Relief

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 My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I threw my first empty coffee cup in the toppling pile of garbage around the trash can in the kitchen, broke back the lid of the second cup, downed a few trazodone, smoked a cigarette out the window, then flopped down on my sofa. I ripped open the M&M’s, ate them and a couple of Zyprexa, and watched Regarding Henry, dozing, the forgotten Klondike bar melting in my pocket. Reva showed up halfway through the movie with a huge tin of caramel popcorn. I answered the door on my hands and knees. “Can I leave this here?” she asked. “If I keep it at my house, I’m afraid I’ll eat it all.” “Uh-huh,” I grunted. Reva helped me up off the floor. I was relieved that she had no elaborately wrapped gift for me. Although Reva was Jewish, she celebrated every Christian holiday. I went to the bathroom, took my coat off, turned the pocket inside out and threw it in the tub. I let the water rinse away the melted Klondike bar. As the chocolate flowed down toward the drain, it looked like blood. “What are you doing here?” I asked Reva when I came back into the living room. She ignored the question. “It’s snowing again,” she said. “I took a cab.” She sat on the sofa. I reheated my half-drunk second cup of coffee in the microwave. I went to the VCR, moved the little elephant statue that I’d positioned to cover the glare from the digital clock. I rubbed my eyes. It was ten thirty. Christmas was almost over, thank God. When I looked at Reva, I saw that under her long black wool cape she was wearing a sparkly red dress and black stockings with boughs of holly embroidered on them. Her mascara was smudged, her face was droopy and swollen and caked with foundation and bronzer. Her hair was slicked back into a bun, shiny with gel. She had kicked off her heels and was now cracking her toe knuckles against the floor. Her shoes lay under the coffee table, tipped over on their sides like two dead crows. She wasn’t giving me any jealous, scornful looks, wasn’t asking if I’d eaten anything that day, wasn’t tidying up or putting the videotapes on the coffee table back in their cases. She was quiet. I leaned against the wall and watched her take her phone out of her purse and turn it off, then open the tin of popcorn, eat some, and put the cover back on. Something had happened, that was clear. Maybe Reva had gone to Ken’s Christmas party and watched him carouse with his wife, who she’d told me was petite and Japanese and cruel. Maybe he’d finally ended the affair. I didn’t ask. I finished my coffee and picked up the tin of popcorn, took it to the kitchen and emptied it into the garbage, which Reva had taken out, apparently, while I was washing my coat.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  That’s the deal.’ There was a little silence here that Zora felt the need to puncture. ‘ Amen! ’ she said, laughing. ‘Preach it, brother, preach it!’ Levi punched Zora in her upper arm, and then Zora punched him back, and then they ran, weaving through the graves, Zora racing from Levi. Jerome called after them both to have some respect. Kiki knew she should stop them, but she could not help feeling it was a relief to hear curses and laughter and whoops fill the darkening day. It took one’s mind off all the people underfoot. Now Kiki and Jerome paused on the white stone steps of the chapel and waited for Zora and Levi to join them. Kiki heard her children’s clattering footsteps reverberate through the archways behind her. They rushed towards her like the shadows of people escaped from their graves, and came to a halt by her feet, panting and laughing. She could no longer see their features in this dusk, only the outlines and movements of beloved faces she knew by heart. ‘OK, that’s enough now. Let’s get out of here, please. Which way?’ Jerome took his glasses off and wiped them on the corner of his shirt. Hadn’t the burial been just to the left of this very chapel? In which case they had walked in a teasing circle.  on beauty and being wrong After taking leave of his father, Howard walked across the street and into the Windmill pub. Here he ordered and began drinking a perfectly reasonable bottle of red wine. His chosen seat was, he thought, in a neglected corner of the bar. But two minutes after he sat down, a huge flat screen that he had not noticed was lowered down near his head and switched on. A football game commenced between a white team and a blue team. Men gathered round. They seemed to accept and like Howard, mistaking him for one of those dedicated souls who come early to get the best seat. Howard allowed this misinterpretation and found himself taken up in the general fervour. Soon he was cheering and complaining with the rest. When a stranger, in his enthusiasm, tipped some beer down Howard’s shoulder, Howard smiled, shrugged and said nothing. A little while later this same fellow bought Howard a beer, saying nothing when he put it down in front of Howard and seeming to expect nothing in return. At the end of the first half another man beside him knocked glasses with Howard in a very jolly way, in approval of Howard’s random decision to cheer the blue team, although the game itself was still 0–0. This score never changed. And after the game finished nobody hit each other or got angry – it didn’t seem to be that kind of game. ‘Well, we got what we needed,’ said one man philosophically.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  She was the master of redial. She compiled petitions and issued ultimatums. When the city of Wellington served Zora with (in her opinion) an undeserved parking ticket, it was not Zora but the city – five months and thirty phone calls later – which backed down. In cyberspace, Zora’s powers of perseverance found their truest expression. Two weeks had passed since the faculty meeting, and in that time Claire Malcolm had received thirty-three – no, thirty- four – e-mails from Zora Belsey. Claire knew this because she had just got Liddy Cantalino to print them all out. Now she shuffled them into a neat pile on her desk and waited. At exactly two o’clock, there came a knock on her door. ‘Come in!’ Erskine’s long umbrella entered the room and rapped twice upon the floor. Erskine followed, in a blue shirt paired with a green jacket, the combination of which did strange things to Claire’s vision. ‘Hi, Ersk – thanks so much for coming. I know this is not your problem at all . But I really appreciate your input.’ ‘At your service,’ said Erskine, and bowed. Claire threaded her fingers together. ‘Basically, I just need back-up – I’m being lobbied by Zora Belsey to help this kid stay in class, and I’m willing to lend my voice, but ultimately I’m powerless here, really – but she simply won’t take my word for it.’  On Beauty ‘Are these they?’ asked Erskine, reaching for the printouts on the desk and then sitting down. ‘The collected letters of Zora Belsey.’ ‘She’s driving me crazy . She’s totally obsessed with this issue – and, I mean, I’m behind her. Imagine what it would be like to be against her.’ ‘Imagine,’ said Erskine. He took his reading glasses from his top pocket. ‘She’s got this enormous petition going that the students are signing – she wants me to overturn the rules of this university overnight – but I can’t create a place for this kid at Wellington! I really enjoy having him in my class, but if Kipps gets the board to rule against discretionaries, what can I do? My hands are tied. And I just feel like I never stop working at the moment – I’ve got unmarked papers coming out of my ears, I owe my publishers three different books now – I’m conducting my marriage through e-mail, I just – ’ ‘Shhhh, shhhh,’ said Erskine and laid his hand over Claire’s. His skin was very dry and puffy and warm. ‘Claire – leave it with me, will you please? I know Zora Belsey well – I have known her since she was a small girl. She loves to make a fuss, but she is rarely very attached to the fuss she makes. I will deal with this.’ ‘Would you? You’re a darling !

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  They said there they were proud of their home-clean restrooms. These prepaid postcards, they said, had been provided for your comments. No postcards. No soap. Nothing. No comments. That day or the next, after a tedious drive through a land of food crops, we reached a pleasant little burg and put up at Chestnut Court —nice cabins, damp green grounds, apple trees, an old swing—and a tremendous sunset which the tired child ignored. She had wanted to go through Kasbeam because it was only thirty miles north from her home town but on the following morning I found her quite listless, with no desire to see again the sidewalk where she had played hopscotch some five years before. For obvious reasons I had rather dreaded that side trip, even though we had agreed not to make ourselves conspicuous in any way—to remain in the car and not look up old friends. My relief at her abandoning the project was spoiled by the thought that had she felt I were totally against the nostalgic possibilities of Pisky, as I had been last year, she would not have given up so easily. On my mentioning this with a sigh, she sighed too and complained of being out of sorts. She wanted to remain in bed till teatime at least, with lots of magazines, and then if she felt better she suggested we just continue westward. I must say she was very sweet and languid, and craved for fresh fruits, and I decided to go and fetch her a toothsome picnic lunch in Kasbeam. Our cabin stood on the timbered crest of a hill, and from our window you could see the road winding down, and then running as straight as a hair parting between two rows of chestnut trees, towards the pretty town, which looked singularly distinct and toylike in the pure morning distance. One could make out an elf-like girl on an insect-like bicycle, and a dog, a bit too large proportionately, all as clear as those pilgrims and mules winding up wax-pale roads in old paintings with blue hills and red little people. I have the European urge to use my feet when a drive can be dispensed with, so I leisurely walked down, eventually meeting the cyclist—a plain plump girl with pigtails, followed by a huge St.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  To perturb your budget, you don’t even require another person or object to be present. You can just imagine your boss, teacher, coach, or anything else relevant to you. Every simulation, whether it becomes an emotion or not, impacts your body budget. As it turns out, people spend at least half their waking hours simulating rather than paying attention to the world around them, and this pure simulation strongly drives their feelings.33 When it comes to managing your body budget, your brain does not have to go it alone. Other people regulate your body budget too. When you interact with your friends, parents, children, lovers, teammates, therapist, or other close companions, you and they synchronize breathing, heart beats, and other physical signals, leading to tangible benefits. Holding hands with loved ones, or even keeping their photo on your desk at work, reduces activation in your body-budgeting regions and makes you less bothered by pain. If you’re standing at the bottom of a hill with friends, it will appear less steep and easier to climb than if you are alone. If you grow up in poverty, a situation that leads to chronic body-budget imbalance and an overactive immune system, these body-budgeting problems are reduced if you have a supportive person in your life. In contrast, when you lose a close, loving relationship and feel physically ill about it, part of the reason is that your loved one is no longer helping to regulate your budget. You feel like you’ve lost a part of yourself because, in a sense, you have.34 Every person you encounter, every prediction you make, every idea you imagine, and every sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell that you fail to anticipate all have budgetary consequences and corresponding interoceptive predictions. Your brain must contend with this continuous, ever-changing flow of interoceptive sensations from the predictions that keep you alive. Sometimes you’re aware of them, and other times you’re not, but they are always part of your brain’s model of the world. They are, as I’ve said, the scientific basis for simple feelings of pleasure, displeasure, arousal, and calmness that you experience every day. For some, the flow is like the trickle of a tranquil brook. For others, it’s like a raging river. Sometimes the sensations are transformed into emotions, but as you will now learn, even when they’re only in the background, they influence what you do, what you think, and what you perceive.35 … When you wake up in the morning, do you feel refreshed or crabby? In the middle of the day, do you feel dragged out or full of energy? Consider how you feel right now. Calm? Interested? Energetic? Bored? Tired? Cranky? These are the simple feelings we discussed at the beginning of the chapter. Scientists call them affect.*

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  Which when I heard I laughed with myself and thought: “In faith, my friend Demeas hath served me well and with forethought, which hath sent me, being a stranger, unto such a man, in whose house I shall not be troubled either with smoke or with the scent of meat,” and therewithal I rode to the door, which was fast barred, and knocked aloud and cried. Then there came forth a maid which said: “ Ho, 37 23 LUCIUS, APULEIUS Tandem adulescentula quaedam procedens “ Heus tu" inquit “Qui tam fortiter fores verberasti, sub qua specie mutuari cupis? An tu solus ignoras prater aurum argentumque nullum nos pignus admittere ?" — * Meliora". inquam * Ominare, et potius responde an intra aedes erum tuum offen- derim.” * Plane;" inquit “Sed quae causa quaes- tionis huius?" *Litteras ei a Corinthio Demea scriptas ad eum reddo." — * Dum annuntio," inquit * Hie ibidem me opperimino," et cum dicto rursum foribus oppessulatis intro capessit. Modico deinde regressa patefactis foribus “ Rogat te” inquit. Intuli me eumque accubantum exiguo admodum grabatulo et commodum cenare incipientem invenio : assidebat pedes uxor et mensa vacua posita, cuius monstratu “En” inquit * Hospitium." * Bene" ego, et illico ei litteras Demeae trado. Quibus properiter lectis “Amo” inquit “Meum Demean, qui mihi tantum conciliavit hospitem," et cum dicto iubet uxorem decedere utque in eius locum assidam iubet, meque etiam nune verecundia cunctantem arrepta lacinia detrahens * Asside" inquit “Istic: nam prae metu latronum nulla sessibula ac ne sufficientem supel- lectilem parare nobis licet.’’ Feci, et “Sic egote " inquit “Etiam de ista corporis speciosa habitudine deque hac virginali prorsus vere- cundia generosa stirpe proditum et recte conicerem, sed et meus Demeas eadem litteris pronuntiat. Ergo brevitatem gurgustioli nostri ne spernas peto. Erit 38 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK I

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  They still shaved. The token blacks still pressed their hair. (O remembrance of things past!) I was there through a friend and so was Bennett. Since my first husband had been psychotic, it seemed quite natural to want to marry a psychiatrist the second time around. As an antidote, say. I was not going to let the same thing happen to me again. This time I was going to find someone who had the key to the unconscious. So I was hanging out with shrinks. They fascinated me because I assumed they knew everything worth knowing. I fascinated them because they assumed I was a “creative person” (as evidenced by the fact that I had appeared on Channel 13 reading my poems—what more evidence of creativity could a shrink need?). When I look back on my not yet thirty-year-old life, I see all my lovers sitting alternately back to back as if in a game of musical chairs. Each one an antidote to the one that went before. Each one a reaction, an about-face, a rebound. Brian Stollerman (my first lover and first husband) was very short, inclined to paunchiness, hairy and dark. He was also a human cannonball and a nonstop talker. He was always in motion, always spewing out words of five syllables. He was a medievalist and before you could say “Albigensian Crusade” he’d tell you the story of his life—in extravagantly exaggerated detail. Brian gave the impression of never shutting up. This was not quite true, though, because he did stop talking when he slept. But when he finally flipped his cookies (as we politely said in my immediate family) or showed symptoms of schizophrenia (as one of his many psychiatrists put it) or woke up to the real meaning of his life (as he put it) or had a nervous breakdown (as his Ph.D. thesis adviser put it) or became-exhausted-as-a-result-of-being-married-to-that-Jewish-princess-from-New York (as his parents put it)—then he never stopped talking even to sleep. He stopped sleeping, in fact, and he used to keep me up all night telling me about the Second Coming of Christ and how this time Jesus just might come back as a Jewish medievalist living on Riverside Drive. Of course we were living on Riverside Drive, and Brian was a spellbinding talker. But still, I was so wrapped up in his fantasies, such a willing member of a folie à deux that it took a whole week of staying up every night listening to him before it dawned on me that Brian himself intended to be the Second Coming. Nor did he take very kindly to my pointing out that this might be a delusion; he very nearly choked me to death for my contribution to the discussion.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  He noticed the direction of my gaze and made her right hip twitch amorously. “Okey-dokey,” big Frank sang out, slapped the jamb, and whistling, carried my message away, and I went on drinking, and by morning the fever was gone, and although I was as limp as a toad, I put on the purple dressing gown over my maize yellow pajamas, and walked over to the office telephone. Everything was fine. A bright voice informed me that yes, everything was fine, my daughter had checked out the day before, around two, her uncle, Mr. Gustave, had called for her with a cocker spaniel pup and a smile for everyone, and a black Caddy Lack, and had paid Dolly’s bill in cash, and told them to tell me I should not worry, and keep warm, they were at Grandpa’s ranch as agreed. Elphinstone was, and I hope still is, a very cute little town. It was spread like a maquette, you know, with its neat green-wool trees and red-roofed houses over the valley floor and I think I have alluded earlier to its model school and temple and spacious rectangular blocks, some of which were, curiously enough, just unconventional pastures with a mule or a unicorn grazing in the young July morning mist. Very amusing: at one gravel-groaning sharp turn I sideswiped a parked car but said to myself telestically—and, telephathically (I hoped), to its gesticulating owner—that I would return later, address Bird School, Bird, New Bird, the gin kept my heart alive but bemazed my brain, and after some lapses and losses common to dream sequences, I found myself in the reception room, trying to beat up the doctor, and roaring at people under chairs, and clamoring for Mary who luckily for her was not there; rough hands plucked at my dressing gown, ripping off a pocket, and somehow I seem to have been sitting on a bald brown-headed patient, whom I had mistaken for Dr. Blue, and who eventually stood up, remarking with a preposterous accent: “Now, who is nevrotic, I ask?”—and then a gaunt unsmiling nurse presented me with seven beautiful, beautiful books and the exquisitely folded tartan lap robe, and demanded a receipt; and in the sudden silence I became aware of a policeman in the hallway, to whom my fellow motorist was pointing me out, and meekly I signed the very symbolic receipt, thus surrendering my Lolita to all those apes. But what else could I do? One simple and stark thought stood out and this was: “Freedom for the moment is everything.” One false move—and I might have been made to explain a life of crime. So I simulated a coming out of a daze.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  A Sunday in June and if you want to get sick, you’d better do it at a beach resort. No doctor to be found. I finally reached the guy who was pinch-hitting for my internist. He would be over right away, he said. Five hours later, he arrived. During all that time Brian was astonishingly subdued. He sat in the living room listening to Bach, seemingly in a trance. I sat in the bedroom trying to absorb what had happened. We pretended to ignore each other. The calm after the storm. At least Brian’s problem had a name now. It was the next best thing to a cure. Being told he was “psychotic” had given me a strange sense of relief. Here was a disease to be treated, a problem to be solved. Naming the thing made it less frightening. Also, it diminished my guilt. Insanity was no one’s fault. It was an act of God. There was something very comforting about that. All natural disasters are comforting because they reaffirm our impotence, in which, otherwise, we might stop believing. At times it is strangely sedative to know the extent of your own powerlessness. We endured the afternoon together with Johann Sebastian Bach. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast” quoth Congreve (who surely is in heaven playing cards with Mozart). When I think of all the bad times that Bach has helped me get through I’m sure he’s in heaven too.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  She pronounced the name so that it rhymed with ‘Y-Cal’, a brand of sugar substitute that Howard used in his coffee. ‘Let Jerome go, please – the engagement is already off. No need for this.’ Howard noticed the surprise on his own son’s face as Mrs Kipps said the word ‘engagement’. Jerome tried to stretch his head away from Michael’s body to catch the eye of the silent, curled-up figure at the table, but this figure did not move. ‘Engagement! Since when was there an engagement!’ Michael yelled and drew back his fist, but Howard was already there and surprised himself by instinctively reaching out to grab the boy’s  On Beauty wrist. Mrs Kipps was trying to stand but seemed to be having difficulty, and, when she called her son’s name again, Howard was thankful to feel all the will in Michael’s arm dissolve. Jerome, shaking, stepped aside. ‘Anyone could see it happening,’ said Mrs Kipps quietly. ‘But it’s over now. All done.’ Michael looked confused for a minute, and then a second thought seemed to come to him and he started to rattle the handle of the French doors. ‘Dad!’ he shouted, but the doors wouldn’t give. Howard stepped forward to help him with the top lock. Michael violently shrugged him off, spotted the fastened lock at last and released it. The French doors flew open. Michael stepped out into the garden, still calling for his father, as the wind chased the curtains up and down. Howard could make out a long stretch of grass and somewhere at the end of it the orange glow of a small bonfire. Beyond that, the ivy-covered base of a monumental tree, the invisible top of which belonged to the night. ‘Hello, Dr Belsey,’ said Mrs Kipps now, as if all of this were a perfectly normal preamble to a nice social call. She took her napkin off her knees and stood up. ‘We’ve not met, have we?’ She was not all what he’d expected. Howard had for some reason envisioned a younger woman, a trophy. But she was older than Kiki, more like sixty something, and rather rangy. Her hair was set and curled but stray wisps framed her face, and her clothes were not at all formal: a dark purple skirt that reached the floor, and an Indian blouse of loose white cotton with elaborate needlework down its front. Her neck was long (he saw now where Michael had inherited his look of nobility) and deeply creased, and round it was a substantial piece of art deco jewellery with a multifaceted moonstone at its centre, rather than the expected cross. She took both of Howard’s hands in her own. At once Howard felt that things were not as absolutely dire as they had appeared to be twenty seconds earlier. ‘Please, not ‘‘Doctor’’,’ he said. ‘I’m – off-duty – it’s Howard – please.

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  If you are able to cut your losses earlier, that’s a huge win. An added bonus is that it frees you up so you can turn your limited attention and resources to more fruitful endeavors that have a higher expected value, reducing opportunity costs. “If we find the Achilles’ heel,” Teller told me, “thank God we found the Achilles’ heel after $2 million instead of after $20 million.” Astro Teller clearly understands that quitting gets you where you want to go faster. The sooner you figure out that you should walk away, the sooner you can switch to something better. And the sooner that happens, the more resources you’re saving, which you can then devote to more fruitful endeavors. One of the beautiful things about the monkeys-and-pedestals mental model is that sometimes it helps you quit before you start. Years ago, X looked into developing what’s now known as a hyperloop, an experimental high-speed rail system. The concept was fine. Building the physical infrastructure wouldn’t be very hard from an engineering standpoint. The monkeys for the hyperloop to be viable were things like whether you could safely load and unload passengers or cargo, and whether you could get the system up to speed and get it to brake without incident. A couple hundred yards of track wouldn’t tell you anything about whether you could conquer those challenges. In fact, Teller and the team at X figured out that you would have to build practically the whole thing before you knew whether it worked. You would have to build a bunch of pedestals before you could find out if the monkeys were intractable. They quickly decided not to pursue it. One of Teller’s valuable insights is that pedestal-building creates the illusion of progress rather than actual progress itself. When you are doing something that you already know you can accomplish, you’re not learning anything important about whether the endeavor is worth pursuing. You already know you can build the pedestal. The problem is whether you can train the monkey. On top of that, Teller realizes that when you’re building pedestals, you are also accumulating sunk costs that make it hard to quit even as you find out that you may not be able to train the monkey to juggle those torches. By focusing on

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  potential employees, and you have to convince customers. And I had done a lot of convincing of people to come work on this project, to leave whatever they were working on before, quit their job, get poorly paid in exchange for equity. . . .” Despite all this, he knew quitting was the right decision. He told his investors, “I think I knew this six weeks ago and I mistook denial for prudence (in the sense of making sure that we didn’t give up too early). But there are just too many things in the ‘against’ column.” To everybody else, it felt like he was quitting too soon. But to Stewart Butterfield, peeking into the future, he recognized that maybe he hadn’t quit soon enough. After he explained his reasoning to the others, it is unclear whether or not he persuaded them to see what he saw. But it didn’t much matter. If he was no longer on board, there was no point in continuing. Most people in that position would not do what Butterfield did. Despite everything that makes sticking the easier choice—his years of commitment to the project, the encouraging recent results, his cofounders and investors wanting to continue, the pain he felt at having to follow through on this decision and what that meant for his employees—he was able to quit. This may seem like an unhappy ending. Butterfield was so passionate about his concept of a collaborative multiplayer game that he devoted a decade to trying to make it happen. Now he had fallen short for a second time. But quitting effectively, when the context warrants it, ought to be the definition of a happy ending. It is just hard for us to see it that way because we process quitting as failure. Stewart Butterfield saw that he had a losing hand and he decided to fold before he had burned through Tiny Speck’s remaining capital. He stopped the company from throwing $6 million at a bad investment, freeing that money up to invest in other things that would be more likely to win. He also spared Tiny Speck’s employees from being trapped in a failing business, working for little money and the promise of equity, by promptly acting when he determined that equity wouldn’t be worth their effort. These things were good for Butterfield, good for his investors and cofounders, and good for his employees. Shouldn’t we view that as a happy

• From Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away (2022)

  Unfortunately, it doesn’t go on to say, “. . . but not enough of the time for it to be profitable.” I remember many, many nights at a poker table when a player sitting next to me would nudge me after a hand to let me know that the cards they folded would have won the pot. It would occasionally get ridiculous, like when they had folded a seven-deuce at the beginning of the hand (the mathematically worst two-card starting combination you can be dealt, so it’s a no-brainer to fold) and the five community cards would end up including seven-deuce-deuce. They would invariably lean over and groan, “I folded seven-deuce. I would have made a full house!” I’d tell them, “There’s a way to avoid that.” “How?” “Just play every hand all the way to the last card.” That advice might have been absurd, but I was making the point that a necessary part of succeeding in poker is to fold some hands that might have won. To be good at the game you just have to learn to live with that. Playing every hand you are dealt is an easy and fast way to go broke since you would be playing too many hands that aren’t profitable in the long run. That would also make poker more like baccarat, taking out a key element of skill, the option to fold. Even playing 50% of your hands comes at a great price. But what you get in return for that cost is peace of mind. When you hold ’em instead of fold ’em, you experience a lot less of the pain of knowing that you could be throwing away a winner. You won’t have to deal with the version of “What if?” on steroids: watching players throwing chips into a gigantic pot and seeing someone else rake it in, knowing that could have been you if you just hadn’t folded your hand. For most players, that peace of mind is a potent force, another siren song. It’s one of the main reasons why amateurs play so many hands. If folding is difficult for amateurs at the beginning of the hand, it’s even more difficult once a player has committed money to the pot. It is hard to overcome the urge to protect the money you have already bet, regardless of the likelihood that the next bet is a favorable choice.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  The Good Samaritan fires off questions in rapid succession: “What is your name? Where are you? Where were you going? What is today’s date?” But I can’t connect with my mouth and make words. I don’t have the energy to answer his questions. His manner of asking them makes me feel more disoriented and utterly confused. Finally, I manage to shape my words and speak. My voice is strained and tight. (11. Voiceless terror is part of the immobility response and is seen in all species that normally vocalize.) I ask him, both with my hands and words, “Please back off.” (12. This is the first time I am able to mobilize an effective defense against intrusion by beginning to establish a protective boundary.) He complies. As though a neutral observer, speaking about the person sprawled out on the blacktop, I assure him that I understand I am not to move my head, and that I will answer his questions later. (13. As the shock is reduced by making an effective boundary, the communication centers in my brain—Broca’s area—are coming online to further delineate and articulate my boundary.) The Power of KindnessAfter a few minutes, a woman unobtrusively inserts herself and quietly sits by my side. “I’m a doctor, a pediatrician,” she says. “Can I be of help?” “Please just stay with me,” I reply. Her simple, kind face seems supportive and calmly concerned. She takes my hand in hers, and I squeeze it. (14. Her outreach and physical touch provide a source of orientation and help to enlist my diminished capacity for social engagement. The activation of the ventral vagal system—see Chapter 6—is helping to buffer me against being sucked down into the black hole of trauma.) She gently returns the gesture. As my eyes reach for hers, I feel a tear form. (15. The eye-to-eye contact is integral to the social engagement system, as is touch. This physiological exchange, in which we are participating in each other’s nervous systems, leads to stabilization and relief.) The delicate and strangely familiar scent of her perfume tells me that I am not alone. I feel emotionally held by her encouraging presence. (16. Through smell we have direct access to the limbic system—formerly called the olfactory-smell-brain—for this very reason.) A trembling wave of release moves through me, and I take my first deep breath. (17. This powerful moment is the first instance of physiological discharge and self-regulation.) Then a jagged shudder of terror passes though my body. Tears are now streaming from my eyes. In my mind, I hear the words, I can’t believe this has happened to me; it’s not possible; this is not what I planned for Butch’s birthday tonight. (18. This is recognition of my own denial.) I am sucked down by a deep undertow of unfathomable regret. (19. In this moment I am contacting the deep emotional truth by acknowledging the loss. In therapy this frequently happens, gradually, over time.) My body continues to shudder. Reality sets in.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  circled and annotated with either smiley or frowny faces. The last entry was marked December 23. Reva seemed to have abandoned her daily numbers game when her mother died. I thought of Reva sleeping in that bed each night, probably drunk and full of Aspartame and Pepcid. In the mornings, she prepped and set out into the world, a mask of composure. And I had problems? Who’s the real fuckup, Reva? I hated her more and more. The bathroom looked like it belonged to a pair of adolescent twins preparing for a beauty pageant. I could smell the mildew and the puke and Lysol. A pink expanded toolbox burst with brushes and applicators of all shapes and sizes, drugstore makeup, nail polish, stolen testers, a dozen shades of Maybelline lip gloss. On the shelf, there were two hair dryers, a curling iron, a flat iron, a bowl of bejeweled barrettes and plastic headbands. Cutouts from fashion magazines were taped to the edges of the mirror over the low vanity and sink: Claudia Schiffer’s Guess Jeans ad. Kate Moss in her Calvins. Runway stick figures. Linda Evangelista. Kate Moss. Kate Moss. Kate Moss. There was a bowl of cotton balls and swabs. A bowl of bobby pins. Two huge bottles of Listerine. Next to the cup that must have held a dozen toothbrushes, each head of bristles yellowed and frayed, a prescription bottle of Vicodin. Vicodin! From the dentist. There were twelve pills left in the bottle. I took one and pocketed the rest. I found more pills under the sink in a wicker box with a pink ribbon tying the lid shut—an Easter relic, I guessed. Maybe when Reva bought it, it was full of chocolate eggs. Clearance sale. Inside: Diurex, ibuprofen, Mylanta, Dulcolax, Dexatrim, Midol, aspirin, fen-phen. A Victoria’s Secret gift bag was tucked into the back corner of the cabinet. Inside, glory! My Ambien, my Rozerem, my Ativan, my Xanax, my trazodone, my lithium. Seroquel, Lunesta. Valium. I laughed. I teared up. Finally, my heart slowed. My hands started trembling a little, or maybe they’d been trembling all along. “Thank God,” I said aloud. The draft sucked the bathroom door shut with a celebratory bang. I counted out three lithium, two Ativan, five Ambien. That sounded like a nice mélange, a luxurious free fall into velvet blackness. And a couple of trazodone because trazodone weighed down the Ambien, so if I dreamt, I’d dream low to the ground. That would be stabilizing, I thought. And maybe one more Ativan. Ativan to me felt like fresh air. A cool breeze, slightly effervescent. This was good, I thought. A serious rest. My mouth watered.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  1 Oudendorp's emendation for the MSS’ timida. Helm suggests intimida. 12 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK I (having his face covered in such sort) ‘Let fortune’ (quoth he) ‘Triumph yet more, let her have her sway, and finish that which she hath begun.’ «Then did I force him to follow and put off one of my garments, and clothed, nay, rather covered him, and immediately I brought him to the bath ; with my own hands I served him with what he needed for anointing and wiping. I diligently rubbed away the filthy scurf of his body ; which done, although I was very weary myself, and hardly held him up, yet I led the poor wretch to my inn, where I bade him repose his body upon a bed, and brought him meat and drink, and refreshed him with talking together. Then we grew free and merry, laughed and joked wittily, now he talked without any fear, until such time as he (fetching a pitiful sigh from the bottom of his heart, and beating his face in miserable sort) began to say : ** Alas, poor wretch that I am, that only for the desire to see a game, famous enough, of trial of weapons, am fallen into these miseries and mis- fortunes. For, having set out, as thou knowest, for Macedonia, on my business, and returning the richer after the space of ten months, a little before that I came to Larissa I turned out of the way to view those games, and behold, in the bottom of a pathless and hollow valley, I was suddenly environed with a wild company of thieves, who robbed and spoiled me of such things as I had: and hardly did I escape, but (being in such extremity) in the end was delivered from them and fortuned to come to the house of a woman that sold wine, called Meroe; old was she, yet not unpleasing ; unto whom I opened the causes of my long peregrination and careful home-coming, and of my unlucky robbery; and after that she i 13 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  But the physician, perceiving that those torments did nothing prevail, began to say: “I cannot suffer or abide that this young man who is innocent should against all law and conscience be punished and con- demned to die, and the other which is culpable should escape so easily, and after mock and flout at your judgement : for I will give you an evident proof and argument of this present crime, You shall understand that when this caitiff demanded of me a present and strong poison, I considered that it was not the part of my calling to give occasion of any others death, but rather to cure and save sick persons by mean of medicines! And on the other side I feared lest if I should deny his request I might by my untimely refusing minister a further cause ot his mischief by some other way, either that he would buy poison of some other, or else return and work his wieked intent with a sword or some dangerous weapon. Wherefore I gave him no poison, but a soothing drink of mandragora, which is of such force that it will cause any man to sleep as though he were dead. Neither is it any marvel if this most desperate man, who is certainly assured to be put to that death which is ordained by our ancient custom, can suffer or abide these facile and easy torments. But if it be so that the child hath received the drink as I tempered it with mine own hands, he is yet alive and doth but rest and sleep, and after his sleep he shall return to life again; but if he hath been murdered, if he be dead indeed, then may you further enquire of the causes of his death." The opinion of this ancient physician was found good, and every man had a desire to go to the tell many physicians of speculation have done, before they have come to practice." 493 LUCIUS: APULEIUS chrum, quo corpus pueri depositum. iacebat: nemo de curia, de optimatibus nemo ac ne de ipso quidem populo quisquam, qui non illuc curiose confluxerit. Ecce pater, suis ipse manibus cooperculo. capuli. remoto, commodum. discusso mortifero. sopore sur- gentem. postliminio mortis deprehendit filium, eum- que complexus artissime, verbis impar praesenti gaudio, producit ad populum atque, ut erat adhuc feralibus amiculis instrictus atque obditus, deportatur ad iudicium puer, lamque liquido. servi. nequissimi, atque. mulieris nequioris patefactis sceleribus. pro- cedit: in medium nuda. veritas; et novereae quidem perpetuum indicitur exilium, servus vero patibulo suffigitur et omnium consensu bono medico sinuntur. aurei, opportuni somui pretium. Et illius. quidem senis. famosa. atque. fabulosa fortuna. providentiae divinae condignum excipit exitum, qui momento modico, immo puncto exiguo, post orbitatis pericu- lum, adolescentium duorum pater repente factus est, :

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  There were only about ten guests in that haunted house. You could see why. Swinging London had swung right by without stopping. I looked down the register. Strawbridge, Henkel, Harbellow, Bottom, Cohen, Kinney, Watts, Wong.... That was it. It had to be Wong. Of course they’d misspell it that way. All Chinese look alike and all Chinese names are Wong. I felt a great closeness to Bennett, having to put up with that kind of crap his whole life and not become bitter. “How about this one in Room 60?” I asked, pointing to the dumb misspelling. “Oh, the Japanese gentleman?” Shit, I thought. They never can tell the difference. “Yes, could you ring his room please?” “Who shall I say is calling?” “His wife.” The term “wife” apparently had clout back here in the nineteenth century. My friend Bob Cratchit literally sprang for the phone. Maybe it really was a Japanese gentleman. Toshiro Mifune perhaps? Complete with Samurai sword and topknot of hair? One of the rapists of Rashomon? The ghost of Yukio Mishima with his wounds still oozing? “I’m sorry, Madam, there’s no answer,” the deskman said. “May I wait in the room?” “Suit yourself, Madam.” And with that he banged a bell on his desk and called for the porter. Another Dickensian type. This one was shorter than me and had glossily Vase- lined hair. I followed him into the elevator cage. Many whirring minutes later, we arrived on the sixth floor. It was Bennett’s room all right; his jackets and ties hanging neatly in the closet. A stack of playbills on the dresser top, his toothbrush and shampoo on the rim of the old-fashioned sink. His slippers on the floor. His underwear and socks drying on the radiator. It scarcely felt as if I had been away at all. Had I? Was Bennett that able to adjust to my absence, calmly going to plays and coming home to wash his socks? The bed was a single. It was unmade but hardly looked tossed at all. I flipped through the stack of playbills. He’d seen every play in London. He had not cracked up or done anything crazy. He was the same predictable Bennett. I sighed with relief, or was it disappointment? I ran a bath for myself and stripped off my dirty clothes, letting them drop in a trail on the floor. The bathtub was one of those long, deep, claw-footed ones. A regular sarcophagus. I sank in up to my chin. “Hello feet,” I said, as my toes surfaced at the other end of the tub. My arms were bruised and aching from dragging that suitcase, and my feet were blistered.

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Only the two girls on the davenport, both wearing black, the younger fingering a bright something about her white neck, only they said nothing, but just smiled on, so young, so lewd. As the music paused for a moment, there was a sudden noise on the stairs. Tony and I stepped out into the hall. Quilty of all people had managed to crawl out onto the landing, and there we could see him, flapping and heaving, and then subsiding, forever this time, in a purple heap. “Hurry up, Cue,” said Tony with a laugh. “I believe, he’s still—” He returned to the drawing room, music drowned the rest of the sentence. This, I said to myself, was the end of the ingenious play staged for me by Quilty. With a heavy heart I left the house and walked through the spotted blaze of the sun to my car. Two other cars were parked on both sides of it, and I had some trouble squeezing out. 36The rest is a little flattish and faded. Slowly I drove downhill, and presently found myself going at the same lazy pace in a direction opposite to Parkington. I had left my raincoat in the boudoir and Chum in the bathroom. No, it was not a house I would have liked to live in. I wondered idly if some surgeon of genius might not alter his own career, and perhaps the whole destiny of mankind, by reviving quilted Quilty, Clare Obscure. Not that I cared; on the whole I wished to forget the whole mess—and when I did learn he was dead, the only satisfaction it gave me, was the relief of knowing I need not mentally accompany for months a painful and disgusting convalescence interrupted by all kinds of unmentionable operations and relapses, and perhaps an actual visit from him, with trouble on my part to rationalize him as not being a ghost. Thomas had something. It is strange that the tactile sense, which is so infinitely less precious to men than sight, becomes at critical moments our main, if not only, handle to reality. I was all covered with Quilty—with the feel of that tumble before the bleeding.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  the principall of the Gods celestiall, the light of the goddesses: at my will the planets of the ayre, the wholesome winds of the Seas, and the silences of hell be diposed; my name, my divinity is adored throughout all the world in divers manners, in variable customes and in many names, for the Phrygians call me the mother of the Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians, Diana: the Sicilians Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres: some Juno, other Bellona, other Hecate: and principally the Aethiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the Aegyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustome to worship mee, doe call mee Queene Isis. Behold I am come to take pitty of thy fortune and tribulation, behold I am present to favour and ayd thee, leave off thy weeping and lamentation, put away all thy sorrow, for behold the healthfull day which is ordained by my providence, therefore be ready to attend to my commandement. This day which shall come after this night, is dedicated to my service, by an eternall religion, my Priests and Ministers doe accustome after the tempests of the Sea, be ceased, to offer in my name a new ship as a first fruit of my Navigation. I command thee not to prophane or despise the sacrifice in any wise, for the great Priest shall carry this day following in procession by my exhortation, a Garland of Roses, next the timbrell of his right hand: follow thou my procession amongst the people, and when thou commest to the Priest make as though thou wouldest kisse his hand, but snatch at the Roses, whereby I will put away the skin and shape of an Asse, which kind of beast I have long time abhorred and despised, but above all things beware thou doubt not nor feare any of those things, as hard and difficill to bee brought to passe, for in the same houre that I am come to thee, I have commanded the Priest by a vision what he shall doe, and all the people by my commandement shall be compelled to give thee place and say nothing! Moreover, thinke not that amongst so faire and joyfull Ceremonies, and in so good a company that any person shall abhorre thy ill-favoured and deformed figure, or that any man shall be so hardy, as to blame and reprove thy suddaine restoration to humane shape, wherby they should gather or conceive any sinister opinion: and know thou this of certaine, that the residue of thy life untill the houre of death shall be bound and subject to me!