Longing

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Inside, the Club is mildly derelict in mood, crowded at certain times, and then oddly deserted, like a school. In the entrance hall in the evening people are always going to and from meetings, or signing each other up for volleyball teams or fitness classes. In the hall the worlds of the hotel above, and the club below, meet. I would always take the downward stair, its handrail tingling with static electricity, and turn along the underground corridor to the gym, the weights room and the dowdy magnificence of the pool. It was a place I loved, a gloomy and functional underworld full of life, purpose and sexuality. Boys, from the age of seventeen, could go there to work on their bodies in the stagnant, aphrodisiac air of the weights room. As you got older, it grew dearer, but quite a few men of advanced years, members since youth and displaying the drooping relics of toned-up pectorals, still paid the price and tottered in to cast an appreciative eye at the showering youngsters. ‘With brother clubs in all the major cities of the world,’ their names and dates incised in marble beneath the founder’s bust in the hall, the large core of men who worked out daily were always supplemented by visitors needing a dip or a game of squash or to find a friend. More than once I had ended up in a bedroom of the hotel above with a man I had smiled at in the showers. The Corry proved the benefit of smiling in general. A sweet, dull man smiled at me there on my first day, talked to me, showed me what was what. I was still an undergraduate then, and a trifle nervous, anticipating, with confused dread and longing, scenes of grim machismo and institutionalised vice. Bill Hawkins, a pillar of the place, I subsequently discovered, fortyish, with the broad belt and sexless underbelly of the heavy weight-lifter, had simply extended camaraderie to a newcomer. ‘Hallo, Will,’ he said to me now as I entered the changing-room and he came back, grunting and staring from a monster workout. ‘Hi, Bill,’ I replied. ‘How’re you doing?’ It was our inevitable exchange, in which some vestige of a joke seemed to reside, our having the same name yet, by the difference of a letter, each being called something altogether different. ‘Haven’t seen you for a bit,’ he said. ‘No, I seem to have had quite a lot on,’ I hinted.

• From Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)

  But to look back from the stony plain along the road which led one to that place is not at all the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective, to say the very least, changes only with the journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seen from any other place. In those days, had the Lord Himself descended from Heaven with trumpets telling her to turn back, she could scarcely have heard Him, and could certainly not have heeded. She lived, in those days, in a fiery storm, of which Richard was the centre and the heart. And she fought only to reach him—only that; she was afraid of what might happen if they were kept from one another; for what might come after she had no thoughts or fears to spare. Her pretext for coming to New York was to take advantage of the greater opportunities the North offered coloured people; to study in a Northern school, and to find a better job than any she was likely to be offered in the South. Her aunt, who listened to this with no diminution of her habitual scorn, was yet unable to deny that from generation to generation, things, as she grudgingly put it, were bound to change—and neither could she quite take the position of seeming to stand in Elizabeth’s way. In the winter of 1920, as the year began, Elizabeth found herself in an ugly back room in Harlem in the home of her aunt’s relative, a woman whose respectability was immediately evident from the incense she burned in her rooms and the spiritualist séances she held every Saturday night. The house was still standing, not very far away; often she was forced to pass it. Without looking up, she was able to see the windows of the apartment in which she had lived, and the woman’s sign was in the window still: M ADAME W ILLIAMS , S PIRITUALIST . She found a job as chambermaid in the same hotel in which Richard worked as lift-boy. Richard said that they would marry as soon as he had saved some money. But since he was going to school at night and made very little money, their marriage, which she had thought of as taking place almost as soon as she arrived, was planned for a future that grew ever more remote.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  I have never felt that way, but I’m an old mom. I had nearly four decades to become myself before experimenting with my obliteration. Sometimes mothers find it alarming to think that what they are doing is so important and in that case it is better not to tell them. It makes them self-conscious and then they do everything less well…. When a mother has a capacity quite simply to be a mother we must never interfere. She will not be able to fight for her rights because she will not understand. As if mothers thought they were performing their ordinary devotions in the wild, then are stunned to look up, and see a peanut-crunching crowd across a moat. Shortly after returning to work after having Iggy, I ran into a superior in the cafeteria. He gallantly purchased me my “vegan comfort meal” and a Naked juice. He asked when my next book would be out; I told him it might take a minute, as I had just had a baby. This sparked a story for him about a colleague he’d once had, a Renaissance studies professor, who allegedly found her newborn so fascinating that for two whole years, her Renaissance research struck her as esoteric and boring. But then, after two years, her interest came back, he said. It came back, he repeated, with a wink. Over time, I have come to suspect that my affection for Bubbles may have less to do with its endorsement of the rule of negative gynecology, and more to do with its ridiculous title, which it shares with Michael Jackson’s pet chimpanzee. Michael doted on Bubbles. But Michael would also rotate the chimp out of service as it aged, and replace it with a new, younger Bubbles. (Cruelty of the Argo?) When I was growing up, my mother would sometimes tell me to switch the TV channel to a station with a male weatherman. They usually have the more accurate forecast, she’d say. The weather people are reading a script, I would say, rolling my eyes. It’s all the same forecast. It’s just a feeling, she would shrug. Alas, it isn’t just a feeling. Even if women are consulting the same satellites, or reading from the same script: their reports are suspect; the jig is up. In other words, the articulation of the reality of my sex is impossible in discourse, and for a structural, eidetic reason. My sex is removed, at least as the property of a subject, from the predicative mechanism that assures discursive coherence. Irigaray’s answer to this conundrum?: to destroy … [but] with nuptial tools…. The option left to me, she writes, was to have a fling with the philosophers.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  his only means of seeing her. At last, when she thought she had baffled his plans, she returned to the churches as before, and Love took care forthwith to make this known to the gentleman, who then resumed his habits of devotion. Fearing lest she should throw some other obstacle in his way, and that he should not have time to make known to her what he fell., one morning, when she was hearing mass in a little chapel, where she thought herself snugly concealed, he placed himself at the end of the altar, and turning to her at the moment when the priest was elevating the host, said, in a voice of deep feeling, " I swear to you, madam, by Him whom the priest holds in his hands, that you are the sole cause of my death. Though you deprive me of all opportunity to address you, yet you cannot be ignorant of the passion I entertain for you. My haggard eyes and death-like countenance must have sufficiently made known to you my condition." The lady pretended not to understand him, and replied, " God's name ought not to be taken in vain ; but the poets say that the gods laugh at the oaths and falsehoods of lovers, wherefore women who prize their honour ought neither to be credulous nor pitiful." So saying, she rose and went home. Those who have been in the like predicament will readily believe that the gentleman was sorely cast down at receiving such a reply. However, as he did not lack courage, he thought it better to have met with a rebuff than to have missed an opportunity of declaring his love. He persevered for three years, and lost not a moment in which he could solicit her by letters and by other means ; but during all that time she never made him any other reply, but shunned him as the wolf shuns the mastiff ; and that not by reason of any aversion she felt for him, but because she was afraid of exposing her He managed so adroitly that he was in the lady's room at the moment appointed. Photographed from Life. Copyright, 1902, by U. Trenor. Second daj.] Q UEEN OF NA VA RRE. 1 6 1 honour and reputation. The gentleman was so well aware that there lay the knot of the difficulty, that he pushed matters more briskly than ever ; till, after a world of trouble, refusals, and sufferings, the lady was touched by his constancy, took pity on him, and granted him what he had so long desired and waited for.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  We had reached the station by then, and he stood a moment looking at me with bemusement, not quite sure what to make of what I had said, and perhaps wondering which of the faces I had shown him was the true face, the face of need he had been accustomed to, or this new face that suddenly was closed to him. Then, as if deciding it wasn’t worth his while to understand, he shrugged and put out his hand, asking for a ten-leva note to see him on his way. For three months there was no sign of Mitko, and over the course of that time my surprise that he would take my parting words to him seriously turned to concern and finally, inevitably, to longing. It was on a weekend afternoon late in February that with a ping he appeared on Skype, from which he had been absent all that time, as he had been absent from NDK and from the streets I had begun to haunt in the hope of finding him again and of picking up the thread I had (as it seemed to me now) too quickly and with too little thought let drop. How extraordinary that with the press of a key, allowing no time for regret, my screen should be filled with his moving image, dear to me again after the long absence. He was peering at his own screen, his face, at first knit with attention, suddenly relaxing and coming alive, as he smiled with what seemed a genuine smile at seeing me after all this time. As we spoke, I stared at his image as if to consume it, taking in what I was surprised to find I had nearly forgotten, though he had let me take photographs of him that night we spent in my apartment, dozens of them, and I had looked at them often in the months he had been gone. But now I could see how he moved, the gestures he made that were too swift for photographs, the living tale of him, and I was filled with a longing free of all ambivalence.

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  I'll never forget the evening I met her... at Uhlich's in the Austernstube... She was with Consul Holm at the time; but I talked a little and was a little nice to her... And when I got her afterwards... well, Thomas! It's a very different feeling than when you get a good deal... But you don't like hearing about such things, I can see it in your face again, and it's over now. I'll say goodbye to her now, although I'll keep in touch with her because of the child... I want to pay everything I owe in Hamburg, you understand, and thenclose.I can't do it anymore. I spoke to Mother and she also wants to give me the five thousand thalers in advance so that I can put things in order, and you'll agree with that, because it's better to simply say: Christian Buddenbrook is going into liquidation and going abroad... than if I go bankrupt, you will agree with me on that. Because I want to go back to London, Thomas, a job in London accept. Self-employment is not for me at all, I'm noticing that more and more. That responsibility... As an employee you go home at night without a care... And I liked being in London... Do you mind?' The Consul had turned his back on his brother throughout this argument and, with his hands in his pockets, was making figures on the ground with one foot. "All right, go to London, then," he said simply. And without even halfway turning back to Christian, he left him behind and walked back to the living room. But Christian followed him. He went up to Gerda, who was sitting there alone reading, and shook her hand. 'Good night, Gerda. Yes, Gerda, I'm going back to London soon. Strange how you get thrown around. Now again into the unknown, you know, in such a big city where there is an adventure at every third step and there is so much to experience. Weird... do you know that feeling? It's sitting here, like in the stomach... very strange..." Third chapter James Möllendorpf, the senior commercial senator, died grotesquely and horrifically. This diabetic old man had lost his instincts of self-preservation so much that in the last years of his life he became more and more obsessed with cakes and tarts. Doctor Grabow, who was also Möllendorpf's family doctor, had protested with all the energy he was capable of, and the concerned family had gently withdrawn the sweet pastry from their head.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Her women now coming in, she ordered them to pre- pare a collation of all sorts of confections ; but D'Avan- nes could neither eat nor drink, so great was his vexa- tion at having missed his blow, and exposed himself, as he feared, by that demonstration of his desires, to lose the position of familiarity in which he had been with her. The husband, having taken measures for extm- guishing the fire, returned, and prevailed on M. D'Avan nes to pass the night in his house ; but he passed it in such a manner that his eyes were more occupied in weeping than in sleeping. He went and bade them adieu at the bedside very early in the morning, and plainly perceived, in kissing the lady, that she felt more pity than anger for his fault. This was a fresh brand to the fire of his love. After dinner he set out for Taffares with the king ; but before his departure he went twice more to take a final farewell of his good father and his wife, who, since her husband's first command, no langer made any scruple to kiss M. DAvannes as her son. There is no doubt that the more virtue did violence to the poor lady's eyes and countenance, constraining them to hide the fire that was in her heart, the more it. augmented and became insupportable. Unable, then, any longer to endure the conflict between love and honour, which yet she had resolved should never be manifested, and having no longer the pleasure and con- solation of seeing and conversing with him for whom she lived, she fell into a continuous fever, caused by a melancholy humour which she was forced to conceal, and which rendered the extremities of her body quite cold, though the inside burned continually. The phy- Third day.] Q UEEN OF NA VA RRE. 26'J

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  with delight. But envy, the enemy of all quiet, could not suffer so innocent and so sweet an intercourse to con- tinue. Some one told the girl's mother he was surprised the gentleman went so often to her house, that people saw it was her daughter's beauty that attracted him, and that they had often been seen together. The mother, who was thoroughly assured of the gentleman's probity, was greatly annoyed at finding that a bad interpretation was put upon his visits ; but in the end, dreading scan- dal and malicious gossip, she begged he would for some time cease to frequent her house. The gentleman was the more mortified at this, as the proper and respectful manner in which he had always behaved towards the daughter had deserved very different treatment. How^- ever, to put an end to the gossip about him, he discon- tinued his visits. Absence, meanwhile, by no means diminished his love ; but one dav, when he was paying a visit to his mistress, he heard it proposed that she should marry a gentleman not richer than himself, and whom, conse^ quently, he thought no better entitled to have her. He began to take heart, and employed his friends to speak on his part in the hope that if the lady was allowed to choose, she would prefer him to his rival ; but as the latter was much the wealthier man, the young lady's mother and relations gave him the preference. The gentleman, who knew that his mistress was a loser as well as himself, was so grieved at being rejected that, without any malady, he began by degrees to waste away, and became so changed that one would have said he had covered his handsome face with the mask of death, to which from hour to hour he was hastening. Still he could not refrain from going as often as he could to see her whom beloved so well ; but at last, his strength being worn out, he was First day.\ QUEEN OF NAVARRE. 63

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  Que vous avez en une heure effass^es, Prenant en vous si grande securel6, Que je m'asseure en vostre fermete ; Souvieigne vous que vous avez remis Du plus parfaict de voz nieilleurs amys Le coeur, I'esprit & Je corps en repos, Par vostre honneste & vertueux propos Aiiquel je veulx adjouster telle foy. Que plus n'aura doubte pouvoir sus moy ; Souvieigne vous que je n'ay plus de paine Que ceste l4 que avecques md^ je maine : C'est le regret de perdre vostre veue, Par qui souvent tant de joye ay receue ; Souvieigne vous du regard de vostre oeil, Dont I'esloingner me faict mourir de dueil ; Souvieigne vous du lieu tres mal par6 Ou fust de moy trop de bien separe ; Souvieigne vous des heures qui sonnoyent, Et du regret qu'en sonnant me donneient, Voyant le temps & I'heure s'advancer Du despartir ou ne fays que penser ; Souvieii'.ne vous de I'adieu redouble A chascun pas, de I'espent trouble, Du coeur trancy & du corps affoibly, Et ne mectez le triste oeil en oubly ; Souvieigne voiis de la parfaicte amour. Qui durera sans cesser nuyct & jour, Qui a dens moy si bien painct vostre ymaige, Que je n'ay riens sinon vostre visaige, Vostre parler, vostre regard tant doulx Devant mes yeulx ; bref, je n'y ay que vous, Vous suppliant, o amye estimee, Plus que nulle aultre & de moy tant aymee, Souvieigne vous d'immortel souvenir De vostre amy, & le vueilles tenir Dens vostre coeur seul amy & parfaict, Ainsi que vous dedens le sien il faict. On the whole, the Queen of Navarre has been far more successful in the poetical treatment of secular than of sacred subjects, and for obvious reasons. We cannot speak from personal knowledge of her efforts in the latter field, but we are very well disposed to accept the judgment pronounced upon them by the Bibliophiles Frangais, that they are barren of poetry, and brimful of tediousness, consistmg, as they do, of long paraphrases of Scripture, theological dissertations, and X] MEMOIR OF MARGARET,

• From Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family (1901)

  "Sitting on the stones" meant: "Being lonely and bored." There came a rainy day that veiled the sea far and wide in a gray veil so that it completely merged with the deep sky that soaked the beach and swamped the paths, and Tony said, 'Today we both have to sit on the stones . . . that is in the porch or in the living room. There is nothing to do but play me your student songs, Morten, although I am terribly bored.” "Yes," said Morten, "let's sit down... But you know, when you're with us, there won't be any more stones!"... By the way, he didn't say things like that when his father was around; his mother was allowed to hear it. "What now?" asked the pilot commander when, after lunch, Tony and Morten got up at the same time and prepared to leave... "Where should the young gentlemen go?" "Yes, I may accompany Fraulein Antonie a little to the sea temple." "So, can you do that? – Tell me, my son Filius, wouldn't it be more appropriate in the end if you sat down in your room and repeated your nerve cords? You'll have forgotten everything by the time you come back to Göttingen..." But Frau Schwarzkopf spoke softly: "Diederich, my God! why shouldn't he go? Let him go! He's on vacation! And shouldn't he get anything from our visit?' So they went. They walked along the beach, at the very bottom of the water, where the sand is wetted by the tide, smoothed and hardened so that it is easy to walk; where scattered are small, common, white shells, and others, oblong, large, opalescent; interspersed with yellow-green wet seaweed with round, hollow fruits that pop when crushed; and jellyfish, simple water-colored as well as reddish-yellow, poisonous, which burn the leg if touched while bathing... "Are you wondering how stupid I used to be?" Tony said. »I wanted to get the colorful stars out of the jellyfish. I carried a lot of jellyfish home in a handkerchief and laid them out neatly on the balcony in the sun to let them evaporate... then the stars had to remain! Yeah, nice... When I checked, there was a pretty big wet spot. It just smelled a little like rotten seaweed...” They walked, the rhythmic roar of the long waves at their side, the fresh salt wind on their faces, coming free and unhindered, enveloping the ears and causing a pleasant dizziness, a muffled stupor...

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I will be with you the whole weekend, he said, I promise, hundert protzent . Over the next few days I received a number of e-mails from him, as he visited hotels and reported back on prices and their nearness to the sea. It was the sea, as the days passed, that I longed for almost as much as I longed for Mitko, having spent so many months in landlocked Sofia, and it was the thought of the sea even more than of Mitko that I dwelled on for the seven cramped hours I spent on the bus from Sofia to the coast. It was a gray day, cold, more like winter than spring. There were martenitsi pinned to everyone’s clothes, small bundles of red and white yarn exchanged on the first of March, a ritual meant to encourage the year to turn. My own bag was covered with them; students had given them to me with great ceremony, with wishes of health and wealth and happiness, all day long. But there was no magic in them, and for the whole trip a light precipitation fell, sometimes as rain, sometimes as snow. I was depressed by both the weather and the landscape we passed, the beauty of which was ruined everywhere human hands had touched it. Along the highway, which must have dated to Communist times, the buildings we passed were squat and concrete and often falling apart, abandoned no doubt for their larger counterparts in the city I had just left. I was amazed by how completely the impulse to beauty had been erased from these buildings, which were so different, in everything but their poverty, from the mountain villages I had visited, where almost every dwelling showed as if defiantly an urge toward art. As evening fell, the landscape darkened and was lost, and the window offered nothing but the reflection of my own face. I’ve never been able to read on buses, and so the only distraction from the discomfort of the ride was the line of small screens that ran the length of the center aisle, looping the same low-budget American action movie over and over. There was no sound, and the subtitles moved too quickly for me to puzzle them out, but even so I was unable to stop watching. It was a terrible movie, a revenge tragedy, every shot was a cliché. In each scene the violence grew more brutal, the tortures more baroque, my own excitement more intense; and not just my own, at one point I heard a woman gasp and glanced away from the screen and saw that nearly everyone on the bus was transfixed. The film had bound us together, it had made us all feel the same thing, so that we became a kind of temporary corporate body.

• From Heptaméron (1559)

  say, surprised that this gentleman did not attach him- self to any of her ladies, asked him one day if it was true that he was as indifferent as he appeared. He re- plied, that if she saw his heart as she saw his face, she would not have asked him that question. Eager to know what he meaiut,. she pressed him so hard that he confessed he loved a lady whom he believed to be the most virtuous in all Christendom. She did all she could by entreaties and commands to make him say who the lady was, but all to no purpose ; till at last she pre- tended to be most deeply incensed against him, and swore that she would never speak to him again if he did not name the lady he loved so passionately. To escape from her importunities, he was forced to say that he would rather die than do what she required of him ; but at last, finding that he was about to be deprived of the honour of seeing her, and to be cast out of her favour for not declaring a truth in itself so seemly that no one could take it in bad part, he said to her, trembling with emotion, " I cannot and dare not, madam, name the per- son ; but I will show her to you the first time we go to the chase ; and I am sure that you will say, as welJ as I, that she is the most beautiful and most accomplished lady in the world." After this reply, the queen went to the chase sooner than she would otherwise have done. Elisor had notice of this, and prepared to wait on her majesty as usual He had got made for himself a great steel mirror in the shape of a corslet, and this he placed on his chest, con cealed beneath a mantle of black frieze, all bordered with purl and gold. He rode a black horse, very richly caparisoned. His harness was all gilded and enamelled black in the Moorish fashion, and his black silk hat had ti buckle adorned with precious stones, and having in •*And what did you see in the mirror?" " Nothing but myself," said the Queen. Third day. \ Q UEEN OF NA VARRE 2 39

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Is he Bulgarian, Mitko asked, catching my meaning, and I said he wasn’t; we met here, I said, but he’s Portuguese, he lives in Lisbon, and then I stopped, feeling I shouldn’t say more. I wanted to keep my relationship with R. to myself, and the thought of him gave new urgency to Mitko’s warning. How would I forgive myself if I had infected him, if I had dragged him into the world from which (as I thought of it) he had lifted me out? Yasno , Mitko said, drawing back his hand, I get it; he seemed happy to let the subject drop. I had noticed his eyes flick once or twice, as if involuntarily, toward the pan still lying by the stove, and I stood and relit the burner, asking him if he was hungry. It wasn’t really a question, and he didn’t pretend to consider it. While the food was warming he turned back to my laptop, logging on to Facebook and, I was sure, the Bulgarian hookup site I remembered from before, and then he closed the computer and sat with me at the little table. I was surprised that I couldn’t remember our ever having shared a meal before in that way, quietly and seated and alone. We didn’t talk at first; Mitko dug into the food and I watched him eat, surprised by how happy I was to have him there. I wondered how much this feeling owed to him, to his company or the pleasure he took in the poor meal I had made, and how much it depended on some gratified notion of myself, my willingness to set aside the past and a generosity I knew he would call on before he left, which was real generosity now, I thought, since I would ask nothing in return for it. He looked up and smiled when he caught me watching him, and I smiled back. I asked him how he had passed the last two years, whether he had been in Varna, whether he had found work. He looked at me, briefly silent, and then, For a while I was in a bad place, he said and paused, as if unsure how to continue, or as if waiting for me to draw him out. What do you mean, I asked, what kind of place, and he set down his fork, which he had been holding in the palm of his hand like a child, all five fingers circled around the handle. I did some bad things, he said, and I was caught, and they put me away for a year. In prison, I asked stupidly, what else could it be, and he wagged his head yes.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Please, he said again, though I had already agreed, the repetition a kind of courtesy; of course I would help him, I said, in this as in everything. And so the following weekend I met K.’s girlfriend, about whom I had heard so much I felt I already knew her, though we were still awkward and reserved with each other when we met in the kitchen of K.’s house. His mother handed us our drinks and made a general fuss of welcome, while of course all we wanted was to be left alone, to claim our privacy, which I anticipated with eager dread and for which K. I knew was simply eager. He fidgeted in his seat, glancing first at me and then at her, holding my gaze though he didn’t hold hers, as though he couldn’t bear to look at her for long. I was safer, he could share with me what he felt, and if this wasn’t the intimacy we had known or that I craved it was still a kind of intimacy, which I could be part of even if it wasn’t exactly mine. He drummed his fingers on the table, he shuffled his feet beneath it. We had already introduced ourselves, K.’s girlfriend and I; she was slight and blond and unremarkably pretty, smiling at me with her big teeth. I had resisted liking her but I did like her, she was kind and wanted my friendship, she had heard so much, she said, she had been waiting so long to meet me. Her name was K., which was something they joked about, their sharing of the initial: K. and K., they said, laughing, making a kind of music of their names, K. and K. They already had jokes of their own, which made them laugh even in front of K.’s mother, who laughed at them too. Even in her presence it was clear what they felt for each other, their feelings were bright and open, sure of their place; if there were certain obstacles to be overcome they were just for show, scenery for a drama everyone would applaud.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  He leaned his head back, pressing his face against mine, rubbing it (it too was stubbled and rough) against the softness of my own, and I felt him harden as he finished pissing, as I carefully skinned him back and shook the last of it, feeling almost suffocated with longing, having never touched anyone in that way before, having never before been of that particular service. Mitko turned to me and kissed me, deeply and searchingly and possessingly, at the same time pushing me backward down the hallway toward the bedroom, pushing me and perhaps also using me for support, to the broad bed where we had lain together earlier and where now we lay down again. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him, and not just his arms, he wrapped his legs around me too and with all four of his limbs pressed me to him, embracing me so that when I breathed in the air was filtered through him, smelling of alcohol of course but also of his own scent that elicited such an animal response from me, that so fired me up (I imagined the chambers of the brain lighting up, thrown switches in a house). He lay like some marine creature wrapped around me, wrapping around me again if I shifted or half woke, and I slept as I have seldom slept, deeply and almost without disturbance, held like his beloved or his child; or held, I suppose it must be said, like his captive or his prey. Not long ago I spent a weekend in Blagoevgrad, in the Pirin mountains, chaperoning a group of students to a conference on mathematical linguistics, a field in which I have little interest and no expertise. I had long hours, while they were in lectures, to explore the beautiful wooded park near our hotel, which followed a small river three kilometers or so toward the pedestrian city center, a haven of humane architecture almost untouched by the ravages of Soviet-era construction, though blemished here and there by gaudy new buildings, expensive apartments overlooking the river. It was spring, the asmi were still bare, the wooden trellises built over benches and tables for grapevines to climb, vines that for now were still withered and dry. They clung to their wooden supports, vestiges of winter in a landscape already lush with the turned year.

• From The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  Writing Through the Narrow Gate had reawakened that old longing for a more intense existence, shot through with transcendent meaning. This had quickly been submerged in the skeptical climate of the television world, but had surfaced occasionally at infrequent intervals. I remembered my drive from Jerusalem to Jericho, watching the sunrise over the surrounding desert. I saw again the Orthodox Jews arguing so passionately about God in the yeshiva, and the Muslim cleric studying the Koran in the al-Aqsa Mosque. I recalled my emotional identification with Saint Paul at Tre Fontane, when my voice had wobbled—just a little bit—when I had quoted his words “Now we see as through a glass darkly— but then, face-to-face!” Even though I considered faith a chimera, religion could still catch me unawares. Whatever my friends thought, God was not—quite—a joke. If I wanted to stay in the swing of things in London, it would be much more sensible to write a life of Fanny Burney. But despite the dismal predictions of the publishers, something in me refused to give up my God book. Maybe, like the mariner, I was moving toward a salvation of sorts “unaware,” my unconscious mind reaching out for what it knew I needed. In deciding to write about God, therefore, I knew that I was setting off on a lonely path, even though, in a sense, that was the last thing I wanted. On the other hand, I reflected, when I had come to an apparent dead end in the past, my life had sometimes taken a turn for the better. “Because I do not hope to turn again,” Eliot had reflected in Ash-Wednesday, “consequently I rejoice.” Like the mariner in his doomed ship, I seemed hopelessly adrift right now, but this had happened to me every five or six years with uncanny regularity. I had spent twenty years trying to fit into one environment, one career after another, to no avail. Perhaps I should simply stop trying to enter the mainstream. Instead of fighting against the bias in my life that pushed me outside the group and beyond the norm, maybe I should just go with it and see what happened.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  The Gloss on the words “How hard is for those who have riches” etc. (Mark x. 23), has the following comment: “It is one thing to have money, another to love it. Many possess it without loving it; many love it without possessing it.” Thus, while some men own wealth and love it; others congratulate themselves on neither owning nor loving it, for this is the safer course. Such men can say with the Apostle, “the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.” Hence it is evident that habitual poverty, in conjunction with actual poverty, is preferable to habitual poverty alone. This same remark may be made with reference to the words in Matt. xix. 23, “How hard it is for a rich man enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” The Gloss here observes, “It is safest neither to possess nor to love riches.” “Has not God chosen the poor in this world?” asks St. James (ii. 5). “Those who are poor, in temporal possessions” is the interpretation of these word given by the Gloss. Hence it is those who are actually poor who are chosen by God. The Gloss on the words, “every one of you who does not renounce everything that he possesses,” observes that “there is a difference between renouncing everything and leaving everything. All who make lawful use of their material possessions renounce them, in so far as their aspirations tend towards such things as are eternal. But those who leave all things act with greater perfection, for they set aside what is temporal in order to seek only what is eternal.” Hence abandonment of all things by actual poverty is a point of evangelical perfection; renunciation of all things by habitual poverty is necessary for salvation. St. Jerome, in his epistle against Vigilantius, says: “The Lord speaks to him who desires to be perfect and, with the Apostle, leaves father, ship and net. The one you praise is in the second or third rank; for he desires only to give the income of his possessions to the poor. We accept such a one, although we know that the first degree of virtue is preferable to the second or third degree.” From these words, it is plain that they who give all that they possess to the poor, are to be preferred before such as give alms only of their income. St. Jerome, again, says, in his epistle to the Monk Rusticus: “If you have possessions, sell them and give to the poor. If you do not have them, you are free from a great burden. Therefore, being stripped of all things, you follow Christ in His poverty. This is a hard and painful undertaking; but it is rewarded with a glorious recompense.” For the sake of brevity, we omit many other passages from St. Jerome, all of whic must be understood as referring to actual poverty.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  All right, I said, I will. I wasn’t very worried: it had been two years, and I hadn’t noticed anything to cause alarm, certainly nothing so dramatic as Mitko’s own symptoms. But it was also true that I hadn’t been tested for anything in years. The terror I had felt constantly when I was younger had given way to something like carelessness, which I knew was irresponsible, though I mostly took the usual precautions, and anyway it was an easy enough thought to avoid. Lots of guys wouldn’t have told you, Mitko said again, they would have said what do I owe him, he can fuck himself. But I’m not like that, he went on, and you’re my friend. I’ve never stopped thinking of you as my friend, he said, shifting the pitch of the conversation just slightly, making it more intimate. This too was a different tone, one I hadn’t heard from him before, retrospective, almost regretful, though I didn’t really trust it, I doubted it was his conscience alone that had brought him back to me. Are you sorry, he said then, deepening this tone still further, are you sorry that you came to Varna that time? I didn’t answer at first, remembering how frightened I had been that night, and thinking too of the whole false history between us, falser now that I’ve turned it over so often. No, I said, I don’t regret it, and as I said it it was true. And you, I said, and he drew his head up in a single quick jerk, not quite a nod, Ne, ne suzhalyavam. For the first time since he had arrived he smiled, not the eager smile I remembered from before but something that lightened the mood. Radvam se , he said, I’m glad you’re not sorry, and then he placed his hand on my knee, not meaning it as a seduction exactly, the fact of his illness dismissed any thought of it, but as a reestablishment of contact, I thought, a suggestion that at some point we might begin again what we had halted. Mitko, I said, I should tell you, I have a friend now, and I paused, not sure how to clarify what I meant, the Bulgarian word allowing for so many possibilities; imam postoyanen priyatel , I said finally, a constant friend, the awkward phrase the best I could manage. I wanted to make things clear, to draw firm lines, but I realized even as I spoke I was taking for granted the fact that Mitko would come again to my door, that almost certainly I would let him in.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  Over the next weeks he called me less often, and when I called him he was almost never home. He had met a girl, he said, and when we did speak he spoke about her, he told me every word they said to each other, every gesture they made. As he cataloged his feelings I tried to meet him as I always had in his words, but I couldn’t now, they were like a territory he receded into and that excluded me. He told me about every victory and frustration, the teasing games she played, how she made him wait for everything he wanted, and how even her delays delighted him, so long as he was sure that they would end. But increasingly as the weeks passed K. was frustrated by a delay beyond their control, by his mother’s vigilance, her denial of the privacy they craved. She was always watching them, K. said, she insisted his door remain open, they could be interrupted at any time; and they couldn’t go to her house, either, her father was even more strict, there they couldn’t even kiss; and it was winter now, even if they could find a suitable place outside, secluded, romantic, it was impossible, it was bitterly cold. If they had cars it would be different, he said, when you have a car you always have privacy, but we didn’t have cars, we were still too young to drive. It was after this inventory of impossibilities that he told me he thought I could help him, if I didn’t mind, as of course I didn’t; I was grateful he would ask me for help, it would bring us closer again, I thought. I would do anything for him, I said, and what he asked was nothing, just that I come to his house and be present, simply be there with him and his girlfriend in his room. His mother wouldn’t be so vigilant then, they would have some uninterrupted time, and if they weren’t quite alone it would be the next best thing. I was his best friend, he said. And she wouldn’t mind either, the girl he said now that he loved; he had told her everything about me and she wanted to meet me, he said, she understood why I had to be there, she wanted it as much as he did.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  Bridgewater studies my expression upon looking around the North-Linn wrestling room, smiles and says, “You’re used to a bigger space if you’ve been spending time at Linn-Mar.” He’s right. Compared with this, the Linn-Mar High School wrestling area, the place where Jay does his thing, is a wing at the MGM Grand. And it represents the difference, or at least one of the differences, between Class 1A and Class 3A in wrestling in Iowa. School classifications are based primarily upon school enrollment, but the bucks don’t stop there. They carry on through the ability of programs to fund-raise and lay out capital expenditures that help make coaches’ and athletic directors’ dreams come true. Linn-Mar is a solid 3A classified school, the largest class in Iowa for wrestling. There is money flowing into the school system, but also flowing around it. You can feel the surge; things are happening. Malls have been constructed up and down Collins Road, the delineation of North Cedar Rapids and Marion. Swing past Barnes and Noble and Taco Bell and the new sixteen-screen, stadium-seating multiplex, and you know you are traveling along a path where developers figure significant future growth to occur. That growth doesn’t ensure a waterfall of money into coach Doug Streicher’s program at Linn-Mar, but it at least affords the opportunity. Out in Troy Mills and Coggon, though, the school enrollment is not growing, because the district as a whole is not growing. Farmers often consider themselves fortunate if any one of their children, once grown, is willing to return to the land to take the place of a family member who is moving away or retiring. Basically—if it all works out—they are looking at something close to a zero-growth cycle in the area itself. The LeCleres have lived on various parcels of family land for a century, but already the modern heirs are beginning to fan out. By the fall of 2005, Dan will be in college, and Michael will be contemplating a move to California, gearing up for graduate school while taking a job to establish residency and lower his tuition bills. Bridgewater, who wants a new wrestling facility for his very tough, very good program, is going to have to fight like hell to get it. He already has raised something like $50,000, and the school board is trying mightily to come up with matching funds, and the other $50,000 will have to be gotten somehow. Things like locally hosted wrestling tournaments are drops in the bucket—a few hundred dollars of profit, maybe more if the snack bar has a good day—but it is by dribs and drabs that the project is coming together. Until then, this will have to do, a place so small that more than half the wrestlers can be found standing against the walls, waiting for their turns on the small mat area. But what the facility lacks in amenities, it makes up for in volume and effort.