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

  Time and again, because of both personal and clinical experiences, I found myself emphasizing the terrible lethality of manic-depressive illness, the dreadful agitation involved in mixed manic states, and the importance of dealing with patients’ reluctance to take lithium or other medications to control their moods. Having to stand back from my own feelings and past in order to write in a more cerebral, scholarly way was refreshing, and it forced me to structure and put into a more objective perspective the turmoil I had been through. Often, the science of the field was not only exciting, but it also held out the very realistic hope of new treatments. Although it was, on occasion, disturbing to see powerful and complicated emotions and behaviors distilled into deadeningly dull diagnostic phrases, it was hard not to be caught up in the new methods and findings of a very rapidly progressing field of clinical medicine. I ended up strangely loving the discipline and obsessiveness that went into developing the countless tables of data. There was something lullingly reassuring about entering number after number, percentage after percentage, into the summary charts; critiquing the methods used in the various studies; and then trying to make some overall sense out of the large number of articles and books that had been reviewed. Much as I had done when frightened or upset as a child, I found that asking questions, tracking down answers as best I could, and then asking yet more questions was the best way to provide a distance from anxiety and a framework for understanding. Lowering my lithium level had allowed not only a clarity of thinking, but also a vividness and intensity of experience, back into my life; these elements had once formed the core of my normal temperament, and their absence had left gaping hollows in the way in which I could respond to the world. The too rigid structuring of my moods and temperament, which had resulted from a higher dose of lithium, made me less resilient to stress than a lower dose, which, like the building codes in California that are designed to prevent damage from earthquakes, allowed my mind and emotions to sway a bit. Therefore, and rather oddly, there was a new solidness to both my thinking and emotions. Gradually, as I began to look around me, I realized that this was the kind of evenness and predictability most people had, and probably took for granted, throughout their lives.

• From Austerlitz (2001)

  said Austerlitz, I myself found my years at Stower Grange a time not of imprisonment but of liberation. While most of us, even those who tormented their contemporaries, crossed off the days on the calendar until they could go home, I would have preferred never to return to Bala at all. From the very first week I realized that for all the adversities of the school it was my only escape route, and I immediately did all I could to find my way around its strange jumble of countless unwritten rules, and the often almost carnivalesque lawlessness that prevailed. It was a great advantage that I soon began to distinguish myself on the rugby field, perhaps because a dull pain always present within me, although I was unaware of it at the time, enabled me to lower my head and make my way through ranks of opponents better than any of my fellow pupils. The fearlessness I displayed in rugger matches, as I remember them always played under a cold winter sky or in pouring rain, very soon gave me special status without my having to try for it by other means, such as recruiting vassals or enslaving weaker boys. Another crucial factor in my good progress at school was the fact that I never found reading and studying a burden. Far from it, for confined as I had been until now to the Bible in Welsh and homiletic literature, it seemed as if a new door were opening whenever I turned a page. I read everything in the school library, which contained an entirely arbitrary selection of works, and everything I could borrow from my teachers—works on geography and history, travel writings, novels, biographies—and sat up until late in the evening over reference books and atlases. My mind thus gradually created a kind of ideal landscape in which the Arabian desert, the realm of the Aztecs, the continent of Antarctica, the snow-covered Alps, the North-West Passage, the river Congo, and the Crimean peninsula formed a single panorama, populated by all the figures proper to those places. As I could move into that world at any time I liked—in a Latin lesson, during divine service, on the interminable weekends—I never fell into the depression from which so many of the boys at Stower Grange suffered. I felt miserable only when it was time to go home for the holidays. Even on my first return to Bala at half-term on All Saints’ Day, I felt as if my life were once again under the unlucky star which had been my companion as long as I could remember. Gwendolyn had gone further downhill during my two months’ absence. She now lay in bed all day looking fixedly up at the ceiling. Elias came in to see her for a while every morning and every evening, but neither he nor Gwendolyn spoke a single word. It seems to me now, looking back, said Austerlitz, as if they were slowly being killed by the chill in their hearts. I don’t know what kind of illness Gwendolyn died of, and I suspect that she herself could not have said. At least, she had no weapon against it but the curious compulsion which came over her several times a day, and perhaps

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

  After the fall of Acre, the Hospitallers established themselves on the island of Cyprus and in 1310 removed to the island of Rhodes, where massive walls and foundations continue to attest the labor expended upon their fortifications and other buildings. From Rhodes, as a base, they did honorable service. Under the grand master La Valette, the Knights bravely defended Malta against the fleet of Suleymon the Magnificent until Europe felt the thrill of relief caused by the memorable defeat of the Turkish fleet by Don John at Lepanto, 1571. From that time the order continued to decay.510 II. The Knight Templars511 before the fall of Acre had, if possible, a more splendid fame than the Knights of St. John; but the order had a singularly tragic ending in 1312, and was dissolved under moral charges of the most serious nature. From the beginning they were a military body. The order owes its origin to Hugo de Payens (or Payns) and Godfrey St. Omer, who entered Jerusalem riding on one horse, 1119. They were joined by six others who united with them in making a vow to the patriarch of Jerusalem to defend by force of arms pilgrims on their way from the coast to Jerusalem. Baldwin II. gave the brotherhood quarters in his palace on Mount Moriah, near the site of Solomon’s temple, whence the name Templars is derived. Hugo appeared at the council of Troyes in 1128,512 and made such persuasive appeals at the courts of France, England, and Germany, that three hundred knights joined the order. St. Bernard wrote a famous tract in praise of the "new soldiery."513 He says: "Never is an idle word, or useless deed, or immoderate laughter or murmur, if it be but in a whisper, among the Templars allowed to go unpunished. They take no pleasure in the absurd pastime of hawking. Draughts and dice they abhor. Ribald songs and stage plays they eschew as insane follies. They cut their hair close; they are begrimed with dirt and swarthy from the weight of their armor and the heat of the sun. They never dress gayly, and wash seldom. They strive to secure swift and strong horses, but not garnished with ornaments or decked with trappings, thinking of battle and victory, not of pomp and show. Such has God chosen to vigilantly guard the Holy Sepulchre."514

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

  It is the oldest literary document of the apostolic age and bears the marks of the style of James:452 "The apostles and the elder brethren453 unto the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia, greeting: Forasmuch as we have heard, that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, to whom we gave no commandment, it seemed good unto us, having come to be of one accord, to choose out men and send them unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who themselves also shall tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that ye abstain from meats sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication; from which if ye keep yourselves, it shall be well with you. Farewell."454 The decree was delivered by four special messengers, two representing the church at Antioch, Barnabas and Paul, and two from Jerusalem, Judas Barsabbas and Silas (or Silvanus), and read to the Syrian and Cilician churches which were agitated by the controversy.455 The restrictions remained in full force at least eight years, since James reminded Paul of them on his last visit to Jerusalem in 58.456 The Jewish Christians observed them no doubt with few exceptions till the downfall of idolatry,457 and the Oriental church even to this day abstains from blood and things strangled; but the Western church never held itself bound to this part of the decree, or soon abandoned some of its restrictions. Thus by moderation and mutual concession in the spirit of peace and brotherly love a burning controversy was settled, and a split happily avoided. Analysis of the Decree. The decree of the council was a compromise and had two aspects: it was emancipatory, and restrictive. (1.) It was a decree of emancipation of the Gentile disciples from circumcision and the bondage of the ceremonial law. This was the chief point in dispute, and so far the decree was liberal and progressive. It settled the question of principle once and forever. Paul had triumphed. Hereafter the Judaizing doctrine of the necessity of circumcision for salvation was a heresy, a false gospel, or a perversion of the true gospel, and is denounced as such by Paul in the Galatians. (2.) The decree was restrictive and conservative on questions of expediency and comparative indifference to the Gentile Christians. Under this aspect it was a wise and necessary measure for the apostolic age, especially in the East, where the Jewish element prevailed, but not intended for universal and permanent use. In Western churches, as already remarked, it was gradually abandoned, as we learn from Augustine.

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

  Qualifying examinations came and went; I conducted a completely uninspired doctoral study about heroin addiction and wrote a correspondingly uninspired dissertation based upon it; then after two weeks of frantically cramming every bit of trivia that I could into my brain, I walked into a room filled with five unsmiling men seated around a table, sat down, and went through the ordeal that is politely known as a Final Oral Examination, or, more aptly, in a military sense, the defense of ones dissertation. Two of the men at the table were the professors with whom I had worked for years; one of them was easy on me, the other was—I suppose in an attempt to demonstrate impartiality—unrelenting. One of the three psycho-pharmacologists, the only one without tenure, felt compelled to give me a particularly bad time, but the other two, who were full professors, clearly felt he had gone too far in establishing his mastery of the minutia of statistics and research design and eventually forced him to return to a less Rottweilerian level of general civility. After three hours of the intricate intellectual ballet that constituted the defense of my thesis, I left the room and stood in the hallway while they voted; endured the requisite moments of agony; and returned to find the same five men who, hours earlier, had seemed so grim and unfriendly. But this time they were smiling; their hands were outstretched to shake mine; and they all said, to my vast relief and pleasure, Congratulations. The rites of passage in the academic world are arcane and, in their own way, highly romantic, and the tensions and unpleasantries of dissertations and final oral examinations are quickly forgotten in the wonderful moments of the sherry afterward, admission into a very old club, parties of celebration, doctoral gowns, academic rituals, and hearing for the first time “Dr.,” rather than “Miss,” Jamison. I was hired as an assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Psychiatry, got good parking for the first time in my life, joined the faculty club posthaste, and began to work my way up the academic food chain. I had a glorious—as it turns out, too glorious—summer, and, within three months of becoming a professor, I was ravingly psychotic.

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

  Finally, after eternity had ticked to a close, David turned to me, put his arms around me, and said softly, “I say. Rotten luck.” I was overcome with relief; I also was struck by the absolute truth of what he just had said. It was rotten luck, and somebody finally understood. All the while, in the midst of my relief, the small, shredded island of humor that remained in my mind, recorded, on a totally different brain track, that David’s phrasing sounded like something straight out of a P. G. Wodehouse novel. I told him this and reminded him of the Wodehouse character who complained that while it was true that he wasn’t disgruntled, he wasn’t altogether gruntled either. We both laughed for a long time, somewhat nervously to be sure, but some of the awful ice was broken. David could not have been kinder or more accepting; he asked me question after question about what I had been through, what had been most terrible, what had frightened me the most, and what he could do to help me when I was ill. Somehow, after that conversation, everything became easier for me: I felt, for the first time, that I was not alone in dealing with all of the pain and uncertainty, and it was clear to me that he genuinely wanted to understand my illness and to take care of me. He started that night. I explained to him that, due to the relatively rare side effects of lithium that affected both my vision and concentration, I essentially could not read more than a paragraph or two at a time. So he read to me: he read poetry, Wilkie Collins, and Thomas Hardy, with one arm around me in bed, smoothing my hair now and again, as though I were a child. Moment by moment, with infinite patience and tact, his gentleness—and his belief in me, in who I was, and in my basic health—pushed back the nightmare fears of unpredictable moods and violence. It must have been clear to David that I despaired of ever returning to my normal self, because he set about, in his rather systematic way, to reassure me. The next evening, when he came home, he announced that he had arranged dinner invitations from two senior British army officers, both of whom had manic-depressive illness. The evenings that we spent with these two men and their wives were unforgettable. One of the men, a general, was elegant, charming, and very smart; his lucidity was beyond question. He was—other than an occasional restlessness in his eyes and a slightly melancholic, albeit savingly sardonic, tinge to his conversation—indistinguishable from the animated, self-assured, and entertaining types one encounters at London and Oxford dinner parties. The other officer was also wonderful—warm, witty, and, like the general, had a “frightfully, frightfully” upper-crust accent. He, too, had an occasional sad aspect to his eyes, but he was terrific company and has remained, over many years, a close friend.

• From The Girls (2016)

  could see the crawl of waves, the cliffs above looking rusted and dry. A few people were out walking, obvious in performance wear. Most of them had dogs—this was the only beach around where you could take dogs off- leash. I’d seen the same rottweiler a few times, his coat a color deeper than black, his heavy churning run. A pit bull had recently killed a woman in San Francisco. Was it strange that people loved these creatures that could harm them? Or was it understandable—that they maybe even loved animals more for their restraint, for the way they blessed humans with temporary safety. I hustled back inside. I couldn’t stay in Dan’s house forever. Another aide job would turn up soon. But how familiar that was—lifting someone into the warm, persistent waters of a therapy tub. Sitting in the waiting rooms of doctor’s offices, reading articles on the effects of soy on tumors. The importance of filling your plate with a rainbow. The usual wishful lies, tragic in their insufficiency. Did anyone really believe in them? As if the bright flash of your efforts could distract death from coming for you, keep the bull snorting harmlessly after the scarlet flag. — The kettle was whistling, so at first I didn’t hear Sasha come into the kitchen. Her abrupt presence startled me. “Morning,” she said. A streak of spit had dried along her cheek. She was wearing high-cut shorts made of sweatpant material, her socks dotted with tiny hot-pink symbols I realized were skulls. She swallowed, her mouth furry with sleep. “Where’s Julian?” she asked. I tried to hide my surprise. “I heard the car leave awhile ago.” She squinted. “What?” she asked. “Didn’t he tell you he was going?” Sasha saw my pity. Her face tightened. “Of course he told me,” she said after a moment. “Yeah, of course. He’ll be back tomorrow.” So he had left her. My first thought was irritation. I wasn’t a babysitter. Then relief. Sasha was a kid—she shouldn’t go with him to Humboldt. Ride an ATV through barbed-wire checkpoints to some shithole tarp ranch in Garberville just to pick up a duffel bag of weed. I was even a little

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  All the while someone is eating the bread of life and drinking the wine, some dirty fat cockroach of a priest who hides away in the cellar guzzling it, while up above in the light of the street a phantom host touches the lips and the blood is pale as water. And out of the endless torment and misery no miracle comes forth, no microscopic vestige even of relief. Only ideas, pale, attenuated ideas which have to be fattened by slaughter; ideas which come forth like bile, like the guts of a pig when the carcass is ripped open. And so I think what a miracle it would be if this miracle which man attends eternally should turn out to be nothing more than these two enormous turds which the faithful disciple dropped in the bidet . What if at the last moment, when the banquet table is set and the cymbals clash, there should appear suddenly, and wholly without warning, a silver platter on which even the blind could see that there is nothing more, and nothing less, than two enormous lumps of shit. That, I believe would be more miraculous than anything which man has looked forward to. It would be miraculous because it would be undreamed of. It would be more miraculous than even the wildest dream because anybody could imagine the possibility but nobody ever has, and probably nobody ever again will. Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some extrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn I parted company with the young Hindu, after touching him for a few francs, enough for a room. Walking toward Montparnasse I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact. Tomorrow there might be a revolution, a plague, an earthquake; tomorrow there might not be left a single soul to whom one could turn for sympathy, for aid, for faith. It seemed to me that the great calamity had already manifested itself, that I could be no more truly alone than at this very moment. I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer. Even if war were declared, and it were my lot to go, I would grab the bayonet and plunge it, plunge it up to the hilt.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  You’re going to take the train and I’m going to tend to her myself. I’ll go see her just as soon as I leave you. Why, you poor boob, if she ever thought you had tried to run away from her she’d murder you, don’t you realize that? You can’t go back any more. It’s settled.” Anyway, what could go wrong? I asked myself. Kill herself? Tant mieux. When we rolled up to the station we had still about twelve minutes to kill. I didn’t dare to say good-bye to him yet. At the last minute, rattled as he was, I could see him jumping off the train and scooting back to her. Anything might swerve him. A straw. So I dragged him across the street to a bar and I said: “Now you’re going to have a Pernod—your last Pernod and I’m going to pay for it... with your dough.” Something about this remark made him look at me uneasily. He took a big gulp of the Pernod and then, turning to me like an injured dog, he said: “I know I oughtn’t to trust you with all that money, but... but... Oh, well, do what you think best. I don’t want her to kill herself, that’s all.” “Kill herself?” I said. “Not her! You must think a hell of a lot of yourself if you can believe a thing like that. As for the money, though I hate to give it to her, I promise you I’ll go straight to the post office and telegraph it to her. I wouldn’t trust myself with it a minute longer than is necessary.” As I said this I spied a bunch of post cards in a revolving rack. I grabbed one off—a picture of the Eiffel Tower it was—and made him write a few words. “Tell her you’re sailing now. Tell her you love her and that you’ll send for her as soon as you arrive. ... I’ll send it by pneumatique when I go to the post office. And tonight I’ll see her. Everything’ll be Jake, you’ll see.” With that we walked across the street to the station. Only two minutes to go. I felt it was safe now. At the gate I gave him a slap on the back and pointed to the train. I didn’t shake hands with him—he would have slobbered all over me. I just said: “Hurry! She’s going in a minute.” And with that I turned on my heel and marched off. I didn’t even look round to see if he was boarding the train. I was afraid to. I hadn’t thought, all the while I was bundling him off, what I’d do once I was free of him.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some extrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn I parted company with the young Hindu, after touching him for a few francs, enough for a room. Walking toward Montparnasse I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact. Tomorrow there might be a revolution, a plague, an earthquake; tomorrow there might not be left a single soul to whom one could turn for sympathy, for aid, for faith. It seemed to me that the great calamity had already manifested itself, that I could be no more truly alone than at this very moment. I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer. Even if war were declared, and it were my lot to go, I would grab the bayonet and plunge it, plunge it up to the hilt. And if rape were the order of the day then rape I would, and with a vengeance. At this very moment, in the quiet dawn of a new day, was not the earth giddy with crime and distress? Had one single element of man’s nature been altered, vitally, fundamentally altered, by the incessant march of history? By what he calls the better part of his nature, man has been betrayed, that is all. At the extreme limits of his spiritual being man finds himself again naked as a savage. When he finds God, as it were, he has been picked clean: he is a skeleton. One must burrow into life again in order to put on flesh. The word must become flesh; the soul thirsts. On whatever crumb my eye fastens, I will pounce and devour. If to live is the paramount thing, then I will live, even if I must become a cannibal. Heretofore I have been trying to save my precious hide, trying to preserve the few pieces of meat that hid my bones. I am done with that. I have reached the limits of endurance. My back is to the wall; I can retreat no further. As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  In a little while there was a knock on the door. It was Fillmore. Collins was waiting downstairs, he informed me. The two of them, Fillmore and Kruger, slipped their arms under me and hoisted me to my feet. As they dragged me to the elevator Kruger softened up. “It’s for your own good,” he said. “And besides, it wouldn’t be fair to me. You know what a struggle I’ve had all these years. You ought to think about me too.” He was actually on the point of tears. Wretched and miserable as I felt, his words almost made me smile. He was considerably older than I, and even though he was a rotten painter, a rotten artist all the way through, he deserved a break—at least once in a lifetime. “I don’t hold it against you,” I muttered. “I understand how it is.” “You know I always liked you,” he responded. “When you get better you can come back here again … you can stay as long as you like.” “Sure, I know. … I’m not going to croak yet,” I managed to get out. Somehow, when I saw Collins down below my spirits revived. If ever any one seemed to be thoroughly alive, healthy, joyous, magnanimous, it was he. He picked me up as if I were a doll and laid me out on the seat of the cab—gently too, which I appreciated after the way Kruger had manhandled me. When we drove up to the hotel—the hotel that Collins was stopping at—there was a bit of a discussion with the proprietor, during which I lay stretched out on the sofa in the bureau . I could hear Collins saying to the patron that it was nothing … just a little breakdown … be all right in a few days. I saw him put a crisp bill in the man’s hands and then, turning swiftly and lithely, he came back to where I was and said: “Come on, buck up! Don’t let him think you’re croaking.” And with that, he yanked me to my feet and, bracing me with one arm, escorted me to the elevator. Don’t let him think you’re croaking! Obviously it was bad taste to die on people’s hands. One should die in the bosom of his family, in private, as it were. His words were encouraging. I began to see it all as a bad joke. Upstairs, with the door closed, they undressed me and put me between the sheets. “You can’t die now, goddamn it!” said Collins warmly. “You’ll put me in a hole. … Besides, what the hell’s the matter with you? Can’t stand good living? Keep your chin up! You’ll be eating a porterhouse steak in a day or two. You think you’re ill! Wait, by Jesus until you get a dose of syphilis! That’s something to make you worry.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  In a little while there was a knock on the door. It was Fillmore. Collins was waiting downstairs, he informed me. The two of them, Fillmore and Kruger, slipped their arms under me and hoisted me to my feet. As they dragged me to the elevator Kruger softened up. “It’s for your own good,” he said. “And besides, it wouldn’t be fair to me. You know what a struggle I’ve had all these years. You ought to think about me too.” He was actually on the point of tears. Wretched and miserable as I felt, his words almost made me smile. He was considerably older than I, and even though he was a rotten painter, a rotten artist all the way through, he deserved a break—at least once in a lifetime. “I don’t hold it against you,” I muttered. “I understand how it is.” “You know I always liked you,” he responded. “When you get better you can come back here again … you can stay as long as you like.” “Sure, I know. … I’m not going to croak yet,” I managed to get out. Somehow, when I saw Collins down below my spirits revived. If ever any one seemed to be thoroughly alive, healthy, joyous, magnanimous, it was he. He picked me up as if I were a doll and laid me out on the seat of the cab—gently too, which I appreciated after the way Kruger had manhandled me. When we drove up to the hotel—the hotel that Collins was stopping at—there was a bit of a discussion with the proprietor, during which I lay stretched out on the sofa in the bureau . I could hear Collins saying to the patron that it was nothing … just a little breakdown … be all right in a few days. I saw him put a crisp bill in the man’s hands and then, turning swiftly and lithely, he came back to where I was and said: “Come on, buck up! Don’t let him think you’re croaking.” And with that, he yanked me to my feet and, bracing me with one arm, escorted me to the elevator. Don’t let him think you’re croaking! Obviously it was bad taste to die on people’s hands. One should die in the bosom of his family, in private, as it were. His words were encouraging. I began to see it all as a bad joke. Upstairs, with the door closed, they undressed me and put me between the sheets. “You can’t die now, goddamn it!” said Collins warmly. “You’ll put me in a hole. … Besides, what the hell’s the matter with you? Can’t stand good living? Keep your chin up! You’ll be eating a porterhouse steak in a day or two. You think you’re ill! Wait, by Jesus until you get a dose of syphilis! That’s something to make you worry.

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

  Doctors, of course, need first to heal themselves; but they also need accessible, competent treatment that allows them to heal. The medical and administrative system that harbors them must be one that encourages treatment, provides reasonable guidelines for supervised practice, but also one that does not tolerate incompetence or jeopardize patient care. Doctors, as my chairman is fond of pointing out, are there to treat patients; patients never should have to pay—either literally or medically—for the problems and sufferings of their doctors. I strongly agree with him about this; so it was not without a sense of dread that I waited for his response to my telling him that I was being treated for manic-depressive illness, and that I needed to discuss the issue of my hospital privileges with him. I watched his face for some indication of how he felt. Suddenly, he reached across the table, put his hand on mine, and smiled. “Kay, dear,” he said, “I know you have manic-depressive illness.” He paused, and then laughed. “If we got rid of all of the manic-depressives on the medical school faculty, not only would we have a much smaller faculty, it would also be a far more boring one.” A Life in Moods [image file=image_rsrcW1.jpg] We are all, as Byron put it, differently organized. We each move within the restraints of our temperament and live up only partially to its possibilities. Thirty years of living with manic-depressive illness has made me increasingly aware of both the restraints and possibilities that come with it. The ominous, dark, and deathful quality that I felt as a young child watching the high clear skies fill with smoke and flames is always there, somehow laced into the beauty and vitality of life. That darkness is an integral part of who I am, and it takes no effort of imagination on my part to remember the months of relentless blackness and exhaustion, or the terrible efforts it took in order to teach, read, write, see patients, and keep relationships alive. More deeply layered over but all too readily summoned up with the first trace of depression are the unforgettable images of violence, utter madness, mortifying behavior, and moods savage to experience, and even more disturbingly brutal in their effects upon others. Yet however genuinely dreadful these moods and memories have been, they have always been offset by the elation and vitality of others; and whenever a mild and gentlish wave of brilliant and bubbling manic enthusiasm comes over me, I am transported by its exuberance—as surely as one is transported by a pungent scent into a world of profound recollection—to earlier, more intense and passionate times. The vividness that mania infuses into one’s experiences of life creates strong, keenly recollected states, much as war must, and love and early memories surely do. Because of this, there is now, for me, a rather bittersweet exchange of a comfortable and settled present existence for a troubled but intensely lived past.

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

  Doctors, of course, need first to heal themselves; but they also need accessible, competent treatment that allows them to heal. The medical and administrative system that harbors them must be one that encourages treatment, provides reasonable guidelines for supervised practice, but also one that does not tolerate incompetence or jeopardize patient care. Doctors, as my chairman is fond of pointing out, are there to treat patients; patients never should have to pay—either literally or medically—for the problems and sufferings of their doctors. I strongly agree with him about this; so it was not without a sense of dread that I waited for his response to my telling him that I was being treated for manic-depressive illness, and that I needed to discuss the issue of my hospital privileges with him. I watched his face for some indication of how he felt. Suddenly, he reached across the table, put his hand on mine, and smiled. “Kay, dear,” he said, “I know you have manic-depressive illness.” He paused, and then laughed. “If we got rid of all of the manic-depressives on the medical school faculty, not only would we have a much smaller faculty, it would also be a far more boring one.” A Life in Moods [image file=image_rsrcW1.jpg] We are all, as Byron put it, differently organized. We each move within the restraints of our temperament and live up only partially to its possibilities. Thirty years of living with manic-depressive illness has made me increasingly aware of both the restraints and possibilities that come with it. The ominous, dark, and deathful quality that I felt as a young child watching the high clear skies fill with smoke and flames is always there, somehow laced into the beauty and vitality of life. That darkness is an integral part of who I am, and it takes no effort of imagination on my part to remember the months of relentless blackness and exhaustion, or the terrible efforts it took in order to teach, read, write, see patients, and keep relationships alive. More deeply layered over but all too readily summoned up with the first trace of depression are the unforgettable images of violence, utter madness, mortifying behavior, and moods savage to experience, and even more disturbingly brutal in their effects upon others. Yet however genuinely dreadful these moods and memories have been, they have always been offset by the elation and vitality of others; and whenever a mild and gentlish wave of brilliant and bubbling manic enthusiasm comes over me, I am transported by its exuberance—as surely as one is transported by a pungent scent into a world of profound recollection—to earlier, more intense and passionate times. The vividness that mania infuses into one’s experiences of life creates strong, keenly recollected states, much as war must, and love and early memories surely do. Because of this, there is now, for me, a rather bittersweet exchange of a comfortable and settled present existence for a troubled but intensely lived past.

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

  Finally, after eternity had ticked to a close, David turned to me, put his arms around me, and said softly, “I say. Rotten luck.” I was overcome with relief; I also was struck by the absolute truth of what he just had said. It was rotten luck, and somebody finally understood. All the while, in the midst of my relief, the small, shredded island of humor that remained in my mind, recorded, on a totally different brain track, that David’s phrasing sounded like something straight out of a P. G. Wodehouse novel. I told him this and reminded him of the Wodehouse character who complained that while it was true that he wasn’t disgruntled, he wasn’t altogether gruntled either. We both laughed for a long time, somewhat nervously to be sure, but some of the awful ice was broken. David could not have been kinder or more accepting; he asked me question after question about what I had been through, what had been most terrible, what had frightened me the most, and what he could do to help me when I was ill. Somehow, after that conversation, everything became easier for me: I felt, for the first time, that I was not alone in dealing with all of the pain and uncertainty, and it was clear to me that he genuinely wanted to understand my illness and to take care of me. He started that night. I explained to him that, due to the relatively rare side effects of lithium that affected both my vision and concentration, I essentially could not read more than a paragraph or two at a time. So he read to me: he read poetry, Wilkie Collins, and Thomas Hardy, with one arm around me in bed, smoothing my hair now and again, as though I were a child. Moment by moment, with infinite patience and tact, his gentleness—and his belief in me, in who I was, and in my basic health—pushed back the nightmare fears of unpredictable moods and violence. It must have been clear to David that I despaired of ever returning to my normal self, because he set about, in his rather systematic way, to reassure me. The next evening, when he came home, he announced that he had arranged dinner invitations from two senior British army officers, both of whom had manic-depressive illness. The evenings that we spent with these two men and their wives were unforgettable. One of the men, a general, was elegant, charming, and very smart; his lucidity was beyond question. He was—other than an occasional restlessness in his eyes and a slightly melancholic, albeit savingly sardonic, tinge to his conversation—indistinguishable from the animated, self-assured, and entertaining types one encounters at London and Oxford dinner parties. The other officer was also wonderful—warm, witty, and, like the general, had a “frightfully, frightfully” upper-crust accent. He, too, had an occasional sad aspect to his eyes, but he was terrific company and has remained, over many years, a close friend.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  At once he brought forth the sheets on which were written the names of the students, the hours, the classes, etc., all in a meticulous hand. He told me how much coal and wood I was allowed and after that he promptly informed me that I was at liberty to do as I pleased in my spare time. This last was the first good thing I had heard him say. It sounded so reassuring that I quickly said a prayer for France—for the army and for the navy, the educational system, the bistros , the whole goddamned works . This folderol completed, he rang a little bell, whereupon the hunchback promptly appeared to escort me to the office of M. l’Econome. Here the atmosphere was somewhat different. More like a freight station, with bills of lading and rubber stamps everywhere, and pasty-faced clerks scribbling away with broken pens in huge, cumbersome ledgers. My dole of coal and wood portioned out, off we marched, the hunchback and I, with a wheelbarrow, toward the dormitory. I was to have a room on the top floor, in the same wing as the pions . The situation was taking on a humorous aspect. I didn’t know what the hell to expect next. Perhaps a spittoon. The whole thing smacked very much of preparation for a campaign; the only things missing were a knapsack and rifle—and a brass slug. The room assigned me was rather large, with a small stove to which was attached a crooked pipe that made an elbow just over the iron cot. A big chest for the coal and wood stood near the door. The windows gave out on a row of forlorn little houses all made of stone in which lived the grocer, the baker, the shoemaker, the butcher, etc.—all imbecilic-looking clodhoppers. I glanced over the rooftops toward the bare hills where a train was clattering. The whistle of the locomotive screamed mournfully and hysterically. After the hunchback had made the fire for me I inquired about the grub. It was not quite time for dinner. I flopped on the bed, with my overcoat on, and pulled the covers over me. Beside me was the eternal rickety night table in which the piss pot is hidden away. I stood the alarm on the table and watched the minutes ticking off. Into the well of the room a bluish light filtered in from the street. I listened to the trucks rattling by as I gazed vacantly at the stove pipe, at the elbow where it was held together with bits of wire. The coal chest intrigued me. Never in my life had I occupied a room with a coal chest. And never in my life had I built a fire or taught children. Nor, for that matter, never in my life had I worked without pay.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  The stubs were lying there in front of us—six francs, four-fifty, seven francs, two-fifty—I was counting them up mechanically and wondering too at the same time if I would like it better being a bartender. Often like that, when she was talking to me, gushing about Russia, the future, love, and all that crap, I’d get to thinking about the most irrelevant things, about shining shoes or being a lavatory attendant, particularly I suppose because it was so cosy in these joints that she dragged me to and it never occurred to me that I’d be stone sober and perhaps old and bent… no, I imagined always that the future, however modest, would be in just this sort of ambiance, with the same tunes playing through my head and the glasses clinking and behind every shapely ass a trail of perfume a yard wide that would take the stink out of life, even downstairs in the lavabo . The strange thing is it never spoiled me trotting around to the swell bars with her like that. It was hard to leave her, certainly. I used to lead her around to the porch of a church near the office and standing there in the dark we’d take a last embrace, she whispering to me “Jesus, what am I going to do now?” She wanted me to quit the job so as I could make love night and day; she didn’t even care about Russia any more, just so long as we were together. But the moment I left her my head cleared. It was another kind of music, not so croony but good just the same, which greeted my ears when I pushed through the swinging door. And another kind of perfume, not just a yard wide, but omnipresent, a sort of sweat and patchouli that seemed to come from the machines. Coming in with a skinful, as I usually did, it was like dropping suddenly to a low altitude. Generally I made a beeline for the toilet—that braced me up rather. It was a little cooler there, or else the sound of water running made it seem so. It was always a cold douche, the toilet. It was real. Before you got inside you had to pass a line of Frenchmen peeling off their clothes. Ugh! but they stank, those devils! And they were well paid for it, too. But there they were, stripped down, some in long underwear, some with beards, most of them pale, skinny rats with lead in their veins. Inside the toilet you could take an inventory of their idle thoughts. The walls were crowded with sketches and epithets, all of them jocosely obscene, easy to understand, and on the whole rather jolly and sympathetic. It must have required a ladder to reach certain spots, but I suppose it was worth while doing it even looking at it from just the psychological viewpoint.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I was getting panicky myself. Everything had happened so quickly that it was impossible to grasp the nature of the situation in full. I walked away from the station in a kind of delicious stupor—with the post card in my hand. I stood against a lamppost and read it over. It sounded preposterous. I read it again, to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming, and then I tore it up and threw it in the gutter. I looked around uneasily, half expecting to see Ginette coming after me with a tomahawk. Nobody was following me. I started walking leisurely toward the Place Lafayette. It was a beautiful day, as I had observed earlier. Light, puffy clouds above, sailing with the wind. The awnings flapping. Paris had never looked so good to me; I almost felt sorry that I had shipped the poor bugger off. At the Place Lafayette I sat down facing the church and stared at the clock tower; it’s not such a wonderful piece of architecture, but that blue in the dial face always fascinated me. It was bluer than ever today. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Unless he were crazy enough to write her a letter, explaining everything, Ginette need never know what had happened. And even if she did learn that he had left her 2,500 francs or so she couldn’t prove it. I could always say that he imagined it. A guy who was crazy enough to walk off without even a hat was crazy enough to invent the 2,500 francs, or whatever it was. How much was it, anyhow?, I wondered. My pockets were sagging with the weight of it. I hauled it all out and counted it carefully. There was exactly 2,875 francs and 35 centimes. More than I had thought. The 75 francs and 35 centimes had to be gotten rid of. I wanted an even sum—a clean 2,800 francs. Just then I saw a cab pulling up to the curb. A woman stepped out with a white poodle dog in her hands; the dog was peeing over her silk dress. The idea of taking a dog for a ride got me sore. I’m as good as her dog, I said to myself, and with that I gave the driver a sign and told him to drive me through the Bois. He wanted to know where exactly. “Anywhere,” I said. “Go through the Bois, go all around it—and take your time, I’m in no hurry.” I sank back and let the houses whizz by, the jagged roofs, the chimney pots, the colored walls, the urinals, the dizzy carrefours . Passing the Rond-Point I thought I’d go downstairs and take a leak. No telling what might happen down there. I told the driver to wait. It was the first time in my life I had let a cab wait while I took a leak. How much can you waste that way? Not very much.

• From The Girls (2016)

  high-pitched complaints, all her questions squeezed to a panicked register. What kind of person breaks into a neighbor’s house? A family I’d known my whole life? “For no reason,” she added shrilly. A pause. “You think I haven’t asked her? You think I haven’t tried?” Silence. “Oh, sure, right, I bet. You want to try?” And so I was sent to Palo Alto. — I spent two weeks at my father’s apartment. Across from a Denny’s, the Portofino Apartments as blocky and empty as my mother’s house was sprawling and dense. Tamar and my father had moved into the biggest unit, and everywhere were the still lifes of adulthood she had so obviously arranged: a bowl of waxed fruit on the counter, the bar cart with its unopened bottles of liquor. The carpet that held the bland tracks of the vacuum. Suzanne would forget me, I thought, the ranch would hurtle on without me and I’d have nothing. My sense of persecution gobbled up and grew fat off these worries. Suzanne was like a soldier’s hometown sweetheart, made gauzy and perfect by distance. But maybe part of me was relieved. To take some time away. The Dutton house had spooked me, the blank cast I’d seen in Suzanne’s face. These were little bites, little inward shifts and discomforts, but even so, they were there. What had I expected, living with my father and Tamar? That my father would try to sleuth out the source of my behavior? That he would punish me, act like a father? He seemed to feel punishment was a right he’d relinquished and treated me with the courtly politeness you’d extend to an aging parent. He startled when he first saw me—it had been over two months. He seemed to remember that he should hug me and made a lurching step in my direction. I noticed a new bunching at his ears, and his cowboy shirt was one I had never seen before. I knew I looked different, too. My hair was longer and wild at the edges, like Suzanne’s. My ranch dress was so worn I could hook my thumb through the sleeve. My father made a move

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  I had promised a lot of things—but that was only to keep him quiet. As for facing Ginette, I had about as little courage for it as he had. I was getting panicky myself. Everything had happened so quickly that it was impossible to grasp the nature of the situation in full. I walked away from the station in a kind of delicious stupor—with the post card in my hand. I stood against a lamppost and read it over. It sounded preposterous. I read it again, to make sure that I wasn’t dreaming, and then I tore it up and threw it in the gutter. I looked around uneasily, half expecting to see Ginette coming after me with a tomahawk. Nobody was following me. I started walking leisurely toward the Place Lafayette. It was a beautiful day, as I had observed earlier. Light, puffy clouds above, sailing with the wind. The awnings flapping. Paris had never looked so good to me; I almost felt sorry that I had shipped the poor bugger off. At the Place Lafayette I sat down facing the church and stared at the clock tower; it’s not such a wonderful piece of architecture, but that blue in the dial face always fascinated me. It was bluer than ever today. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Unless he were crazy enough to write her a letter, explaining everything, Ginette need never know what had happened. And even if she did learn that he had left her 2,500 francs or so she couldn’t prove it. I could always say that he imagined it. A guy who was crazy enough to walk off without even a hat was crazy enough to invent the 2,500 francs, or whatever it was. How much was it, anyhow?, I wondered. My pockets were sagging with the weight of it. I hauled it all out and counted it carefully. There was exactly 2,875 francs and 35 centimes. More than I had thought. The 75 francs and 35 centimes had to be gotten rid of. I wanted an even sum—a clean 2,800 francs. Just then I saw a cab pulling up to the curb. A woman stepped out with a white poodle dog in her hands; the dog was peeing over her silk dress. The idea of taking a dog for a ride got me sore. I’m as good as her dog, I said to myself, and with that I gave the driver a sign and told him to drive me through the Bois. He wanted to know where exactly. “Anywhere,” I said. “Go through the Bois, go all around it—and take your time, I’m in no hurry.” I sank back and let the houses whizz by, the jagged roofs, the chimney pots, the colored walls, the urinals, the dizzy carrefours. Passing the Rond-Point I thought I’d go downstairs and take a leak.