Nostalgia

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 Shunned (2018)

  —Joseph Campbell W e arrived at the house by midafternoon, the sun high in the sky, the pine trees’ succulent aroma seducing me to relax. For all my talk of loving big-city life and embracing the concrete jungle, I noticed how much I missed the intense green of Oregon, white-capped Cascades touching heaven, the tree line of noble evergreens pointing upward. There was a sameness and stability here; any changes were slow, imperceptible, lacking human contrivance. We found the house as always, in quiet repose, the blinds pulled down like resting eyelids. We broke through the silence with one turn of a key and began our habitation routines. Everything was as I’d remembered it, barstools lined up in an even row under the tiled kitchen counter, macramé wall hanging over the river-rock fireplace. I set a few decks of cards and poker chips on the long wood dining table and then followed my dad through the sliding glass doors leading to the back deck. He stopped still and took a deep, satisfying breath, then walked over to open an outdoor cupboard to the rear of the garage. I joined him there, and, without a word, he handed me several cushions. Together we laid them on the empty patio chairs like pieces of a puzzle. We went inside and joined the others to finish settling in. I avoided the upstairs bedroom Ross and I used to share, choosing instead to sleep in one of the smallest rooms, tucked downstairs behind the kitchen. Because it had twin beds, it was usually reserved for Sheena and Tyler. Without the children, the house felt empty, and without Randy and Marlene there were whole rooms left unattended, which made everything feel off kilter. Returning to the kitchen, I found Mom putting away the last of the groceries. Ove was already in the garage, pulling out the bikes. We all went for a short ride through the area, past familiar homes and vistas. It felt good to move, to get my heart pumping, shaking loose the odd awareness of being there, knowing what faced me, what faced us all that weekend. I wanted to capture each moment like an emotional photograph: the lighthearted mood, the genuine goodwill, the ease born of familiarity, the love. Part of me was relaxing, but another was vigilant and intent to soak it in, to remember every nuance. Ordinary things, like chopping vegetables with my sister or doing dishes with Mom, were potent with a bittersweet melancholy. I wondered if they felt it, too, the small stone in the pit of my belly. Friday turned to Saturday, and the time unfurled like ribbons in a gentle breeze. Breakfast slipped into pool time, which naturally led to another, longer bike ride, which naturally led to lunch together on the shady deck—cold fried chicken and potato salad. With full bellies, we settled in for a lazy afternoon. Dad disappeared into his room for a nap, and Ove went out to play golf.

• From Shunned (2018)

  My parents had taught me never to show up as an empty-handed dinner guest. Equal to that, I wanted to have some choice in what we drank, as discovering, drinking, and collecting wines is part of Bob’s and my lifestyle. In homage to my family, we chose pinot noirs made in Newberg and the Dundee Hills, where both of my parents grew up. If the evening was a complete bust—a fear I had not yet shaken—we would find consolation in a good wine. I parked on the street across from my parents’ house. Their driveway was full of cars, and street parking would allow us an easy exit whenever that time came. “This is it, Bobby,” I said. “This is where I lived from the ages of three to twenty.” My eyes came to rest on the rhododendrons hugging the edge of the living room picture window. This was where Lory, Randy, and I had stood for the photograph that sits near my writing desk, the day my childhood self had imagined the faceless hooded riders coming to get my dad. I remember my urgent need to convince him not to be stubborn, to change his mind, to convince him how much safer he would be if only he’d just believe. If only. Just believe. Please. Now I understood how much that was to ask of him. Now there were people in my parents’ home worried the faceless hooded riders would come to get me . They could come any day now. How foolish we all had been, each in our own way. Bob grabbed the two bottles of wine, and we walked through the driveway, past several parked cars. The only car I recognized was Dad’s Trooper. The living room was lit up, and through the sheer curtains I could make out several people standing around, huddled in pockets of conversation. We walked through the front door, and I hollered out a hello over the din of voices. My sister was in the living room, visiting with a person I did not recognize. She was wearing the same suit she’d worn to the memorial, and I surmised she had come straight from the funeral home to help my mother prepare. Each free space in the living room held bouquets of flowers that had graced the service earlier. I’d been excluded from helping with any of this, not because I’d journeyed from afar, but because of my status. Mom and Dad came around the corner from the kitchen. Dad was wearing jeans and leather slippers. Mom had also changed into a black cotton pantsuit that fell loose around her small frame. “Welcome,” they both said, gathering our coats and inviting us to remove our shoes and discard them near the other waiting pairs. Bob slipped easily out of his black loafers. I was wearing high-heeled black boots and hesitated to remove them, which would leave my black pants pooling around my ankles.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  But last year we got it changed to include turtlenecks and letter sweaters. Still, we can’t wear jeans. Otto’s got a clip-on tie and a gold shirt he got for a dollar at the Safeway store. He’s got the shirt on now. He scoots by me and steps into the aisle to put on his good pants. He’ll wear his letter sweater, too. It’s a green cardigan with a gold DT. People always give us shit about our DTs. When we walk into a match some creepo always yells out, “Oh, here come the DTs!” Then he pretends to be drunk and wobbles around yelling about seeing snakes and spiders. In my bag I’ve got a gray cotton turtleneck Mom bought me for road trips when we got the rule changed and an old-fashioned sleeveless pullover letter sweater and a big floppy thug hat Carla got me for my birthday. With my baggy bell-bottomed cords I look like an escapee from The Little Rascals show. Mom and I used to watch them on TV together. She’d get up early for work so she’d have plenty of time to put on her makeup. I’d sit with her and we’d watch The Little Rascals in her room. She loved it because she used to go to their movies when she was a kid. She said they were called Our Gang Comedy then. I was always late for school. I suppose it would be smarter for us to just wear our good stuff right from home instead of getting dressed on the bus. But real comfort, like old jeans and flannel shirts, is something you don’t like to be without unless you absolutely have to. Not even for a six-hour bus ride. We pull into the Custer parking lot and a few Custer and Battleground guys pelt the bus with snowballs in a friendly way. The Lewis and Clark bus isn’t here yet. The door opens and the sharp cold air rushes in. On a hill behind the school, snowmobiles swarm. Either the ring of their two-cycle engines or the shot of cold air arouses Kuch from the nap he began around Coeur d’Alene. I sit and wait for him while he knots his tie and pulls his hair back into a ponytail and fixes it with a rubber band. If he can sleep through a road trip he has truly achieved tranquility. * * * Schmoozler is off in a corner of the bleachers reading Semi-Tough to some Custer guys. They’re all chortling and guffawing. We beat them in a real close match this afternoon. I felt good all through my match. It went into the third round. We stuffed my nose before I went out and it only bled a little. I got really dizzy after it was over, though. When the ref raised my arm I had to grab on to him to keep from falling down.

• From Shunned (2018)

  Zeroes still glared near my name on the sales report as November slipped into December. Like the weather, things between Steve and me had cooled off. Our summer brush with intimacy had been real and touching, but neither of us had worked to sustain it. When opportunities presented themselves, I dated other men I found interesting, preferring the early phases of romance, before the rose-colored glasses come off, when the other person sits before you full of promise and compliments. Even so, Steve was a steady presence in my life. We had a strong affinity for one another and I knew I could count on him if I was ever in trouble. Christmas was new territory, arriving at a time when I didn’t want or need a fresh challenge. This would be my first year celebrating. I’d always looked at Christmas as an indulgent pagan celebration that made a mockery of Christ and “pure Christian” worship. Over the years, as part of my Bible study, I’d done extensive reading about the history of the holiday and the role church and politics had played in its creation. I knew Christ was born in the autumn, not the dead of winter. And I’d always been taught to steer clear of birthday celebrations, also fraught with pagan rituals true Christians avoided. The whole premise of Christmas was flawed from the Witness point of view. Up until that year, Christmas had been just another day to me, sometimes spent in repose, other times skiing with a group of Witness friends on Mount Hood. Occasionally the entire family came together for dinner, taking advantage of a time when few of us were working. There was no tree or gift exchange. If Christmas happened to fall on a regularly scheduled meeting night, like Tuesday or Thursday, it was often business as usual. I loved a good party, and that was the tack I chose to create distance from my years of piety. Like all my other ideas about faith and religion, I decided to let go of my grip on the old story and give Christmas a chance. It could be fun, and Lord knows I needed some light and joy in my life. I made a point to stroll along Michigan Avenue and see the sparkling lights of Watertower Place, then throw money into the Salvation Army tin guarded by a suspiciously thin Santa chiming a bell outside Marshall Fields. Steve and my work friends Cindy and Catherine were on my shopping list, and I needed stocking stuffers for my colleagues. For the very first time, I purchased Christmas cards and sent notes to my friends and former coworkers in Portland. I missed them all and was delighted to receive many cards in return, some with long, handwritten notes updating me on their lives.

• From Vision Quest (1979)

  I didn’t tell him about how she walked around naked and just peed right in from of me and stuff. I didn’t want him to get the wrong impression. Kuch described how his girlfriend, Laurie, handled his Hodaka in dirt and pointed out the cleanness of the welds on his Yamaha, the new spoked alloy wheels and the new rear disc brake he and his dad had put on that afternoon. He traced a dirt track in the air for me and drew in the ruts and showed me the line he’d ride to stomp ass the next weekend in the race at Post Falls. We wiped our greasy fingers on the grass and stared up at the stars. We lay back against the Thompson Park benches and talked about how fast our first two years of high school had gone and about how weird it felt to be beginning the last one in less than a month. I was already getting nostalgic thinking about all the great times being over so soon. And it’s a lot worse now that I’ll be graduating in a few weeks. Tanneran once told us that college is where you make your lifetime friends. He said college is where you begin your intellectual growing and that you just grow away from your high school friends. I hope that doesn’t turn out to be true. I never want to lose the friendship of Kuch or Otto. I guess it can’t turn out to be true if I don’t let it. “Ya know what I’m gonna do instead of goin’ to college?” Kuch asked, popping another beer. “Win the Spanish Grand Prix?” I replied. “Besides that.” “What, then?” “I’m gonna go on a vision quest,” he said. I didn’t say anything for a minute or two. I’d read about vision quests in several books, but I learned the real detailed stuff about them from a book called Seven Arrows by a Northern Cheyenne named Hyemeyohsts Storm. The circumstances under which I read that book consisted of Kuch yelling and screaming, “Read this sonofabitching book, man. It is un-fucking-believable!” It has nice pictures, but outside of the part where the Indian kid fucks his mother, I didn’t bend the edges of too many pages. I originally turned Kuch on to the subject of the American Indian early in our sophomore year. I got into it by way of Thomas Berger’s Little Big Man . From Berger I went to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee , to Black Elk Speaks , and then to everything I could get my hands on. I liked learning about the Indians, but Kuch freaked out. He rampaged through Indian fiction, history, anthropology, and also through the Wickiup Tavern in Springdale on the border of the Spokane Indian Reservation. For a while it looked like I’d created a monster. “Why a vision quest?” I asked. “I’d like to see if I can’t find my place in the circle,” Kuch replied.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  Besides being a waste of precious money, the machines were slot machines and therefore evil, or at least suspect as connected with white slavery— the most vicious kind , she’d say ominously. Linda knew green things were precious, and the peaceful, healing qualities of water. On Saturday afternoons, sometimes, after my mother finished cleaning the house, we would go looking for some park to sit in and watch the trees. Sometimes we went down to the edge of the Harlem River at 142nd Street to watch the water. Sometimes we took the D train and went to the sea. Whenever we were close to water, my mother grew quiet and soft and absent-minded. Then she would tell us wonderful stories about Noel’s Hill in Grenville, Grenada, which overlooked the Caribbean. She told us stories about Carriacou, where she had been born, amid the heavy smell of limes. She told us about plants that healed and about plants that drove you crazy, and none of it made much sense to us children because we had never seen any of them. And she told us about the trees and fruits and flowers that grew outside the door of the house where she grew up and lived until she married. Once home was a far way off, a place I had never been to but knew well out of my mother’s mouth. She breathed exuded hummed the fruit smell of Noel’s Hill morning fresh and noon hot, and I spun visions of sapadilla and mango as a net over my Harlem tenement cot in the snoring darkness rank with nightmare sweat. Made bearable because it was not all. This now, here, was a space, some temporary abode, never to be considered forever nor totally binding nor defining, no matter how much it commanded in energy and attention. For if we lived correctly and with frugality, looked both ways before crossing the street, then someday we would arrive back in the sweet place, back home . We would walk the hills of Grenville, Grenada, and when the wind blew right smell the limetrees of Carriacou, spice island off the coast. Listen to the sea drum up on Kick’em Jenny, the reef whose loud voice split the night, when the sea-waves beat upon her sides. Carriacou, from where the Belmar twins set forth on inter-island schooners for the voyages that brought them, first and last, to Grenville town, and they married the Noel sisters there, mainlander girls. The Noel girls. Ma-Liz’s older sister, Anni, followed her Belmar back to Carriacou, arrived as sister-in-law and stayed to become her own woman. Remembered the root-truths taught her by their mother, Ma-Mariah. Learned other powers from the women of Carriacou. And in a house in the hills behind L’Esterre she birthed each of her sister Ma-Liz’s seven daughters. My mother Linda was born between the waiting palms of her loving hands.

• From Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (2009)

  remained the greatest hero in the history of Israel; to him was ascribed authorship of all the 150 songs or liturgical hymns which have become welded into a single book as the psalms, even though many of them are patently of much later date. In the first century CE it was important for the early Christians to establish that their Anointed One Jesus had an actual family kinship with the ancient hero, allowing Jesus to be called ‘Son of David’ (see pp. 78–82).19 It was the work of David’s actual son, King Solomon, to build a temple in the newly conquered Jerusalem, to be a fitting home for the Ark of the Covenant. This temple began to outdo any rival sacred cultic sites created or inherited by the religion of Yahweh, and it produced much of the psalmody later attributed to Solomon’s father; elaborate music was a prominent feature of the new cultic observance which was now created in Jerusalem. During the long reign of Solomon (c. 970–c. 930 BCE) the kingdom of Israel reached its greatest extent, and it might even have been seen as a regional power, a status which later biblical writers living in less glorious days did nothing to diminish. In the many bad times that followed, there was deep nostalgia for this brief brilliant flourish of Israel’s power and a longing for it to return. Around the turn of the first millennium BCE, therefore, Israel acquired much of the potential profile of later Judaism. These thousand years of Jewish history between David and Jesus Christ the ‘Son of David’ are also effectively the first millennium of Christian history, for that span of time established key notions which would shape Christian thinking and imagery: for instance, the central importance of the kingdom of God’s chosen one David and of the Temple in Jerusalem. There took shape a history of divinely foreordained salvation for the Jewish people, shot through with retribution for their constant backsliding and misunderstanding of God’s purposes. From a different perspective, the same history is a story of a struggle to establish that Yahweh was one supreme God, with neither effective rivals nor companions (for instance, a female consort).20 The literature of the Hebrew scriptures was produced by the victors in that struggle, although the editors of it were often too respectful of the ancient texts which they had inherited entirely to eliminate rival voices. We have already met examples of this respectful preservation in the text of the Book of Genesis (see pp. 54–5). Solomon’s empire quickly split on his death into two kingdoms, southern Judah and northern Israel, whose union had even in David’s time appeared fragile; the bitterness of the rift led to constant warfare of varying intensity between them. It must have been a grave disappointment for those who had seen the Davidic monarchy as the culmination of Yahweh’s purposes. While Judah kept the Solomonic capital of Jerusalem with its Temple, the kings of Israel had to retreat to the northern city of Samaria. With their control of the strategic pass

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  collective desire to be touched by that hand. As believers passed under him, they were caught for a moment in a fierce blue gaze just before he squeezed his eyes shut, rolled his head upward, and slapped his right palm on their foreheads. “In the name of Je-sus.” They reeled and hit the ground as dead weight. They threw down their crutches. Praise God. They didn’t walk, they ran. Hallelujah. The deaf heard. Glory be to God. And the dumb spoke with the tongues of angels. Amen. I had not seen Randall or his father for more than twenty years. It had been longer since I had stepped inside a tent. During the intervening years I had indulged in the posthippie haze of the seventies well into the mideighties before finally graduating from college. Like the woman at the well, I had married and divorced more than one man and lived with several who were not my husband. I had written reams of advertising copy, attended my daughter’s graduation from college and graduate school, and married a poet who was also a successful entrepreneur. Somewhere along the line, I had become a semirespectable, doubt- ridden Episcopalian with Buddhist tendencies. My sister’s message on the answering machine brought it all back: blond pine shavings covering the dirt floor of the tent, feathered and piled one upon the other, each singular as a snowflake. My brother and I bedding down with the Terrell kids on that field of sawdust, wrapped in a nest of quilts while the adults paced the tent, praying into the early hours long after the crowd melted away and the last amen was uttered. The warmth of the cannon-shaped kerosene heater roaring beside us on teeth-chattering cold nights, its red tip glowing in the darkness like the all-seeing eye of God. That November evening as my husband and I stood, mouths agape, in the white-tiled kitchen of our urban home, I felt the past rise up and move toward me like some long-slumbering, pitifully deformed creature. It smelled of pine shavings and kerosene. Its rough, dense texture moved in and out of memory like a tent flap blowing in the breeze. My mother pulsed out a familiar melody on the Hammond organ: Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down. Ain’t no gra-ave gonna hold my body down. Somewhere a tambourine kept time. The Sawdust Trail 1960–1962 THE TWILIGHT SOUND OF CICADA SINGING OF A DAY ALREADY GONE BY. Dōgen

• From Rocket Men: The Daring Odyssey of Apollo 8 and the Astronauts Who Made Man’s First Journey to the Moon (2018)

  Steeds of Apollo, that showed four horses galloping into the heavens. But the restaurant’s real secret weapon was Lovell’s son, Jay, its executive chef, who made Lovell’s of Lake Forest a success. On most evenings, the restaurant was packed with patrons. On the night of September 11, 2001, it was virtually deserted but for Jim Lovell himself. Dressed in his usual suit and tie, he stood alone in the corner of the basement bar, staring at the television, watching endless replays of terrorists bring down the towers at the World Trade Center in New York, an American hero not quite believing what had just happened to America. In 2003, Jim and Marilyn Lovell celebrated the thirty-fifth anniversary of Apollo 8 with Frank and Susan Borman and Bill and Valerie Anders. The reunion was warm and friendly, but it seemed to Lovell that Frank was doing everything, even making lunch, while Susan seemed not to contribute much at all. But the whole event was so nice that Lovell didn’t think much more about it. Five years later, the couples met for the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 8. This time, it was even more evident to Lovell that something was amiss with Susan; she acted strangely and hardly talked, and Frank constantly helped her, even with small things. Like his crewmates from Apollo 8, Lovell had flown private planes since retiring from NASA. Lately, he’d been piloting a twin-engine Cessna 421, able to make it from his home near Chicago to his other home in Texas—along with Marilyn, their dog, and luggage—in a slick five hours. But Marilyn had been growing increasingly concerned about her husband’s flying alone. In the gentlest terms, she urged him to find a copilot or sell the airplane. In 2013, at age eighty-five, he sold. Not a day passes when he doesn’t miss it. In 2015, after a sixteen-year run, Lovell’s of Lake Forest closed its doors, a victim of the economic downturn that began in 2008. Jay Lovell and his wife, Darice, opened a smaller, more casual place in nearby Highwood, Illinois. Jim and Marilyn eat there often. At their home near Chicago, Jim and Marilyn lead a quieter life than they did during the NASA years, when they could hardly leave the house without attention. Now they enjoy their children and grandchildren, and a golden retriever they found at a rescue shelter—one that watches the Apollo 13 movie whenever it plays on TV. For many years, Jim and

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  “How about my place?” “You’re going to cook?” “You sound suspicious.” “It just seems like a radical idea.” “If you’d rather go out …” “No. That sounds great.” You get out at Bleecker Street. Megan takes your hand and leads you into a delicatessen. She holds up a box for your approval. “Linguine,” she says. You nod. “I’m going to teach you how to purchase and make a meal.” In the next aisle she introduces you to two cans of clams. Ordinarily, she says, she would use fresh clams and fresh pasta, but she doesn’t want to scare you on your first lesson. From the deli you walk toward Sixth. Megan is telling you about the difference between fresh and dried pasta. Each step takes you closer to the old apartment on Cornelia Street, where you first lived with Amanda in New York. This was your neighborhood. These shops were your shops. You possessed these streets as securely as if you held title. Now the vista is skewed slightly, someone has tilted the ground a few degrees, and everything is the same and not the same. You pass Ottomanelli’s Meats, where the corpses of small animals hang in the window: unskinned rabbits, hairless fetal pigs, plucked fowl with yellow feet. No ferrets. Amanda was always grossed out by this display. Already she was aspiring to the Upper East Side, where the butchers dress their wares in paper replicas of designer outfits. At the corner of Jones and Bleecker a Chinese restaurant has replaced the bar whose lesbian patrons kept you awake so many summer nights when, too hot to sleep, you lay together with the windows open. Just before you moved out of the neighborhood a delegation of illiberal youths from New Jersey went into the bar with baseball bats after one of their number had been thrown out. The lesbians had pool cues. Casualties ran heavy on both sides and the bar was closed by order of the department of something or other. Farther along, the obese gypsy Madame Katrinka beckons you to enter her storefront parlor with red velvet couch to have your fortune told. What would she have told you a year ago? “Best bread in the city,” Megan says, pointing to Zito’s Bakery. The bell over the door rings as you enter. The fragrance of the interior reminds you of mornings on Cornelia when you woke to the smell of bread from the bakery ovens, Amanda sleeping beside you. It seems a lifetime ago, but you can see her sleeping. You just can’t remember what you talked about. “White or wheat,” Megan asks. “I don’t know. White, I guess.” “You don’t know what’s good for you.” “All right, wheat. Wheat’s better.” From the bakery you proceed to the vegetable stand. Why are all the vegetables in the city sold by Koreans? Boxes of tumescent produce glisten under the green awning. You wonder if they color-coordinate the displays according to secret Oriental principles of mind control.

• From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (1982)

  She knew about blessing the food and yourself before eating, and about saying prayers before going to sleep. She taught us one to the mother that I never learned in school. Remember, oh most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thy intercession, was ever left unaided. Inspired with this confidence I fly unto thee now, oh my sweet mother, to thee I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful. Oh mother of the word incarnate, despise not my petitions but in thy clemency and mercy oh hear and answer me now . As a child, I remember often hearing my mother mouth these words softly, just below her breath, as she faced some new crisis or disaster—the icebox door breaking, the electricity being shut off, my sister gashing open her mouth on borrowed skates. My child’s ears heard the words and pondered the mysteries of this mother to whom my solid and austere mother could whisper such beautiful words. And finally, my mother knew how to frighten children into behaving in public. She knew how to pretend that the only food left in the house was actually a meal of choice, carefully planned. She knew how to make virtues out of necessities. Linda missed the bashing of the waves against the sea-wall at the foot of Noel’s Hill, the humped and mysterious slope of Marquis Island rising up from the water a half-mile off-shore. She missed the swift-flying bananaquits and the trees and the rank smell of the tree-ferns lining the road downhill into Grenville Town. She missed the music that did not have to be listened to because it was always around. Most of all, she missed the Sunday-long boat trips that took her to Aunt Anni’s in Carriacou. Everybody in Grenada had a song for everything. There was a song for the tobacco shop which was part of the general store, which Linda had managed from the time she was seventeen. 3/4 of a cross and a circle complete 2 semi-circles and a perpendicular meet… A jingle serving to identify the store for those who could not read TOBACCO. The songs were all about, there was even one about them, the Belmar girls, who always carried their noses in the air. And you never talked your business too loud in the street, otherwise you were liable to hear your name broadcast in a song on the corner the very next day. At home, she learned from Sister Lou to disapprove of the endless casual song-making as a disreputable and common habit, beneath the notice of a decent girl.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  Call me if you can’t.” • • • The first light of the morning outlines the towers of the World Trade Center at the tip of the island. You turn in the other direction and start uptown. There are cobbles on the street where the asphalt has worn through. You think of the wooden shoes of the first Dutch settlers on these same stones. Before that, Algonquin braves stalking game along silent trails. You’re not sure exactly where you are going. You don’t feel you have the strength to walk home. You walk faster. If the sunlight catches you on the streets, you will undergo some terrible chemical change. After a few minutes you notice the blood on your fingers. You hold your hand up to your face. There is blood on your shirt, too. You find a Kleenex in your jacket pocket and hold it to your nose. You advance with your head tilted back against your shoulders. By the time you reach Canal Street, you think that you will never make it home. You look for taxis. A bum is sleeping under the awning of a shuttered shop. As you pass he raises his head and says, “God bless you and forgive your sins.” You wait for the cadge but it doesn’t come. You wish he hadn’t said anything. As you turn, what is left of your olfactory equipment sends a message to your brain: fresh bread. Somewhere they are baking bread. You can smell it, even through the nose-bleed. You see bakery trucks loading in front of a building on the next block. You watch as bags of rolls are carried out onto the loading dock by a man with tattooed forearms. This man is already at work so that normal people can have fresh bread for their morning tables. The righteous people who sleep at night and eat eggs for breakfast. It is Sunday morning and you haven’t eaten since … when? Friday night. As you approach, the smell of bread washes over you like a gentle rain. You inhale deeply, filling your lungs. Tears come to your eyes, and you feel such a rush of tenderness and pity that you stop beside a lamppost and hang on for support. The smell of bread recalls you to another morning. You arrived home from college after driving half the night; you just felt like coming home. When you walked in, the kitchen was steeped in this same aroma. Your mother asked what the occasion was, and you said a whim. You asked if she was baking. “Learning to draw inferences at college, are we,” you remember her asking. She said she had to find some way to keep herself busy now that her sons were taking off. You said that you hadn’t left, not really. You sat down at the kitchen table to talk, and the bread soon started to burn. She had made bread only two other times that you could recall.

• From Bright Lights, Big City (1984)

  cancer.” After many drinks Michael says, “I need a little air.” On the way back to the apartment, you stop in on a friend who happens to have a spare half for the low, low price of sixty dollars. You feel that you are basically through with this compulsion. This time you just want to celebrate crossing the hump. You are a little drunk and you want to keep going, keep talking. You should have told us, Michael says, sprawled out on the couch in your apartment. “I mean, what’s a family for?” He bangs his hand on the coffee table for emphasis. “What’s family for?” “I don’t know. You want to do a few lines?” Michael shrugs. “Why not?” He watches as you get up and take the mirror from the wall. “What was bad for me,” he says, “is at first I’d see her the way she was toward the end, all wasted and thin. But now I have this image I keep with me. I don’t know when it was, but I came home from school one day—this was after you’d gone to college—and Mom was out back raking leaves. It was October or something and she was wearing your old ski team jacket, which was about six sizes too big.” He stops. His eyes are closed and you think maybe he has passed out. You shake some coke out onto the mirror. Michael opens his eyes. “I remember the way the air smelled, the way Mom looked in that jacket with leaves in her hair, the lake in the background. That’s the way I remember her now. Raking leaves in your old ski team jacket.” “I like that,” you say. You can imagine it. She wore that jacket for years. Once you finished high school you didn’t want any part of it and she took it up. You’d never really given it a thought, but now you feel good about it. You cut eight lines. Michael begins to snore. You call his name and then you get up and gently shake his shoulder. He turns his face into the cushions. You do two of the lines and sit back in the chair. A year ago tonight you were up until daybreak, sitting beside your mother’s bed. You thought you would faint when you came home the last time, three

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  surable attitude to life. Confronted with a particularly charming child, we often feel wistful: we remember our own golden past, the qualities we have lost and wish we had again. And in the presence of the child, we get a little When Hermes was born on Mount Cyllene his of that goldenness back. mother Maia laid him in Natural seducers are people who somehow avoided getting certain swaddling bands on a childish traits drummed out of them by adult experience. Such people can winnowing fan, but he grew with astonishing be as powerfully seductive as any child, because it seems uncanny and mar- quickness into a little boy, velous that they have preserved such qualities. They are not literally like and as soon as her back children, of course; that would make them obnoxious or pitiful. Rather it was turned, slipped off and is the spirit that they have retained. Do not imagine that this childishness is went looking for adventure. Arrived at Pieria, where something beyond their control. Natural seducers learn early on the value Apollo was tending a fine of retaining a particular quality, and the seductive power it contains; they herd of cows, he decided to 55 56 • The Art of Seduction steal them. But, fearing to adapt and build upon those childlike traits that they managed to preserve, be betrayed by their tracks, exactly as the child learns to play with its natural charm. This is the key. It he quickly made a number is within your power to do the same, since there is lurking within all of us a oj shoes from the bark of a fallen oak and tied them devilish child straining to be let loose. To do this successfully, you have to until plaited grass to the be able to let go to a degree, since there is nothing less natural than seeming feet of the cows, which he hesitant. Remember the spirit you once had; let it return, without self-then drove off by night along the road. Apollo consciousness. People are much more forgiving of those who go all the discovered the loss, but way, who seem uncontrollably foolish, than the halfhearted adult with a Hermes's trick deceived childish streak. Remember who you were before you became so polite and him, and though he went self-effacing. To assume the role of the Natural, mentally position yourself as far as Pylus in his westward search, and to in any relationship as the child, the younger one. Onchestus in his eastern, The following are the main types of the adult Natural. Keep in mind he was forced, in the end, that the greatest natural seducers are often a blend of more than one of to offer a reward for the apprehension of the thief. these qualities. Silenus and his satyrs, greedy of reward, spread out in different directions to track him down but, for a

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Interpretation. Napoleon always thought of France, and his army, as a target to be wooed and seduced. As General de Ségur wrote of Napoleon: "In moments of sublime power, he no longer commands like a man, but seduces like a woman." In the case of his escape from Elba, he planned a bold, surprising gesture that would titillate a bored nation. He began his return to France among the people who would be most receptive to him: the peasantry who had revered him. He revived the symbols—the revolutionary colors, the eagle standards—that would stir up the old sentiments. He placed himself at the head of his army, daring his former soldiers to fire on him. The march on Paris that brought him back to power was pure theater, calculated for emotional effect every step of the way. What a contrast this former amour presented to the dolt of a king who now ruled them. Napoleon's second seduction of France was not a classical seduction, following the usual steps, but a re-seduction. It was built on old emotions 428 • The Art of Seduction and revived an old love. Once you have seduced a person (or a nation) there is almost always a lull, a slight letdown, which sometimes leads to a separation; it is surprisingly easy, though, to re-seduce the same target. The old feelings never go away, they lie dormant, and in a flash you can take your target by surprise. It is a rare pleasure to be able to relive the past, and one's youth—to feel the old emotions. Like Napoleon, add a dramatic flair to your re-seduction: revive the old images, the symbols, the expressions that will stir memory. Like the French, your targets will tend to forget the ugliness of the separation and will remember only the good things. You should make this second seduction bold and quick, giving your targets no time to reflect or wonder. Like Napoleon, play on the contrast to their current lover, making his or her behavior seem timid and stodgy by comparison. Not everyone will be receptive to a re-seduction, and some moments will be inappropriate. When Napoleon came back from Elba, the Parisians were too sophisticated for him, and could see right through him. Unlike the peasants of the South, they already knew him well; and his reentry came too soon, they were too worn out by him. If you want to re-seduce someone, choose one who does not know you so well, whose memories of you are cleaner, who is less suspicious by nature, and who is dissatisfied with present circumstances. Also, you might want to let some time pass. Time will restore your luster and make your faults fade away. Never see a separation or sacrifice as final. With a little drama and planning, a victim can be retaken in no time. Symbol: Em- bers, the remains of the fire on the morning after. Left to themselves, the embers will

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  As adults we tend to overvalue our childhood. In their dependency and powerlessness, children genuinely suffer, yet when we get older we conveniently forget about that and sentimentalize the supposed paradise we have left behind. We forget the pain and remember only the pleasure. Why? Because the responsibilities of adult life are a burden so oppressive at times that we secretly yearn for the dependency of childhood, for that per- [ In Japan, ] much in the son who looked after our every need, assumed our cares and worries. This traditional way of child-daydream of ours has a strong erotic component, for the child's feeling of rearing seems to foster passive dependence. The being dependent on the parent is charged with sexual undertones. Give child is rarely left alone, people a sensation similar to that protected, dependent feeling of childhood day or night, for it usually and they will project all kinds of fantasies onto you, including feelings of sleeps with the mother. love or sexual attraction that they will attribute to something else. We When it goes out the child is not pushed ahead in a won't admit it, but we long to regress, to shed our adult exterior and vent pram, to face the world the childish emotions that linger beneath the surface. alone, but is tightly bound Early in his career, Sigmund Freud confronted a strange problem: many to the mother's back in a snug cocoon. When the of his female patients were falling in love with him. He thought he knew mother bows, the child does what was happening: encouraged by Freud, the patient would delve into too, so the social graces are her childhood, which of course was the source of her illness or neurosis. acquired automatically while feeling the mother's She would talk about her relationship with her father, her earliest experi- heartbeat. Thus emotional ences of tenderness and love, and also of neglect and abandonment. The security tends to depend process would stir up powerful emotions and memories. In a way, she almost entirely on the physical presence of the would be transported back into her childhood. Intensifying this effect was mother. • . . . Children the fact that Freud himself said little and made himself a little cold and dis- learn that a show of tant, although he seemed to be caring—in other words, quite like the tradi- passive dependence is the best way to get favors as tional father figure. Meanwhile the patient was lying on a couch, in a well as affection. There is a helpless or passive position, so that the situation duplicated the roles of par- verb for this in Japanese: ent and child. Eventually she would begin to direct some of the confused amaeru, translated in the emotions she was dealing with toward Freud himself. Unaware of what was dictionary as "to presume upon another's love; to

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  for qualities of childhood— spontaneity, sincerity, unpretentiousness. In the presence of Naturals, we feel at ease, caught up in their playful spirit, transported back to that golden age. Naturals also make a virtue out of weakness, eliciting our sympathy for their trials, making us want to protect them and help them. As with a child, much of this is natural, but some of it is exaggerated, a conscious seductive maneuver. Adopt the pose of the Natural to neutralize people's natural defensiveness and infect them with helpless delight. Psychological Traits of the Natural Children are not as guileless as we like to imagine. They suffer from feelings of helplessness, and sense early on the power of their natural charm to remedy their weakness in the adult world. They learn to play a game: if their natural innocence can persuade a parent to yield to their desires in one instance, then it is something they can use strategically in another instance, laying it on thick at the right moment to get their way. If Long-past ages have a their vulnerability and weakness is so attractive, then it is something they great and often puzzling attraction for men's can use for effect. imagination. Whenever Why are we seduced by children's naturalness? First, because anything they are dissatisfied with natural has an uncanny effect on us. Since the beginning of time, natural their present surroundings— and this happens phenomena—such as lightning storms or eclipses—have instilled in human often enough—t hey turn beings an awe tinged with fear. The more civilized we become, the greater back to the past and hope the effect such natural events have on us; the modern world surrounds us that they will now be able to prove the truth of the with so much that is manufactured and artificial that something sudden and inextinguishable dream of inexplicable fascinates us. Children also have this natural power, but be- a golden age. They are cause they are unthreatening and human, they are not so much awe inspir- probably still under the ing as charming. Most people try to please, but the pleasantness of the child spell of their childhood, which is presented to them comes effortlessly, defying logical explanation—and what is irrational is by their not impartial often dangerously seductive. memory as a time of More important, a child represents a world from which we have been uninterrupted bliss. forever exiled. Because adult life is full of boredom and compromise, we —SIGMUND FREUD, THE S T A S D A R D E D I T I O N O F T H E harbor an illusion of childhood as a kind of golden age, even though it can COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL often be a period of great confusion and pain. It cannot be denied, how- WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD, ever, that childhood had certain privileges, and as children we had a plea- VOLUME 23

• From Middlesex (2002)

  And it was funny, because these were his streets. Milton had known them his whole life. Over there on Lincoln there used to be a fruit stand. Lefty used to stop there with Milton to buy cantaloupes, teaching Milton how to pick a sweet one by looking for tiny punc- tures left by bees. Over on Trumbull was where Mrs. Tsatsarakis lived. Used to always ask me to bring up Vernorsfrom the basement, Mil- ton thought to himself. Couldn't climb stairs anymore. On the corner of Sterling and Commonwealth was the old Masonic Temple, where one Saturday afternoon thirty-five years before, Milton had been runner-up in a spelling bee. A spelling bee! Two dozen kids in their best clothes concentrating as hard as they could to piece out "pres- tidigitation" one letter at a time. That's what used to happen in this neighborhood. Spelling bees! Now ten-year-olds were running in the streets, carrying bricks. They were throwing bricks through store windows, laughing and jumping, thinking it was some kind of game, some kind of holiday. Milton looked away from the dancing children and saw the pillar of smoke right in front of him, blocking the street. There was a sec- ond or two when he could have turned back. But he didn't. He hit it dead on. The Oldsmobile's hood ornament disappeared first, then the front fenders and the roof. The taillights gleamed redly for a mo- ment and then winked out. In every chase scene we'd ever watched, the hero always climbed up to the roof. Strict realists in my family, we always objected: "Why do they always go up?" "Watch. He's going to climb the tower. See? I told you." But Hollywood knew more about human nature than we realized. Because, faced with this emergency, Tessie took Chapter Eleven and me up to the attic. Maybe it was a vestige of our arboreal past; we wanted to climb up and out of danger. Or maybe my mother felt safer there because of the door that blended in with the wallpaper. Whatever the reason, we took a suitcase full of food up to the attic and stayed there for three days, watching the city burn on my grandparents' small black-and-white. In housedress and sandals, Desdemona held her cardboard fan to her chest, shielding herself 239 against the spectacle of life repeating itself. "Oh my God! Is like Smyrna! Look at the mavrosl Like the Turks they are burning every- thing!"

• From Middlesex (2002)

  I made Chapter Eleven go through Indian Village, passing our old house. I wanted to take a nostalgia bath to calm my nerves before seeing my mother. The streets were still full of trees, bare in winter, so that we could see all the way to the frozen river. I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair cut, and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happen- ing all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. 518 What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death. Seen this way, my bodily metamorphosis was a small event. Only the pimp might have been interested. Soon we reached Grosse Pointe. The naked elms reached across our street from both sides, touching fingertips, and snow lay crusted in the flower beds before the warm, hibernatory houses. My body was reacting to the sight of home. Happy sparks were shooting off inside me. It was a canine feeling, full of eager love, and dumb to tragedy. Here was my home, Middlesex. Up there in that window, on the tiled window seat, I used to read for hours, eating mulberries off the tree outside. The driveway hadn't been shoveled. Nobody had had time to think about that. Chapter Eleven took the driveway a little fast and we bounced in our seats, the tailpipe hitting. After we got out of the car, he opened the trunk and began carrying my suitcase to the house. But halfway there he stopped. "Hey, bro," he said. "You can carry this yourself." He was smiling with mischief. You could see he was enjoy- ing the paradigm shift. He was taking my metamorphosis as a brain teaser, like the ones in the back of his sci-fi magazines. "Let's not get carried away," I answered. "Feel free to carry my luggage anytime." "Catch!" shouted Chapter Eleven, and hefted the suitcase. I caught it, staggering back. Right then the door of the house opened and my mother, in house slippers, stepped out into the frost-powdery air.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Downtown looked the same, only emptier. You couldn't knock down the skyscrapers when the tenants left; so instead boards went over the windows and doors, and the great shells of commerce were put in cold storage. On the riverfront the Renaissance Center was be- ing built, inaugurating a renaissance that has never arrived. "Let's go through Greektown," I said. Again my brother humored me. Soon we came down the block of restaurants and souvenir stores. Amid the ethnic kitsch, there were still a few authentic coffee houses, patron- ized by old men in their seventies and eighties. Some were already up this morning, drinking coffee, playing backgammon, and reading the Greek newspapers. When these old men died, the coffee houses would suffer and finally close. Little by little, the restaurants on the block would suffer, too, their awnings getting ripped, the big yellow lightbulbs on the Laikon marquee burning out, the Greek bakery on the corner being taken over by South Yemenis from Dearborn. But all that hadn't happened yet. On Monroe Street, we passed the Gre- cian Gardens, where we had held Lefty's makaria. "Are we having a makaria for Dad?" I asked. 517 "Yeah. The whole deal." "Where? At the Grecian Gardens?" Chapter Eleven laughed. "You kidding? Nobody wanted to come down here." "I like it here," I said. "I love Detroit." "Yeah? Well, welcome home." He had turned back onto Jefferson for the long miles through the blighted East Side. A wig shop. Vanity Dancing, the old club, now for rent. A used-record store with a hand-painted sign showing peo- ple grooving amid an explosion of musical notes. The old dime stores and sweet shops were closed, Kresge's, Woolworth's, Sanders Ice Cream. It was cold out. Not many people were on the streets. On one corner a man stood impervious, cutting a fine figure against the winter sky. His leather coat reached to his ankles. Space funk goggles wrapped around his dignified, long-jawed head, on top of which sat, or sailed really, the Spanish galleon of a velvet maroon hat. Not part of my suburban world, this figure; therefore exotic. But nevertheless familiar, and suggestive of the peculiar creative energies of my home- town. I was glad to see him anyway. I couldn't take my eyes away. When I was little, street-corner dudes like that would sometimes lower their shades to wink, keen on getting a rise out of the white girl in the backseat passing by. But now the dude gave me a different look altogether. He didn't lower his sunglasses, but his mouth, his flared nostrils, and the tilt of his head communicated defiance and even hate. That was when I realized a shocking thing. I couldn't be- come a man without becoming The Man. Even if I didn't want to.