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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Objection 2: Further, the Apostle says (Eph. 5:33) that a husband should “love his wife as himself.” Now a man ought to love himself more than his parents. Therefore he ought to love his wife also more than his parents. Objection 2: Further, love should be greater where there are more reasons for loving. Now there are more reasons for love in the friendship of a man towards his wife. For the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 12) that “in this friendship there are the motives of utility, pleasure, and also of virtue, if husband and wife are virtuous.” Therefore a man’s love for his wife ought to be greater than his love for his parents. On the contrary, According to Eph. 5:28, “men ought to love their wives as their own bodies.” Now a man ought to love his body less than his neighbor, as stated above [2564](A[5]): and among his neighbors he should love his parents most. Therefore he ought to love his parents more than his wife. I answer that, As stated above [2565](A[9]), the degrees of love may be taken from the good (which is loved), or from the union between those who love. On the part of the good which is the object loved, a man should love his parents more than his wife, because he loves them as his principles and considered as a more exalted good. But on the part of the union, the wife ought to be loved more, because she is united with her husband, as one flesh, according to Mat. 19:6: “Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh.” Consequently a man loves his wife more intensely, but his parents with greater reverence. Reply to Objection 1: A man does not in all respects leave his father and mother for the sake of his wife: for in certain cases a man ought to succor his parents rather than his wife. He does however leave all his kinsfolk, and cleaves to his wife as regards the union of carnal connection and co-habitation. Reply to Objection 2: The words of the Apostle do not mean that a man ought to love his wife equally with himself, but that a man’s love for himself is the reason for his love of his wife, since she is one with him. Reply to Objection 3: There are also several reasons for a man’s love for his father; and these, in a certain respect, namely, as regards good, are more weighty than those for which a man loves his wife; although the latter outweigh the former as regards the closeness of the union. As to the argument in the contrary sense, it must be observed that in the words quoted, the particle “as” denotes not equality of love but the motive of love. For the principal reason why a man loves his wife is her being united to him in the flesh.

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

  JEROME. By Jerusalem He means not the stones and buildings, but the dwellers there, over whom He laments with the feeling of a Father. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Foreseeing the destruction of the city, and the blow it would receive from the Romans, He called to mind the blood of the saints which had been, and should yet be, shed in it. Thou killedst Esaias who was sent unto thee, and stonedst my servant Jeremias; thou dashedst out the brains of Ezechiel by dragging him over stones; how shalt thou be saved, which wilt not suffer a physician to come nigh thee? And He said not, Didst kill and stone; but, Killest, and Stonest; that is, This is a common and natural practice with thee to kill and stone the saints. She did to the Apostles the same things which she had once done to the Prophets. CHRYSOSTOM. Having thus addressed her, and spoken of her cruel murders, He said, as justifying Himself, How often would I have gathered thy children together? as much as to say, Notwithstanding, these thy murders have not alienated Me from thee, but I would have taken thee to Me, not once or twice, but many times. The strength of His affection He shews by the comparison of a hen. AUGUSTINE. (Quæst. Ev. i. 36.) This species has the greatest affection for its brood, insomuch that when they are sick the mother sickens also; and what you will hardly find in any other animal, it will fight against the kite, protecting its young with its wings. In like manner our mother, the Wisdom of God, sickened as it were in the putting on the flesh, according to that of the Apostle, The weakness of God is stronger than men, (1 Cor. 1:25.) protects our weakness, and resists the Devil that he should not make us his prey. ORIGEN. He calls them children of Jerusalem, just as we call each generation of citizens the sons of the preceding generation. And He says, How often, though it is well known that once only did He teach the Jews in the body, because Christ was ever present in Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Angels, ministering to human salvation in every generation. Whosoever shall not have been gathered in by Him shall be judged, as though he had refused to be gathered in. RABANUS. (non occ.) Let heretics then cease to assign to Christ a beginning from the Virgin; let them leave off to preach one God of the Law and another of the Prophets. AUGUSTINE. (Ench. 97.) Where is that omnipotence, by the which He did whatsoever pleased Him both in heaven and in earth, if He would have gathered the children of Jerusalem and did not? Was it not that she would not that her children should be gathered by Him, and yet He did, notwithstanding, gather those of her children whom He would?

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Half an hour later I saw she was in my room tidying up; I took thought and then went up the outside steps. As soon as I saw her, I pretended surprise: “I beg your pardon”, I said, “I’ll just get a book and go at once; please don’t let me disturb you!” and I pretended to look for the book. She turned sharply and looked at me fixedly: “Why do you treat me like this?” she burst out, shaking with indignation. “Like what?” I repeated, pretending surprise. “You know quite well”, she went on angrily, hastily: “at first I thought it was chance, unintentional; now I know you mean it. Whenever you’re talking or telling a story, as soon as I come into the room you stop and hurry away as if you hated me. Why? Why?” she cried with quivering lips, “What have I done to make you dislike me so?” and the tears gathered in her lovely eyes. I felt the moment had come: I put my hands on her shoulders and looked with my whole soul into her eyes: “Did you never guess, Kate, that it might be love, not hate?” I asked. “No, no!” she cried, the tears falling, “love doesn’t act like that!” “Fear to miss love does, I can assure you”, I cried, “I thought at first that you disliked me and already I had begun to care for you”, (my arms went round her waist and I drew her to me) “to love you and want you. Kiss me, dear” and at once she gave me her lips while my hand got busy on her breasts and then went down of itself to her sex. Suddenly she looked at me gaily, brightly while heaving a big sigh of relief. “I’m glad, glad!” she said, “if you only knew how hurt I was and how I tortured myself; one moment I was angry, then I was sad. Yesterday I made up my mind to speak, but today I said to myself, I’ll just be obstinate and cold as he is and now”—and of her own accord she put her arms round my neck and kissed me, “you are a dear, dear! Anyway, I love you!” “You mustn’t give me those bird-pecks!” I exclaimed, “those are not kisses: I want your lips to open and cling to mine” and I kissed her while my tongue darted into her mouth and I stroked her sex gently. She flushed, but at first didn’t understand, then suddenly she blushed rosy red as her lips grew hot and she fairly ran from the room. I exulted: I knew I had won: I must be very quiet and reserved and the bird would come to the lure; I felt exultingly certain!

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

  Whether charity is a virtue?Objection 1: It would seem that charity is not a virtue. For charity is a kind of friendship. Now philosophers do not reckon friendship a virtue, as may be gathered from Ethic. viii, 1; nor is it numbered among the virtues whether moral or intellectual. Neither, therefore, is charity a virtue. Objection 2: Further, “virtue is the ultimate limit of power” (De Coelo et Mundo i, 11). But charity is not something ultimate, this applies rather to joy and peace. Therefore it seems that charity is not a virtue, and that this should be said rather of joy and peace. Objection 3: Further, every virtue is an accidental habit. But charity is not an accidental habit, since it is a more excellent thing than the soul itself: whereas no accident is more excellent than its subject. Therefore charity is not a virtue. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Moribus Eccl. xi): “Charity is a virtue which, when our affections are perfectly ordered, unites us to God, for by it we love Him.” I answer that, Human acts are good according as they are regulated by their due rule and measure. Wherefore human virtue which is the principle of all man’s good acts consists in following the rule of human acts, which is twofold, as stated above ([2497]Q[17], A[1]), viz. human reason and God. Consequently just as moral virtue is defined as being “in accord with right reason,” as stated in Ethic. ii, 6, so too, the nature of virtue consists in attaining God, as also stated above with regard to faith, ([2498]Q[4], A[5]) and hope ([2499]Q[17], A[1]). Wherefore, it follows that charity is a virtue, for, since charity attains God, it unites us to God, as evidenced by the authority of Augustine quoted above.

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

  I answer that, Beneficence simply means doing good to someone. This good may be considered in two ways, first under the general aspect of good, and this belongs to beneficence in general, and is an act of friendship, and, consequently, of charity: because the act of love includes goodwill whereby a man wishes his friend well, as stated above ([2600]Q[23], A[1];[2601] Q[27] , A[2]). Now the will carries into effect if possible, the things it wills, so that, consequently, the result of an act of love is that a man is beneficent to his friend. Therefore beneficence in its general acceptation is an act of friendship or charity. But if the good which one man does another, be considered under some special aspect of good, then beneficence will assume a special character and will belong to some special virtue. Reply to Objection 1: According to Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv), “love moves those, whom it unites, to a mutual relationship: it turns the inferior to the superior to be perfected thereby; it moves the superior to watch over the inferior:” and in this respect beneficence is an effect of love. Hence it is not for us to benefit God, but to honor Him by obeying Him, while it is for Him, out of His love, to bestow good things on us. Reply to Objection 2: Two things must be observed in the bestowal of gifts. One is the thing given outwardly, while the other is the inward passion that a man has in the delight of riches. It belongs to liberality to moderate this inward passion so as to avoid excessive desire and love for riches; for this makes a man more ready to part with his wealth. Hence, if a man makes some great gift, while yet desiring to keep it for himself, his is not a liberal giving. On the other hand, as regards the outward gift, the act of beneficence belongs in general to friendship or charity. Hence it does not detract from a man’s friendship, if, through love, he give his friend something he would like to I keep for himself; rather does this prove the perfection of his friendship. Reply to Objection 3: Just as friendship or charity sees, in the benefit bestowed, the general aspect of good, so does justice see therein the aspect of debt, while pity considers the relieving of distress or defect. Whether we ought to do good to all?Objection 1: It would seem that we are not bound to do good to all. For Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 28) that we “are unable to do good to everyone.” Now virtue does not incline one to the impossible. Therefore it is not necessary to do good to all. Objection 2: Further, it is written (Ecclus. 12:5) “Give to the good, and receive not a sinner.” But many men are sinners. Therefore we need not do good to all.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  He doesn’t know why. I get on my knees before him. “What is it, darling, what is it?” And I say this terrible thing: “Do you have an intuition?”—which, because of his faith and his slow senses, he cannot understand. He believes Henry only stimulates me imaginatively, as a writer. And it is because he believes this that he sits down to write also, to woo me with writing. I want to cry out, “That is so young of you; it’s like the faith of a child.” God, I’m old, I’m the last woman on earth. I am aware of a monstrous paradox: By giving myself I learn to love Hugo more. By living as I do I am preserving our love from bitterness and death. The truth is that this is the only way I can live: in two directions. I need two lives. I am two beings. When I return to Hugo in the evening, to the peace and warmth of the house, I return with a deep contentment, as if this were the only condition for me. I bring home to Hugo a whole woman, freed of all “possessed” fevers, cured of the poison of restlessness and curiosity which used to threaten our marriage, cured through action. Our love lives, because I live. I sustain and feed it. I am loyal to it, in my own way, which cannot be his way. If he ever reads these lines, he must believe me. I am writing calmly, lucidly while waiting for him to come home, as one waits for the chosen lover, the eternal one. Henry makes notes on me. He registers all I say. We are both registering, each with different sensors. The life of writers is another life. I sit on his bed, with my rose dress spread around me, smoking, and as he observes me, he says he will never take me into his life, to the places he has told me about, that for me all the trappings of Louveciennes are right and fitting, that I must have them. “You couldn’t live otherwise.” I contemplate his sordid room and exclaim, “I think it is true. If you put me in this room, poor, I would start all over again.” The next day I write him one of the most human notes he has ever received: no intellect, just words about his voice, his laughter, his hands. And he writes me: “Anaïs, I was stunned when I got your note this evening. Nothing I can ever say will match these words. To you the victory—you have silenced me—I mean so far as expressing these things in writing goes. You don’t know how I marvel at your ability to absorb quickly and then turn about, rain down the spears, nail it, penetrate it, envelop it with your intellect. The experience dumbed me; I felt a singular exaltation, a surge of vitality, then of lassitude, of blankness, of wonder, of incredulity, everything, everything.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Are they really as beautiful as that? Yes, indeed.” I laugh. “You appreciate other things, perhaps.” “What?” “Warmth, for instance.” I’m smiling, but there are so many fine lacerations that Henry’s words open. “When Fred hears me talk about June, he says I do not love you.” Yet he won’t let me go. He calls out to me in his letters. His arms, his caresses, and his fucking are voracious. He says, with me, that no amount of thinking (Proust’s words, or Fred’s, or mine) will stop us from living. And what is living? The moment when he rings at Natasha’s door (she is away and I have her place) and immediately desires me. The moment when he tells me he has had no thoughts of whores. I am so idiotically fair and loyal to June in every word I utter about her. How can I deceive myself about the extent of Henry’s love when I understand and share his feelings about June? He sleeps in my arms, we are welded, his penis still in me. It is a moment of real peace, a moment of security. I open my eyes, but I do not think. One of my hands is on his gray hair. The other hand is spread around his leg. “Oh, Anaïs,” he had said, “you are so hot, so hot that I can’t wait. I must shoot into you quickly, quickly.” Is how one is loved always so important? Is it so imperative that one should be loved absolutely or greatly? Would Fred say of me that I can love because I love others more than I love myself? Or is it Hugo who loves when he goes three times to the station to meet me because I have missed three trains? Or is it Fred, with his nebulous, poetic, delicate comprehension? Or do I love most when I say to Henry, “The destroyers do not always destroy. June has not destroyed you, ultimately. The core of you is a writer. And the writer is living.” “Henry, tell Fred we can go and get the curtains tomorrow.” “I’ll come, too,” said Henry, suddenly jealous. “But you know Fred wants to see me, to talk with me.” Henry’s jealousy pleased me. “Tell him to meet me at the same place as last time.” “About four o’clock.” “No, at three.” I was thinking we didn’t have enough time together the last day we met. Henry’s face is impenetrable. I never know by any sign on it what he feels. There are transitions, yes, when he is flushed and excited, or serious and chastened, or observant and introspective. The blue eyes are analytical, like a scientist’s, or moist with feeling. When they are moist I am moved down to my toes because I remember a story about his childhood. His parents (his father was a tailor) used to take him with them on their Sunday outings, visiting, dragging the child along all day and late at night.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  In two or three minutes she had again let down a flow of love-juice or so I believed and I kept right on with the love-game, knowing that the first experience is never forgotten by a girl and resolved to keep on to dinner-time if necessary to make her first love-joust ever memorable to her. Kate lasted longer than Mrs. Mayhew: I came ever so many times, passing ever more slowly from orgasm to orgasm before she began to move to me; but at length her breath began to get shorter and shorter and she held me to her violently, moving her pussy the while up and down harshly against my manroot. Suddenly she relaxed and fell back: there was no hysteria; but plainly I could feel the mouth of her womb fasten on my cock as if to suck it. That excited me fiercely and for the first time I indulged in quick, hard thrusts till a spasm of intensest pleasure shook me and my seed spirted or seemed to spirt for the sixth or seventh time. When I had finished kissing and praising my lovely partner and drew away, I was horrified: the bed was a sheet of blood and some had gone on my pants: Kate’s thighs and legs even were all incarnadined, making the lovely ivory white of her skin, one red. You may imagine how softly I used the towel on her legs and sex before I showed her the results of our love-passage. To my astonishment she was unaffected: “You must take the sheet away and burn it”, she said, “or drop it in the river: I guess it won’t be the first.” “Did it hurt very much”, I asked. “At first a good deal”, she replied, “but soon the pleasure overpowered the smart and I would not even forget the pain: I love you so: I am not even afraid of consequences with you: I trust you absolutely and love to trust you and run whatever risks you wish.”

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Ultimately, love not only showed me how to grieve—it showed me how to live. Love allowed me to thaw my stuck feelings and live more wholeheartedly. Love gave me the courage to be free—not free from the pain but free from the fear of pain and the barrier it creates to love. Love eventually allowed me to provide for myself exactly what my father had given me every second I was lucky enough to have him in my life: the feelings of being lovable, safe, and good enough. This is the journey of our humanness. To connect to love, our true power, in order to heal the wounds that keep us stuck. It’s a simple, jagged path with no easy pass or mileage points. But all roads lead there—even the ones that take us off track. Thank you for walking this path with me. Now, keep going. And remember to smell the fragrant lizards along the way. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To Pamela Cannon, my brilliant editor. Without you this book wouldn’t exist. Thank you for your unwavering enthusiasm, can-do spirit, and “ok, now you’re just showing off” candor. For crawling into the trenches with me (index cards and all), and for every edit that made this book something I am very proud of. I appreciate you and your very big heart, my friend. To Suzanne Guillette, thank you for pouring your poetry onto these pages with me. For pushing me to go deeper, and for showing me ways to express the inexpressible. Your guidance not only made this book richer, it helped me grow. To Patty Gift, thank you for championing a topic most shy away from. For giving me the space and grace to take my time, find my way, and create my music. Je t’adore, lion. To Reid Tracy, thank you for saying yes to my writing so long ago (even the cuss words). Your friendship means the world, moon, and stars to me. To Melody Guy, thank you for coaxing out even more magic. For finding the nooks and crannies that needed more heart (or clearer explanation!), and for allowing me to go to places I was afraid to go to. Once there, you said, “It’s OK. That’s normal. Keep going.” To my wonderful literary agents, Scott Hoffman and Steve Troha, thank you for believing in my work and welcoming me into the Folio fold. To Sarah Hall, Krystin White (Cookie), Lindsay McGinty, and Lizzi Marshall, thank you for helping me spread this book far and wide. To my amazing team: Mandi, Hayley, Deidra, Abby, Morgan, Cameron, Justin, John, thank you for your creative hearts, big smarts, and caring spirits.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I feel him evading the word which comes easiest to his lips, grasping another, a more subtle one. Sometimes I feel that I have taken him into an intricate world, a new country, and he does not walk like John, trampling, but with an awareness I sensed in him from the very first day. He walks inside of Proust’s symphonies, of Gide’s insinuations, of Cocteau’s opium enigmas, of Valery’s silences; he walks into suggestivity, into spaces; into the illuminations of Rimbaud. And I walk with him. Tonight I love him, for the beautiful way he has given me the earth. As I go along I cannot and must not tear down. I will not ask Hugo even for one free evening. Because of that I bring out new and profound feelings in Henry. “Are you glad,” asks Eduardo, “that he wants to write, work, that he is exalted rather than destroyed?” “Yes.” “The real test will come when you begin to want to use your power over men destructively and cruelly.” Will that time come? I tell Hugo about my imaginary journal of a possessed woman, which fortifies him in his attitude that everything is make-believe except our love. “But how do you know there is not really such a journal? How do you know I’m not lying to you?” “You may be,” he said. “You’ve got a really supple mind now.” “Give me realities to fight,” he has said to me. “My imagination makes it worse.” I let him read my letter to June, and he found relief in knowing. The best of lies are half-truths. I tell him half-truths. Sunday. Hugo goes to play golf. I dress ritually and compare the joy of dressing for Henry to my sorrow at dressing for idiotic bankers and telephone kings. Later, a small, dark room, so shabby, like a deep-set alcove. Immediately, the richness of Henry’s voice and mouth. The feeling of sinking into warm blood. And he, overcome with my warmth and moisture. Slow penetration, with pauses and with twists, making me gasp with pleasure. I have no words for it; it is all new to me. The first time Henry made love to me, I realized a terrible fact—that Hugo was sexually too large for me, so that my pleasure has not been unmixed, always somewhat painful. Has that been the secret of my dissatisfaction? I tremble as I write it. I don’t want to dwell on it, on its effect on my life, on my hunger. My hunger is not abnormal. With Henry I am content. We come to a climax, we talk, we eat and drink, and before I leave he floods me again. I have never known such plenitude. It is no longer Henry; and I am just woman.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Someday, after another one of your victories, I’ll answer any question you put to me.” “Yes, I know that,” said Henry, “I am sure of it. I wait quite patiently. I can wait.” What I could have found ridiculous only touched me with its humanness: Henry crawling to find my black silk garters, which had fallen behind the bed. His awe on seeing my twelve-franc necklace: “It is such a fine, rare thing you wear.” When I saw him naked, he appeared defenseless to me, and my tenderness welled up. Afterwards he was languid, and I was gay. We even talked about our craft: “I like,” said Henry, “to have my desk in order before I begin, only notes around me, a great many notes.” “Do you do that?” I said excitedly, as if it were a most interesting statement. Our craft. Delight in talk of techniques. I guess, Henry, that you are suffering from the effort at complete revelations about yourself and June, inexorable frankness but painfully obtained. You have moments of reserve, of feeling you are violating sacred intimacies, the secret life of your own being as well as of others. At moments I am willing to help you because of our common objective passion for truth. But it hurts, Henry, it hurts. I am trying to be honest in my journal, day to day. You are right, in one sense, when you speak of my honesty. An effort, anyway, with the usual human or feminine retractions. To retreat is not feminine, male, or trickery. It is a terror before utter destruction. What we analyze inexorably, will it die? Will June die? Will our love die, suddenly, instantaneously if you should make a caricature of it? Henry, there is a danger in too much knowledge. You have a passion for absolute knowledge. That is why people will hate you. And sometimes I believe your relentless analysis of June leaves something out, which is your feeling for her beyond knowledge, or in spite of knowledge. I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon. What will you do after you have revealed all there is to know about June? Truth. What ferocity in your quest of it. You destroy and you suffer. In some strange way I am not with you, I am against you. We are destined to hold two truths. I love you and I fight you. And you, the same. We will be stronger for it, each of us, stronger with our love and our hate. When you caricature and nail down and tear apart, I hate you. I want to answer you, not with weak or stupid poetry but with a wonder as strong as your reality. I want to fight your surgical knife with all the occult and magic forces of the world.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Yesterday he came to Louveciennes. A new Henry, or, rather, the Henry sensed behind the one generally known, the Henry beyond what he has written down, beyond all literal knowledge, my Henry, the man I love tremendously now, too much, dangerously. He looked so serious. He had received a letter from June, in pencil, irregular, mad, like a child’s, moving, simple, cries of her love for him. “Such a letter blots out everything.” I felt the moment had come for me to release my June, to give him my June, “because,” I said, “it will make you love her more. It’s a beautiful June. Other days I felt you might laugh at my portrait, jeer at its naïveté. Today I know you won’t.” I read him all I had written in my journal about June. What is happening? He is deeply moved, torn apart. He believes. “It is in that way I should have written about June. The other is incomplete, superficial. You have got her, Anaïs.” But wait. He has left softness, tenderness out of his work, he has written down only the hate, the violence. I have only inserted what he has left out. But he has not left it out because he doesn’t feel it, or know it, or understand (as June thinks), only because it is more difficult to express. So far his writing has only issued from violence, it has been whipped out of him, the blows have made him wail and curse. And now he sits and I confide in him completely, in the sentient, profound Henry. He is won. He says, “Such a love is wonderful, Anaïs. I do not hate or despise that. I see what you give each other. I see it so well. Read, read—this is a revelation to me.” I read, and I tremble as I read, up to our kiss. He understands too well. Suddenly he says, “Anaïs, I have just realized that what I give you is something coarse and plain, compared to that. I realize that when June returns . . .” I stop him. “You don’t know what you have given me! It is not coarse and plain! Today, for example . . .” I am choking with feelings that are too entangled. I want to tell him how much he has given me. We are oppressed by the same fear.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  Next door to us lived a doctor’s widow with two daughters, the eldest a medium-sized girl with large head and good grey eyes, hardly to be called pretty though all girls were pretty enough to excite me for the next ten years or more. This eldest girl was called Molly—a pet name for Maria. Her sister Kathleen was far more attractive physically: she was rather tall and slight, with a lithe grace of figure that was intensely provocative. Yet though I noted all Kathleen’s feline witchery, I fell prone for Molly. She seemed to me both intelligent and witty: she had read widely too and knew both French and German; she was as far above all the American girls I had met in knowledge of books and art as she was inferior to the best of them in bodily beauty. For the first time my mind was excited and interested and I thought I was in love and one late afternoon or early evening on Castle Hill I told her I loved her and we became engaged. Oh, the sweet folly of it all! When she asked me how we should live, what I intended to do, I had no answer ready save the perfect self-confidence of the man who had already proved himself in the struggle of life. Fortunately for me, that didn’t seem very convincing to her: she admitted that she was three years older than I was and if she had said four, she would have been nearer the truth, and she was quite certain I would not find it so easy to win in England as in America: she underrated both my brains and my strength of will. She confided to me that she had a hundred a year of her own: but that, of course, was wholly inadequate. So though she kissed me freely and allowed me a score of little privacies, she was resolved not to give herself completely. Her distrust of my ability and her delightfully piquant reserve heightened my passion and once I won her consent to an immediate marriage. At her best Molly was astonishingly intelligent and frank. One night alone together in our sitting-room which my father and sister left to us, I tried my best to get her to give herself to me. But she shook her head: “it would not be right, dear, till we are married”, she persisted. “Suppose we were on a desert island”, I said, “and no marriage possible?” “My darling!” she said kissing me on the mouth and laughing aloud, “don’t you know, I should yield then without your urging: you dear! I want you, Sir, perhaps more than you want me.” But she wore closed drawers and I didn’t know how to unbutton them at the sides and though she grew intensely and quickly excited, I could not break down the final barrier. In any case, before I could win, Fate used her shears decisively.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  She was wearing Christian Louboutin shoes, pale satin with bright red soles. You saw the red soles when she kneeled at the altar. B 14 efore she was born we had been planning a trip to Saigon. We had assignments from magazines, we had credentials, we had everything we needed. Including, suddenly, a baby. That year, 1966, during which the American military presence in Vietnam would reach four hundred thousand and American B-52s had begun bombing the North, was not widely considered an ideal year to take an infant to Southeast Asia, yet it never occurred to me to abandon or even adjust the plan. I even went so far as to shop for what I imagined we would need: Donald Brooks pastel linen dresses for myself, a flowered Porthault parasol to shade the baby, as if she and I were about to board a Pan Am flight and disembark at Le Cercle Sportif. In the end this trip to Saigon did not take place, although its cancellation was by no means based on what might have seemed the obvious reason—we canceled, it turned out, because John had to finish the book he had contracted to write about César Chávez and his National Farm Workers Association and the DiGiorgio grape strike in Delano—and I mention Saigon at all only by way of suggesting the extent of my misconceptions about what having a child, let alone adopting one, might actually entail. How could I not have had misconceptions? I had been handed this perfect baby, out of the blue, at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. She could not have been more exactly the baby I wanted. In the first place she was beautiful. Hermosa, chula. Strangers stopped me on the street to tell me so. “I have a beautiful baby girl at St. John’s,” Blake Watson had said, and he did. Everyone sent dresses, an homage to the beautiful baby girl. There the dresses were in her closet, sixty of them (I counted them, again and again), immaculate little wisps of batiste and Liberty lawn on miniature wooden hangers. The miniature wooden hangers, too, were a gift to the beautiful baby girl, another homage from her instantly acquired relatives, besotted aunts and uncles and cousins in West Hartford (John’s family) and Sacramento (mine). I recall changing her dress four times on the afternoon the State of California social worker made her mandated visit to observe the candidate for adoption in the home environment. We sat on the lawn. The candidate for adoption played at our feet. I did not mention to the social worker that Saigon had until recently figured in the candidate’s future. Nor did I mention that current itineraries called for her to sojourn instead at the Starlight Motel in Delano.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  3To love with all one’s soul and leave the rest to fate, was the simple rule she heeded. “Vot zapomni [now remember],” she would say in conspiratorial tones as she drew my attention to this or that loved thing in Vyra—a lark ascending the curds-and-whey sky of a dull spring day, heat lightning taking pictures of a distant line of trees in the night, the palette of maple leaves on brown sand, a small bird’s cuneate footprints on new snow. As if feeling that in a few years the tangible part of her world would perish, she cultivated an extraordinary consciousness of the various time marks distributed throughout our country place. She cherished her own past with the same retrospective fervor that I now do her image and my past. Thus, in a way, I inherited an exquisite simulacrum—the beauty of intangible property, unreal estate—and this proved a splendid training for the endurance of later losses. Her special tags and imprints became as dear and as sacred to me as they were to her. There was the room which in the past had been reserved for her mother’s pet hobby, a chemical laboratory; there was the linden tree marking the spot, by the side of the road that sloped up toward the village of Gryazno (accented on the ultima), at the steepest bit where one preferred to take one’s “bike by the horns” (bïka za roga) as my father, a dedicated cyclist, liked to say, and where he had proposed; and there was, in the so-called “old” park, the obsolete tennis court, now a region of moss, mole-heaps, and mushrooms, which had been the scene of gay rallies in the eighties and nineties (even her grim father would shed his coat and give the heaviest racket an appraisive shake) but which, by the time I was ten, nature had effaced with the thoroughness of a felt eraser wiping out a geometrical problem.

• From Speak, Memory (1966)

  She spoke in birdlike bursts of rapid twitter, mixing governess English and Parisian French. Two years before, on the same plage, I had been much attached to Zina, the lovely, sun-tanned, bad-tempered little daughter of a Serbian naturopath—she had, I remember (absurdly, for she and I were only eight at the time), a grain de beauté on her apricot skin just below the heart, and there was a horrible collection of chamber pots, full and half-full, and one with surface bubbles, on the floor of the hall in her family’s boardinghouse lodgings which I visited early one morning to be given by her as she was being dressed, a dead hummingbird moth found by the cat. But when I met Colette, I knew at once that this was the real thing. Colette seemed to me so much stranger than all my other chance playmates at Biarritz! I somehow acquired the feeling that she was less happy than I, less loved. A bruise on her delicate, downy forearm gave rise to awful conjectures. “He pinches as bad as my mummy,” she said, speaking of a crab. I evolved various schemes to save her from her parents, who were “des bourgeois de Paris” as I heard somebody tell my mother with a slight shrug. I interpreted the disdain in my own fashion, as I knew that those people had come all the way from Paris in their blue-and-yellow limousine (a fashionable adventure in those days) but had drably sent Colette with her dog and governess by an ordinary coach-train. The dog was a female fox terrier with bells on her collar and a most waggly behind. From sheer exuberance, she would lap up salt water out of Colette’s toy pail. I remember the sail, the sunset and the lighthouse pictured on that pail, but I cannot recall the dog’s name, and this bothers me. During the two months of our stay at Biarritz, my passion for Colette all but surpassed my passion for Cleopatra. Since my parents were not keen to meet hers, I saw her only on the beach; but I thought of her constantly. If I noticed she had been crying, I felt a surge of helpless anguish that brought tears to my own eyes. I could not destroy the mosquitoes that had left their bites on her frail neck, but I could, and did, have a successful fistfight with a red-haired boy who had been rude to her. She used to give me warm handfuls of hard candy. One day, as we were bending together over a starfish, and Colette’s ringlets were tickling my ear, she suddenly turned toward me and kissed me on the cheek. So great was my emotion that all I could think of saying was, “You little monkey.”

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Taking him home was a no-brainer. With help from kind strangers we met along the way, we were able to get Buddy down the mountain, slowly and carefully. One hiker offered a blanket, another gave him part of his ham sandwich. Brian took off his belt and made a collar and leash. When Buddy looked like he needed a break, Brian carried him. From that moment forward, they were inseparable. Buddy came to us in bad shape—days away from dying. The vet told us that he was about 50 pounds underweight and very lucky to be alive. I scoured the local papers, Facebook posts, and lost pet registries, but could find no notice that anyone was looking for him. Good! As we were trying to understand what happened to him, the vet explained that Buddy could have been dumped. His breed is often used for hunting, and this gentle fella was clearly no predator. Loud noises terrified him. He hated guns, thunder, and raised voices. When scared, he could snap, but most of the time, Buddy was mellow. For months, we poured our hearts into healing our boy. We sprang into action researching the best diet, supplements, and holistic remedies. We made home-cooked food, tried herbal remedies, and even gave acupuncture a shot. Until he bit the vet. Apparently, needles were his red line. When the weight wasn’t coming on fast enough for his recovery, we added softball-size servings of raw ground beef to the mix. Twice weekly, this vegan would head to the butcher in a baseball hat and sunglasses. My love for Buddy knew no bounds. Over time, Buddy transformed; he went from looking like he was at death’s door to totally radiant. His matted coat became shiny, and his body functions normalized. His spirit took longer to heal, though. Like all of us with wounds, his process couldn’t be rushed. Buddy needed time, space, and stability until he felt safe enough to let his spark come back. Any sudden changes might trigger him. Once, I plopped down next to him on the sofa, unintentionally startling him awake. He instantly bit at the air like a great white shark leaping for a seal. I got the message: “Be mindful around me; I’m still in a vulnerable state.” After a long and tender winter, Buddy’s personality finally emerged. We were thrilled to meet the real him. Turns out, he was hilarious—a gentle, goofy giant, who went from being frightened of touch to moaning for ear noogies and full-body compression hugs. When he wasn’t holding court and welcoming visitors as the “mayor” of our porch, he was on patrol checking the perimeter and keeping us safe (or so we let him believe).

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

  BEDE. (ubi sup.) But observe that the righteousness of the law, when kept in its own time, conferred not only earthly goods, but also eternal life on those who chose it. Wherefore the Lord’s answer to one who enquires concerning everlasting life is, Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill; for this is the childlike blamelessness which is proposed to us, if we would enter the kingdom of heaven. On which there follows, And he answered and said unto him, Master, all these have I observed from my youth. We must not suppose that this man either asked the Lord, with a wish to tempt him, as some have fancied, or lied in his account of his life; but we must believe that he confessed with simplicity how he had lived; which is evident, from what is subjoined, Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him. If however he had been guilty of lying or of dissimulation, by no means would Jesus, after looking on the secrets of his heart, have been said to love him. ORIGEN. (in Evan. tom. xv. 14) For in that He loved, or kissed himp, He appears to affirm the truth of his profession, in saying that he had fulfilled all those things; for on applying His mind to him, He saw that the man answered with a good conscience. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. (Cat. in Marc. Oxon.) It is worthy of enquiry, however, how He loved a man, who, He knew, would not follow Him? But this is so much as to say, that since he was worthy of love in the first instance, because he observed the things of the law from his youth, so in the end, though he did not take upon himself perfection, he did not suffer a lessening of his former love. For although he did not pass the bounds of humanity, nor follow the perfection of Christ, still he was not guilty of any sin, since he kept the law according to the capability of a man, and in this mode of keeping it, Christ loved himq. BEDE. (ubi sup.) For God loves those who keep the commandments of the law, though they be inferior; nevertheless, He shews to those who would be perfect the deficiency of the law, for He came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. Wherefore there follows: And said unto him, One thing thou lackest; go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me; (Matt. 5:17) for whosoever would be perfect ought to sell all that he has, not a part, like Ananias and Sapphira, but the whole. THEOPHYLACT. And when he has sold it, to give it to the poor, not to stage-players and luxurious persons.

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  I saw them into the omnibus and got kind words from all the party, even from Señor Arriga, but cherished most her look and word as she went out of the door. Holding it open for her, I murmured as she passed, for the others were within hearing: “I shall come soon.” The girl stopped, at once, pretending to look at the tag on a trunk the porter was carrying. “El Paso is far away,” she sighed, “and the hacienda ten leagues further on. When shall we arrive—when?” she added glancing up at me. “When?” was the significant word to me for many a month; her eyes had filled it with meaning. I’ve told of this meeting with Miss Vidal at length, because it marked an epoch in my life; it was the first time that love had cast her glamor over me making beauty superlative, intoxicating. The passion rendered it easier for me to resist ordinary temptation, for it taught me there was a whole gorgeous world in Love’s Kingdom that I had never imagined, much less explored. I had scarcely a lewd thought of Gloria. It was not till I saw her bared shoulders in evening dress that I stripped her in imagination and went almost wild in uncontrollable desire. Would she ever kiss me? What was she like undressed? My imagination was still untutored: I could picture her breasts better than her sex and I made up my mind to examine the next girl I was lucky enough to see naked, much more precisely. At the back of my mind was the fixed resolve to get to Chihuahua somehow or other in the near future and meet my charmer again and that resolve in due course shaped my life anew. In early June, that year, three strangers came to the Hotel, all cattlemen I was told, but of a new sort: Reece and Dell and Ford, the “Boss”, as he was called. Reece was a tall dark Englishman or rather Welshman, always dressed in brown leather riding boots, Bedford Cord breeches and dark tweed cutaway coat: he looked a prosperous gentleman farmer; Dell was almost a copy of him in clothes, about middle height and sturdier—in fact an ordinary Englishman. The Boss was fully six feet, taller even than Reece with a hatchet-thin, bronzed face and eagle profile—evidently a Western cattle-man from head to foot. The headwaiter told me about them and as soon as I saw them I had them transferred to a shady-cool table and saw that they were well waited on.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  As trauma specialist Robert Stolorow points out, our feelings, no matter what they are, long for a home. Creating that home, a place where all parts of us are welcome, is how we heal. Grief, loss, and pain beg for a safe place to be seen and heard. They ask us to be vulnerable, which is the last thing we want to do when we’re in agony. But if we’re brave enough to let our various griefs do their therapeutic work, they will grow and mend us in ways we can’t begin to imagine (yet). And when it comes to healing, there’s a bigger picture at play. Humans are interconnected beings, different but bound by our shared experience of being alive. As such, our healing can have a ripple effect on others, too. As we forgive, and unlock and release our pain, we create an opening for others to do the same. But it doesn’t stop there. Our healing even has the power to contribute to the healing of ancestral wounds carried down the genetic line. Yet another reason this work is so important. Grief cracks you open and teaches you priceless, heartexpanding, and healing lessons, too. It certainly has done that for me. It can be used as a catalyst to take inventory of your life, figure out what matters most versus what you can let go of, and allow you to reset, breathing into the next phase of brave, courageous, and utterly unique you. YOU ARE NOT ALONESince the onset of the pandemic, the grief, shock, depression, and trauma of the last few years have been astounding. For many of us, this disorientation has prompted some deep soul-searching. Everywhere people are reassessing their values and priorities as a result of losses that will affect us for generations to come. Because of what we’ve all been through, we may be more likely to consider the person we walk by in the grocery store, who, like us, might be quietly carrying the burden of their own pain. Loss is the one thing we all have in common. We’ll get dumped or do the dumping, we’ll quit or get fired, we’ll lose our connection to self and wonder why we’re here in the first place, and we’ll get sick and better and sick again. Our hearts will shatter and swell with fullness. And our resilience is the only thing that allows us to be brave enough to continue loving. Our mere existence requires us to strengthen our heart muscle through the back-and-forth of love and loss—two experiences that may feel like polar opposites but are actually two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. The kind of love I’m talking about here is messy and honest. It guides us when we have the courage to follow it. It asks us to do very beautiful and difficult things, like stand up for someone else, or ourselves, or choose what feels right instead of what looks good.