Love

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 Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  “What say ye to me, O ye gainsayers that I was speaking unto, who yet believe Moses to have been the holy servant of God, and his books the oracles of the Holy Ghost? Is not this house of God, not coeternal indeed with God, yet after its measure, eternal in the heavens, when you seek for changes of times in vain, because you will not find them? For that, to which it is ever good to cleave fast to God, surpasses all extension, and all revolving periods of time.” “It is,” say they. “What then of all that which my heart loudly uttered unto my God, when inwardly it heard the voice of His praise, what part thereof do you affirm to be false? Is it that the matter was without form, in which because there was no form, there was no order? But where no order was, there could be no vicissitude of times: and yet this almost nothing,’ inasmuch as it was not altogether nothing, was from Him certainly, from Whom is whatsoever is, in what degree soever it is.” “This also,” say they, “do we not deny.” With these I now parley a little in Thy presence, O my God, who grant all these things to be true, which Thy Truth whispers unto my soul. For those who deny these things, let them bark and deafen themselves as much as they please; I will essay to persuade them to quiet, and to open in them a way for Thy word. But if they refuse, and repel me; I beseech, O my God, be not Thou silent to me. Speak Thou truly in my heart; for only Thou so speakest: and I will let them alone blowing upon the dust without, and raising it up into their own eyes: and myself will enter my chamber, and sing there a song of loves unto Thee; groaning with groanings unutterable, in my wayfaring, and remembering Jerusalem, with heart lifted up towards it, Jerusalem my country, Jerusalem my mother, and Thyself that rulest over it, the Enlightener, Father, Guardian, Husband, the pure and strong delight, and solid joy, and all good things unspeakable, yea all at once, because the One Sovereign and true Good. Nor will I be turned away, until Thou gather all that I am, from this dispersed and disordered estate, into the peace of that our most dear mother, where the first-fruits of my spirit be already (whence I am ascertained of these things), and Thou conform and confirm it for ever, O my God, my Mercy. But those who do not affirm all these truths to be false, who honour Thy holy Scripture, set forth by holy Moses, placing it, as we, on the summit of authority to be followed, and do yet contradict me in some thing, I answer thus; By Thyself judge, O our God, between my Confessions and these men’s contradictions.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  How hast Thou loved us, good Father, who sparedst not Thine only Son, but deliveredst Him up for us ungodly! How hast Thou loved us, for whom He that thought it no robbery to be equal with Thee, was made subject even to the death of the cross, He alone, free among the dead, having power to lay down His life, and power to take it again: for us to Thee both Victor and Victim, and therefore Victor, because the Victim; for us to Thee Priest and Sacrifice, and therefore Priest because the Sacrifice; making us to Thee, of servants, sons by being born of Thee, and serving us. Well then is my hope strong in Him, that Thou wilt heal all my infirmities, by Him Who sitteth at Thy right hand and maketh intercession for us; else should I despair. For many and great are my infirmities, many they are, and great; but Thy medicine is mightier. We might imagine that Thy Word was far from any union with man, and despair of ourselves, unless He had been made flesh and dwelt among us. Affrighted with my sins and the burden of my misery, I had cast in my heart, and had purposed to flee to the wilderness: but Thou forbadest me, and strengthenedst me, saying, Therefore Christ died for all, that they which live may now no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him that died for them. See, Lord, I cast my care upon Thee, that I may live, and consider wondrous things out of Thy law. Thou knowest my unskilfulness, and my infirmities; teach me, and heal me. He, Thine only Son, in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, hath redeemed me with His blood. Let not the proud speak evil of me; because I meditate on my ransom, and eat and drink, and communicate it; and poor, desired to be satisfied from Him, amongst those that eat and are satisfied, and they shall praise the Lord who seek Him. Book XI

• From Another Country (1962)

  His face was the face of a man entering middle age, and it was also—and always would be, for her—the face of a boy. His sandy hair was longer than usual, it was beginning to turn gray, his forehead was wet, and his hair was wet. Cass discovered that she loved him during the fearful, immeasurable second that she stood there watching him. Had she loved him less, she might have wearily consented to continue acting as the bulwark which protected his simplicity. But she could not do that to Richard, nor to his children. He had the right to know his wife: she prayed that he would take it. She said, “I have to tell you something, Richard. I don’t know how you’ll take it, or where we can go from here.” She paused, and his face changed. Be quick! she told herself. “I have to tell you because we can never come back together, we can never have any future if I don’t.” Her stomach contracted again, dryly. She wanted to run to the bathroom, but she knew that that would do no good. The spasm passed. “Vivaldo and I have never touched each other. I’ve”—be quick!—“been having an affair with Eric.” His voice, when he spoke, seemed to have no consciousness behind it, to belong to no one; it was a mere meaningless tinkle on the air: “Eric?” She walked to the bar and leaned on it. “Yes.” How the silence rang and gathered! “Eric?” He laughed. “Eric?” It’s his turn now, she thought. She did not look at him; he was rising to his feet; he stumbled, suddenly drunken, to the bar. She felt him staring at her—for some reason, she thought of an airplane trying to land. Then his hand was on her shoulder. He turned her to face him. She forced herself to look into his eyes. “Is that the truth?” She felt absolutely cold and dry and wanted to go to sleep. “Yes, Richard. That’s the truth.” She moved away and sat down in the chair again. She had, indeed, delivered herself up: she thought of the children and fear broke over her like a wave, chilling her. She stared straight before her, sitting perfectly still, listening: for no matter what else was lost, she would not give up her children, she would not let them go. “It’s not true. I don’t believe you. Why Eric? Why did you go to him?” “He has something—something I needed very badly.” “What is that, Cass?” “A sense of himself.” “A sense of himself,” he repeated, slowly. “A sense of himself.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  Yves locked their door behind them and Eric walked to the window and looked at the sky, at the mighty towers. He heard the murmur of the water and then Yves called his name. He turned. Yves stood on the other side of the room, between the two beds, naked. “Which bed do you think is better?” he asked. And he sounded genuinely perplexed, as though it were a difficult decision. “Whichever you prefer,” Eric said, gravely. Yves pulled back the covers of the bed nearest the window and placed himself between the sheets. He pulled the covers up to his chin and lay on his back, watching Eric. His eyes were dark and enormous in the dark room. A faint smile touched his lips. And this look, this moment, entered into Eric, to remain with him forever. There was a terrifying innocence in Yves’ face, a beautiful yielding: in some marvelous way, for Yves, this moment in this bed obliterated, cast into the sea of forgetfulness, all the sordid beds and squalid grappling which had led him here. He was turning to the lover who would not betray him, to his first lover. Eric crossed the room and sat down on the bed and began to undress. Again, he heard the murmur of the stream. “Will you give me a cigarette?” Yves asked. He had a new voice, newly troubled, and when Eric looked at him he saw for the first time how the face of a lover becomes a stranger’s face. “Bien sûr.” He lit two cigarettes and gave one to Yves. They watched each other in the fantastic, tiny glow—and smiled, almost like conspirators. Then Eric asked, “Yves, do you love me?” “Yes,” said Yves. “That’s good,” said Eric, “because I’m crazy about you. I love you.” Then, in the violent moonlight, naked, he slowly pulled the covers away from Yves. They watched each other and he stared at Yves’ body for a long time before Yves lifted up his arms, with that same sad, cryptic smile, and kissed him. Eric felt beneath his fingers Yves’ slowly stirring, stiffening sex. This sex dominated the long landscape of his life as the cathedral towers dominated the plains. Now, Yves, as though he were also remembering that day and night, turned his head and looked at Eric with a wondering, speculative, and triumphant smile. And at that moment, Madame Belet entered, with a sound of knives and forks and plates, and switched on the lights. Yves’ face changed, the sea vanished. Yves rose from the hassock, blinking a little. Madame Belet put the utensils on the table, carefully, and marched out again, returning immediately with a bottle of wine, and a corkscrew. She placed these on the table. Yves went to the table and began opening the wine. “She thinks you are going to abandon me,” said Yves. He poured a tiny bit of wine into his own glass, then poured for Eric.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Our bodies grew stranger, to ourselves, to each other. You sprouted coarse hair in new places; new muscles fanned out across your hip bones. My breasts were sore for over a year, and while they don’t hurt anymore, they still feel like they belong to someone else (and in a sense, since I’m still nursing, they do). For years you were stone; now you strip your shirt off whenever you feel like it, emerge muscular, shirtless, into public spaces, go running—swimming, even. Via T, you’ve experienced surges of heat, an adolescent budding, your sexuality coming down from the labyrinth of your mind and disseminating like a cottonwood tree in a warm wind. You like the changes, but also feel them as a sort of compromise, a wager for visibility, as in your drawing of a ghost who proclaims, Without this sheet, I would be invisible. (Visibility makes possible, but it also disciplines: disciplines gender, disciplines genre.) Via pregnancy, I have my first sustained encounter with the pendulous, the slow, the exhausted, the disabled. I had always presumed that giving birth would make me feel invincible and ample, like fisting. But even now—two years out—my insides feel more quivery than lush. I’ve begun to give myself over to the idea that the sensation might be forever changed, that this sensitivity is now mine, ours, to work with. Can fragility feel as hot as bravado? I think so, but sometimes struggle to find the way. Whenever I think I can’t find it, Harry assures me that we can. And so we go on, our bodies finding each other again and again, even as they—we—have also been right here, all along. For reasons almost incomprehensible to me now, I cried a little when our first ultrasound technician—the nice, seemingly gay Raoul, who sported a little silver sperm-squiggle pin on his white coat—told us at twenty weeks that our baby was a boy, without a shadow of a doubt. I guess I had to mourn something— the fantasy of a feminist daughter, the fantasy of a mini-me. Someone whose hair I could braid, someone who might serve as a femme ally to me in a house otherwise occupied by an adorable boy terrier, my beautiful, swaggery stepson, and a debonair butch on T. But that was not my fate, nor was it the baby’s. Within twenty-four hours of hearing the news, I was on board. Little Agnes would be little Iggy. And I would love him fiercely. Maybe I would even braid his hair! As you reminded me on the drive home from our appointment, Hey, I was born female, and look how that turned out.

• From Wild (2012)

  She wanted us to remember that, and I did. It felt like she was with me always, metaphorically at least. And in a way it was literal too. When we’d finally laid down that tombstone and spread her ashes into the dirt, I hadn’t spread them all. I’d kept a few of the largest chunks in my hand. I’d stood for a long while, not ready to release them to the earth. I didn’t release them. I never ever would. I put her burnt bones into my mouth and swallowed them whole. By the night of my mother’s fiftieth birthday, I loved her again, though I still couldn’t bear to let the Judy Collins songs come into my head. It was cold, but not as cold as the night before. I sat bundled in my tent wearing my gloves, reading the first pages of my new book—The Best American Essays 1991. I usually waited until morning to burn whatever pages I’d read the night before, but on this night, when I was done reading, I crawled out of my tent and made a fire of the pages I’d read. As I watched them ignite, I said my mother’s name out loud as if it were a ceremony for her. Her name was Barbara, but she’d gone by Bobbi, so that was the name I spoke. Saying Bobbi instead of Mom felt like a revelation, like it was the first time that I truly understood that she was my mother, but also more. When she’d died, I’d lost that too—the Bobbi she’d been, the woman who was separate from who she was to me. She seemed to come at me now, the full perfect and imperfect force of her humanity, as if her life was an intricately painted mural and I could finally see the whole thing. Who she’d been to me and who she hadn’t. How it was she belonged to me profoundly, and also how she didn’t.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  October, 2007. The Santa Ana winds are shredding the bark off the eucalyptus trees in long white stripes. A friend and I risk the widowmakers by having lunch outside, during which she suggests I tattoo the words HARD TO GET across my knuckles, as a reminder of this pose's possible fruits. Instead the words *I love you* come tumbling out of my mouth in an incantation the first time you fuck me in the ass, my face smashed against the cement floor of your dank and charming bachelor pad. You had *Molloy* by your bedside and a stack of cocks in a shadowy unused shower stall. Does it get any better? *What's your pleasure?* you asked, then stuck around for an answer.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Luckily, Iggy couldn’t care less. He is stalwart, has a high tolerance for physical intrusions. Within his first year of life, he withstood a spinal tap, several catheterizations, a contrast enema, electric shocks, nuclear scans, countless IVs, and an infusion of rare antibodies harvested from other people’s bodies (an infusion that, had we not had health insurance, would have cost $47,000 for the vial, an amount that puts the price of frozen sperm to shame). All that said, his native joy and robustness have continued, unabated. Until he grows too heavy, I carry him always and everywhere, even against the rules (making pancakes at the stove, walking down steep trails, etc.). When we go on the road together, I let him drag around my enormous roily-bag at the airport, even though he’s been ambulatory for only a few weeks. He insists. I recognize his insistence. I ignore the books that sternly advise against rocking or nursing your baby to sleep, so that she learns to go to sleep by herself; I am blessed with the time and the desire to hold Iggy until he slips off, and so I do. I wait and wait and wait until I hear a sleep rattle enter his breath, I watch his eyes flutter open and closed, open and closed, a hundred times, until finally they stay shut. I know from raising my stepson that this ritual won’t last forever—Iggy’s babyhood is already speeding away. By the time this book is published, it will be gone. Sturdy pilot, he flips over the coffee table and rides. I adore Winnicott. But the perversity is not lost on me that the most oft-cited, well-respected, best-selling books about the caretaking of babies—Winnicott, Spock, Sears, Weissbluth— have been and are mostly still by men. On the front cover of The Baby Book—arguably one of the more progressive contemporary options (albeit oppressively heteronormative)—the byline reads “by William Sears (MD) and Martha Sears (RN).” This seems promising(ish), but nurse/wife/mother Martha’s voice appears only in anecdotes, italics, and sidebars, never as co-narrator. Was she too busy taking care of their eight children to join in the first-person? I look down at my well-loved copy of Winnicott on the Child and note that it comes laden with not one, not two, but three introductions by male pediatricians (Brazelton, Greenspan, Spock). What kind of bubble would burst if a lady shrink were presumed to add value to his legacy? Why don’t I myself seek out child-care books by women? Am I unconsciously channel-surfing for the male weatherman? How could Gallop, or any mother, however whip-smart, present the rule of negative gynecology and be taken as seriously as Sloterdijk? I’m boring myself with these reversals (feminist hazard).

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  A day or two after my love pronouncement, now feral with vulnerability, I sent you the passage from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes in which Barthes describes how the subject who utters the phrase “I love you” is like “the Argonaut renewing his ship during its voyage without changing its name.” Just as the Argo’s parts may be replaced over time but the boat is still called the Argo, whenever the lover utters the phrase “I love you,” its meaning must be renewed by each use, as “the very task of love and of language is to give to one and the same phrase inflections which will be forever new.” I thought the passage was romantic. You read it as a possible retraction. In retrospect, I guess it was both. You’ve punctured my solitude, I told you. It had been a useful solitude, constructed, as it was, around a recent sobriety, long walks to and from the Y through the sordid, bougainvillea-strewn back streets of Hollywood, evening drives up and down Mulholland to kill the long nights, and, of course, maniacal bouts of writing, learning to address no one. But the time for its puncturing had come. I feel I can give you everything without giving myself away, I whispered in your basement bed. If one does one’s solitude right, this is the prize. A few months later, we spent Christmas together in a hotel in downtown San Francisco. I had booked the room for us online, in the hope that my booking of the room and our time in the room would make you love me forever. It turned out to be one of those hotels that booked for cheap because it was undergoing an astonishingly rude renovation, and because it was smack in the middle of the cracked-out Tenderloin. No matter—we had other business to attend to. Sun filtered through the ratty Venetian blinds just barely obscuring the construction workers hammering away outside as we attended to it. Just don’t kill me, I said as you took off your leather belt, smiling. After the Barthes, I tried again, this time with a fragment of a poem by Michael Ondaatje: Kissing the stomach kissing your scarred skin boat. History is what you’ve travelled on and take with you We’ve each had our stomachs kissed by strangers to the other and as for me I bless everyone who kissed you here I didn’t send the fragment because I had in any way achieved its serenity. I sent it with the aspiration that one day I might—that one day my jealousy might recede, and I would be able to behold the names and images of others inked onto your skin without disjunct or distaste. (Early on we made a romantic visit to Dr. Tattoff on Wilshire Boulevard, both of us giddy at the prospect of clearing your slate. We left crestfallen at the price, the improbability of ever completely eradicating the ink.)

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Title : The Argonauts Author: Nelson, Maggie Note to the Reader: In the print edition of The Argonauts, attributions for otherwise unattributed text appear in the margins in grayscale. Because of limitations in the conversion of printed books to reflowable ebook files, there is not an adequate way to reproduce those marginal citations alongside the main text in the ebook. Therefore, all quoted text that is not attributed within the body of the text is listed at the end of the book, with italics indicating the quoted material.THE ARGONAUTS [image file=image_rsrcRU.jpg] ALSO BY MAGGIE NELSON The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning Bluets Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions The Red Parts: A Memoir Jane: A Murder Something Bright, Then Holes The Latest Winter Shiner THE ARGONAUTSMaggie Nelson Graywolf Press Copyright © 2015 by Maggie Nelson This publication is made possible, in part, by the voters of Minnesota through a Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grant, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund, and through a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota. Significant support has also been provided by Target, the McKnight Foundation, Amazon.com, and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks. [image file=image_rsrcRV.jpg] The Argonauts is a project of the Creative Capital Foundation. Published by Graywolf Press 250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600 Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401 All rights reserved. www.graywolfpress.org Published in the United States of America Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-55597-707-8 Ebook ISBN 978-1-55597-340-7 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 First Graywolf Printing, 2015 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014960046 Cover design: Jeenee Lee Design for Harry THE ARGONAUTSOctober, 2007. The Santa Ana winds are shredding the bark off the eucalyptus trees in long white stripes. A friend and I risk the widowmakers by having lunch outside, during which she suggests I tattoo the words HARD TO GET across my knuckles, as a reminder of this pose’s possible fruits. Instead the words I love you come tumbling out of my mouth in an incantation the first time you fuck me in the ass, my face smashed against the cement floor of your dank and charming bachelor pad. You had Molloy by your bedside and a stack of cocks in a shadowy unused shower stall. Does it get any better? What’s your pleasure? you asked, then stuck around for an answer. Before we met, I had spent a lifetime devoted to Wittgenstein’s idea that the inexpressible is contained—inexpressibly!—in the expressed. This idea gets less air time than his more reverential Whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent, but it is, I think, the deeper idea. Its paradox is, quite literally, why I write, or how I feel able to keep writing.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I let her walk away. And the sight of her diminishing figure, while at the same time her voice talked so tiredly and yet evenly in my ear of high credit and low credit (this bank job was beneath her, surely), made my interest in her, my love for her, flare up. I loved her, for instance, for not writing “Thanx” on her note and not using an exclamation point. I watched her go back to her desk and sit down and pull in her chair and pick up the phone. She was a woman . Though I’m thirty-five, as I seem to want to point out on every page, I am often surprised by the simple observation that there are women, that they wear rustly layers of clothing, that they have lips and teeth which on occasion they employ to smile at me. They take their existence for granted, but I don’t, by any means. I think, too, in all modesty, that I have an unusually good instinct for detecting when an average-looking woman senses herself entering a new phase of attractiveness. I can detect better than others when a woman feels that she is looking unusually good that day, or when something like a new haircut, or the discovery of a store that has the kind of clothes that she looks best in, reminds her of the fact that romance and flirtation are part of life, too. Joyce is perhaps not, objectively considered, stunning, though she is pretty—but these happen to be, I think, miracle weeks for her, as she learns to her surprise how she can be beautiful in a thirty-year-old rather than a twenty-three-year-old sort of way. The French braid is part of it. I doubt very much that anyone at work has said that to her—“You are entering a new phase of beauty, Joyce”—but some of them must have noticed it, too. Joyce had been eating something—yogurt, probably—as she dictated. Normally I am not fond of this practice. But when she said the word “unplanned” and I heard one of those odd palatal moments, most often associated with yogurt, in which the tone of her voice changed suddenly, went nasal on me, I simply could not believe I was this close to her. My head was practically in her mouth!

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  Why did it take me so long to find someone with whom my perversities were not only compatible, but perfectly matched? Then as now, you spread my legs with your legs and push your cock into me, fill my mouth with your fingers. You pretend to use me, make a theater of heeding only your pleasure while making sure I find mine. Really, though, it's more than a perfect match, as that implies a kind of stasis. Whereas we're always moving, shape-shifting. No matter what we do, it always feels dirty without feeling lousy. Sometimes words are a part of it. I can remember, early on, standing beside you in a friend's cavernous fourth-floor painting studio in Williamsburg at night (she was out of town), completely naked, more construction workers outside, this time building some kind of luxury high-rise across the street, their light towers flooding the studio with orange shaft and shadow, as you asked me to say aloud what I wanted you to do to me. My whole body struggled to summon any utterable phrase. … there's no substitute for saying them with one's own mouth.

• From Dante's Divine Comedy (2001)

  ©2001 The Teaching Company. 79 A. F a i t h i s l i k e n e d t o a n i n t e l lectual exam; hope, to meditation on authoritative sources; and love is described in experiential terms. B. D a n t e e l o q u e n t l y t e s t i f i e s t o h i s love, using words that evoke Saint Francis’s reception of the stigmata of Christ. C. W h e n h i s s i g h t r e t u r n s , h e i s a b l e t o s e e m u c h f u r t h e r t h a n b e f o r e . V. T h e n i n t h h e a v e n l y s p h e r e i s t h e s o - c a l l e d primum mobile, or first mover, which gives motion to all the others and is the outermost sphere of the created universe. VI. T h e t e n t h s p h e r e D a n t e c a l l s “ t h e e m p y r e a n . ” A. I t i s b e y o n d s p a c e a n d t i m e ; t h i s i s t h e g o a l o f D a n t e ’ s j o u r n e y , because it is the “dwelling place” of God. B. T h e o r g a n i z a t i o n a n d n u m e r i c a l s c h e m e o f P a r a d i s e c a n b e compared with that of the other two canticles, Purgatorio and Inferno. VII. A t t h e e n d o f C a n t o 3 0 , B e a t r i c e p o i n ts Dante to the rose, the petals of which are the souls of the saved. The rest of Paradiso has been a kind of image of this reality. A. B e a t r i c e t e l l s D a n t e t h a t o n e o f t h e e m p t y “ s e a t s ” i s r e s e r v e d f o r Henry VII, the Holy Roman Emperor. B. T h e n s h e t a k e s t h e o p p o r t u n i t y t o d e c r y C h u r c h c o r r u p t i o n , especially that of Pope Boniface VIII. C. E v e n a t t h e e n d o f P a r a d i s o , t h e r e i s r o o m f o r i n v e c t i v e a g a i n s t corrupt Church practices. The seriousness of the moral, political, and theological problem that Dante saw reaches even into heaven.

• From Dante's Divine Comedy (2001)

  (Leo S. Olschki, Florence) in the series Italian Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Cook and Herzman published The Medieval World View with Oxford University Press in 1983 and are currently preparing a second edition. They have also written several articles together on such subjects as Dante, the Song of Roland, and paintings of the life of Saint Francis in Assisi. Currently, Cook is writing articles based on research that was not used in his books, and he plans to bring two great lovesSaint Francis and the city of Sienatogether by doing research on the fifteenth-century Franciscan Bernardino of Siena. Cook has taught about Francis at Siena College (Loudenville, NY) and has given lectures about Francis and Franciscan art throughout the United States. With Herzman, he has taught about Francis to groups ranging from school children to students in religious education classes to Trappist monks. Cook has directed ten Seminars for School Teachers for the National Endowment for the Humanities since 1983; six have had Francis as their subject and have been conducted in Siena and Assisi, Italy. ©2001 The Teaching Company. ii Ronald B. Herzman, Ph.D. Professor of English, State University of New York at Geneseo

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Last week, Joyce was wearing this very same gray-blue hipbone-flaunting dress one day. She dropped off a tape for me to do and told me that she liked my glasses, and I’ve been nuts about her since. I blushed and thanked her and told her I liked her scarf, which really was a very likable scarf. It had all sorts of golds and blacks and yellows in it, and Cyrillic letters seemed to be part of the design. She said, “Well thank you, I like it, too,” and she surprised me (surprised us both possibly) by untying it from her neck and pulling it slowly through her fingers. I asked whether those were indeed Cyrillic letters I saw before me, and she said that they were, pleased at my attentiveness, but she said that she had asked a friend of hers who knew Russian what they spelled, and he had told her that they meant nothing, they were just a jumble of letters. “Even better,” I said, somewhat idiotically, anxious to show how completely uninterested I was in her mention of a male friend. “The designer picked the letters for their formal beauty—he didn’t try to pretend he knew the language by using a real word.” The moment threatened to become more flirtatious than either of us wanted. I hurried us past it by asking her how soon she needed her tape done. (I’m a temp, by the way.) “No big rush,” she said. She retied her scarf, and we smiled quite warmly at each other again before she went off. I was happy all that day just because she had told me she liked my glasses. Joyce is probably not going to play a large part in this account of my life. I have fallen in love with women many, many times, maybe a hundred or a hundred and fifty times; I’ve taken off women’s clothes many times, too: there is nothing particularly unusual about this occasion within which I am currently parked. The only unusual thing about it is that this time I’m writing about it. I know there are thousands of women in the world I could potentially feel love for as I do feel it now for Joyce—she just happens to work at this office in the domestic-credit department of MassBank where I happen to be a temp for a few weeks. But that is the strange thing about what you are expected to do in life—you are supposed to forget that there are hundreds of cities, each one of them full of women, and that it is most unlikely that you have found the perfect one for you. You are just supposed to pick the best one out of the ones you know and can attract, and in fact you do this happily—you feel that the love you direct toward the one you do choose is not arbitrarily bestowed.

• From Another Country (1962)

  And, before Eric could answer, he took a large swallow of his whiskey and said in a different tone, a lower voice, “Because, you know, when I was in the bathroom, I was thinking that, yes, I loved being in your arms, holding you”—he flushed and looked up into Eric’s face again—“why not, it’s warm, I’m sensual, I like— you—the way you love me, but”—he looked down again—“it’s not my battle, not my thing, and I know it, and I can’t give up my battle. If I do, I’ll die and if I die”—and now he looked up at Eric with a rueful, juvenile grin—“you won’t love me any more. And I want you to love me all my life.” Eric reached out and touched Vivaldo’s face. After a moment, Vivaldo grabbed his hand. “For you, the moon, baby,” Eric said. His voice, to his surprise, was a grave, hoarse whisper. He cleared his throat. “Do you want some coffee now?” Vivaldo shook his head. He emptied his glass and put it on the table. “Drink up,” he said to Eric. Eric finished his drink. Vivaldo took the glass from him and set it down. “I don’t want any coffee now,” he said. He opened his arms. “Let’s make the most of our little day.” By ten minutes to four, Eric was, somehow, showered, shaved, and dressed, with his raincoat and his rain cap on. The coffee was too hot, he only managed to drink half a cup. Vivaldo was still undressed. “You go on,” he said. “I’ll clean up a little and I’ll lock the door.” “All right.” But Eric dreaded leaving in the same way that Vivaldo dreaded getting dressed. “I’ll leave you the cigarettes, I’ll buy some.” “That’s big of you. Go on, now. Give my love to Cass.” “Give my love,” he said, “to Ida.” They both grinned. “I’m going to call her,” Vivaldo said, “just as soon as you get your ass out of here.” “Okay, I’m gone.” Yet, at the door, he stopped, looking at Vivaldo, who stood in the center of the room, holding a cup of coffee. He stared at the floor with a harsh bewilderment in his face. Then he felt Eric’s eyes and looked up. He put down his coffee cup and walked to the door. He kissed Eric on the mouth and looked into his eyes. “See you soon, baby.” “Yes,” said Eric, “see you soon.” He opened the door and left. Vivaldo listened to him go down the stairs. Then he walked to the window and opened the blinds and watched him. Eric appeared in the street as though he had been running, or as though he had been propelled.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Does the difference make any difference?” “Well,” said Vivaldo, tapping with his thumbnail against the hinges of the door, “I certainly think that the real ball game is between men and women. And it’s physically easier.” He looked quickly at Eric. “Isn’t it? And then,” he added, “there are children.” And he looked quickly at Eric again. Eric laughed. “I never heard of two cats who wanted to make it failing because they were the wrong size. Love always finds a way, dad. I don’t know anything about baseball, so I don’t know if life’s a baseball game or not. Maybe it is for you. It isn’t for me. And if it’s children you’re after, well, you can do that in five minutes and you haven’t got to love anybody to do it. If all the children who get here every year were brought here by love, wow! baby, what a bright world this would be!” And now Vivaldo felt, at the very bottom of his heart, a certain reluctant hatred rising, against which he struggled as he would have struggled against vomiting. “I can’t decide,” he said, “whether you want to make everybody as miserable as you are, or whether everybody is as miserable as you are.” “Well, don’t put it that way, baby. How happy are you? That’s got nothing to do with me, nothing to do with how I live, or what I think, or how miserable I am—how are you making it?” The question hung in the room, like the smoke which wavered between Eric and Vivaldo. The question was as thick as the silence in which Vivaldo looked down, away from Eric, searching his heart for an answer. He was frightened; he looked up at Eric; Eric was frightened, too. They watched each other. “I’m in love with Ida,” Vivaldo said. Then, “And sometimes we make it, beautifully, beautifully. And sometimes we don’t. And it’s hideous.” And he remained where he was, in the doorway, still. “I, too, am in love,” said Eric, “his name is Yves; he’s coming to New York very soon. I got a letter from him today.” He stood up and walked to his desk, picked up the play and opened it and took out an airmail envelope. Vivaldo watched his face, which had become, in an instant, weary and transfigured. Eric opened the letter and read it again. He looked at Vivaldo. “Sometimes we make it, too, and it’s beautiful.

• From Dante's Divine Comedy (2001)

  ©2001 The Teaching Company 3 In the final cantos of Paradiso, we journey through the fixed stars, then move beyond space and time as we come closer to God himself. Lecture Twenty-Two shows Dante examined by Saints Peter, James, and John on what he has learned. Lecture Twenty-Three shows Dante receiving Bernard, his final guide. Our final lecture, “In My End Is My Beginning,” shows Dante in his mystical, ineffable vision of God, which brings full circle the journey that began when God’s love, mediated by prayer, first sent Virgil to meet a troubled pilgrim who found himself lost “in the middle of our life’s way” amid error’s darkling wood. Throughout, we will show how each part of the poem is connected to what has come before and how the questions with which Dante begins the poem are raised at ever-deeper levels of development as the journey continues. By the time your own journey through these lectures is through, we will have shown you why Dante’s pilgrimage can continue to be an exceedingly enriching experience for anyone who chooses to journey along with him. ©2001 The Teaching Company 4 Lecture One Reading the Poem—Issues and Editions Scope: T h i s l e c t u r e i n t r o d u c e s t h e e n t i re course by outlining Dante’s Commedia (or Divine Comedy, as it is often called), examining the question of translations, and providing an overview of Dante’s life. The Commedia is one of the most impressive poems ever written, and a brief account of what the poem is about will help orient us to the nature of its achievement. The three-part journey to the realms of the Christian afterlife is impressive, both for its complexity and its interconnectedness. Because the poem is autobiographicalit is the journey of a pilgrim traveler named “Dante”we also give a brief biographical account of Dante’s life as it relates to the poem, focusing on his exile from his native Florence during the last nineteen years of his life.

• From The Argonauts (2015)

  2011, the summer of our changing bodies. Me, four months pregnant, you six months on T. We pitched out, in our inscrutable hormonal soup, for Fort Lauderdale, to stay for a week at the beachside Sheraton in monsoon season, so that you could have top surgery by a good surgeon and recover. Less than twenty-four hours after we arrived, they were snapping a sterile green hat on your head—a "party hat," the nice nurse said—and wheeling you away. … You emerged four hours later, hilariously zonked from the drugs, trying in vain to play the host while slipping in and out of consciousness, your whole torso more tightly bound than you've ever managed yourself, a drain hanging off each side, two pouches that filled up over and over again with blood stuff the color of cherry Kool-Aid. … Over and over again we emptied your drains into little Dixie cups and flushed the blood stuff down the hotel toilet. I've never loved you more than I did then, with your Kool-Aid drains, your bravery in going under the knife to live a better life, a life of wind on skin, your nodding off while propped up on a throne of hotel pillows, so as not to disturb your stitches. "The king's sleep," we called it, in homage to our first pay-per-view purchase of the week, *The King's Speech*.

• From Another Country (1962)

  Vivaldo hoped that he was dreaming still. A terrible sorrow entered him, because he was dreaming and because he was awake. Immediately, he felt that he had created his dream in order to create this opportunity; he had brought about something that he had long desired. He was frightened and then he was angry—at Eric or at himself? he did not know—and started to pull away. But he could not pull away, he did not want to, it was too late. He thought to keep his eyes closed in order to take no responsibility for what was happening. This thought made him ashamed. He tried to reconstruct the way in which this monstrous endeavor must have begun. They must have gone to sleep, spoon-fashion. Eric curled against him—oh, what did this cause him, nearly, to remember? He had curled his legs, himself, around Eric, since Eric’s body was there; and desire had entered this monastic, this boyish bed. Now it was too late, thank God it was too late; it was necessary for them to disentangle themselves from the drag and torment of their undershorts, their trousers, and the sheets. He opened his eyes. Eric was watching him with a small half-smile, a troubled smile, and this smile caused Vivaldo to realize that Eric loved him. Eric really loved him and would be proud to give Vivaldo anything Vivaldo needed. With a groan and a sigh, with an indescribable relief, Vivaldo came full awake and pulled Eric closer. It had been a dream and not a dream, how long could such dreams last? this one could not last long. Instantaneously, then, they each seemed to become intent on carrying this moment, which belonged to them, as far as it could go. They kicked their trousers to the floor, saying nothing—what was there to say?—and not daring to let go of one another. Then, as in a waking dream, helpless and trustful, he felt Eric remove his shirt and caress him with his parted lips. Eric bowed and kissed Vivaldo on the belly button, half-hidden in the violent, gypsy hair. This was in honor of Vivaldo, of Vivaldo’s body and Vivaldo’s need, and Vivaldo trembled as he had never trembled before. And this caress was not entirely pleasant. Vivaldo felt terribly ill at ease, not knowing what was expected of him, or what he could expect from Eric. He pulled Eric up and kissed him on the mouth, kneading Eric’s buttocks and stroking his sex. How strange it felt, this violent muscle, stretching and throbbing, so like his own, but belonging to another! And this chest, this belly, these legs, were like his, and the tremor of Eric’s breath echoed his own earthquake. Oh, what was it that he could not remember? It was his first sexual encounter with a male in many years, and his very first sexual encounter with a friend.