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 History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  philosophy and Eastern religion, that the Divinity was well pleased with the sacrifices, the speculations, the tortures of man; it was to St. John that it was left to teach in all its fulness that the one sign of God’s children is ’the love of the brethren.’ And as it is Love that pervades our whole conception of his teaching, so also it pervades our whole conception of his character. We see him—it surely is no unwarranted fancy—we see him declining with the declining century; every sense and faculty waxing feebler, but that one divinest faculty of all burning more and more brightly; we see it breathing through every look and gesture; the one animating principle of the atmosphere in which he lives and moves; earth and heaven, the past, the present, and the future alike echoing to him that dying strain of his latest words, ’We love Him because He loved us.’ And when at last he disappears from our view in the last pages of the sacred volume, ecclesiastical tradition still lingers in the close: and in that touching story, not the less impressive because so familiar to us, we see the aged apostle borne in the arms of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating over and over again the same saying, ’Little children, love one another;’ till, when asked why he said this and nothing else, he replied in those well known words, fit indeed to be the farewell speech of the Beloved Disciple, ’Because this is our Lord’s command and if you fulfil this, nothing else is needed.’ " § 42. Apostolic Labors of John. John in the Acts. In the first stadium of Apostolic Christianity John figures as one of the three pillars of the church of the circumcision, together with Peter and James the brother of the Lord; while Paul and Barnabas represented the Gentile church.581 This seems to imply that at that time he had not yet risen to the full apprehension of the universalism and freedom of the gospel. But he was the most liberal of the three, standing between James and Peter on the one hand, and Paul on the other, and looking already towards a reconciliation of Jewish and Gentile Christianity. The Judaizers never appealed to him as they did to James, or to Peter.582 There is no trace of a Johannean party, as there is of a Cephas party and a party of James. He stood above strife and division.

• From From the Streets to the Sheets: Noire's Urban Erotic Quickies (2007)

  When we got to our cars, Dushawn gave me one last strong hug and kiss I’ll remember ’til I die. I blurted, “You think Camille’s gonna hate my ass?” He looked at me like I had sprouted another head and said, “Naw. I’ll talk to her. She used to tell me all the time how cool you was. She told me I needed to dump them skank-ass hoes and get wit a girl that really cared about me. She knew that meant you, La La.” We hugged and kissed again. It wasn’t the XXX hug we had shared in the old factory but I could feel it was real. When I tried to let go, he tightened his hold and gave me a long deep kiss that reached down to my seriously satisfied pussy. I didn’t want it to end. I said, “I got one question.” He said, “Ask.” “When the shit went down about my diary. Did your mama talk to you first?” “Yeah.” “Didn’t you tell her we wasn’t doin’ nothin’?” “Yeah.” “She didn’t believe you, or what?” “Prolly not, ’cause she had caught me with my draws around my ankles more than a few times,” he laughed. “Come on, Dushawn. I know you had to tell her some’m else for her to be that mad. What’d you tell her?” “I’ll tell you if you promise to see me again,” he teased. “Promise!” He pulled me closer and whispered, “The truth—I told her you was wifey material and that when I was ready to settle down, you was definitely on my list.” All I could say was, “Mmph! Mmph! Mmph!” • • • The next year was the best and worst in my life. Me and Cami got tighter than ever. Her mama still hated my ass but bein’ that we was grown-ass bitches on our own, it wasn’t nuthin’ she could really do. I finished cosmetology school and got my license. Camille had a baby with Tarik Jackson and moved to North Long Beach. We still talked every day, but her baby girl slowed her way down. I was by myself. Breast cancer had taken my momma after I graduated from high school. We barely had a chance to say good-bye. One minute she was complaining of a little bump under her titty, and a few months later she was gone. I was lonelier than I’d ever been in my life. I hadn’t heard shit from Dushawn since the day we kicked a hole in it. Camille told me that he moved up north to go to school. I didn’t hold it against him too much. He had already told me what the deal was, besides, I had all kinds a men steppin’ my way, if I wanted them. I looked good, I smelled good, I dressed good, and I had my own thang poppin’ at my hair and nail shop called Tight. • • •

• From The Master and Margarita (1966)

  I’d stay with you right now, but I’d rather not do it that way. I don’t want it to remain for ever in his memory that I ran away from him in the middle of the night. He’s never done me any wrong . . . He was summoned unexpectedly, there was a fire at the factory. But he’ll be back soon. I’ll talk with him tomorrow morning, I’ll tell him that I love another man and come back to you for ever. Or maybe you don’t want that? Answer me.” ‘ “Poor dear, my poor dear,” I said to her. “I won’t allow you to do it. Things won’t go well for me, and I don’t want you to perish with me.” ‘ “Is that the only reason?” she asked, and brought her eyes close to mine. ‘ “The only one.” ‘She became terribly animated, she clung to me, put her arms around my neck and said: ‘ “I’m perishing with you. In the morning I’ll be here.” ‘And so, the last thing I remember from my life is a strip of light from my front hall, and in that strip of light an uncurled strand of hair, her beret and her eyes filled with determination. I also remember the black silhouette in the outside doorway and the white package. ‘ “I’d see you home, but it’s beyond my strength to come back alone. I’m afraid.” ‘ “Don’t be afraid. Bear with it for a few hours. Tomorrow morning I’ll be here.” ‘Those were her last words in my life . . . Shh! . . .’ the patient suddenly interrupted himself and raised a finger. ‘It’s a restless moonlit night tonight.’ He disappeared on to the balcony. Ivan heard little wheels roll down the corridor, someone sobbed or cried out weakly. When everything grew still, the guest came back and announced that room 120 had received an occupant. Someone had been brought, and he kept asking to be given back his head. The two interlocutors fell anxiously silent, but, having calmed down, they returned to the interrupted story. The guest was just opening his mouth, but the night was indeed a restless one. There were still voices in the corridor, and the guest began to speak into Ivan’s ear, so softly that what he told him was known only to the poet, apart from the first phrase: ‘A quarter of an hour after she left me, there came a knock at my window . . .’ What the patient whispered into Ivan’s ear evidently agitated him very much. Spasms repeatedly passed over his face.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  At no time during either of the dinner parties was manic-depressive illness discussed; it was, in fact, the very normality of the evenings that was so reassuring and so important to me. Being introduced to such “normal” men, both from a world much like the one I had known as a child, was one of David’s many intuitive acts of kindness. “It is the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. “If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters … I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit.” After knowing David, I never again saw life in its worst possible spirit. I left London with a terrible sense of apprehension, but David wrote and called often. In the late fall we spent time together in Washington, and, as I finally was feeling myself again, I enjoyed life in ways that I hadn’t for years. Those November days remain in my memory as a gentle yet intensely romantic swirl of long walks in the cold, visits to old houses and yet older churches, light snows covering the eighteenth-century gardens of Annapolis, and icy rivers threading their way out of and beyond the Chesapeake Bay. The evenings were filled with dry sherry and meandering dinner conversations about almost everything; the nights were filled with wonderful lovemaking and much-sought, long-absent, untroubled sleep. David returned to London; I returned to Los Angeles; we wrote and spoke often, missed one another, and threw ourselves into our respective lives of work. I went back to England in May, and we had two weeks of long, warm pre-summer days in London, Dorset, and Devon. One Sunday morning, after church, we walked up into the hills to listen to the ringing of the church bells, and I noticed that David had stopped, was standing still, and breathing heavily. He joked about getting too much strenuous exercise at night, we both laughed, and left it at that.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  But since they could not meet openly, because of the Lord, they waited for a suitable opportunity. It was the custom to give the palace a thorough cleaning on the thirteenth of December, and for the courtiers to change their old clothes for new and spotless garments. On that day, following a plan conceived by Korin's servant, Sohatjiro was introduced into the palace in a big bamboo basket, in which Korin had already sent some new soft robes to his mother. They succeeded in carrying Sohatjiro into the room adjoining the Lord's bedroom. Korin pretended that he had pains in the stomach, and kept the screen doors well oiled so as to be able to open them easily in the night. The first time Korin went out of the room, the Lord complained of the noise he made; but, as the night advanced, the latter fell into a deep sleep and started to snore very loudly. Then Korin, thinking that the moment had come when he might join his love, crept into the next room. The two lovers embraced and swore a faithful and changeless love until their deaths. They spoke very quietly, in a whisper, of their amorous pleasures; but by ill luck it happened that the Lord was wakened by their voices. He shouted: 'There is someone in the next room, and he shall not escape.'He grasped a spear, which was renting against his pillow, and rushed upon Sohatjiro as he turned to run away. But Korin seized him by the sleeve and said: 'It is not worthy of you, Lord, to agitate yourself in this way. Be caI beg you. There was no one here but I. I was only uttering certain complaints because of my pain. Forgive me, Lord, for having disturbed your sleep.' At that moment Sohatjiro Started to climb over the wall by the help of a large branch, and the Lord saw him. He Sternly questioned Korin; but the other denied everything. Then, since he had great love for Korin, the Lord thought that this was perhaps another evil badger haunting the garden, and he calmed himself. But one of the sentinels, Shinroku Kanai, came and said to the Lord: 'I saw the track of a man in this room, and himself with my own eyes in the garden. His hair was disordered and his actions were Strange. It must be Korin's secret lover. I advise the Lord to watch Korin.'But Korin answered bravely: 'My dear one has given me his life. He is my faithful lover. Even if I must die, I will not tell his name. I have already said this many times to my Lord.'He was calm and serene. Two days later Korin was led into the guard-room of the palace, and the Lord said to him: 'I myself will execute you, Korin, as a warning to my courtiers not to deceive me. Prepare to die.'And he took a halberd in his hands.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Love grows with our apprehension of God’s love. As the soul contemplates the cross it is itself pierced with the sword of love, as when it is said in the Canticles, II. 5. "I am sick from love." Love towards God has its reward, but love loves without reference to reward. True love is sufficient unto itself. To be fully absorbed by love is to be deified.1433 As the drop of water dropped into wine seems to lose its color, and taste, and as the iron held in the glowing flame loses its previous shape and becomes like the flame, and as the air, transfused by the light of the sun, becomes itself like the light, and seems to be as the sun itself, even so all feeling in the saint is wholly transfused by God’s will, and God becomes all and in all. In Bernard’s eighty-six Sermons on the Song of Solomon, we have a continuous apostrophe to love, the love of God and the soul’s love to God. As sermons they stand out like the Petite Carême of Massillon among the great collections of the French pulpit. Bernard reached only the first verse of the third chapter. His exposition, which is written in Latin, revels in the tropical imagery of this favorite book of the Middle Ages. Everything is allegorized. The very words are exuberant allegories. And yet there is not a single sensual or unchaste suggestion in all the extended treatment. As for the historical and literal meaning, Bernard rejects all suggestion of it as unworthy of Holy Scripture and worthy only of the Jews, who have this veil before their faces.1434 The love of the Shulamite and her spouse is a figure of the love between the Church and Christ, though sometimes the soul, and even the Virgin Mary, is put in the place of the Shulamite. The kiss of SS. 1:2 is the Holy Spirit whom the second person of the Trinity reveals.1435 The breasts of the bride, 4:5, are the goodness and longsuffering which Christ feels and dispenses, Rom. 2:4. The Canticles are a song commemorating the grace of holy affection and the sacrament of eternal matrimony.1436 It is an epithalamial hymn; no one can hear who does not love, for the language of love is a barbarous tongue to him who does not love, even as Greek is to one who is not a Greek.1437 Love needs no other stimulus but itself. Love loves only to be loved again. Rhapsodic expressions like these welled up in exuberant abundance as Bernard spoke to his audiences at different hours of the day in the convent of Clairvaux. They are marked by no progress of thought. Aphoristic statement takes the place of logic. The same spiritual experiences find expression over and over again. But the treatment is always devout and full of unction, and proves the justice of the title, "the honey-flowing doctor,"—doctor mellifluus — given to the fervid preacher.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  3. In his statement of the doctrine of the Trinity, Abaelard laid himself open to the charge both of modalism and Arianism. It called forth Bernard’s severest charges. Abaelard made no contribution to the subject. The idea of the Trinity he derived from God’s absolute perfections. God, as power, is the Father; as wisdom, He is the Son; as love, the Spirit. The Scriptures are appealed to for this view. The Father has put all things in His power, Acts 1:7. The Son, as Logos, is wisdom. The Holy Spirit is called good, Ps. 143:10, and imparts spiritual gifts. The figure gave much umbrage, by which he compared the three persons of the Trinity to the brass of which a seal is made, the form of the seal, and the seal itself proceeding from, or combining the brass and the form. "The brass itself which is the substance of the brazen seal, and the seal itself of which the brass is the substance, are essentially one; yet the brass and the seal are so distinct in their properties, that the property of the brass is one, and the property of the brazen seal another." These are ultimately three things: the brass, aes, the brass capable of sealing, sigillabile, and the brass in the act of sealing, sigillans. 4. In his treatment of the atonement, Abaelard has valuable original elements.1384 Strange to say, he makes no reference to Anselm’s great treatise. Man, Abaelard said, is in the power of the devil, but the devil has no right to this power. What rights does a slave have over another slave whom he leads astray? Christ not only did not pay any price to the devil for man’s redemption, he also did not make satisfaction to divine justice and appease God’s wrath. If the fall of Adam needed satisfaction by the death of some one, who then would be able to satisfy for the death of Christ? In the life and death of the Redeemer, God’s purpose was to manifest. His love and thus to stir up love in the breast of man, and to draw man by love back to Himself. God might have redeemed man by a word, but He chose to set before man an exhibition of His love in Christ. Christ’s love constitutes the merit of Christ. The theory anticipates the modern moral influence theory of the atonement, so called. 5. Abaelard’s doctrine of sin likewise presents features of difference from the view current in his time.1385 The fall occurred when Eve resolved to eat the forbidden fruit, that is, after her desire was aroused and before the actual partaking of the fruit.1386

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  7 They Loved Each Other even to Extreme Old Age T HERE WAS A LITTLE SHOP IN A STREET OF the Yanaka district of Yedo, with a narrow bill hung in the doorway which read: 'We have a remedy for superfluous hairs. It is equally good for many other ailments.'Copybooks for Students were also sold there; but since these were written by the hand of an old man, no one bought them. A bamboo blind hung between the worn and dirty screens. The trade of that shop was negligible, and the proprietor did not make enough out of it to live by. A graceful pine tree rose above the sloping roof; summer chrysanthemums flourished in the garden, and there was a well of pure water and a pail on the end of a pole. Sometimes birds came and perched on the pail. The owner of the shop was an old samurai, who had abandoned his career as a samurai when he was Still young. He lived on the money he had obtained by the sale of his former garments and his precious family heirlooms. He had only one intimate friend, who was of the same age as himself; and they very often played chess together. His only other companion was a little dog. He had no other visitors, except his few rare customers. Once, at the end of a hot summer day, he removed his clothes, which were soaked with sweat, and took a bath in his garden. His friend wept at the sight of his worn old body, and tenderly caressed the poor bent back. With his voice full of tears he said, as he washed his friend's wrinkled and bony shoulders: 'A certain great Chinese poet said in one of his poems: "A fine young man proudly sang the beauty of his body, admiring himself in a mirror. But that was yesterday. To-day, alas! he is no more than a poor old man worn out with wrinkles, and his head is covered with grey hair." That is exactly our own Story. We have sung together hand in hand without a care when we were young. But now it is only a distant memory and a dream.'Then the two old men joined hands and wept tears of regret for their past, while the hot water in the little tub grew cold. These two men were samurais who had been born in the Province of Tjikuzen. The younger's name was Mondo Tamashima, and he had been celebrated for the beauty of his face. Many people took him for a young Princess. The elder was called Hayemon Toyoda, and was a skilful marksman. He fell in love with Mondo, who returned his love sincerely. Mondo was sixteen years old and Hayemon nineteen when their love began. They were Strongly devoted to each other, and vowed an affection deeper than the sea. But another samurai loved Mondo.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  She regretted not to die in a foreign land, because she was not far from God, who would raise her up at the last day. "Bury my body anywhere," was her last request, "and trouble not yourselves for it; only this one thing I ask, that you remember me at the altar of my God, wherever you may be."2150 Augustine, in his Confessions, has erected to Monica the noblest monument that can never perish. If ever there was a thorough and fruitful conversion, next to that of Paul on the way to Damascus, it was that of Augustine, when, in a garden of the Villa Cassiciacum, not far from Milan, in September of the year 386, amidst the most violent struggles of mind and heart—the birth-throes of the new life—he heard that divine voice of a child: "Take, read!" and he "put on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. xiii. 14). It is a touching lamentation of his: "I have loved Thee late, Thou Beauty, so old and so new; I have loved Thee late! And lo! Thou wast within, but I was without, and was seeking Thee there. And into Thy fair creation I plunged myself in my ugliness; for Thou wast with me, and I was not with Thee! Those things kept me away from Thee, which had not been, except they had been in Thee! Thou didst call, and didst cry aloud, and break through my deafness. Thou didst glimmer, Thou didst shine, and didst drive away, my blindness. Thou didst breathe, and I drew breath, and breathed in Thee. I tasted Thee, and I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burn for Thy peace. If I, with all that is within me, may once live in Thee, then shall pain and trouble forsake me; entirely filled with Thee, all shall be life to me."

• From Trash (1988)

  “I didn’t think like that.” She spoke slowly. “Like you and Jo. You two were always fighting. I felt like I had to be the peace-maker. And I . . .” She paused, bringing her hands up in the air as if she were lifting something. “I just didn’t want to be a hateful person. I wanted it to be all right. I wanted us all to love each other.” She dropped her hands. “Now you just hate me. You and Jo, you hate me worse than him.” “No.” I spoke in a whisper. “Never. It’s hard sometimes to believe, I know. But I love you. Always have. Even when you made me so mad.” She looked at me. When she spoke, her voice was tiny. “I used to dream about it,” she whispered. “Not killing him, but him dying. Him being dead.” I smiled at her. “Easier that way,” I said. Arlene nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah.” That evening Mavis stopped me in the hall. She had a stack of papers in one hand and an expression that bordered on outrage. “This an’t been signed,” she said. Her hand shook the papers. I looked at them as she stepped in close to me. She pulled one off the bottom. “This is from Mrs. Crawford, that woman was in the room next to your mama. Look at this. Look at it close.” The printing was dark and bold. “Do not resuscitate.” “No extraordinary measures to be taken.” I looked up at Mavis, and she shook her head at me. “Don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean. You been on this road a long time. You know what’s coming, and your mother needs you to take care of it.” She pressed a sheaf of forms into my hand. “You go in there and take another good long look at your mother, and then you get these papers done right.” Later that evening I was holding a damp washrag to my eyes over the little sink in the entry to Mama’s room. I could hear Mama whispering to Jo on the other side of the curtain around the bed. “What do you think happens after death?” Mama asked. Her voice was hoarse. I brought the rag down to cover my mouth. “Oh hell, Mama,” Jo said. “I don’t know.” “No, tell me.” There was a long pause. Then Jo gave a harsh sigh and said it again. “Oh hell.” Her chair slid forward on the linoleum floor. “You know what I really think?” Her voice was a careful whisper. “I’ll tell you the truth, Mama. But don’t you laugh. I think you come back as a dog.” I heard Mama’s indrawn breath. “I said don’t laugh. I’m telling you what I really believe.” I lifted my head. Jo sounded so sincere. I could almost feel Mama leaning toward her.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  To a world that had grown very weary gazing on the cold passionless grandeur which Cato realized, and which Lucan sung, it presented an ideal of compassion and of love—an ideal destined for centuries to draw around it all that was greatest, as well as all that was noblest upon earth—a Teacher who could weep by the sepulchre of His friend, who was touched with the feeling of our infirmities. To a world, in fine, distracted by hostile creeds and colliding philosophies, it taught its doctrines, not as a human speculation, but as a Divine revelation, authenticated much less by reason than by faith. ’With the heart man believeth unto righteousness;’ ’He that doeth the will of my Father will know the doctrine, whether it be of God;’ ’Unless you believe you cannot understand;’ ’A heart naturally Christian;’ ’The heart makes the theologian,’ are the phrases which best express the first action of Christianity upon the world. Like all great religions, it was more concerned with modes of feeling than with modes of thought. The chief cause of its success was the congruity of its teaching with the spiritual nature of mankind. It was because it was true of the moral sentiments of the age, because it represented faithfully the supreme type of excellence to which men were then tending, because it corresponded with their religious wants, aims, and emotions, because the whole spiritual being could then expand and expatiate under its influence that it planted its roots so deeply in the hearts of men." Merivale (Convers. of the Rom. Emp., Preface) traces the conversion of the Roman empire chiefly to four causes: 1) the external evidence of the apparent fulfilment of recorded prophecy and miracles to the truth of Christianity; 2) the internal evidence of satisfying the acknowledged need of a redeemer and sanctifier; 3) the goodness and holiness manifested in the lives and deaths of the primitive believers; 4) the temporal success of Christianity under Constantine, which "turned the mass of mankind, as with a sweeping revolution, to the rising sun of revealed truth in Christ Jesus." Renan discusses the reasons for the victory of Christianity in the 31st chapter of his Marc-Aurèle (Paris 1882), pp. 561–588. He attributes it chiefly "to the new discipline of life," and "the moral reform," which the world required, which neither philosophy nor any of the established religions could give. The Jews indeed rose high above the corruptions of the times. "Glorie éternelle et unique, qui doit faire oublier bien des folies et des violence! Les Juifs sont les révolutionnaires du 1er et du 2e siècle de notre ère." They gave to the world Christianity.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  We had first met at a London dinner party during one of my earlier visits to England; it was, wonderfully, and without question, love at first sight. Neither of us had any awareness of anyone else at the dinner table that night, and neither of us—we agreed much later—had ever been so completely and irrationally swept away by the power of our feelings. Several months later, when I returned to London for my year’s sabbatical leave, he called and asked me to go out to dinner. I was renting a mews house in South Kensington, so we went to a restaurant nearby. It was, for both of us, a continuation of what we had felt when we first met. I was spellbound by the ease with which he understood me, and physically overwhelmed by his intensity. We both knew, long before the wine was through, that we were beyond any way of turning back. It was raining when we left the restaurant, and he put his arm around me as we ran madcap to my place. Once there, he held me very close to him for a long, long time. I felt and smelled the rain against his coat, felt his arms around me, and remembered, with relief, how extraordinary scents and rain and love and life can be. I had not been with a man in a very long time, and, understanding this, he was kind and gentle and utterly loving. We saw each other as often as we could. Because we both were inclined to intense feelings and moods, we could console one another easily and, likewise, give one another a wide berth whenever necessary. We talked about everything. He was almost frighteningly intuitive, smart, passionate, and, occasionally, deeply melancholic; and he came to know me better than anyone had ever known me. He had no difficulty seeing the complexity in emotional situations or moods—his own made him well able to understand and respect irrationality, wild enthusiasms, paradox, change, and contradiction. We shared a love for poetry, music, tradition, and irreverence, as well as an unflagging awareness of the darker side of almost everything that was light, and the lighter side of almost everything that was bleak or morbid.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  I first met Richard Wyatt at a Christmas party in Washington, and he certainly was not at all what I expected. I had heard of him—he is a well-known schizophrenia researcher, Chief of Neuropsychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health, and the author of more than seven hundred scientific papers and books—but I was completely unprepared for the handsome, unassuming, quietly charming man I found myself talking with near a gigantic Christmas tree. He was not only attractive, he was very easy to talk to, and we got together often in the months that followed. Less than a year after we met, I returned to London for another marvelous six months, again on sabbatical leave from UCLA, and then went back to Los Angeles long enough to fulfill my post-sabbatical obligations and make plans to move to Washington. The whole thing had been a short but very convincing courtship. I loved being with him and found him not just unbelievably smart, but imaginative, fiendishly curious, refreshingly open-minded, and wonderfully easygoing. Even then, very early in our relationship, I could not imagine my life without him. I resigned my tenured position at the medical school with genuine regret at leaving the University of California, which I loved, and considerable anxiety about the financial implications of giving up a secure income, and then went to a long round of farewell parties given by colleagues, friends, and students. Overall, however, I left Los Angeles with few regrets. It had never been the City of Angels to me, and I was more than happy to leave it, first, thousands of feet below me—and then, finally, thousands of miles behind—filled with near death, a completely shattered innocence, and a recurrently lost and broken mind. Life in California had been often good, even very wonderful, but it was hard for me to see any of that at the time I returned to Washington to live. The ever promising, always elusive, and infinitely complex Promised Land seemed to me to be exactly that: promised.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  At no time during either of the dinner parties was manic-depressive illness discussed; it was, in fact, the very normality of the evenings that was so reassuring and so important to me. Being introduced to such “normal” men, both from a world much like the one I had known as a child, was one of David’s many intuitive acts of kindness. “It is the history of our kindnesses that alone makes this world tolerable,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson. “If it were not for that, for the effect of kind words, kind looks, kind letters … I should be inclined to think our life a practical jest in the worst possible spirit.” After knowing David, I never again saw life in its worst possible spirit. I left London with a terrible sense of apprehension, but David wrote and called often. In the late fall we spent time together in Washington, and, as I finally was feeling myself again, I enjoyed life in ways that I hadn’t for years. Those November days remain in my memory as a gentle yet intensely romantic swirl of long walks in the cold, visits to old houses and yet older churches, light snows covering the eighteenth-century gardens of Annapolis, and icy rivers threading their way out of and beyond the Chesapeake Bay. The evenings were filled with dry sherry and meandering dinner conversations about almost everything; the nights were filled with wonderful lovemaking and much-sought, long-absent, untroubled sleep. David returned to London; I returned to Los Angeles; we wrote and spoke often, missed one another, and threw ourselves into our respective lives of work. I went back to England in May, and we had two weeks of long, warm pre-summer days in London, Dorset, and Devon. One Sunday morning, after church, we walked up into the hills to listen to the ringing of the church bells, and I noticed that David had stopped, was standing still, and breathing heavily. He joked about getting too much strenuous exercise at night, we both laughed, and left it at that.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  The same hotel, the same room. We look out on the courtyard where the bicycles are parked, and there is the little room up above, under the attic, where some smart young Alec played the phonograph all day long and repeated clever little things at the top of his voice. I say “we” but I’m getting ahead of myself, because Mona has been away a long time and it’s just today that I’m meeting her at the Gare St. Lazare. Toward evening I’m standing there with my face squeezed between the bars, but there’s no Mona, and I read the cable over again but it doesn’t help any. I go back to the Quarter and just the same I put away a hearty meal. Strolling past the Dôme a little later suddenly I see a pale, heavy face and burning eyes—and the little velvet suit that I always adore because under the soft velvet there were always her warm breasts, the marble legs, cool, firm, muscular. She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately—a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us and we in each other’s arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks—a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die. We walk down the Rue du Château, looking for Eugene. Walk over the railroad bridge where I used to watch the trains pulling out and feel all sick inside wondering where the hell she could be. Everything soft and enchanting as we walk over the bridge. Smoke coming up between our legs, the tracks creaking, semaphores in our blood. I feel her body close to mine—all mine now—and I stop to rub my hands over the warm velvet. Everything around us is crumbling, crumbling and the warm body under the warm velvet is aching for me. … Back in the very same room and fifty francs to the good, thanks to Eugene. I look out on the court but the phonograph is silent. The trunk is open and her things are lying around everywhere just as before. She lies down on the bed with her clothes on. Once, twice, three times, four times… I’m afraid she’ll go mad… in bed, under the blankets, how good to feel her body again! But for how long? Will it last this time? Already I have a presentiment that it won’t. She talks to me so feverishly—as if there will be no tomorrow. “Be quiet, Mona! Just look at me… don’t talk!” Finally she drops off and I pull my arm from under her. My eyes close. Her body is there beside me… it will be there till morning surely. … It was in February I pulled out of the harbor in a blinding snowstorm.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  Sometimes, in the midst of one of my dreadful, destructive upheavals of mood, I feel Richard’s quietness nearby and am reminded of Byron’s wonderful description of the rainbow that sits “Like Hope upon a death-bed” on the verge of a wild, rushing cataract; yet, “while all around is torn / By the distracted waters,” the rainbow stays serene: Resembling, ’mid the torture of the scene, Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. But if love is not the cure, it certainly can act as a very strong medicine. As John Donne has written, it is not so pure and abstract as one might once have thought and wished, but it does endure, and it does grow. Part Four [image file=image_rsrcW2.jpg] AN UNQUIET MINDSpeaking of Madness [image file=image_rsrcW1.jpg] Not long before I left Los Angeles for Washington, I received the most vituperative and unpleasant letter that anyone has ever written me. It came not from a colleague or a patient, but from a woman who, having seen an announcement of a lecture I was to give, was outraged that I had used the word “madness” in the title of my talk. I was, she wrote, insensitive and crass and very clearly had no idea at all what it was like to suffer from something as awful as manic-depressive illness. I was just one more doctor who was climbing my way up the academic ranks by walking over the bodies of the mentally ill. I was shaken by the ferocity of the letter, resented it, but did end up thinking long and hard about the language of madness. In the language that is used to discuss and describe mental illness, many different things—descriptiveness, banality, clinical precision, and stigma—intersect to create confusion, misunderstanding, and a gradual bleaching out of traditional words and phrases. It is no longer clear what place words such as “mad,” “daft,” “crazy,” “cracked,” or “certifiable” should have in a society increasingly sensitive to the feelings and rights of those who are mentally ill. Should, for example, expressive, often humorous, language—phrases such as “taking the fast trip to Squirrel City,” being a “few apples short of a picnic,” “off the wall,” “around the bend,” or “losing the bubble” (a British submariner’s term for madness)—be held hostage to the fads and fashions of “correct” or “acceptable” language?

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  We created our own world of discussion, desire, and love, living on champagne, roses, snow, rain, and borrowed time, an intense and private island of restored life for both of us. I had no hesitancy in telling him everything about myself, and he, like David, was extremely understanding about my manic-depressive illness. His immediate response, after I told him, was to take my face in his hands, kiss me gently on either cheek, and say, “I thought it was impossible for me to love you any more than I do.” He was silent for a while and then added, “It doesn’t really surprise me, but it does explain a certain vulnerability that goes along with your boldness. I am very glad you told me.” He meant it. They were not just easy words to cover awkward feelings. Everything he did and said after our discussion only underscored the meaning of his words. He understood, took into account, and put into perspective my vulnerabilities; but he also knew and loved my strengths as he saw them. He kept both in mind, protecting me from the hurt and pain of my illness and loving those aspects of me that he felt carried over with passion into life and love and work and people. I told him about my problems with the idea of taking lithium, but also that my life was dependent upon it. I told him that I had discussed with my psychiatrist the possibility of taking a lower dose in hopes of alleviating some of the more problematic side effects; I was eager to do this, but very frightened that I would have a recurrence of my mania. He argued that there would never be a safer or more protected period of time in my life in which to do it and that he would see me through. After discussing it with my psychiatrist in Los Angeles and my doctor in London, I did, very slowly, cut back on the amount of lithium I was taking. The effect was dramatic. It was as though I had taken bandages off my eyes after many years of partial blindness. A few days after lowering my dose, I was walking in Hyde Park, along the side of the Serpentine, when I realized that my steps were literally bouncier than they had been and that I was taking in sights and sounds that previously had been filtered through thick layers of gauze. The quacking of the ducks was more insistent, clearer, and more intense; the bumps on the sidewalk were far more noticeable; I felt more energetic and alive. Most significant, I could once again read without effort. It was, in short, remarkable.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  We created our own world of discussion, desire, and love, living on champagne, roses, snow, rain, and borrowed time, an intense and private island of restored life for both of us. I had no hesitancy in telling him everything about myself, and he, like David, was extremely understanding about my manic-depressive illness. His immediate response, after I told him, was to take my face in his hands, kiss me gently on either cheek, and say, “I thought it was impossible for me to love you any more than I do.” He was silent for a while and then added, “It doesn’t really surprise me, but it does explain a certain vulnerability that goes along with your boldness. I am very glad you told me.” He meant it. They were not just easy words to cover awkward feelings. Everything he did and said after our discussion only underscored the meaning of his words. He understood, took into account, and put into perspective my vulnerabilities; but he also knew and loved my strengths as he saw them. He kept both in mind, protecting me from the hurt and pain of my illness and loving those aspects of me that he felt carried over with passion into life and love and work and people. I told him about my problems with the idea of taking lithium, but also that my life was dependent upon it. I told him that I had discussed with my psychiatrist the possibility of taking a lower dose in hopes of alleviating some of the more problematic side effects; I was eager to do this, but very frightened that I would have a recurrence of my mania. He argued that there would never be a safer or more protected period of time in my life in which to do it and that he would see me through. After discussing it with my psychiatrist in Los Angeles and my doctor in London, I did, very slowly, cut back on the amount of lithium I was taking. The effect was dramatic. It was as though I had taken bandages off my eyes after many years of partial blindness. A few days after lowering my dose, I was walking in Hyde Park, along the side of the Serpentine, when I realized that my steps were literally bouncier than they had been and that I was taking in sights and sounds that previously had been filtered through thick layers of gauze. The quacking of the ducks was more insistent, clearer, and more intense; the bumps on the sidewalk were far more noticeable; I felt more energetic and alive. Most significant, I could once again read without effort. It was, in short, remarkable.

• From An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness (1995)

  I first met Richard Wyatt at a Christmas party in Washington, and he certainly was not at all what I expected. I had heard of him—he is a well-known schizophrenia researcher, Chief of Neuropsychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health, and the author of more than seven hundred scientific papers and books—but I was completely unprepared for the handsome, unassuming, quietly charming man I found myself talking with near a gigantic Christmas tree. He was not only attractive, he was very easy to talk to, and we got together often in the months that followed. Less than a year after we met, I returned to London for another marvelous six months, again on sabbatical leave from UCLA, and then went back to Los Angeles long enough to fulfill my post-sabbatical obligations and make plans to move to Washington. The whole thing had been a short but very convincing courtship. I loved being with him and found him not just unbelievably smart, but imaginative, fiendishly curious, refreshingly open-minded, and wonderfully easygoing. Even then, very early in our relationship, I could not imagine my life without him. I resigned my tenured position at the medical school with genuine regret at leaving the University of California, which I loved, and considerable anxiety about the financial implications of giving up a secure income, and then went to a long round of farewell parties given by colleagues, friends, and students. Overall, however, I left Los Angeles with few regrets. It had never been the City of Angels to me, and I was more than happy to leave it, first, thousands of feet below me—and then, finally, thousands of miles behind—filled with near death, a completely shattered innocence, and a recurrently lost and broken mind. Life in California had been often good, even very wonderful, but it was hard for me to see any of that at the time I returned to Washington to live. The ever promising, always elusive, and infinitely complex Promised Land seemed to me to be exactly that: promised.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  The same hotel, the same room. We look out on the courtyard where the bicycles are parked, and there is the little room up above, under the attic, where some smart young Alec played the phonograph all day long and repeated clever little things at the top of his voice. I say “we” but I’m getting ahead of myself, because Mona has been away a long time and it’s just today that I’m meeting her at the Gare St. Lazare. Toward evening I’m standing there with my face squeezed between the bars, but there’s no Mona, and I read the cable over again but it doesn’t help any. I go back to the Quarter and just the same I put away a hearty meal. Strolling past the Dôme a little later suddenly I see a pale, heavy face and burning eyes—and the little velvet suit that I always adore because under the soft velvet there were always her warm breasts, the marble legs, cool, firm, muscular. She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately—a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us and we in each other’s arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks—a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die. We walk down the Rue du Château, looking for Eugene. Walk over the railroad bridge where I used to watch the trains pulling out and feel all sick inside wondering where the hell she could be. Everything soft and enchanting as we walk over the bridge. Smoke coming up between our legs, the tracks creaking, semaphores in our blood. I feel her body close to mine—all mine now—and I stop to rub my hands over the warm velvet. Everything around us is crumbling, crumbling and the warm body under the warm velvet is aching for me. … Back in the very same room and fifty francs to the good, thanks to Eugene. I look out on the court but the phonograph is silent. The trunk is open and her things are lying around everywhere just as before. She lies down on the bed with her clothes on. Once, twice, three times, four times… I’m afraid she’ll go mad… in bed, under the blankets, how good to feel her body again! But for how long? Will it last this time? Already I have a presentiment that it won’t. She talks to me so feverishly—as if there will be no tomorrow. “Be quiet, Mona! Just look at me… don’t talk!” Finally she drops off and I pull my arm from under her. My eyes close. Her body is there beside me… it will be there till morning surely. … It was in February I pulled out of the harbor in a blinding snowstorm.