Sadness

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 Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, If privations, as considered by the mind, were what they are in reality, this question would seem to be of no importance. For, as stated in the [1315]FP, Q[14], A[10] and [1316]FP, Q[48], A[3], evil is the privation of good: and privation is in reality nothing else than the lack of the contrary habit; so that, in this respect, to sorrow for the loss of good, would be the same as to sorrow for the presence of evil. But sorrow is a movement of the appetite in consequence of an apprehension: and even a privation, as apprehended, has the aspect of a being, wherefore it is called “a being of reason.” And in this way evil, being a privation, is regarded as a “contrary.” Accordingly, so far as the movement of the appetite is concerned, it makes a difference which of the two it regards chiefly, the present evil or the good which is lost. Again, since the movement of the animal appetite holds the same place in the actions of the soul, as natural movement in natural things; the truth of the matter is to be found by considering natural movements. For if, in natural movements, we observe those of approach and withdrawal, approach is of itself directed to something suitable to nature; while withdrawal is of itself directed to something contrary to nature; thus a heavy body, of itself, withdraws from a higher place, and approaches naturally to a lower place. But if we consider the cause of both these movements, viz. gravity, then gravity itself inclines towards the lower place more than it withdraws from the higher place, since withdrawal from the latter is the reason for its downward tendency. Accordingly, since, in the movements of the appetite, sorrow is a kind of flight or withdrawal, while pleasure is a kind of pursuit or approach; just as pleasure regards first the good possessed, as its proper object, so sorrow regards the evil that is present. On the other hand love, which is the cause of pleasure and sorrow, regards good rather than evil: and therefore, forasmuch as the object is the cause of a passion, the present evil is more properly the cause of sorrow or pain, than the good which is lost. Reply to Objection 1: The loss itself of good is apprehended as an evil, just as the loss of evil is apprehended as a good: and in this sense Augustine says that pain results from the loss of temporal goods. Reply to Objection 2: Pleasure and its contrary pain have the same object, but under contrary aspects: because if the presence of a particular thin be the object of pleasure, the absence of that same thing is the object of sorrow. Now one contrary includes the privation of the other, as stated in Metaph. x, 4: and consequently sorrow in respect of one contrary is, in a way, directed to the same thing under a contrary aspect.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  the world in the same way. What we perceive is our personal version of reality, one that is of our own creation. To realize this is a critical step in our understanding of human nature. Imagine the following scenario: A young American must spend a year studying in Paris. He is somewhat timid and cautious, prone to feelings of depression and low self-esteem, but he’s genuinely excited by this opportunity. Once there, he finds it hard to speak the language, and the mistakes he makes and the slightly derisory attitude of the Parisians make it even harder for him to learn. He finds the people not friendly at all. The weather is damp and gloomy. The food is too rich. Even Notre Dame Cathedral seems disappointing, the area around it so crowded with tourists. Although he has pleasurable moments, he generally feels alienated and unhappy. He concludes that Paris is overrated and a rather unpleasant place. Now imagine the same scenario but with a young woman who is more extroverted and has an adventurous spirit. She’s not bothered by making mistakes in French, nor by the occasional snide remark from a Parisian. She finds learning the language a pleasant challenge. Others find her spirit engaging. She makes friends more easily, and with more contacts her knowledge of French improves. She finds the weather romantic and quite suitable to the place. To her, the city represents endless adventures and she finds it enchanting. In this case, two people see and judge the same city in opposite ways. As a matter of objective reality, the weather of Paris has no positive or negative qualities. Clouds simply pass by. The friendliness or unfriendliness of the Parisians is a subjective judgment—it depends on whom you meet and how they compare with the people where you come from. Notre Dame Cathedral is merely an agglomeration of carved pieces of stone. The world simply exists as it is—things or events are not good or bad, right or wrong, ugly or beautiful. It is we with our particular perspectives who add color to or subtract it from things and people. We focus on either the beautiful Gothic architecture or the annoying tourists. We, with our mind-set, can make people respond to us in a friendly or unfriendly manner, depending on our anxiety or openness. We shape much of the reality that we perceive, dictated by our moods and emotions. Understand: Each of us sees the world through a particular lens that colors and shapes our perceptions. Let us call this lens our attitude . The great Swiss psychologist Carl Jung defined this in the following way: “Attitude is a readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way. . . . To have an attitude means to be ready for something definite, even though this something is unconscious; for having an attitude is synonymous with an a priori orientation to a definite thing.”

• From Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir (2004)

  mayberry rfd I’d grown up watching Otis, the town drunk on the television show Mayberry RFD , who let himself into the jail cell each night with a skeleton key, which he rehung within arm’s reach to let himself out in the morning. Each town had a few, at least the towns I knew. A Mugsy. A Mousey. A sign of tolerance. Inevitable. It was said you could get Mousey to hurt someone, to burn down a house, steal a car. All it took was a bottle. His brother taught us at day camp, he led us in singing “500 Miles” on the bus on the way home, and we all knew Mousey, his brother, the lost one— Lord I can’t go back home this-a-way . Mugsy’s kids went to school with me, one was in my class, I’d grown up playing with him. Bombardment. Geronimo. We knew them, knew their families, their struggles were public, a failing acted out daily, daily forgiven. We could pray for them, if we prayed. When I was fifteen, sixteen, you could get Mugsy to buy for you, you could find him in the parking lot of the package store, and for a couple beers he’d buy you a case. If the cops were around he’d have to get in the car with you, like you were all going to a party together, old buddies, and you’d drop him a few blocks away, and drive off into the liquid night. My father put on a good front at first. Evicted only recently, he’d lived on his own for years. Outside for only a month or so, broke, but still put-together, lucid, somewhat clean. When he first arrives he has one eye unmoored, having been cross-eyed for years. It floats in his head like a ghost satellite. Gave him an intense look, Ray says. On his legs he wears support stocking, for the phlebitis. But he doesn’t appear psychotic, claims he’s never been institutionalized, never been on meds, never even been in a detox. Maybe he has traces of a head injury, maybe in prison he’d been locked up in a psych ward for a while, but the doctors made no diagnosis, at least not one he’s willing to talk about. The drinking, the fall on the head, all “organic” damage, the psych people say, we can’t touch him. A blustering, damaged man, but many are worse off. Where else is he to go?

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  This made it easier for him to reassess his father once he was on his own. The other children lacked this ability to distance themselves and were more easily enmeshed in the father’s brutality. This would seem to indicate something different in the way Anton’s brain was wired. Some children are greedier than others—they display from early on a greater need for attention. They tend to always see what is missing, what they are not getting from others. Second, our earliest experiences and attachment schemas (see chapter 4) play a large role in shaping the attitude. We internalize the voices of the mother and father figure. If they were very authoritarian and judgmental, we will tend to be harsher on ourselves than others and have a more critical bent toward everything we see. Equally important are the experiences we have outside the family, as we get older. When we love or admire someone, we tend to internalize a part of their presence, and they shape how we see the world in a positive way. This could be teachers, mentors, or peers. Negative and traumatic experiences can have a constricting effect—they close our minds off to anything that might possibly make us reexperience the original pain. Our attitude is constantly being shaped by what happens to us, but vestiges of our earliest attitude always live on. No matter how far he progressed, Chekhov remained susceptible to feelings of depression and self-loathing. What we must understand about the attitude is not only how it colors our perceptions but also how it actively determines what happens to us in life—our health, our relations with people, and our success. Our attitude has a self-fulfilling dynamic. Look again at the scenario of the young man in Paris. Feeling somewhat tense and insecure, he reacts defensively to mistakes that he makes in learning the language. This makes it harder for him to learn, which in turn makes meeting people more difficult, which makes him feel more isolated. The more his energy lowers from depression, the more this cycle perpetuates itself. His insecurities can also push people away. The way we think about people tends to have a like effect upon them. If we feel hostile and critical, we tend to inspire critical emotions in other people. If we feel defensive, we make others feel defensive. The attitude of the young man tends to lock him into this negative dynamic. The attitude of the young woman, on the other hand, triggers a positive dynamic. She is able to learn the language and meet people, all of which elevates her mood and energy levels, which makes her more attractive and interesting to others, on and on. Although attitudes come in many varieties and blends, we can generally categorize them as negative and narrow or positive and expansive.

• From The Hours (1998)

  For a while they are all absorbed in the ritual of his leaving: the taking on of jacket and briefcase; the flurry of kisses; the waves, he from over his shoulder as he crosses the lawn to the driveway, Laura and Richie from behind the screen door. Their lawn, extravagantly watered, is a brilliant, almost unearthly green. Laura and Richie stand like spectators at a parade as the man pilots his ice-blue Chevrolet down the short driveway and into the street. He waves one last time, jauntily, from behind the wheel. “Well,” she says, after the car has disappeared. Her son watches her adoringly, expectantly. She is the animating principle, the life of the house. Its rooms are sometimes larger than they should be; they sometimes, suddenly, contain things he’s never seen before. He watches her, and waits. “Well, now,” she says. Here, then, is the daily transition. With her husband present, she is more nervous but less afraid. She knows how to act. Alone with Richie, she sometimes feels unmoored—he is so entirely, persuasively himself. He wants what he wants so avidly. He cries mysteriously, makes indecipherable demands, courts her, pleads with her, ignores her. He seems, almost always, to be waiting to see what she will do next. She knows, or at least suspects, that other mothers of small children must maintain a body of rules and, more to the point, an ongoing mother-self to guide them in negotiating the days spent alone with a child. When her husband is here, she can manage it. She can see him seeing her, and she knows almost instinctively how to treat the boy firmly and kindly, with an affectionate maternal off handedness that seems effortless. Alone with the child, though, she loses direction. She can’t always remember how a mother would act. “You need to finish your breakfast,” she says to him. “Okay,” he says. They return to the kitchen. Her husband has washed his coffee cup, dried it, put it away. The boy sets about eating with a certain tractorish steadiness that has more to do with obedience than appetite. Laura pours herself a fresh cup of coffee, sits at the table. She lights a cigarette. . . . the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June. She exhales a rich gray plume of smoke. She is so tired. She was up until after two, reading. She touches her belly—is it bad for the new baby, her getting so little sleep? She hasn’t asked the doctor about it; she’s afraid he’ll tell her to stop reading altogether. She promises that tonight she’ll read less. She’ll go to sleep by midnight, at the latest. She says to Richie, “Guess what we’re going to do today? We’re going to make a cake for your father’s birthday. Oh, what a big job we have ahead of us.” He nods gravely, judiciously.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Theresa slapped the table in anger. ““That’s a terrible word. They call you that to hurt you.” I leaned forward. “But [ve listened. They don’t call the Saturday-night butches he-shes. It means something, It’s a way we're different. It doesn’t just mean we're ... lesbians.” Theresa frowned. “What's the matter?” I shrugged. “Nothing, I just never said that word before. It sounds so easy when you say it. But to me it sounds too much like lezzie and lesbo. That’s a tough word for me to wrap my tongue around.” Theresa and I smiled at each other in spite of ourselves. “Honey,” my tone had changed, “I’ve got to do something. ’ve been fighting to defend who I am all my life. ’m tired. I just don’t know how to go on anymore. This is the only way I can think of I can still be me and survive. I just don’t know any other way.” Theresa sat back in her chair. “I’m a woman, Jess. I love you because you’re a woman, too. I made up my mind when I was growing up that I was not going to betray my desire by resigning myself to marrying a dirt farmer or the boy at the service station. Do you understand?” I shook my head sadly. “Do you wish I wasn’t a butch?” She smiled. “No. I love your butchness. I just don’t want to be some man’s wife, even if that man’s a woman.” Stone Butch Blues 159 I turned up my palms. “Then what should I do?” She shook her head. “T just don’t know.” Theresa asked me to pick up our dry cleaning and to go grocery shopping while she was at work. But the moment she left the house, I felt lost. I wandered into the backyard and knelt down beside Theresa’s garden. By the time the sun was directly overhead I was sitting between the rows of squash blossoms and tomato vines. This garden was a part of Theresa I didn’t know. And I began to realize this little patch of ground was a postage-stamp memory of the country soil in which she’d grown. Where was I when Theresa had planted this garden in the spring? Now it was overrun. I thought about the way things grow in their seasons and how much takes place underground. I thought about the things a gardener can’t control, like weather and critters. The sound of Theresa’s footsteps in the grass behind me was familiar, but it startled me nonetheless. I hadn’t realized it was late afternoon. I remembered earlier in the summer I’d found her working in her garden, sweaty and flushed with heat. I laid her down in the grass nearby and pressed her body into the dirt with my hips and kissed her 160 = Leslie Feinberg mouth until she made small sounds of desire I recognized. “Jess?” Theresa’s voice interrupted the memory. “What are you doing in my garden?” I sighed. “Just thinking.”

• From The History of Christianity II: From the Reformation to the Modern Megachurch (2017)

  õ When South Sudan became an independent country in 2011, it was no time at all before a political power struggle and tensions between different ethnic groups plunged this largely Christian country into civil war. Huntington’s thesis gives us no tools to understand a situation like this: the “bloody borders” that so often appear between Christians themselves. õ The point here is that we need to think of Christianity and Islam not as giant, monolithic, fixed, clashing civilizations, but as lived religions that play out in specific contexts. They mean something particular to each person who practices them. GLOBAL CAPITALISM õ A global economy arose after the end of European colonialism in the 1960s. Enormous multinational companies became more and more adept at extracting material and human resources and moving their factories where costs are lowest—and national governments grew less and less able to control their domestic economies. õ Globalization has brought tremendous benefits to some people, and overall it has raised the standard of living in many developing countries, like India and China. But the same forces have also brought great misery to millions of people who have lost jobs to overseas workers or watched their communities eroded by foreign companies and a consumer culture that seems to steamroll over traditional values. õ Many commentators have pointed out that radicalized Muslim communities see Western Christians as dangerous missionaries— not missionaries of the gospel, but missionaries of crass consumer capitalism. õ And the most ascendant form of Christianity in recent years has been the prosperity gospel: the health-and-wealth strain of the faith that says prayers and church donations can lead to earthly health and prosperity. 354 The History of Christianity II

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Put the baby over there,” she told them, pointing to a bassinet near the sink. Put the baby over there. The words chilled the Indian women. My mother could see that. The story was retold many times as I was growing up, as though the frost that bearded those words could be melted by repeating them in a humorous, ironic way. Days after I was born the grandmother knocked on our door again, this time because my cries alarmed her. She found me in the bassinet, unwashed. My mother admitted she was afraid to touch me, except to pin on a diaper or stick a bottle in my mouth. The next day the grandmother sent over her daughter, who agreed to keep me during the day while her children were at school, if that was alright. It was and it wasn’t. My mother was relieved, ’'m sure, although at the same time it was an indictment of her. But she let me go. And so I grew in two worlds, immersed in the music of two languages. One world was Wheaties and Milton Berle. The other was fry bread and sage. One was cold, but it was mine; the other was warm, but it wasn't. 8 Leslie Feinberg My patents finally stopped letting me travel across the hall when I was four. They came to pick me up before dinner one night. A number of the women had cooked a big meal and brought all the children together for the feast. They asked my parents if I could stay. My father grew alarmed when he heard one of the women say something to me in a language he didn’t understand, and I answered her with words he’d never heard before. He said later he couldn’t stand by and watch his own flesh and blood be kidnapped by Indians. I’ve only heard bits and pieces about that evening, so I don’t know everything that went on. I wish I did. But this part ’ve heard over and over again: one of the women told my parents I was going to walk a difficult path in life. The exact wording changed in the retelling. Sometimes my mother would pretend to be a fortune-teller, close her eyes, cover her forehead with her fingertips, and say, “I see a difficult life for this child.” Other times my father would bellow like the Wizard of Oz, “This child will walk a hard road!” In any case, my parents yanked me out of there. Before they left, though, the grandmother gave my mother a ring and said it would help to protect me in life. The ring frightened my parents, but they figured all that turquoise and silver must be worth something, so they took it. That night there was another terrible desert storm, my parents told me, terrifying in its power. The thunder crashed and the lightning illuminated everything. “Jess Goldberg?” the teacher asked. “Present,” I answered.

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  Although it’s only three in the morning, the lampshade makes the room feel like the last moments of a sinister sunset. Under the bulb’s electric hum, Paul and I spot each other through the doorway. He wipes his eyes with the palm of one hand and waves me over with the other. He slips the photo into his chest pocket and puts on his glasses, blinking hard. I sit on the cherrywood armchair beside him. “You okay, Grandpa?” I say, still foggy from sleep. His smile has a grimace underneath it. I suggest that I go back to bed, that it’s still early anyway, but he shakes his head. “It’s alright.” He sniffles and straightens up in the chair, serious. “It’s just—well, I just keep thinking about that song you sang earlier, the uh . . .” He squints at the floor. “Ca trù,” I offer, “the folk songs—the ones Grandma used to sing.” “That’s right.” He nods vigorously. “Ca trù. I was lying there in the damn dark and I swear I kept hearing it. It’s been so long since I heard that sound.” He glances at me, searching, then back at the floor. “I must be going crazy.” Earlier that night, after dinner, I had sung a few folk songs for Paul. He had inquired about what I had learned during the school year and, already steeped in summer and drawing a blank, I offered a few songs I had memorized from Lan. I sang, in my best effort, a classic lullaby Lan used to sing. The song, originally performed by the famous Khánh Ly, describes a woman singing among corpses strewn across sloping leafy hills. Searching the faces of the dead, the singer asks in the song’s refrain, And which of you, which of you are my sister? Do you remember it, Ma, how Lan would sing it out of nowhere? How once, she sang it at my friend Junior’s birthday party, her face the shade of raw ground beef from a single Heineken? You shook her shoulder, telling her to stop, but she kept going, eyes closed, swaying side to side as she sang. Junior and his family didn’t understand Vietnamese—thank god. To them it was just my crazy grandma mumbling away again. But you and I could hear it. Eventually you put down your slice of pineapple cake—untouched, the glasses clinking as the corpses, fleshed from Lan’s mouth, piled up around us. Among the empty plates stained from the baked ziti, I sang that same song as Paul listened. After, he simply clapped, then we washed up. I had forgotten that Paul, too, understands Vietnamese, having picked it up during the war. “I’m sorry,” I say now, watching the red light pool under his eyes. “It’s a stupid song anyway.” Outside, the wind is driving through the maples, their rinsed leaves slap against the clapboard siding. “Let’s just make some coffee or something, Grandpa.”

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  have to repeat it, ritual by ritual, on their own, then return for the noon mass. By the time it was over, they were all too exhausted to play. In the moments he had to himself, Anton would wander around town. Taganrog was a grim place to grow up. The fronts of almost all of the houses were decaying and crumbling, as if they were already ancient ruins. The roads were not paved, and when the snow melted there was mud everywhere, with giant potholes that could swallow a child up to the neck. There were no streetlights. Prisoners would be tasked with finding the stray dogs on the streets and beating them to death. The only quiet and safe place was the surrounding graveyards, and Anton would visit them often. On these walks, he would wonder about himself and the world. Was he really so worthless that he deserved the almost daily beatings from his father? Perhaps. And yet his father was a walking contradiction—he was lazy, a drunk, and quite dishonest with customers, despite his religious zeal. And the citizens of Taganrog were equally ridiculous and hypocritical. He would observe them at the cemetery, trying to act pious during the funeral service but then excitedly whispering to one another about the delicious cakes they would eat later at the home of the widow, as if that was why they had shown up. His only recourse in the face of the pain and boredom he constantly felt was to laugh at it all. He became the family clown, imitating the characters of Taganrog and inventing stories about their private lives. Sometimes his humor turned aggressive. He played cruel practical jokes on other children in the neighborhood. Sent to the market by his mother, he often tormented the live duck or chicken that he carried home in a sack. He was becoming impish and quite lazy. Then in 1875, everything changed for the Chekhov family. Anton’s two older brothers, Alexander and Nikolai, had had enough of their father. They decided to move together to Moscow, Alexander to pursue a university degree and Nikolai to become an artist. This snubbing of his authority infuriated the father, but he could not stop them. At around the same time, Pavel Yegorovich had to finally confront his complete mismanagement of the grocery store—he had piled up debts over the years and now the bills came due. Facing bankruptcy and almost certainly time in the debtor’s prison, he quietly slipped out of town one night, without telling his wife, and escaped to Moscow, intending to live with his sons. The mother was forced to sell the family possessions to pay the debts. A boarder who lived with them offered to help the mother with their case against the creditors, but much to her surprise, he used his court connections to swindle the Chekhovs out of their house. Without a penny to her name, the mother was forced to leave for

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  still so young. But suddenly she began to feel worn down and inarticulate. She wrote to a friend in the spring of 1962, “I’ve been writing for sixteen years and I have the sense of having exhausted my original potentiality and being now in need of the kind of grace that deepens perception.” One day shortly before Christmas of 1963, she suddenly fainted and was taken to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed her with anemia and began a series of blood transfusions to revive her. She was too weak now to even sit at her typewriter. Then a few months later they discovered a benign tumor that they needed to remove. Their only fear was that the trauma of the surgery would somehow reactivate the lupus and the powerful episodes of fevers that she had experienced ten years before. In letters to friends, she made light of it all. Strangely enough, now that she was at her weakest, she found the inspiration to write more stories and prepare a new collection of them for fall publication. In the hospital she studied her nurses closely and found material for some new characters. When the doctors prohibited her from working, she concocted stories in her head and memorized them. She hid notebooks under her pillow. She had to keep writing. The surgery was a success, but by mid-March it was clear that her lupus had come roaring back. She compared it to a wolf ( lupus is Latin for “wolf”) raging inside her now, tearing things up. Her hospital stay was extended, and yet despite it all, she managed here and there to get in her daily two hours, hiding her work from the nurses and doctors. She was in a hurry to scratch out these last stories before it was all over. Finally, on June 21, she was allowed to return home, and in the back of her mind she sensed the end was coming, the memory of her father’s last days so vivid within her. Pain or no pain, she had to work, to finish the stories and revisions she had started. If she could manage only an hour a day, so be it. She had to squeeze out every last bit of consciousness that remained to her and make use of it. She had realized her destiny as a writer and had led a life of incomparable richness. She had nothing now to complain about or regret, except the unfinished stories. On July 31, while watching the summer rain by her window, she suddenly lost consciousness and was rushed to the hospital. She died in the early hours of August 3, at the age of thirty-nine. In accordance with her last wishes, Flannery was buried next to her father. • • • Interpretation: In the years after the onset of lupus, Flannery O’Connor noticed a peculiar phenomenon: In her interactions with friends, visitors, and correspondents, she often found herself playing

• From On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)

  There are times, late at night, when your son would wake believing a bullet is lodged inside him. He’d feel it floating on the right side of his chest, just between the ribs. The bullet was always here, the boy thinks, older even than himself—and his bones, tendons, and veins had merely wrapped around the metal shard, sealing it inside him. It wasn’t me, the boy thinks, who was inside my mother’s womb, but this bullet, this seed I bloomed around. Even now, as the cold creeps in around him, he feels it poking out from his chest, slightly tenting his sweater. He feels for the protrusion but, as usual, finds nothing. It’s receded, he thinks. It wants to stay inside me. It is nothing without me. Because a bullet without a body is a song without ears. Across town, facing the window, you consider reheating the noodles one more time. You sweep into your palm pieces of the paper napkin you had torn up, then get up to toss it out. You return to the chair, wait. That window, the same one your son had stopped at one night before coming in, the square of light falling across him as he watched your face, peering out at him. Evening had turned the glass into a mirror and you couldn’t see him there, only the lines scored across your cheeks and brow, a face somehow ravaged by stillness. The boy, he watches his mother watch nothing, his entire self inside the phantom oval of her face, invisible. The song long over, the cold a numbing sheath over their nerves. Under their clothes, goose bumps appear, making their thin, translucent hair rise, then bend against the fabric under their shirts. “Hey Trev,” your son says, his friend’s blood crusted tight on his cheek. “Tell me a secret.” Wind, pine needles, seconds. “What kind?” “Just—like . . . a normal secret. It doesn’t have to suck.” “A normal one.” The hush of thinking, steady breaths. The stars above them a vast smudge on a hastily-wiped chalkboard. “Can you go first?” On the table across town, your fingers stop drumming the Formica. “Okay. You ready?” “Yeah.” You push back your chair, grab your keys, and walk out the door. “I’m not scared of dying anymore.” (A pause, then laughter.) The cold, like river water, rises to their throats. Ma. You once told me that memory is a choice. But if you were god, you’d know it’s a flood.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Whether the craving for unity is a cause of sorrow?Objection 1: It would seem that the craving for unity is not a cause of sorrow. For the Philosopher says (Ethic. x, 3) that “this opinion,” which held repletion to be the cause of pleasure, and division [*Aristotle wrote {endeian}, ‘want’; St. Thomas, in the Latin version, read ‘incisionem’; should he have read ‘indigentiam’?], the cause of sorrow, “seems to have originated in pains and pleasures connected with food.” But not every pleasure or sorrow is of this kind. Therefore the craving for unity is not the universal cause of sorrow; since repletion pertains to unity, and division is the cause of multitude. Objection 2: Further, every separation is opposed to unity. If therefore sorrow were caused by a craving for unity, no separation would be pleasant: and this is clearly untrue as regards the separation of whatever is superfluous. Objection 3: Further, for the same reason we desire the conjunction of good and the removal of evil. But as conjunction regards unity, since it is a kind of union; so separation is contrary to unity. Therefore the craving for unity should not be reckoned, rather than the craving for separation, as causing sorrow. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. iii, 23), that “from the pain that dumb animals feel, it is quite evident how their souls desire unity, in ruling and quickening their bodies. For what else is pain but a feeling of impatience of division or corruption?” I answer that, Forasmuch as the desire or craving for good is reckoned as a cause of sorrow, so must a craving for unity, and love, be accounted as causing sorrow. Because the good of each thing consists in a certain unity, inasmuch as each thing has, united in itself, the elements of which its perfection consists: wherefore the Platonists held that “one” is a principle, just as “good” is. Hence everything naturally desires unity, just as it desires goodness: and therefore, just as love or desire for good is a cause of sorrow, so also is the love or craving for unity. Reply to Objection 1: Not every kind of union causes perfect goodness, but only that on which the perfect being of a thing depends. Hence neither does the desire of any kind of unity cause pain or sorrow, as some have maintained: whose opinion is refuted by the Philosopher from the fact that repletion is not always pleasant; for instance, when a man has eaten to repletion, he takes no further pleasure in eating; because repletion or union of this kind, is repugnant rather than conducive to perfect being. Consequently sorrow is caused by the craving, not for any kind of unity, but for that unity in which the perfection of nature consists.

• From The Laws of Human Nature (2018)

  Cosima was drawn to von Bülow’s air of sadness. He lived with his domineering and hostile mother, and Cosima had great sympathy for him. She wanted to rescue von Bülow and transform him into a great composer. They were soon married. As time went on, Cosima could see that he felt quite inferior in relation to her intelligence and strong will. Soon he began to question her love for him. He continually withdrew from her during his bouts of depression. When she became pregnant, he suddenly developed some mysterious ailment that prevented him from being with her. Without warning he could become quite cold. Feeling unloved and neglected, she began an affair with the famous composer Richard Wagner, who was a friend and colleague of von Bülow’s. Cosima had the feeling that von Bülow had unconsciously encouraged their affair. When she eventually left von Bülow to live with Wagner, von Bülow bombarded her with letters, blaming himself for what had happened; he was unworthy of her love. He would then go on about the bad turn in his career, his various illnesses, his suicidal tendencies. Although he criticized himself, she could not help but feel guilty and depressed for somehow being responsible. Recounting all of his woes seemed like his subtle way of wounding her. She compared each letter to “a sword twisted in my heart.” And they kept coming, year after year, until he remarried and repeated the same pattern with his new wife. These types often have a secret need to wound others, encouraging behavior such as betrayal or criticism that will feed their depression. They will also sabotage themselves if they experience any kind of success, feeling deep down that they don’t deserve it. They will develop blocks in their work, or take criticism to mean they should not continue with their career. Depressive types can often attract people to them, because of their sensitive nature; they stimulate the desire to want to help them. But like von Bülow, they will start to criticize and wound the ones who wish to help, then withdraw again. This push and pull causes confusion, but once under their spell it is hard to disengage from them without feeling guilty. They have a gift for making other people feel depressed in their presence. This gives them more fuel to feed off. Most of us have depressive tendencies and moments. The best way to handle them is to be aware of their necessity—they are our body’s and mind’s way of compelling us to slow down, to lower our energies and withdraw. Depressive cycles can serve positive purposes. The solution is to realize their usefulness and temporary quality. The depression you feel today will not be with you in a week, and you can ride it out. If possible, find ways to elevate your energy level, which will physically help lift you out of the mood. The best way to handle recurrent depression is to channel your energies into work, especially the arts.

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  The dog jumped up and licked my face. Dale pulled his collar. “Bone, get off of him. Where’s your manners?” Dale shook my hand. His hand was hard and calloused within his gentle grip. “You all want some coffee? I just made some fresh.” My eyes lit up. Ruth shook her head. “You best be going.” She told me. “You think you can find your way back to the Thruway?” I laughed. “Yeah, follow the lake and make a left at the sunflowers.” “You sure you don’t want to come in and rest up a little while?” Dale asked. I looked at Ruth. Her face was resolutely impassive. “Thank you, Dale. But I still got a chunk of driving to do. I’m headed to Buffalo. Maybe I’ll see you when I drive back to pick up Ruth.” I froze. Did I make a mistake by calling her Ruth? Dale nodded. “Well, you be sure to stop in around suppertime if you do. I'll make Dale’s famous fried zucchini for you. Robbie’ll tell you I make it real good. I got some killer zucchini out of my garden this year.” Ruth sighed. I took it as my cue to leave. I got back in the car and started it up. Dale still held onto Bone’s collar and waved with his other hand. Ruth looked at me with soulful eyes. The streets of Buffalo were as familiar as my own reflection in the mirrot. I pulled up in front of the apartment building where Theresa and I had lived. Her name wasn’t on the mailbox anymore. I walked around back, half expecting to find my young self still sitting on a milk crate stating up at the sky, straining for a glimpse of her own future. Here I was, back searching for her. A memory suddenly gripped me: the look of pain in Theresa’s eyes the night I was arrested in Rochester. I covered my face with my hands so I wouldn’t see it, but the image was behind my eyes. Let it come, I thought to myself. It’s all there anyway. Let it come up. I walked to a pay phone on the corner and called information. I wanted to keep the promise I had made to Kim and Scotty to come back and visit. I remembered how my coming had shaken Kim, root and branch, and my leaving had hurt her most. Would she remember me? Would Scotty? Did he become the wind? I couldn’t find their names in the phone book. Maybe they still lived at home with Gloria. Her number was listed. Gloria couldn’t figure out who I was. “Jess Goldberg,” I repeated. “We worked together at the print shop. You let me stay at your house. I’m back in town for a day or two, and I wanted to see Kim and Scotty.”

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  (This is, you will recognize later, a pattern: she loves to walk away from you in places where you know no one, where you have no power, where you can’t simply get up and go somewhere. Over the course of your relationship she will walk away from you in New York a total of seven times.) You sit down on a bench and numbly try to buy a bus ticket on your phone, but your phone’s storage is full and your screen does not respond properly to your finger. When you look up she is actually gone, and you panic, because you don’t know New York, and not only do you not know New York, you hate New York, and you have too many bags and no money for a taxi and you don’t even know the difference between uptown and downtown. In every direction walk New Yorkers: so confident, so cosmopolitan. You think, they are not the kind of people who get abandoned by their girlfriends at twee craft fairs. You cry so hard that a tall woman with dreadlocks gets up from her storage container and comes over to you. She sits on the bench and puts her arm around your shoulder, and asks if she can do anything to help. You hiccup and wipe your nose with your hand, and tell her no, no, you’re just having a bad day, and she crosses back to her container to fetch something. When she returns, she hands you a tiny box of cone incense and a carved wooden incense holder. “For your new year,” she says, and you want to believe she’s right—that even though your suffering feels eternal, unrelenting, the new year is full of promise, and it is coming fast. Dream House as Mystical PregnancyEvery television show you watched in your twenties included some kind of mystical pregnancy. Every interesting female character needs one, or so the showrunners seem to think. Vampires get pregnant with magical mortals; comatose women give birth to gods and empathic starfleet officers to mystic energy; time-traveling companions discover they’ve been flesh avatars for months, and their actual body is somewhere far away and about to give birth. One woman wakes up on her wedding day to discover herself massively pregnant, courtesy of an alien.

• From In the Dream House (2019)

  The abused woman has certainly been around as long as human beings have been capable of psychological manipulation and interpersonal violence, but as a generally understood concept it—and she—did not exist until about fifty years ago. The conversation about domestic abuse within queer communities is even newer, and even more shadowed. As we consider the forms intimate violence takes today, each new concept—the male victim, the female perpetrator, queer abusers, and the queer abused—reveals itself as another ghost that has always been here, haunting the ruler’s house. Modern academics, writers, and thinkers have new tools to delve back into the archives in the same way that historians and scholars have made their understanding of contemporary queer sexuality reverberate through the past. Consider: What is the topography of these holes? Where do the lacunae live? How do we move toward wholeness? How do we do right by the wronged people of the past without physical evidence of their suffering? How do we direct our record keeping toward justice? The memoir is, at its core, an act of resurrection. Memoirists re-create the past, reconstruct dialogue. They summon meaning from events that have long been dormant. They braid the clays of memory and essay and fact and perception together, smash them into a ball, roll them flat. They manipulate time; resuscitate the dead. They put themselves, and others, into necessary context. I enter into the archive that domestic abuse between partners who share a gender identity is both possible and not uncommon, and that it can look something like this. I speak into the silence. I toss the stone of my story into a vast crevice; measure the emptiness by its small sound. [image file=image_rsrc2K0.jpg] 1. Eleanor Roosevelt to Lorena Hickock, November 17, 1933.IEros limbslackener shakes me again— that sweet, bitter, impossible creature. —Sappho, as translated by Jim Powell Dream House as Not a MetaphorI daresay you have heard of the Dream House? It is, as you know, a real place. It stands upright. It is next to a forest and at the rim of a sward. It has a foundation, though rumors of the dead buried within it are, almost certainly, a fiction. There used to be a swing dangling from a tree branch but now it’s just a rope, with a single knot swaying in the wind. You may have heard stories about the landlord, but I assure you they are untrue. After all, the landlord is not a man but an entire university. A tiny city of landlords! Can you imagine? Most of your assumptions are correct: it has floors and walls and windows and a roof. If you are assuming there are two bedrooms, you are both right and wrong. Who is to say that there are only two bedrooms? Every room can be a bedroom: you only need a bed, or not even that. You only need to sleep there. The inhabitant gives the room its purpose. Your actions are mightier than any architect’s intentions.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) Where it is evident that He did not proclaim him openly to all, lest He should make him the more shameless; at the same time He did not altogether keep it silent, lest thinking that he was not discovered, he should boldly hasten to betray Him. THEOPHYLACT. But how could they eat reclining, when the law ordered that standing and upright they should eat the Passover? It is probable that they had first fulfilled the legal Passover, and had reclined, when He began to give them His own Passover. PSEUDO-JEROME. The evening of the day points out the evening of the world; for the last, who are the first to receive the penny of eternal life, come about the eleventh hour. All the disciples then are touched by the Lord; so that there is amongst them the harmony of the harp, all the well attuned strings answer with accordant tone; for it goes on: And they began to be sorrowful, and to say unto him one by one, Is it I? One of them however, unstrung, and steeped in the love of money, said, Is it I, Lord? as Matthew testifies. THEOPHYLACT. But the other disciples began to be saddened on account of the word of the Lord; for although they were free from this passion, yet they trust Him who knows all hearts, rather than themselves. It goes on: And he answered and said unto them, It is one of the twelve, that dippeth with me in the dish. BEDE. (ubi sup.) That is, Judas, who when the others were sad and held back their hands, puts forth his hand with his Master into the dish. And because He had before said, One of you shall betray me, and yet the traitor perseveres in his evil, He accuses him more openly, without however pointing out his name. PSEUDO-JEROME. Again, He says, One out of the twelve, as it were separate from them, for the wolf carries away from the flock the sheep which he has taken, and the sheep which quits the fold lies open to the bite of the wolf. But Judas does not withdraw his foot from his traitorous design though once and again pointed at, wherefore his punishment is foretold, that the death denounced upon him might correct him, whom shame could not overcome; wherefore it goes on: The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him. THEOPHYLACT. The word here used, goeth, shews that the death of Christ was not forced but voluntary. PSEUDO-JEROME. But because many do good, in the way that Judas did, without its profiting them, there follows: Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! good were it for that man if he had never been born.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (iii. 2. de Con. Evan) Though all the Evangelists say that the Lord foretold that Peter was to deny before the cock crew, Mark alone has related it more minutely, wherefore some from inattention suppose that he does not agree with the others. For the whole of Peter’s denial is threefold; if it had begun altogether after the cock crew, the other three Evangelists would seem to have spoken falsely, in saying, that before the cock crew, he would deny him thrice. Again, if he had finished the entire threefold denial before the cock began to crow, Mark would in the person of the Lord seem to have said needlessly, Before the cock crow twice, thou shall deny me thrice. But because that threefold denial began before the first cock-crowing, the other three did not notice when Peter was to finish it, but how great it was to be, that is, threefold, and when it was to begin, that is, before the cock crew, although the whole was conceived in his mind, even before the first cock crew; but Mark has related more plainly the interval between his words themselves. THEOPHYLACT. We are to understand that it happened thus; Peter denied once, then the cock crew, but after he had made two more denials, then the cock crew for the second time. PSEUDO-JEROME. Who is the cock, the harbinger of day, but the Holy Ghost? by whose voice in prophecy, and in the Apostles, we are roused from our threefold denial, to most bitter tears after our fall, for we have thought evil of God, spoken evil of our neighbours, and done evil to ourselves. BEDE. (ubi sup.) The faith of the Apostle Peter, and his burning love for our Lord, is shewn in what follows. For it goes on: But he spake the more vehemently, If I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise. THEOPHYLACT. The other disciples also shewed a fearless zeal. For there follows, Likewise also said they all, but nevertheless they acted against the truth, which Christ had prophesied. 14:32–4232. And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. 33. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy; 34. And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch. 35. And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36. And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt. 37. And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. 18. ad pop. Ant.) But godly sorrow is a great thing, and it worketh repentance to salvation. Hence St. Paul when he had no failings of his own to weep for, mourned for those of others. Such grief is the source of gladness, as it follows, For ye shall laugh. For if we do no good to those for whom we weep, we do good to ourselves. For he who thus weeps for the sins of others, will not let his own go unwept for; but the rather he will not easily fall into sin. Let us not be ever relaxing ourselves in this short life, lest we sigh in that which is eternal. Let us not seek delights from which flow lamentation, and much sorrow, but let us be saddened with sorrow which brings forth pardon. We often find the Lord sorrowing, never laughing. BASIL. (Hom. de Grat. act.) But He promises laughing to those who weep; not indeed the noise of laughter from the mouth, but a gladness pure and unmixed with aught of sorrow. BEDE. He then who on account of the riches of the inheritance of Christ, for the bread of eternal life, for the hope of heavenly joys, desires to suffer weeping, hunger, and poverty, is blessed. But much more blessed is he who does not shrink to maintain these virtues in adversity. Hence it follows, Blessed are ye when men shall hate you. For although men hate, with their wicked hearts they can not injure the heart that is beloved by Christ, It follows, And when they shall separate you. Let them separate and expel you from the synagogue. Christ finds you out, and strengthens you. It follows; And shall reproach you. Let them reproach the name of the Crucified, He Himself raises together with Him those that have died with Him, and makes them sit in heavenly places. It follows, And cast out your name as evil. Here he means the name of Christian, which by Jews and Gentiles as far as they were able was frequently erased from the memory, and east out by men, when there was no cause for hatred, but the Son of man; for in truth they who believed on the name of Christ, wished to be called after His name. Therefore He teaches that they are to be persecuted by men, but are to be blessed beyond men. As it follows, Rejoice ye in that day, and weep for joy, for behold your reward is great in heaven. CHRYSOSTOM. Great and little are measured by the dignity of the speaker. Let us enquire then who promised the great reward. If indeed a prophet or an apostle, little had been in his estimation great; but now it is the Lord in whose hands are eternal treasures and riches surpassing man’s conception, who has promised great reward.