Pride

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 How to Be Yourself: Quiet Your Inner Critic and Rise Above Social Anxiety (2018)

  To sum up, when we feel awkward we’re quick to blame our skills. And while sometimes our skills seem to escape us, it’s inhibition that gets in our way, but that can be changed. In an old study from 1976, researchers asked forty socially anxious undergrads to role-play situations where they had to be assertive, like asking for a raise or requesting a neighbor turn down their stereo. Half the participants were instructed to respond as they would in real life, while the other half were asked to respond as assertively as they believed the most assertive person would. (Stage whisper: Hey, that sounds like playing a role from chapter 8.) Participants were able to improve their performance on demand, turning their assertiveness up and down like a dimmer switch. Again, counter to the myth of I have lousy social skills, we don’t need more skills, we just need less inhibition. But guess what? You already know what to do to lower your inhibition: Like the assertive study participants, play a role—give yourself a mission. Dare to be average. Fake it until you are it. And finally, drop your safety behaviors. Step away from the body spray. * * * Looking back, Derrick realized the new gym wasn’t full on opening day for the simple reason that businesses don’t get up to speed overnight. After a while, he also realized business success wasn’t just a cult of personality, as he had assumed. His father’s success wasn’t due only to his social skills. Instead, it was a combination of location, marketing, hard work, time, and luck. The problem wasn’t Derrick’s social skills at all. If anything held him back, it was his anxiety, which kept him from accessing his skills. A year or so after the empty opening, Derrick surveyed the no-longer-new gym one Saturday morning. The place was packed. Guys in long athletic shorts drubbed the punching bags. Two blond women, one with pink gloves, sparred nearby. A dozen people gathered in the central ring for the start of a fundamentals class. The kids’ class Derrick had started was under way. The kids’ program was Derrick’s pride and joy. “Shy kids learn confidence. Cocky kids learn to tone it down. There’s a wait list for this class.” Just then a prospective member walked up to the desk, and Derrick went over to greet him. Derrick didn’t try to be his father. He didn’t try to have someone else’s skills. He could be himself. As Derrick discovered, he already had it in him. 15 The Myth of Hope in a Bottle

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Frankenstein, and a thousand more recent horror heroes, all master some quasi-supernatural power and are punished for it, worn out by it, destroyed by it. How false and wearisome this outcome is. Why should a life with some unusual metaphysical feature built into it inevitably end in unhappiness and early death? Why should all the heroes have some fatal flaw that causes them to overreach and hence to self-destruct? It’s too convenient. Even the two quieter (and surprisingly similar, one to another) literary artifacts that treat conditions of temporal halt which resemble my own private Foldouts—I am speaking here of Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and Borges’s “The Secret Miracle”—both punish their heroes severely: they end with military executions. I read these two stories in high school with a sense of deep personal dissatisfaction. Is this all a writer thinks a Fold-drop could be about? Putting off death at the last minute? Where are the supervenient hebephrenias? Where is the life? Where are the tits? In reality, I’m here to report, people very often get away with things. I have not been caught and imprisoned for what I have done; and besides, I am not Dr. Jekyll or Dr. Frankenstein and don’t deserve torments and agonies. Even if I publish this memoir as a book, and someone recognizes herself in it and prosecutes me for a relevant sex-offense (I have gone through the manuscript, by the way, and altered a few names and fudged a few dates to decrease the possibility of this happening, but it still might), my life will still seem to me to have been a good life and I will seem to myself to have been a man who wanted to do no harm and who in fact did no harm. In part I am self-righteous-minded at the moment because of some recent developments having to do with the all-important Joyce Collier, Joyce of the love-inspiring black pubic hair, whom I had to abandon early in these pages in my eagerness to get as much of my past interlife recorded as I could without new preoccupying interruptions. On a Friday at work two real-weeks ago, about the general time I was starting to write about taking my watch off for Rhody in the Thai restaurant, I looked over at the head of a certain squash-playing loan officer named Paul at MassBank and suddenly felt that I wouldn’t be able to stand going to work that coming Monday; moreover, I felt I wouldn’t be able to stand going to work at all until I had finished a good deal more of this memoir. I called my coordinator and asked her for a whole week off from the bank.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Put yourself firstWhen you board an airplane, the flight attendant reminds you that in the event of an emergency, passengers should put their own oxygen masks on first. Women everywhere need to be reminded of this when it comes to our sexual health and needs. Putting ourselves first isn’t easy, especially since women seem raised to think of others before themselves. However, the more you do this, the more you will realize that when you feel happy, healthy, satisfied, and well-rested, the people around you will thrive from your positive presence. Your sexuality is an important part of who you are. If you don’t allow it to flourish, you are doing a great disservice to yourself and your loved ones. Grow with your partnerUnderstanding your partner within the context of your relationship is part of a great sex life. Men and women are equal, but we are still unique when it comes to our thoughts, feelings, hormones, and socialization. These differences are reflected in our relationships and our sex lives—each partner has their own needs in the bedroom. Celebrating these differences and embracing the way they play out in our relationships is the first step in creating great communication and sizzling intimacy. Embrace your sexualityA great sex life begins with great self-knowledge. From self-love to sexploration with a partner, discovering our own sexual needs is a crucial step on the journey to self-awareness, both sexually and otherwise. By overcoming your inhibitions and championing your own sexuality, you will discover a new-found bravery in all other parts of your life. You will also find deeper intimacy and passion in your relationship with your partner. Here’s to breaking out of our uncomfortable cocoons and blossoming into the beautiful, unique, and sexual women that we were born to be. ResourcesCreating a vibrant, healthy sex life doesn’t happen overnight. Luckily, there are many great resources that women can use to guide them on their journey to fulfilling, joyous sex lives. As you continue to grow and discover your particular sexual tastes and pleasures, these resources can answer your questions, assuage your fears, and help you unleash your inhibitions. From books to websites to erotic toy stores, here is a comprehensive guide to the best sexual health tools for women. [image file=image_rsrc3E4.jpg] BooksFor Women Onlyby Jennifer Berman and Laura Berman (Henry Holt and Company, 2001) Contains medical information and case studies to help women understand and enjoy their sexuality, with information on drugs, products, and treatments. Passion Prescriptionby Laura Berman (Hyperion, 2006) This book is a must-read for all women who want to learn more about their emotional, medical, physical, and social ties to sex. The Five Love Languagesby Gary Chapman (Northfield Publishing, 2004) Like a couples’ counseling session, this book shows how to talk and share love with your partner in a way that he or she will understand and give back. Conscious Lovingby Gay Hendricks and Kathlyn Hendricks (Bantam, 1990)

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Share your successIf your man’s self-esteem is low, you can boost it by spending time together doing activities that give you shared goals—such as hiking or bike riding. The exercise will also improve his mental outlook and lead to good bedroom vibes. Notice his achievements. Men don’t always toot their own horn when they have had a good day at work. Ask for the details and applaud his efforts. This will boost his ego and encourage him to continue being successful. If he feels happy and appreciated, he is more likely to want to celebrate with you in bed. Give him timeJust as your partner doesn’t always fill you in when he’s had a good day, he might also be inclined to hide his emotions about a bad one. Don’t push him for details, but offer your support by letting him know that you’re there for him. Be patient, since he might take a little while to come out of his shell. While you are waiting, a spot of quiet time can be therapeutic for both of you. Private playtimeIf you want to help de-stress your lover, invite him to the bedroom for some adult playtime. Any sexual activity is a great way to unwind together—and your invitation will boost his self-esteem. Get yourselves in the mood with some simple silliness. Play around taking pictures of your lover, challenge him to a pillow fight, or tell each other jokes and funny stories while lying naked in bed. Demand a private viewing Pay your partner the ultimate compliment and ask him to perform a strip show for the camera. Make it fun, admire his body, and offer thoughtful compliments. When he feels confident in his body, he is more likely to reward you with some esteem-boosting activity between the sheets. [image file=image_rsrc3AC.jpg] Sex DriveA person’s libido, otherwise known as sexual desire, is often simply defined as their interest in sex. This interest in sex is governed by a number of different factors, such as your physiological urges, emotional impulses, and psychological needs. A healthy libido is also dependent on our other basic needs being met, which usually means that food, sleep, and rest come first. But once they are satisfied, the mood for emotional and physical intimacy comes on strong. The power of the libidoA woman with a strong libido has satisfied all her basic needs so she is able to focus on the more pleasurable parts of life, such as sex and her relationships. Libido also affects more than your sex life—it is a powerful mood enhancer and will enable you to embrace other aspects of your life, including your emotional and creative energy. [image file=image_rsrc3AD.jpg] Not in the moodEven a strong libido has off days. Normally you’d be ready to rip off your partner’s shirt, but there are times—if you’ve had a bad day, for instance, or if you are tired and stressed—when you might just not be in the mood for sex.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  My sexuality is still very much in flux. But I would say that about us all. The limits we put on our own sexual development and exploration are partly cultural scripts and partly our own hopes and fears playing out skin stories. In other words, sexuality is always undergoing transition - just like our bodies and minds and souls and energies - always in flux. So to be married might mean for some people that they shut down their sexual journey, or that they follow a wife/mother storyline, but I remain interested in explorations in between those things, at the edges, or beyond the regular orbits. I do still think that culturally speaking there is a very narrow bandwidth available for women in terms of sexual development. Wife, mother, lover, other. Men too, of course, but I have lived the limits more in terms of women and girls. But if psycho-sexual development and corporeal development is lifelong, then I consider it part of my job in life to journey right up until the last. Even if I’m a dried up old raisin. Because I think bodies are about the coolest thing in … ever. Your body. Mine. All the different kinds. What a glory bodies are. I hope to write a book about bodies in the near future. Your scholastic achievements are admirable, especially given that you accomplished them without support from your parents and despite the emotional chaos of your younger life. What drove you to do this? Survival. Pure and simple. I discovered early on that mobility for a woman in this culture is crucial. The ability to live and work on your own if you have to is vital. The ability to pursue the life of the mind is vital. The ability to journey the body’s full story is vital. Volition. If you can find that in yourself you are going to be okay. I have a picture of myself running away from home for the first time. I’m three. I have a small plastic suitcase and a big scary looking doll. My cat “spice” is in the foreground, probably wondering where I’m going. My sister is in the background, nearly out of the frame, in the most glorious red dress. I went to the edge of the yard and sat on the curb for about 30 minutes. The house is near Stinson Beach near San Francisco, where I was born. The yard was filled with fruit trees. The house was filled with anger. My sister and I were terrified most of our childhoods. My father bred fear into the bodies of his daughters. And yet, in that moment of the picture, taken by my mother who no doubt thought it looked cute, like mothers do, I knew what to do. Volition. There is art in that.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had once sat drooping on her parlour chair, expecting her to send me home with a sovereign. Now, when the ladies whispered of ‘this freak of Diana Lethaby’s’, I brushed the lint from the sleeve of my coat, drew my monogrammed hankie from my pocket, and smiled. When the autumn of 1892 became the winter, and then the spring of ’93, and still I kept my favoured place at Diana’s side, the ladies’ whispers faded. I became at last not Diana’s caprice; but simply, her boy.‘Come to supper, Diana.’‘Come for breakfast, Diana.’‘Come at nine, Diana; and bring the boy.’For it was always as a boy that I travelled with her now, even when we ventured into the public world, the ordinary world beyond the circle of Cavendish Sapphists, the world of shops and supper-rooms and drives in the park. To anyone who asked after me, she would boldly introduce me as ‘My ward, Neville King’; she had several requests for introductions, I believe, from ladies with eligible daughters. These she turned aside: ‘He’s an Anglo-Catholic, ma’am,’ she’d whisper, ‘and destined for the Church. This is his final Season, before taking Holy Orders ...’It was with Diana that I returned to the theatre again - flinching to find her lead me to a box beside the foot-lights, flinching again as the chandeliers were dimmed. But they were terribly grand, the theatres she preferred. They were lit with electricity rather than gas; and the crowd sat hushed. I could not see the pleasure in it. The plays I liked well enough; but I would more often turn my gaze to the audience - and there was always plenty of eyes and glasses, of course, that were lifted from the stage and fastened on me. I saw several faces that I knew from my old renter days. One time I stood washing my hands in the lavatory of a theatre and felt a gent look me over - he didn’t know that he had had my lips on him already, in an alley off Jermyn Street; later I saw him in the audience, with his wife. One time, too, I saw Sweet Alice, the mary-anne who had been so kind to me in Leicester Square. He also sat in a box; and when he recognised me, he blew a kiss. He was with two gents: I raised my brows, he rolled his eyes.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I won a prize. Like she had as a young woman-a story she’d tucked into a shoebox with old photographs and a drawing of a redbird my father made when they first met. My photo was in the paper. The day they took the picture my mother took me to get a haircut. My mother and I went to the 7-Eleven to get the newspaper the day the story was supposed to come out. We sat in the car and stared at the picture of me and read the small story about the “writers” who had won prizes. My mother said I looked like a woman. When I looked at the image of myself I looked … like a woman I’d never met. The story I wrote was about a child who had witnessed a crime in a city park-a pedophile has been stealing and molesting children. The only other witness is a blind man on a bench. The blind man has no children. No wife. Just a gentle man. The child and the blind man have to piece the story together to help catch the pedophile. When called upon by authorities to speak, because she is afraid, the child loses her voice. But she is able to talk to the blind man when they are alone together. Each without a sense, they make a story that saves children. The police find out that before the pedophile defiles the child, he whips them on the bare bottom with a belt. The police are able to catch him when they hear the thwack. In the newspaper the judge of the writing contest remarked on how mature my story content was. My mother and father took me out to dinner at the Brown Derby. We didn’t talk. We ate. It was the first story I ever wrote. About Hair and Skin THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT HAIR AND SKIN. In a beautiful wooden box, I have the hair of people I love. I have my sister’s. My own when I was a kid. My son’s. My dead infant’s almost hair. The hair of my best friend in high school. In college. I have Kathy Acker’s hair. Ken Kesey’s hair. My first husband’s hair. The hair of a longtime woman lover - several different colors of it. My second husband’s hair. My third husband’s hair. The hair of two of the dogs I owned. The hair of cats. The hair of- and this one is kind of random - my high school English teacher - who was over the top Christian - so I have Christian hair. I have Buddhist hair. I have atheist hair. Gay hair, straight hair, the hair of a post-op tranny who used to be a Scientologist. The hair of a white wolf. Seriously. I have my mother’s hair. What? I can’t help it. When I get the chance to own the hair of someone important to me, I leap forward a little too zealously.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  When I’m with him now, if any of the kids playing around in the pool near us who look like they were born fucking seals even GLANCE at him I shoot them a death look so sharp it slicks their hair back, reddens their smug little faces and … well. Let’s just say something a lot worse than water going into your brain. They’re lucky to have brains at all after I shoot them the look. It’s a look from my father. Still, at my son’s age, I was a racer. You know those little plastic wind-up bathtub things - contraptions with small flippers or limbs attached to internal rubber bands which, when wound, rotate at alarming speeds? Sending a little dolphin or boat or shark shooting across the tub? That’s what seven year old girl racers look like. Heads down. Twenty-five meters. Maybe one breath. Maybe. Whoever we were on land, once freed in water, we grew dangerously alive. My son’s been in swimming lessons - level A - three times now. At the end of the lessons they always hand me the green card that says mamma of Miles, your son can barely float, he’ll only hold his breath above the water, if he’s in the water without supervision he’ll sink to the bottom like a tire, and they smile, and I smile, and Miles beams, and then we go home and eat OREOS and I give him another one of my trophies. When I work with him alone in the pool, he clings to me like a little sea monkey until I let him put his full regalia back on. It’s his head. He doesn’t want to put his head in. When I ask him why, he answers incredulously, “Because the water will go in my nose and ears and go into my brain. Duh.” I look at him for a long minute. He doesn’t back down. “I see,” I said. “ Where’d you get that idea?” Quite convincingly, he responds. “Harry Potter.” Harry Potter. Goddamn that little bespectacled twit. I instantly know which Harry Potter scene he is talking about. It’s the one from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, where the five students have to compete in the Tri-Wizard’s Cup. One of the trials is an ocean dive to save trapped friends and loved ones who have been suspended underwater by strange little sea witches with pitchforks. Each student must figure out a magical way to breathe underwater, or they’ll die, and all their loved ones trapped underwater will die, water will go up all the noses and flood all their ears and drown all their brains unless they have special underwater gear. Total kid death fest if they don’t find a way to breathe underwater. Neville Longbottom, the buck-toothed nerd kid interested in animals and botany and ichthyology, gives Harry Potter magic Gillyworms. Then he grows temporary gills and webbed hands and feet. Christ. Why does anyone become a mother?

• From The Fermata (1994)

  She considered a Thanksgiving serving platter but didn’t like the idea of its breaking; she pondered a small plastic plate left over from a premium frozen dinner, but it wasn’t heavy enough. Finally she went into her dining room and took the tea service off of her grandmother’s brass tray. The tea service itself was undistinguished, but the tray was a Viennese beauty, chased with circles of bouquets and thick-scaled fish and pine-cones and mythical panthery creatures in high relief. In the middle was a very stylized sun—it looked like a fried egg—and this proved to be the perfect surface on which to fix a dildo’s suction cup. The famed male dancer at the Golden Banana, Armande Klockhammer, Jr., had only once in his distinguished career consented to have a lost-wax mold made of the trilogy-in-flesh that had opened so many doors for him. Along the underside of the slightly upcurved and alarmingly lifelike high-grade silicone cock-stalk, Armande’s own signature, taken directly from the licensing contract, ran, in such a way that the two bas-relief m’s of his surname appeared right over what would have been, had this been his actual dick, its most sensitive part. Marian arranged her virgin Armande Klockhammer Signature Model, along with many of its veteran colleagues, on a linen napkin unfolded on her brass tray and bore them out into the garden. She put the tray down in the thick grass in the chosen spot, leaving room on either side for her to plant her feet. There was a slight haze in the sky, so that it was sunny, but not uncomfortably so. When she moved the napkin aside, the light glinted on the tray’s ancient pattern, and, once she had squirted copious Astroglide over its head, on the surface of her chosen dildo as well—which looked opulently nasty poking up from that heirloom. Then, playing hard-to-get now that she knew she had Armande where she wanted him, she went for a blithe little walk. She was wearing a jumper printed with big loose flowers and nothing underneath.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I doubt that this fact of my birth has anything to do with my later chronanisms, but I will put it down here just in case it does. I am proud of having set immediately to work art-nouveauing the functional furnishings of my intrauterine deanery. Somehow I was able to form a loop and then swim right through it. I tied a knot in myself . Like many child prodigies, however, I fizzled early. The Fermata, first unfolding itself for me in fourth grade, has been a lifelong distraction. I have wanted to keep it a secret, and as a result it has swallowed up large chunks of my personality. But I hope that will change now. Once, following a long lull, I found a way to get back into the Fold five or six times after I smashed my head into a parking meter in Philadelphia. I was thirteen or fourteen. We were staying at the Barclay Hotel; as a treat I was allowed to drink some watered-down wine with lunch. I drank more of it than the adults knew and found myself acting wild and flaily on the street during our afternoon walk. I ran ahead, hid between two cars, intending to spring out on everyone. I sprang, shouting, “Boo!” But my mouth and the side of my face met a parking meter that I had forgotten was there. The collision made an enormous bony sound in my head. The meter had only a minute or two left, I noticed, staggering; the red thought-balloon saying EXPIRED was just about to dawn. I saw a pattern of squirming diamonds that would have made very nice Wiener Werkstatte wrapping paper. Twenty minutes later, as the bed made sloppy figure eights around the hotel room (where I had been left to convalesce), I pinched my swollen lip and noticed that all traffic noise stopped. I realized I was in the Fold. I walked downstairs to the motionless hotel bar and back to the kitchen and ate two huge shrimp that a motionless cook or cook’s helper held as he arranged a shrimp cocktail. I was amazed at how good the cocktail sauce tasted. I sucked on a piece of lime and threw it out in a can behind the bar. I felt steadied.

• From Real Sex for Real Women (2008)

  Record your thoughtsIf you are struggling to let go of negative sexual encounters or want to uncover your views on sex, try keeping a journal. Make a list of goals, such as “I want to be more uninhibited.” Then list the things that are preventing you from reaching your goals, such as “I need to feel comfortable naked.” Once you realize what action you need to take, you can address them alone or with your partner. If you still find yourself struggling to enjoy sex, a sex therapist can help you work through your feelings about your sexuality. [image file=image_rsrc3AA.jpg] Self-esteem and your Sex LifeA woman with good self-esteem is confident and uninhibited in the bedroom. Her outlook on life is positive and she is motivated to attain a happy and fulfilling sex life. Why? Because if you feel good about yourself, you are more likely to be adventurous and try new things. If you are confident, you appreciate yourself as a woman and make your sexual needs a priority. And if you feel fantastic and sexually satisfied in body and mind, you walk down the street with a smile and a sway in your hips. Identify the obstacles to self-esteemFeeling unattractive, unappreciated, stressed, and anxious can lead to negative self-esteem. Ill health, aging, fertility problems, and even family disagreements can also leave you feeling uncertain and unhappy. On the other hand, if you are contented, fulfilled, and relaxed you are more likely to find sexual satisfaction. Think and act yourself happySelf-esteem and happiness depend on self-acceptance. Look in the mirror every day, and repeat this mantra until it becomes part of your being: “I am in charge of my actions. I control my own happiness. I accept and love myself.” Saying these words on a regular basis will boost your self-esteem and put you on a path that acknowledges you are worthy of self-respect and love. Combat negative feelings about yourself by embracing your potential. Take up a sport, such as jogging, volleyball, tennis, or even walking. Push yourself—you might be surprised at just how strong you are. And try it with your partner: you will get an endorphin rush from working out together, which is bound to create sexual sparks later on in the bedroom. Create your personal spaceSpend time alone. Browse in a bookstore, or just sit and watch the world go by. This allows you to free your mind and think about your life. Rest and relaxation are vital to improving your state of mind, and let you review your sexual relationship.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  And had she family, in Kent, and when did she see them? She had none at all, she said, since her grandmother died. Mother tut-tutted over that, and said it was a shame; Davy said she could help herself to some of our relations, if she liked, for we had more than we knew what to do with.‘Oh yes?’ said Kitty.‘Yes,’ said Davy. ‘You must have heard the song:‘There’s her uncle, and her brother, and her sister, and her mother,And her auntie, and another, who is cousin to her mother...’No sooner had he finished the verse, indeed, than there was the sound of our street-door opening, and a shout up the stairs; and three of our cousins themselves appeared, followed by Uncle Joe and Aunt Rosina - all got up in their Sunday best, and all just popped in, they said, for a ‘peek’ at Miss Butler, if Miss Butler had no objection.More chairs were brought up, and more cups; a fresh round of introductions was made, and the little room grew stuffy with heat and smoke and laughter. Somebody said what a shame it was we had no piano for Miss Butler to give us a song; then George - my eldest cousin - said, ‘Would a harmonica serve the purpose?’ and produced one from his jacket pocket. Kitty blushed, and said she couldn’t; and everyone cried, ‘Oh please, Miss Butler, do!’‘What do you think, Nan,’ she said to me, ‘should I shame myself?’‘You know you won’t,’ I said, pleased that she had turned to me at the last, and used my special name before them all.‘Very well, then,’ she said. A little space was cleared for her, and Rhoda ran down to her house, to fetch her sisters to come and watch.She sang ‘The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery’, and ‘The Coffee Shop Girl’ - then ‘The Boy’ again for Rhoda’s sisters, who had just arrived. Then she whispered to George and to me, and I fetched her a hat of Father’s and a walking-cane, and she sang us a couple of masher songs, and ended with the ballad with which she finished her set at the Palace, about the sweetheart and the rose.We cheered her then, and she had her hand shaken, and her back slapped, ten times over. She looked very flushed and hot at the end of it all, and rather tired. Davy said, ‘How about a song from you now, Nance?’ I gave him a look.‘No,’ I said. I wouldn’t sing for them with Kitty there, for anything.Kitty looked at me curiously. ‘Do you sing, then?’ she said.‘Nancy’s got the prettiest voice, Miss Butler,’ said one of the cousins, ‘you ever heard.’‘Yes, go on, Nance, be a sport!’ said another.‘No, no, no!’ I cried again - so firmly that Mother frowned, and the others laughed.Uncle Joe said, ‘Well, that’s a shame, that is.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  Originally published in hardcover by Random House, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1994. The fictional product names in this book are the property of the author and may not be used as names for real products or services without his prior written permission. The Library of Congress has cataloged the Random House edition as follows: Baker, Nicholson The Fermata / Nicholson Baker p. cm. eISBN: 978-0-307-80749-6 I Title. PS3552.A4325F47 1994 813′.54–dc20 93-26492 v3.1 The Fermata FOR MY FATHER The Fermata Contents Cover About the Author Other Books by This Author Title Page Copyright Dedication Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 The Fermata 1 I AM GOING TO CALL MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY THE FERMATA , EVEN though “fermata” is only one of the many names I have for the Fold. “Fold” is, obviously, another. Every so often, usually in the fall (perhaps mundanely because my hormone-flows are at their highest then), I discover that I have the power to drop into the Fold. A Fold-drop is a period of time of variable length during which I am alive and ambulatory and thinking and looking, while the rest of the world is stopped, or paused. Over the years, I have had to come up with various techniques to trigger the pause, some of which have made use of rocker-switches, rubber bands, sewing needles, fingernail clippers, and other hardware, some of which have not. The power seems ultimately to come from within me, grandiose as that sounds, but as I invoke it I have to believe that it is external for it to work properly. I don’t inquire into origins very often, fearing that too close a scrutiny will damage whatever interior states have given rise to it, since it is the most important ongoing adventure of my life. I’m in the Fold right now, as a matter of fact. I want first to type out my name—it’s Arnold Strine. I prefer Arno to the full Arnold. Putting my own name down is loin-girding somehow—it helps me go ahead with this. I’m thirty-five. I’m seated in an office chair whose four wide black casters roll silently over the carpeting, on the sixth floor of the MassBank building in downtown Boston. I’m looking up at a woman named Joyce, whose clothes I have rearranged somewhat, although I have not actually removed any of them.

• From Wild (2012)

  “I wouldn’t say that,” I stammered. “Being a hobo and being a hiker are two entirely different things.” I looped my wrist into the pink strap of my ski pole and scraped the dirt with the tip, making a line that went nowhere. “I’m not a hiker in the way you might think of a hiker,” I explained. “I’m more like an expert hiker. I hike fifteen to twenty miles a day, day after day, up and down mountains, far away from roads or people or anything, often going days without seeing another person. Maybe you should do a story on that instead.” He glanced up at me from his notebook, his hair blowing extravagantly across his pale face. He seemed like so many people I knew. I wondered if I seemed that way to him. “I hardly ever meet hobo women,” he half whispered, as if confiding a secret, “so this is fucking cool.” “I’m not a hobo!” I insisted more vehemently this time. “Hobo women are hard to find,” he persisted. I told him that this was because women were too oppressed to be hobos. That most likely all the women who wanted to be hobos were holed up in some house with a gaggle of children to raise. Children who’d been fathered by hobo men who’d hit the road. “Oh, I see,” he said. “You’re a feminist, then.” “Yes,” I said. It felt good to agree on something. “My favorite,” he said, and wrote in his notebook without saying his favorite what. “But none of this matters!” I exclaimed. “Because I myself am not a hobo. This is totally legit, you know. What I’m doing. I’m not the only one hiking the PCT. People do this. Have you ever heard of the Appalachian Trail? It’s like that. Only out west.” I stood watching him write what seemed like more words than I’d spoken. “I’d like to get a picture of you,” Jimmy Carter said. He reached into his car and pulled out a camera. “That’s a cool shirt, by the way. I love Bob Marley. And I like your bracelet too. A lot of hobos are Nam vets, you know.” I looked down at William J. Crockett’s name on my wrist. “Smile,” he said, and snapped a shot. He told me to look for his piece on me in the fall issue of the Hobo Times, as if I were a regular reader. “Articles have been excerpted in Harper’s,” he added. “Harper’s?” I asked, dumbfounded. “Yeah, it’s this magazine that—” “I know what Harper’s is,” I interrupted sharply. “And I don’t want to be in Harper’s. Or rather, I really want to be in Harper’s, but not because I’m a hobo.” “I thought you weren’t a hobo,” he said, and turned to open the trunk of his car. “Well, I’m not, so it would be a really bad idea to be in Harper’s, which means you probably shouldn’t even write the article because—”

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  God’s purpose is always tied to people. That doesn’t mean you have to have a particular personality type. You might love meeting people, being in social situations, and interacting with others. Or you might be someone who wishes your plus-one at social events could be your cat. God created both extremes and everything in between. He made you, and He wants to send you. You have something to offer others: your personality, your gifts, your experiences, your wisdom, your perspective, your voice. And most of all, your love. Letting God “send” you doesn’t mean you will never fail. You will fail at times. We all do. You have to believe that your contribution outweighs your mistakes. Obviously you should avoid as many mistakes as possible and learn from the ones you do make. I’m not justifying incompetence here. But I think we struggle less with competence and more with confidence . You have to know your value to the team. And if you’re ever in doubt about that, go to God, the greatest coach of all, and let Him give you a locker room pep talk. Kobe Bryant was one of the greatest basketball players to ever live, and he’s a personal hero of mine. He is famous for making a ridiculous number of points per game—and for missing a ridiculous number of shots. He currently ranks #4 in NBA history for career points scored2 and #1 in shots missed.3 Do you know how he kept taking shots, even with so many misses? He had an unshakable commitment to self-confidence. He didn’t just know he was good; he knew he needed to keep reminding himself that he was good. Sports Illustrated contributor Chris Ballard highlights Kobe’s mentality about self-confidence by recounting a conversation Kobe and filmmaker Gotham Chopra had after they watched a basketball game together. Here is his description of that exchange. Recalls Chopra, “Deron Williams went like 0-for-9. I was like, ‘Can you believe Deron Williams went 0-9?’ Kobe was like, ‘I would go 0-30 before I would go 0-9. 0-9 means you beat yourself, you psyched yourself out of the game, because Deron Williams can get more shots in the game. The only reason is because you’ve just now lost confidence in yourself.’”4 I don’t think Kobe was trying to throw shade; he was just pointing out that any player who stopped at nine shots had already given up. For Kobe, missing shots wasn’t failure—but not taking shots certainly was. Even hockey star Wayne Gretzky is quoted as saying, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Whether it’s a team you coach, a mom’s group you join, an immigrant community you volunteer in, or a nation you move to, there are people around you who need what you bring to the game.

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  1. In his early days, Francis was thought by some who saw him to be a heretic, but he was, in fact, completely loyal to the institutions that he believed were created by God. 2. Francis did his “rebuilding” primarily through preaching by word and example, rather than by criticizing rich and sometimes corrupt church officials. III. As Francis looked at the church and the society of his day (early 13 th- century Italy), he saw the besetting sins of pride and avarice, a growing complexity in society, and a lukewarmness toward Christianity, which he challenged. A. Pride was especially the sin associated with the feudal aristocracy; in fact, pride was often represented in medieval art as a knight falling off his horse: Pride goeth before a fall. 1. Francis himself had aspired to knighthood. 2. In Francis’s time, almost all the bishops and abbots had come from the feudal nobility. 3. The antidote to pride was humility, and Francis lived a life of humility. a. Francis’s humility was not a kind of false modesty but an honest understanding of his own life. b. God’s act of becoming human was, for Francis, the greatest expression of humility and the one all humans should recognize and seek to imitate. B. For the rising middle class, the besetting sin was avarice. 1. The money economy was relatively new, and people respond quite differently to money than they do to wealth in other forms, such as land. 2. Francis grew up in the house of a rich merchant and worked for several years in the family cloth business. 3. He chose to live a life of utter poverty, dropping out of the money economy and never even touching money. C. Life was becoming more complex, especially in the development of universities and what we might call academic theology. 1. Francis went to school for several years and could write in both Latin and his native Umbrian, but he was no scholar. 2. Francis understood that there was a certain aridity and pride in much of academic theology. What is the value of knowing and ©2007 The Teaching Company. 49

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I jumped to my feet, thrust Cyril at her, then hurried to the steps at the side of the platform and ran up them, two at a time. The chairman saw me and half-rose to block my path, but I waved him back and stepped purposefully over to the sweating, sagging Ralph.‘Oh, Nance,’ he said, as close to tears as I had ever seen him. I took his arm and gripped it tight, and held him in his place before the crowd. They had grown momentarily silent - through sheer delight, I think, at seeing me leap, so dramatically, to Ralph’s side. Now I took advantage of their hush to send my voice across their heads in a kind of roar.‘So you don’t care for mathematics?’ I cried, picking up the speech where Ralph had let it falter. ‘Perhaps it’s hard to think in millions; well, then, let us think in thousands. Let us think of three hundred thousand. What do you think I am referring to? The Lord Mayor’s salary?’ There were titters at that: there had been a bit of a scandal, a couple of years before, about the Lord Mayor’s wages. Now I gratefully singled out the titterers and addressed myself to them. ‘No missis,’ I said, ‘I’m not talking of pounds, nor even of shillings. I am talking of persons. I am talking of the amount of men, women, and children who are living in the workhouses of London - of London! the richest city, in the richest country, in the richest empire, in all the world! - at this very moment, as I speak now ...’I went on like this; and the titters grew less. I spoke of all the paupers in the nation; and of all the people who would die in Bethnal Green, that year, in a workhouse bed. ‘Shall it be you that dies in the poorhouse, sir?’ I cried — I found myself adding a few little rhetorical flourishes to the speech, as I went along. ‘Shall it be you, miss? Or your old mother? Or this little boy?’ The little boy began to cry.Then: ‘How old are we likely to be, when we die?’ I asked. I turned to Ralph - he was gazing at me in undisguised wonder - and called, loudly enough for the crowd to hear, ‘What is the average age of death, Mr Banner, amongst the men and women of Bethnal Green?’He stared at me dumbfounded for a second, then, when I pinched the flesh of his arm, sang out: ‘Twenty-nine!’

• From Worried about Everything Because I Pray about Nothing (2022)

  Kobe Bryant was one of the greatest basketball players to ever live, and he’s a personal hero of mine. He is famous for making a ridiculous number of points per game—and for missing a ridiculous number of shots. He currently ranks #4 in NBA history for career points scored 2 and #1 in shots missed. 3 Do you know how he kept taking shots, even with so many misses? He had an unshakable commitment to self-confidence. He didn’t just know he was good; he knew he needed to keep reminding himself that he was good. Sports Illustrated contributor Chris Ballard highlights Kobe’s mentality about self-confidence by recounting a conversation Kobe and filmmaker Gotham Chopra had after they watched a basketball game together. Here is his description of that exchange. Recalls Chopra, “Deron Williams went like 0-for-9. I was like, ‘Can you believe Deron Williams went 0-9?’ Kobe was like, ‘I would go 0-30 before I would go 0-9. 0-9 means you beat yourself, you psyched yourself out of the game, because Deron Williams can get more shots in the game. The only reason is because you’ve just now lost confidence in yourself.’” 4 I don’t think Kobe was trying to throw shade; he was just pointing out that any player who stopped at nine shots had already given up. For Kobe, missing shots wasn’t failure—but not taking shots certainly was. Even hockey star Wayne Gretzky is quoted as saying, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Whether it’s a team you coach, a mom’s group you join, an immigrant community you volunteer in, or a nation you move to, there are people around you who need what you bring to the game. I challenge you to pray this prayer, if you are ready: “Here am I, Lord, send me.” Or, if you’re more of a sports person, go with, “Here am I, Coach, put me in the game.” You have shots to take. Points to score. People to help. A world to love.

• From Wild (2012)

  It seemed like years ago now—as I stood barefoot on that mountain in California—in a different lifetime, really, when I’d made the arguably unreasonable decision to take a long walk alone on the PCT in order to save myself. When I believed that all the things I’d been before had prepared me for this journey. But nothing had or could. Each day on the trail was the only possible preparation for the one that followed. And sometimes even the day before didn’t prepare me for what would happen next. Such as my boots sailing irretrievably off the side of a mountain. The truth is, I was only half sorry to see them go. In the six weeks I’d spent in those boots, I’d trekked across deserts and snow, past trees and bushes and grasses and flowers of all shapes and sizes and colors, walked up and down mountains and over fields and glades and stretches of land I couldn’t possibly define, except to say that I had been there, passed over it, made it through. And all the while, those boots had blistered my feet and rubbed them raw; they’d caused my nails to blacken and detach themselves excruciatingly from four of my toes. I was done with those boots by the time I lost them and those boots were done with me, though it’s also true that I loved them. They had become not so much inanimate objects to me as extensions of who I was, as had just about everything else I carried that summer—my backpack, tent, sleeping bag, water purifier, ultralight stove, and the little orange whistle that I carried in lieu of a gun. They were the things I knew and could rely upon, the things that got me through. I looked down at the trees below me, the tall tops of them waving gently in the hot breeze. They could keep my boots, I thought, gazing across the great green expanse. I’d chosen to rest in this place because of the view. It was late afternoon in mid-July, and I was miles from civilization in every direction, days away from the lonely post office where I’d collect my next resupply box. There was a chance someone would come hiking down the trail, but only rarely did that happen. Usually I went days without seeing another person. It didn’t matter whether someone came along anyway. I was in this alone. I gazed at my bare and battered feet, with their smattering of remaining toenails. They were ghostly pale to the line a few inches above my ankles, where the wool socks I usually wore ended. My calves above them were muscled and golden and hairy, dusted with dirt and a constellation of bruises and scratches. I’d started walking in the Mojave Desert and I didn’t plan to stop until I touched my hand to a bridge that crosses the Columbia River at the Oregon-Washington border with the grandiose name the Bridge of the Gods.

• From Emotional Inheritance (2022)

  Do you have other patients like me, who talk and talk and don’t let you get in a word?” I smile. I like Alice and I know how hard it is for her to talk about her childhood and to challenge her narratives the way she does. “I feel stronger,” she adds, and I nod in agreement. “It’s like I’m giving birth to myself,” she says proudly. “And you are my midwife.” When I open the door the following week, I hardly recognize Alice. It takes me a minute to realize that it is her hair. She has cut it short. “What do you think? Do you like it?” She sounds excited. “The other day I asked myself what I would want to change before my baby is born. By the way, we decided to name her Zoe, which means life.“ Alice looks a little older. I think about her decision to name her daughter Zoe and to cut her hair, which she mentions in the same breath. I recall our conversations about hair: her mother’s long braids, which seem inappropriate for her age; her own long curly hair, which was hard to brush; and her mother’s resentment of the brushing. Zoe will be born soon. Alice will become a mother and she doesn’t look like her mother anymore. Cutting her hair is a symbolic way of cutting the thread, separating before becoming a mother herself, and by doing that, allowing her daughter to have a life of her own, free of the legacy of trauma. Before I have a chance to share any of these thoughts, she turns to me and says, “I have one more thought from this weekend. Tell me what you think. I want to consider accepting my father’s offer to pay for the surrogate mother.” “Tell me about it,” I say, thinking about the new haircut and this development. Alice is working to reorganize her family structure. She tries to challenge the mother-daughter–centric family in order to make space for a multimember family. I’m aware that this is enacted in her process with me as well, where Alice has made sure a third person is symbolically with us in our sessions. At first it was her mother, whom she constantly analyzed, and then it was Art, with whom she shared our sessions. Alice was unconsciously trying to avoid the dyadic experience that most people seek in therapy, where patient and therapist become an intimate therapeutic couple in a private, secretive process. Instead, what Alice needed was to create a triangle that first included both her mother and me and then included both Art and me. She needed to create a structure in which she didn’t have to be loyal to only one parent.