Resentment

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 The Things They Carried (1990)

  —really hate—is all those whiner-vets. Guys sniveling about how they didn't get any parades. Such absolute crap. I mean, who in his right mind wants a parade? Or getting his back clapped by a bunch of patriotic idiots who don't know jack about what it feels like to kill people or get shot at or sleep in the rain or watch your buddy go down underneath the mud? Who needs it? Anyhow, I'm basically A-Okay. Home free!! So why not come down for a visit sometime and we'll chase pussy and shoot the breeze and tell each other old war lies? A good long bull session, you know? I felt it coming, and near the end of the letter it came. He explained that he had read my first book, Jf 7 Die in a Combat Zone, which he liked except for the "bleeding-heart political parts." For half a page he talked about how much the book had meant to him, how it brought back all kinds of memories, the villes and paddies and rivers, and how he recognized most of the characters, including himself, even though almost all of the names were changed. Then Bowker came straight out with it: What you should do, Tim, is write a story about a guy who feels like he got zapped over in that shithole. A guy who can't get his act together and just drives around town all day and can't think of any damn place to go and doesn't know how to get there anyway. This guy wants to talk about it, but he can’t ... If you want, you can use the stuff in this letter. (But not my real name, okay?) I'd write it myself except I can't ever find any words, if you know what I mean, and I can't figure out what exactly to say. Something about the field that night. The way Kiowa just disappeared into the crud. You were there— you can tell it. Norman Bowker's letter hit me hard. For years I'd felt a certain smugness about how easily I had made the shift from war to peace. A nice smooth glide—no flashbacks or midnight sweats. The war was over, after all. And the thing to do was go on. So I took pride in sliding gracefully from Vietnam to graduate school, from Quang Ngai to Harvard, from one world to another. In ordinary conversation I never spoke much about the war, certainly not in detail, and yet ever since my return I had been talking about it virtually nonstop through my writing. Telling stories seemed a natural, inevitable process, like clearing the throat. Partly catharsis, partly communication, it was a way of grabbing people by the shirt and explaining exactly what had happened to me, how I'd allowed myself to get dragged into a wrong war, all the mistakes I'd made, all the terrible things I had seen and done.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “We are jumping,” Dederich said, “from one nuptial or marital or romantic or erotic adventure to the next, from a platform of love rather than a platform of hatred.” He later told a reporter for the San Raphael Independent Journal , “I thought, wouldn’t it be funny to perform some emotional surgery on people who were getting along pretty well.” Mass divorces were performed, followed by enormous wedding ceremonies called Love Matches of ten or more new partners vowing their commitment for a maximum of three years. Because children did not spend much time with their parents, Changing Partners had little or no effect on us. It made no difference in our day-to-day routines and was not a part of our lives in any concrete sense. I imagined it to be similar to the head-shaving films I’d seen, a party-like event. Only this time everyone danced in celebration of the divorces and remarriages. I also thought maybe they’d run out of the best men when it was my mother’s turn to choose. It turned out that I was not too far off the mark. Years later Theresa told me she had not wanted to participate at the beginning, when the new regimen was still voluntary and there were a variety of possible husbands from which to choose. Instead, she’d watched from the sidelines, amused, thinking it just a passing phase. Once it became mandatory to change partners if married or if single find a mate pronto, men she might have considered had already been snatched up. She was gamed incessantly for putting too much thought into the matter and aggressively hounded to pick from the men who were left. Each time she turned down a suggestion, the game became more vicious. She was being too picky, members shrieked. Who did she think she was? There was nothing special about Theresa, her status. Backed into a corner, both she and Larry entered their relationship reluctantly. They were married in a ceremony with several other remaining couples. “I did not really want to marry him,” Theresa told me years later. “He was a friend who I saw as more of a father figure.” Their pairing lasted one year. Chapter ThirteenA Friend “No! No! No!” The sounds of someone pounding the wall stopped me. I watched as a young girl, writhing in the grip of a temper tantrum, came into view. A demonstrator pulled at the girl’s arms, which were twisted above her head, and dragged her body across the carpet. “I won’t wear a dress! I won’t!” While she screamed, she managed to free one arm, which she used to claw at the floor. “Your mother’s coming to visit, and you will put on a dress for her,” the demonstrator said. The girl’s head flew back. Her body arched as she tried to dig her short nails into the demonstrator’s wrist. Another girl returned to the room with three dresses, all of them ruffled and feminine. I wondered where they came from.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  ἁλμῦρός, a, cv, (ἅλμη) salt, briny, Hom. only in Od., and always in phrase, ἁλμυρὸν ὕδωρ the salt sea-water, 4. 511, etc.; ἅλμ. πόντος Hes. Th. 107; καθ᾽ ἅλμ. ἅλα Epich. 26 Ahr., Eur. Tro. 76; ἅλμ. βένθεα Pind. O. 7. 105; ἅλμ. ποταμός, of the Hellespont, Hdt. 7. 35. 2. in Att. Prose, of taste, salt, Xen. Cyr. 6. 2, 31; αἷμα Plat. Tim. 84 A; of drinking-water, brackish, Thuc. 4. 26; of soil, Theophr. C. P. 6. Io, I; opp. to μωρός (insipid), Com. Anon. 220. 3. metaph. bitter, distasteful, like Lat. amarus, ἀκοή, γειτόνημα Plat. Phaedr. 243 D, Lege. 705 A, Alcm. 116, cf. Ath. 121 E; ἁλμυρὰ κλαίειν to weep bitterly, Theocr. 23. 34. b. piquant, Plut. 2. 685 E. ἁλμῦρότης, ητος, ἡ, saltness, Hipp. 1200 A, Arist. Meteor. 2. 3, 13. ἁλμῦρώδης, es, (εἶδος) saltish, Hipp. Epid. τ. 979, Theophr. ἁλμώδης, ες, (ἅλμη, εἶδος) saltish, Hipp. Coac. 157, Xen. Oec. 20,12, etc. ἀλοάω, Att., Ep. ἀλοιάω Theocr. Το. 48: Ep. impf. ἀλοία Il. : fut. -now Lxx: aor. ἠλόησα Ar. Ran. 149, but part. ἀλοάσας [Go] Pherecr. Inv. 3; Ep. ἠλοίησα [ἀπ--] Il., (συν--) Theocr. :—Pass., fut. -ηθήσομαι LXX: aor. 7A079nv Polyb. 10. 12, 9, Plut., but part. ἀλοᾶθείς Theophr. C. P. 4. 6, 5: perf. ἠλόημαι Ib. 4. 12, 9 (Cod. Urb.): cf. ἀπ--, κατ--, συν-αλοάω.--- There is also found a poét. aor. part. ἀλοίσας (as if from ἀλοίω) Epigr. ap. Diog. ἵν. 7. 31, and ἤλοισε has been suggested in Soph. Fr. 21 ; cf. κατ- αλοάω. (V. sub ἀλέω.) To thresh, thresh out, Plat. Theag. 124 A, Xen. Oec. 18, 2. 2. to thresh, smite, γῆν χερσὶν ἀλοία Il. g. 568, cf. Epigr. 1. c.: to cudgel, beat, thrash, Soph. Fr. 21, Ar. Ran. 149, Thesm. 25 ΤΙ. to tread round, like cattle when treading out the corn, vy. Schol. Ar. Thesm. 2. ἄ-λοβος, ov, with a lobe wanting’, of the livers of victims, aA. ἱερά Xen. Hell. 3. 4, 15, etc., v. Ellendt Arr. An. 7. 18. ἀλογεύομαι, Dep. to play the fool, Cic. Att. 6. 4, 3; al. ἀλλογνοούμενα. ἀλογέω, fut. ἤσω, to be ἄλογος, to pay no regard to a thing, Lat. ra- tionem non habere, c. dat., εἰ δέ poe οὐκ ἐπέεσσ᾽ ἐπιπείσεται, GAN ἀλογήσει 1]. 15. 162; c. gen. to be disregardful of, πάσης συμβουλίης Hdt. 3. 125 ; τῶν ἐντολέων Id. 8. 46; absol., Ib. 116. II. Pass. to be disregarded, Diog. L. 1. 32: to reckon without one’s host, to miscalculate, Polyb. 8. 2, 4., 28. 9, 8. 2. to be out of one’s senses, Luc. Ocyp. 143. 3. to offend against the laws of language, E. M. 405. 34, etc. ἀλόγημα, ατος, τό, a mishap, Polyb. 9.16, 5. - ἀλογητέον, verb. Adj. one must take no heed of, τινός Philo 1. 312. ἀλόγητος, ov, disregarded, Schol. Eur. Or. 1156.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “The woman who founded the Summit Lighthouse, Elizabeth Clare Prophet, is just far out,” Theresa said and thrust a brochure in front of me, obscuring the pages of the novel I’d been reading. We were preparing for our road trip down south to Calabasas to visit the third and last commune on our list. Ray had grown ever more tense as time was running out for us. Jane and her husband would be back soon to reclaim their apartment. The cover of the brochure that Theresa had placed on my open book portrayed a woman who looked to be in her forties smiling with an overbite and carefully coiffed curly hair. She wore a pale pink suit jacket. The lighting around her appeared fuzzy and soft, giving the impression of otherworldliness. I tossed the brochure aside and resumed reading. “Look inside the brochure, Celena,” Theresa urged. She picked it up and handed it back to me. “They have a great private school.” I sighed and opened the pamphlet, examining the picture Theresa pointed at. Kids in prep school uniforms, all clean cut, smiled stiffly at the camera. Initially I’d thought that the Summit Lighthouse was our best option because it meant being near LA and family, but now I wasn’t so sure. “She channels the ascended masters. Did you know that Jesus is one of the ascended masters?” I couldn’t have cared less, but I was going to hear about it anyway. The more Theresa rattled on about the community, the less promising it sounded. The private school focused on activities like meditation and lessons on karma, angels, and, of course, the ascended masters. Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the head of it all, smiled wistfully in every picture. I imagined dead saints talking through her and concluded that I would petition my father to come get me if we wound up with these people. Over the course of a year, I had become increasingly irritated with Theresa, but that irritation had been recently suspended when Synanon management had threatened to keep Sara and me after our parents announced they were leaving. The idea of possibly not seeing my mother again had left me stunned and terror-stricken. Then there was the feeling of relief and exaltation when we learned that, in fact, Synanon was not going to keep us, and at long last I was finally going to leave the cult. I had been excited over our move to Santa Clara. But our immersion into mainstream society was in danger of curtailment due to the choices of Theresa and Ray. My irritation had returned. How many times had I told Theresa that I did not want to be placed in a private school? The word private held negative connotations for me. I did not want to be part of a school that had an unorthodox way of doing things. Who knew what went on in these private schools?

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Jorgenson's lip twitched. "No, I botched it. Period. Got all frozen up, I guess. The noise and shooting and everything—my first firefight—I just couldn't handle it ... When I heard about the shock, the gangrene, I felt like ... | felt miserable. Nightmares, too. I kept seeing you lying out there, heard you screaming, but it was like my legs were filled up with sand, they didn't work. I'd keep trying but I couldn't make my goddamn /egs work." He made a small sound in his throat, something low and feathery, and for a second I was afraid he might bawl. That would've ended it. I would've patted his shoulder and told him to forget it. But he kept control. He swallowed whatever the sound was and forced a smile and tried to shake my hand. It gave me an excuse to glare at him. "It's not that easy," I said. "Tim, I can't go back and do things over." "My ass." Jorgenson kept pushing his hand out at me. He looked so earnest, so sad and hurt, that it almost made me feel guilty. Not quite, though. After a second I muttered something and got into my jeep and put it to the floor and left him standing there. I hated him for making me stop hating him. Something had gone wrong. I'd come to this war a quiet, thoughtful sort of person, a college grad, Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude, all the credentials, but after seven months in the bush I realized that those high, civilized trappings had somehow been crushed under the weight of the simple daily realities. I'd turned mean inside. Even a little cruel at times. For all my education, all my fine liberal values, I now felt a deep coldness inside me, something dark and beyond reason. It's a hard thing to admit, even to myself, but I was capable of evil. I wanted to hurt Bobby Jorgenson the way he'd hurt me. For weeks it had been a vow—I'll get him, I'll get him

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  The three men moved with slow, heavy steps. It was hard to keep balance. Their boots sank into the ooze, which produced a powerful downward suction, and with each step they would have to pull up hard to break the hold. The rain made quick dents in the water, like tiny mouths, and the stink was everywhere. When they reached the river, they shifted a few meters to the north and began wading back up the field. Occasionally they used their weapons to test the bottom, but mostly they just searched with their feet. "A classic case," Azar was saying. "Biting the dirt, so to speak, that tells the story." "Enough," Bowker said. "Like those old cowboy movies. One more redskin bites the dirt." "I'm serious, man. Zip it shut." Azar smiled and said, "Classic." The morning was cold and wet. They had not slept during the night, not even for a few moments, and all three of them were feeling the tension as they moved across the field toward the river. There was nothing they could do for Kiowa. Just find him and slide him aboard a chopper. Whenever a man died it was always the same, a desire to get it over with quickly, no frills or ceremony, and what they wanted now was to head for a ville and get under a roof and forget what had happened during the night. Halfway across the field Mitchell Sanders stopped. He stood for a moment with his eyes shut, feeling along the bottom with a foot, then he passed his weapon over to Norman Bowker and reached down into the muck. After a second he hauled up a scummy green rucksack. The three men did not speak for a time. The pack was heavy with mud and water, dead-looking. Inside were a pair of moccasins and an illustrated New Testament. "Well," Mitchell Sanders finally said, "the guy's around here somewhere." "Better tell the LT." "Screw him." "Yeah, but—" "Some lieutenant," Sanders said. "Camps us in a toilet. Man don't know shit." "Nobody knew," Bowker said. "Maybe so, maybe not. Ten billion places we could've set up last night, the man picks a latrine." Norman Bowker stared down at the rucksack. It was made of dark green nylon with an aluminum frame, but now it had the curious look of flesh. "It wasn't the LT's fault," Bowker said quietly. "Whose then?" "Nobody's. Nobody knew till afterward."

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  The epiphany of Krishna’s mother became my own enlightenment in regard to my capabilities. I did not have to force myself to make sense of something far beyond my comprehension. “Theresa, can I keep this book?” I asked. “Yes. It’s for you.” For weeks I carried the Bhaghavad Gita wherever I went and even slept with it, comforted by the pictures. Sometimes I tried to read the Hindu bible, but the ideas and philosophies expressed in the spiritual text were too complex for me to grasp. In an attempt to spend time with Theresa while escaping the demonstrators’ scrutiny, I took to hanging around the laundry room, helping her with the endless mounds of washing. Gwyn would be given a hand towel or washcloth to fold, and Theresa always made a big deal over the rumpled cloth when Gwyn was done “folding” it. Whenever I wanted to be with Theresa, it seemed Gwyn was there, too, and I began to resent her. I thought of my mother and me as an already complete unit, like a hand with all five digits. Gwyn was an extra finger, dangling, useless and in the way. The other children found my association with the “retarded” girl as something more about which to tease me. At mealtimes the demonstrators made allowances for me and other children to join Theresa and Gwyn at their table because Gwyn was technically part of the school. But watching Gwyn eat made me nauseated. She didn’t close her mouth when she chewed, and I often got sprayed with her half-masticated food and saliva. Flecks of her dinner inevitably flew out of her open mouth when she sneezed, landing near my plate. At some point she would bite her tongue and yell in pain or purposely knock over a glass of milk, smirking when Theresa rushed to clean it up. The specialness of having Theresa around began to wear off now that almost all of our interactions involved her needy charge. I stopped by the laundry room less often and chose to sit elsewhere at mealtimes when I could. A distance formed between us. Chapter EighteenS ynanon Kid “Ooh, ahh. Yeah, baby. Do it to me,” Melissa moaned as the voice of the Barbie doll she held. Bending and twisting, she pried the doll’s stiff rubbery legs apart. The short skirt, which barely covered the doll’s crotch stretched up while the plastic hip joints strained in their sockets. Every time Melissa moaned for the doll, she contorted her own face into a strained grimace. “There’s a giant penis coming up out of the manhole,” she said. “And it’s fucking her. She likes it.” I stared down at the fuzz of carpet where the pretend manhole was supposed to be. It wasn’t hard to imagine the manhole but I couldn’t picture the penis. By then I had seen plenty of erections in the Playboy , Penthouse and Hustler magazines that some of the adults left lying around.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  We get closer to the town, and Lecia starts rifling her purse for hand unguents and lip gloss and chewing gum. She wants a Coke. She wants to stop and check in with her office by pay phone. I’d expected all this. The motel we booked—a Norman Bates–type Econo-lodge—has the only vacancy this last minute. At the check-in counter, the pinwheel mints have melted into their wrappers, their inner whirls gone smudgy pink. The TV doesn’t get cable, and the bathroom sink has a tiny cup of the type dentists give you for antiseptic. In the dusty windowsills lie papery gray moths. Sliding off her shades, Lecia peels back the flowered spread and stares down at a rough blanket the color of mustard. I was going to take a nap, she says, but there must be all species of bed louse here. So when I head off to find our grade school, she shoulders her massive purse like a duffel bag, saying, Let’s march. We’re not heading into battle. War’d be easier for me, she says, and she follows me into the blinding sunshine. It’s strange. She’s always been our navigator. You could lower her into a jungle with nary a compass, and she could machete her way out. Yet here, I have an uncanny sense where things lie. There’s no map in my head either, just my torso leaning one direction or another. I follow a path straight as a spear to the pale brick schoolhouse, which now houses town offices. The heavy door closes behind us, and we’re sealed in with the odor of floor wax. As we look up the short stairway leading to a wall of coat hooks, it so exactly matches my recall that I feel a shock. It happened. Lecia seems enervated all of a sudden. She wants to go back to the motel, see if we can find something halfway decent to eat. I knew this would be hard for you, I say. She stares at me with cool brown eyes, saying, Then why the fuck did you bring me here? Back on the main drag, tourists are gleefully buying fool’s gold and Indian arrowheads and turquoise earrings. The house we lived in burnt to the ground, we find out. A neighbor lady doesn’t recall us, but she names the principal who lived across the road. Maneuvering back to the hotel, I walk us smack against the bar Mother once owned—a gift shop now. Or I claim it’s the same bar. Lecia says it isn’t. Hell no.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “Oh, but Sophie’s such a good friend,” my mother said, squatting to our level and taking both our hands. “She’s all prepared to show you around and explain how everything works, and she’s been looking forward to your arrival. The two of you will be sharing a room, and soon you’ll enjoy each other’s company.” I didn’t want to share a room with Sophie, and I didn’t want to be a beautiful Synanon girl. I stared at Sophie, doubtful. It seemed she wanted to be me. I had not considered it possible to be given a good friend. I decided that I hated her.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  In my mind, Ray belonged in Synanon, and leaving the community meant leaving him behind too. Other times I worried that my mother stayed because she was afraid she would not be allowed to leave. Not only did I focus on Theresa’s flaws, but I also began to observe the demonstrators in a much more cynical manner. Feeling less intimidated, I started to view their arbitrary rules and punishments with contempt. Having resettled into our normal routines after the move, games increased to a daily event. To whip us back into shape, we were required to participate in a mini stew, a game of twenty-four hours’ duration. The stew started after breakfast, and we were off to a fierce start of attacks and counterattacks, which frittered away into jealous squabbles between some of the girls about who had stolen whose friend. Next came talks between couples who wanted to break up, each person backed by his or her best friends. “I don’t want to go out with you!” one girl yelled at her boyfriend. “Why?” he demanded. She leaned forward, lips peeled away from her teeth. “Look, sucker, I never wanted to be your girlfriend in the first place.” This remark brought on a backlash from the humiliated boyfriend’s friends. “You fucking slut! He’s glad to be rid of your stupid pussy. He was doing you a favor!” “Yeah. You dumb bitch, you’re too stupid to know what you have!” “Oh, you think you’re good with girls, asshole? Have you ever had a girlfriend, dick-face?” The rest of us, who were a few years younger, sat out the amorous savagery, neither sufficiently experienced nor much caring to participate. Hours dragged by as the demonstrators took turns watching over us and encouraging us to keep going. “Play! Keep playing! This is a stew.” By midnight some of the kids had nodded off, spent, with nothing more to say. At some point I also drifted off and awoke to a demonstrator vigorously shaking me. “It’s not time to sleep! We’re still playing. You must participate!” The penetrating glow of fluorescent light, stark and hellish, illuminated my droopy-eyed schoolmates. My eyes felt grainy and scratchy with sleep. “Fuck. I’m tired,” I muttered. The demonstrator pushed her face close to mine. A black fury swirled in the depths of her eyes, the bags under them swollen to half-moons from lack of sleep. “You wake up and play. Do you hear me?” I sat up straighter, blinking rapidly. I didn’t know what was going on. Someone talked about a roommate not keeping her side of the room tidy. The child being attacked stared with glazed eyes, expressionless. The rest of my circle was almost comatose. “Hey, I’m talking to you, asshole!” an attacker shouted, trying to bring the level back up. I rubbed at my eyes and looked at the girl on the hot seat, waiting for her reply. She hadn’t moved or even blinked. “Are you listening?” The demonstrator shook her.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  μνησϊκἄκέω, fo remember wrongs done one, remember past injuries, Hadt. 8. 29, Ar. Lys. 590, Dem. 258, 12; esp. in party politics, Lys. 151. 5, etc.; οὐ py. to bear no malice, pass an act of amnesty, Ar. Pl. 1146, Thuc. 4. 74, Xen. Hell. 2. 4, 43, and Oratt., cf. esp. Dem. 685. 7 :— Construct., c. gen. rei, Antipho 115. 26; c. dat. pers., Thuc. 8. 73, Andoc. 12. 40, Lys. 184. 2; c. dat. pers. et gen. rei, μ. τινι Tivos to bear one a grudge for a thing, ap. Andoc. 11.5, Xen. An. 2. 4, 13 also, py. περί τινος Isocr. 299 Β, ee: II. c. ace. rei, τὴν ἡλικίαν pv. to remind one of the ills of age, Ar. Nub. 999. μνησικάκημα, τό, = μνησικακία, Eust. Opusc. 117. 48. μνησϊκἄκητικός, 4, όν, -- μνησίκακος, Arr. Epict. 4.5, 12. μνησϊκᾶἄκία, ἡ, the remembrance of wrongs, Plut. 2.860 A. μνησί-κἄκος, ov, remembering wrongs, bearing malice, revengeful, Cratin. Tay. 3, Arist. Eth. N. 4.3, 30, Rhet. 2. 4, 17. μνήσιος, ov, of memory (formed like κτήσιος), Theognost. Can. 58. 4. μνησῖ-πήμων, ov, gen. ovos, reminding of misery; μν. πόνος the pain~ Jul memory of woe, Aesch. Ag. 180. μνησιστέφἄνος, ov, mindful of crowns, ἀγών Pind. ap. Eust. Opuse. 56.422; μνησί-τοκοξ, ov, mindful of birth, fruitful, dub. in Hipp. 593. 3; Coraés (Plut. 3. p. 8) reads κνησίτοκος, making abortive. μνησῖ-χάρη, ἡ, (χαίρω) gaiety, Hesych. μνήσκομαι, for μιμνήσκομαι, Anacr. 69. 4; cf. ὑπομνήσκω. μνηστεία, 77, a wooing, courting, Plut. Cato Mi. 30, Luc. D. Deor. 20. 14: metaph. of great events, ἔτι ἐν py. εἶναι to be still suitors for the poet's favour, Plat. Menex. 239 C. μνήστειρα, Dor. μνάστ--, 4, fem. of μνηστήρ, a bride, Anth. P. 5. 276. 11. as Adj. mindful of, ᾿ΑφροδίταΞ μνάστειραν ὀπώραν Pind. I. 2.8; cf. μνηστήρ I. μνηστέον. verb. Adj. of μνάομαι, one must mention, τινός Dion. H. de Rhet. 2. 5, Eust. Μνησαρέτη was the real courtship, wooing, in pl., ἄλλης γυναικὸς ἐκπόνει μνήστευσις ---- μοῖρα. μνηστεύματα set about wooing another wife, Eur. Hel. 1514; ὦ κακὰ py. oh baneful sporsals, Id. Phoen. 580. μνήστευσις, 7, espousal, A. B. 107. μνηστευτικός, 7, dv, of or for courtship or espousal, Gloss.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  πικρία, 7, bitterness, 1. of taste, Arist. Plant. 2. 10, 1, Theophr. H. Ps 6), τον 75 Elut..2, 897 A,, Lxxi (Jer) m5.) τὰ; δέοι), 2. of temper, τὴν ἀπὸ THs ψυχῆς π. Dem. 580. 1, cf. 795. 7., 1482. 21, etc. ; ἡ ἐπί τινι π. Polyb. 15. 4, 11; πρός Twa Plut. Cor. 15; λόγος π. ἔχων μεμιγμένην χάριτι Id, Lyc. το. πικρίδιος, a, ov, somewhat bitter, σῦκα Ath. 78 A. πικρίζω, to be or taste bitter, Strab. 498, Clem. Al. 893. 2. proverbs, εἰς τὸν τετρημένον πίθον ἀντλεῖν of the task of | , , πικρίς --- πίμπλημι. πικρίϑ, (50s, ἡ, a bitter herb, perh. succory, endive, Arist. H. A. ο. 6, 8, Theophr. H. P. 7. 11, 4. πικρό-γἄμος, ov, miserably married, Od. 1. 260., 4. 346., 17. 137. πικρό-γλωσσοξ, ον, of sharp or bitter tongue, apat Aesch. Theb. 787. πικρο-θάνατος, ov, with bitter death, Byz. πικρό-θῦμος, ov, of bitter spirit, Manass. Chron. 3615. Byz. ΠΤ ταρπός, ov, bearing bitter fruit, Aesch. Theb. 693, Manass. Chron. 4317. πικρολογία, ἡ, bitterness of language, Arist. Virt. et Vit. 6, 3. πικρο-λόγος, ov, speaking bitter things, γλῶσσα Epigr. Gr. praef. 288 C. 4. ἘΠ Noros, ov, of the bitter lotus, σπέρμα Galen. πικρο-ποιός, Ov, causing bitterness, Eust. 820. 49, etc. πικρό-ποτοξ, ov, bitter to drink, Manass. Chron. 3989.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Our calorie-restricted meals were a back-to-basics homage to the original “Fatathon” of communal weight loss, conceived as an incentive and encouragement for Chuck to follow his own doctor-ordered diet. It was much easier for him if the whole community became involved in his program, which was limited to a strict eight hundred calories a day. During the Fatathon blitz, there was tremendous pressure from the community for the overweight to shed pounds fast. Some members who were already lean grumbled about the mandatory health program. The complainers were verbally blasted into compliance, forced to winnow away pounds as well. In back-to-basics, all of this came back, the diet requirements trickling down to the children in the form of toast without butter, meal portions cut sometimes by half and the abolishment of snacks.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  About once a week Warren asks for the laundered mittens, and I pretend to rummage around before wandering away, giving in to my failure as a laundress—read: mother. The other couples in the center look so blithe. They plead academic poverty but drive swanky foreign cars and live sweatered in cashmere. They take family vacations in beachy climes with grandparents who plunk seashells into buckets their toddler grandchildren tote while the couple slips off to the local bookstore or bakery to canoodle over steaming coffee. Our nearest grandparents are assiduously hands-off. Though Mrs. Whitbread had cranked out six kids like linked hot dogs, Warren’s upbringing was almost Victorian in its chill. By his testament, he’d been presented from time to time like a petit four, scrubbed up and bathrobed before bedtime for kisses. Otherwise, he’d been banished to a gulag nursery guarded by some icy servant. During our own requisite holidays at the great house, we spent hours chasing Dev through rooms big as skating rinks packed with costly breakables, which we weren’t allowed to move out of kid reach. A sofa lined with antique dolls stared at Dev with insouciant porcelain faces he squirmed in my arms to get at. Once, from exhausted spite, I let him smash one. As for Mr. Whitbread, he seemed to eye Dev’s festive ramblings as he might have a cockroach’s. He once made the boy cry by calling him—beyond my earshot, of course—an ignorant little crud. Dev’s teary response, which Warren reported—You’re a big fat man with a red nose—proved Dev had enough Texan in him to take the patriarch in a verbal tussle. Other couples in our orbit had such easeful abundance inside their families. One took a pensione in Rome owned by somebody’s aunt who’s married to Lord Suck-on-This of the foreign service. Another woman’s uncle gave her a house down payment. It’s the most amazing piece of luck... It’s not luck! I want to scream. You’re rich! You’re rich, and your parents are rich. Of course the Whitbreads were, too, and none of them ever had a cavity that ached in the mouth like a rotted cypress stump for weeks on end. Nor did they have to scrounge nursery furniture from a garage sale. The only clothes Dev gets are handed down from my sister’s kid. That Lecia sends her son’s outgrown slick leather jackets and that fancy loafers come free never strikes me as fortune. Nor does my subsidized rent. Nor the fancy Harvard doctors Dev has through Warren’s job. Nor the Minks’ ongoing calls and letters. I have a gaze that blanks out luck any time I face it, like a black box over the eyes of a porn star. Whap and thunk. I compose my Christmas list for my in-laws, who always give exactly what you ask for—nothing more, nothing less. This year I’ve asked for a crockpot, but I secretly long for a Smith & Wesson. The machine jams.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  Hippos are their theme animal, Mother and Harold’s. In the months since I’ve moved Daddy into the home, the old house has sprouted hippos all over. Money I’ve sent to help out has partly been used for the bloated, nappy furniture they laze on—also for redoing the bath, where Mother painted another cartoonlike mural of twin hippos, which I fear echoes the two of them nude together. Mother dials the phone while telling Harold to put some britches on. The silky polyester shirt he slides into has zigzag lightning bolts. Once the buttons are fastened, the front puckers. In our apartment in Cambridge, the phone squeals, and I holler to my husband, who’s typing in the next room, That’s her. Don’t answer it, he says. I know he’s right. The meetings I’ve been dipping into for children of alcoholics—at the urging of Tex—suggest I stay out of Mother’s orbit when she’s loaded. I started consulting Tex when she and Harold took off on this tear a few months back. But rather than steer clear of her like they all say, I’m morbidly compelled to connect with her. Pray about it, those religious morons suggest, for they fancy some bearded giant staring down from a cloud is gonna zap me into shape. But a god I don’t believe in can’t wave a wand over my mother to stop her drinking. Or wipe away thirty years of fret that therapy has just tamped down. Harold says I’m smoking hot, like a skillet, Mother says. Lucky you, I say. Y’all going out tonight? she wants to know. Hardly, I said. Warren’s working on an essay. I’m ghostwriting an article about the stock market for that business review. I’m on deadline—huge pressure. Actually, I’m not working on squat. I’ve been swilling chardonnay on the tiny porch—a back stair landing off our colonial—while headphones pump Mozart’s Requiem into my head over and over. However sorry for myself Mozart’s howling angels can make me, I want Mother to feel sorrier. This is part of our elaborate economy circa 1984. I send her money, and she lets me blame her for everything wrong with my life. She also intermittently berates me for becoming a corporate drudge. On the phone, she asks what we’re doing home on a Saturday night. You’re both sticks-in-the-mud, she tells me. Or is it stick-in-the-muds? We’re working, Mother. We’re not out drinking ourselves to death. Don’t start on me, she says. I was talking about Daddy, I say. But I hadn’t been talking about Daddy. I’d been trying to land a small barb through the thick fog around her. Since you moved your daddy out, Mother says, I feel like a teenager again. Is your blood pressure any better? I ask, hearing in the background the music from Flashdance start up. I’m so fat, she says, I’m scared to take my damn blood pressure.

• From Healing Our Broken Humanity: Practices for Revitalizing the Church and Renewing the World (2018)

  There wasn’t much interaction between Asian Americans and African Americans until the 1970s. As the two groups began interacting, tensions rose and led to events such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The riots began on April 29 after a jury acquitted four officers of using excessive force in the arrest of Rodney King. Looting, arson, and killings resulted, and more than twenty-three hundred Korean-owned businesses were burned down or looted. This incident created deep tensions between African Americans and Korean Americans, as each blamed the other. These tensions flared again in the Baltimore riots in 2015 following the arrest and death of Freddie Gray. More than forty-two Korean American businesses were looted, burned, or damaged, and many business owners had no insurance or were underinsured. The damage done against the livelihood of Korean Americans was grave, and the tension between Korean Americans and African Americans is still evident.10 As of now there has not been much dialogue or intentional conversation between Korean Americans and African Americans. They view each other with suspicion. We are busy having conversations with other conversation partners but have neglected this very important discussion. Dialogue needs to be opened if the two groups want to move forward and have a better relationship with each other and with the wider community. In addition to the evidence from the world of the need for reconciliation, in 2 Corinthians 5:11-21 Paul challenges us to embrace this vision and ministry. What is our core motivation for reconciliation? “Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor 5:14-15 ). This extravagant love, which was revealed in the life, message, and death of Jesus, and which was poured out for all peoples, compels us to pursue a ministry of reconciliation. We do this as we live for him who died for all and was resurrected for all. We now see people in a new way, shaped by the love and reconciling work of God. Our fellow believers are new creations, and our ministry is to take this reconciling message to the world. God has reconciled humanity to Godself in Jesus Christ, and God reconciles people to each other. Notice the movements in this story. First God reconciles us to Godself. Then God reconciles us with each other and gives us the ministry of reconciliation. The order is important, as it frames our theology of reconciliation as well as our purpose and posture in reconciliation. God makes us ambassadors of his reconciliation. Through our love, forgiveness, justice, and reconciliation, we reveal the righteousness and hope of God. “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  His head went back. The sensation mounted a spectrum without terminal. He opened his mouth and tried to scream with airless lungs. His face locked on a smile; the immobility was agony. “ Now what the hell you call yourself doing?” His calf, beyond unengulfable oceans, shook. One arm beat about his head. And a voice, a woman’s voice, pricked him with jewels of what was so much more than pleasure he could not define it. He sobbed (without voice), while she cried out in the darkness: CATHERINE FROM THE ALTAR: I could be crass and simply begin by saying: that I am sitting here on this stained napkin, my legs spread, a cross in one hand, a cock in the other, and still I have time to think, means (by definition, no?) you’ve failed. But I beg the point. Who can satisfy me? You, or you, or you? None of you comes at me with that complete, unbridled lust to which I would quite happily give myself up. I have seen more of it through a ship’s porthole hours ago than any of you can demonstrate. The rest of you arrive with variations of pride, resentment—Oh, Jonathan, that you blame on your obsession with me whatever imbalances mar your creation as proof of my culpability: for shame! That may be enough to keep a stiff dick or a sloppy box. I do, however, demand more than that, even without broaching the swamp of love that already you have so dishonestly touched your toe to—let’s be honest—not to prepare for the truth you had to tell, but to mask that other you have so unfairly left for me. Seven times between noon and midnight? Frankly, Captain—and I am sure more than one of you has had the thought trickle through—if the devil can’t accomplish that with ease, he isn’t much of a man. Had you set your task, Jonathan, as the rounded and rich rendering of the interface between the actual and the ideal, I would be bound, however reluctantly, to accept any amount of moral slippage. But what am I—what are any of us—to do with such concise and conscious striving after the false note, the mawkish, and the thin? No, the lack of interest you have shown in your satisfaction since sunset is indicative of something more. A new age? Perhaps it signals an inchoate uncertainty whether or not you really want to give up this present one. After all, it’s been quite good to you. It has granted you all these previous joys. Are you willing to relinquish them for the fifty-fifty possibility of pain or pleasure? As well as a certainty of the unpleasantness bound to accompany the adjustment period? What is required here, someplace between the kisses and the bites, the whips, the thrusting loins, the tensed buttocks, is one consciousness that will move freely to its own total engulfment in pleasure.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  I’m starting to feel all clean inside, she says. How does that happen? I want to know, for I keep having dreams that I’m getting sneakily drunk and trying to hide it from people in my group. I’m making amends to people I’ve screwed over, she says. Like I shoplifted a bunch of stuff from this deli, and so I brought the guy thirty bucks. Korean guy. He was really nice about it. The snowy roads make us fishtail now and then, and traffic has started to drag. See, I resent this shit, I say, pressing on the horn, adding, Even the fucking traffic feels orchestrated to fuck me up. Dev needs to eat. You need to get home before dinner curfew or you’re grounded. It’s funny, she says, how everybody else is traffic, huh? I laugh, saying, Making amends to other people isn’t high on my list right now. I’m still too pissed at everybody. Think of all the ways you’ve let yourself down, resentments against yourself, she says, and she looks at me from down her turned-up nose. I say, I’m too much of an asshole even to contemplate looking at that carnage. Listen to how you let your own mind talk to you, she says. You’d fight anybody to the ground who said that shit to you. Just as traffic starts to ease up, the car’s engine light goes on. A mile or so later, steam starts pouring from the hood. I steer to the far lane, cars whooshing past in snow. Dev wakes up blinking and crimson-cheeked in his down jacket, really hungry. Stepping out of the car, I land ankle-deep in slush and start swearing under my breath. But no sooner do I pop the hood than a vehicle pulls alongside. Joe and Sam happen to be driving a borrowed tow truck that has—another stroke of fortune—jugs of blue engine coolant. From a paper bag on the dash, Joe’s massive mitt draws out a glazed donut for Dev. He says, Here you go, tough guy. We all stand on the side of the road in the blue dusk, Dev snug in big Joe’s arm and gnawing the pastry as Sam doctors the radiator. For an instant, I can feel the gratitude seep up from my damp footsoles—one of my first pure instances of it. Back in the car, I announce it to Chris. Say thanks, then, she says. I just did. Joe wouldn’t even let me pay for the antifreeze. I meant, she says, say thanks to your higher power. I look at her round girlish face. She still has a few snowflakes in her dark lashes. Thanks, H.P., I say, but it actually shames me, for some reason, to say such a dumb thing. (A year later, Chris would flee the house to stick up a bank with a machine gun. She’d cop heroin and overdose in a park.

• From Lit: A Memoir (2009)

  The Whitbread family tree sports nary a divorce, and it shames Warren to break the news. Once he does, the channels between the family and me snap so totally shut, I don’t hear the fallout. While my clan views the split as a done deal, Mother can’t feature me without Warren’s solidity. The boat I row (financially speaking) is fully loaded and taking water, but so’s Warren’s. Warren loans me our sole vehicle pretty much on demand, but it galls me to ask him. Facing walls of ice at my drive’s end, I try to tell myself that not having a car to shovel out is a bonus, but climbing over slippery, filthy edifices to reach a bus stop, Dev’s mittened hand in mine, I curse the oyster-gray sky and the fat flakes that Dev never tires of catching on his tongue. The bus to Dev’s after-school takes a full hour each way, and pulling him in a red wagon to and from the grocery store leaves me feeling stranded as a polar explorer. (People who’ve never seen a credit-union employee roll her eyes when you request a two-thousand-dollar car note will say, Just borrow.) In Syracuse, I find another circle of identical shit-brown chairs occupied by sober strangers, and I call Joan the Bone to complain about the mildewy carpet and the chilblains I get wearing wet boots in the unheated room. She says, Uh-huh. Are they sober? While Joan’s never more than a phone call away, she can’t be my polestar at such a remove. Before I moved, we’d agreed I’d have to find a local contender. You’re irreplaceable, I tell her on the phone. I am, aren’t I? she says, nudging me by phone to court Patti—a former English teacher who helps run an outpatient rehab—a petite woman with a blond bob and the energy of a fire truck. She has enough outlaw in her to start, at one point, dating a biker in our acquaintance, and while I see her heart-shaped face at public lectures and bookstores, I also catch sight of her at a stoplight on the back of a Harley-Davidson, staring from the helmet’s visor like a road warrior. Over coffee, she worries that she doesn’t have the time to counsel me, what with her hellacious job and raising two kids alone while caring for an aged mother. But she takes my calls and listens to me whine. (Still does, seventeen years later.) When Dev has bronchitis and his codeine cough syrup looks tasty one night, it’s Patti who squirrels the bottle away in her glove box and drives by after work every evening to dispense his single teaspoon.

• From The Tides of Lust (1973)

  The more perceptive among you by now have intuited (if only by the lack of space devoted to her) that Catherine is the passionate concern. Our first encounter focused on a recognition of death. At this writing, she is the only character whose fate I do not know. Bull, Nazi, Nig, Kim, Sambo, Dove, Benny, Gunner, Kirsten, you nameless beast in the cellar, and you too, we must hunt her, for she is terribly powerful. Captain, it is your addition to our entourage that steels me to face her. You bring an implication of mythic chaos with which to tempt her. She must be destroyed. She has spied on the devil, and now employs what she has learned to indulge freedoms that absolutely threaten us. Her scarcity in this narrative is the first sign of her power. You have no doubt deduced the standing competition between us. I have presented only an encounter during which, I think you will agree, she lost and I was a generous winner. There are very few of those. That there is no example I personally can bear to present where victory went otherwise, even to service that vaunted symmetry which I hold inviable:—there is the major indicator of her strength: That, as an obsession, she can so mar my intended effect of grace, gusto, and compression, simply by not showing up! It is her aesthetic and ethical elusiveness that make her the subject of the hunt. She is no figurine gratuite marked up to pay for the resonances of this tale. Her import is all I have not told you, am unable to tell you. Blame on her the distortions you have already noted in what I have tried to display. If you have any outrage left for that, then perhaps you will feel a little of what I feel for her. Yes, my view is distorted, but do not think it is small, or without compassion. Were it, believe me, it would generate no such obsession. She has spied on the devil. But so have you. So have we all, and indulged the irony of recognition, which, on a greater scale, is her only crime. Oh, she enjoys the theatre (perhaps gluts herself upon it), museums, has an entire life of the mind I have only implied. She reads of the destruction of young women in novels such as these and takes pleasure in it. She finds it amusing when innocent young men are executed for the unspeakable. But I need not go into her facility in the management of property, politics, or the division of money. Many of us have lain with her, not all against our will as did the poor monster mad in the cellar; most of us, not surprisingly have fared better than he. Notice I have spared you the evocation of sympathy for him as spur to our revenge. But, Captain, if you are compassionate . . .