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 Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions (1939)

  But that is not true at all: it is good form, of course, to appear to meditate deeply over one's grief. But cases in which a sorrow is really cherished are rather rare. There is quite another reason: one of the accustomed conditions of our activity has vanished, yet we are still required to act in and upon the world without it . Most of the potentialities of our world (work to be done, people to see , duties of the daily round to be accomplished) remain the same. Only the means for realizing them, the paths traced over our 'hodological space' have changed. If for example, I have just learned that I am ruined, I no longer dispose of the same means (a private car, etc.) to accomplish them. I shall have to substitute means new to me (taking the motor-bus, etc.), which is precisely what I do not want to do. My melancholy is a method of suppressing the obligation to look for these new ways, by transforming the present structure of the world, replacing it with a totally undifferentiated structure. What it comes to, in short, is that I make the world into an affectively neutral reality, a system which is, affectively, in complete equilibrium. Objects highly charged with affect are de-charged, brought down to affective zero, and therefore apprehended as perfectly equivalent and interchangeable. In other words, lacking both the ability and the will to carry out the projects I formerly entertained, I behave in such a manner that the universe requires nothing more from me. This one can do only by acting upon oneself, by 'lowering the flame of life to a pin-point' — and the noetic correlate of this attitude is what we call Bleakness : the universe is bleak; that is, of undifferentiated structure. At the same time, therefore, we naturally draw back into ourselves, we 'efface ourselves', and the noetic counterpart of that is the Refuge . The entire universe is bleak, and it is precisely in order to protect ourselves from its frightful, illimitable monotony that we make some place or other into a 'shelter'. That is the one differentiating factor in the absolute monotony of the world: a bleak wall, a little darkness to screen us from that bleak immensity. Active sadness can take many forms; but the one cited by Janet (of the psychasthenic who throws a fit of nerves because she does not want to make her confession) may be characterized as a refusal. It exemplifies above all a negative behaviour intended to deny the urgency of certain problems and to replace them by others. The patient wants to move Janet's feelings. This means that she wants to change his attitude of impassible expectancy into one of affectionate concern. She wants this and she makes use of her body to bring it about.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  Spiced grass carp. I thought of the meals I skipped in Noxhurst. When my pants tightened, I undid a button. I ate more. But this calm had its limits. Beijing was hot, its inhabitants loud. Used as I was to the quiet of Noxhurst, I couldn’t stop noticing the Beijing traffic. In June, I came upon a five-vehicle logjam pileup. Paramedics hauled bloodstained bodies from twisted cars, and laid them on the asphalt. Blood swelled in slow blooms from splayed limbs. A girl in pale jeans sprawled in a dark pool so vast I had the senseless idea that all the fluids had been pressed out. Cars lunged past, horns wailing, heedless. A motorcyclist’s wheel flattened the dead girl’s shoe, and kept going. Then, a fund principal, Martin Phelps, a Brit, hosted an office-wide reception at his house. In spite of the heat, people drifted toward his backyard. His garden, he called it, though he hadn’t planted much: the sizable lawn, along with limp floral strands twining up a pergola. He’d placed urns on the grass; tall plinths, too, six of them. Waiters circled with goblet-sized cocktails. I drank fast. The outside lights flicked on. Paper-lantern strings pearled the lawn, like threads drawn tight to unite the crowd, but we all still stood apart. Each guest hovered on his own rising pedestal of late-afternoon shade. The men, in full suits, swabbed napkins across damp faces. Wives swayed in high heels. Thin bracelets tinkled. I listened to a woman cavil about the last trip she’d taken, to a Thai island. Since I’m, as you can tell, Asian, she said, while Matt, he’s white, Thai people kept mistaking me for a bargirl. It’s, well, a kind of prostitute. So, one night, the hotel night clerk tried to prohibit me from going in. He shouted at me in Thai. You should have heard Matt yell. It was hilarious. She laughed, uncertain, then inhaled from a cigarette. Its lit end flared. The tale had fallen flat. If I’d been Phoebe, I’d have replied with tactful questions to help the conversation along. With a light joke, a quick grace note, I’d put this woman, plus all the listeners, at ease. I lacked such skill; instead, I smiled, polite. I excused myself to find a cocktail. It was childish, but I started revising the night. The next time I talked to Phoebe, I’d retell it as the kind of outsize frolic she’d wish she hadn’t missed. I’d gild the event, adding the six-piece jazz band, a hired waltzing troupe. Pop champagne to spout, like liquid mirth, from jeroboam bottles. Twirl the partiers. Set them to dance beneath the jasmine, florets dangling like bells from white-limbed pergolas. The Phelps’ house was also in Shichahai, less than a mile from my apartment. I left the party on foot, but I hadn’t walked much in Beijing. Within minutes, I was lost.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  What I’d do without you, I don’t know, honey, she said. She laughed a little, rueful. The exhale rustled the line, and she almost sounded like her old self again. The mother I’d had used to bring kitchen-table bouquets from the garden: buttercups, dahlia. Goldenrod in armfuls, the paint-daub petals trailing, flickering, like tattered flags. Nose dusted with pollen, she sang Donizetti arias in phonetic Italian. When I was an infant, she waltzed me to bel canto until I slept. She’d been ill a long time; still, it wasn’t until last March, in my father’s absence, that she first had to be hospitalized. I returned home from a spring-break mission to Beijing, a trip I’d had planned for months, to find she’d moved into the living room, stationed on an airbed to avoid what she’d shared with him. He’d fled to Florida to live with a girlfriend we hadn’t known existed. I learned this from the note he left; my mother had stopped talking. The cut flowers had wilted. I changed the vases. When she did, at last, get up, she sat gazing into a compact. Once, as I watched, she brushed lipstick on the reflection. But when I was hired at Michelangelo’s, Paul, who owned the place, had indicated I might attain a future promotion. He could use a college kid like me to help snap the whip, like an assistant-managing type, he said. Since then, he hadn’t brought it up. I thought of what I’d spent these past couple of months on clothes. Oxford shirts, marlin-printed shorts. The white-soled boat shoes, out of season until spring. Ribbon belts. In thrift stores, online, in the attempt to look like what I claimed to be, I scavenged polo shirts in pink, azure, and apple-green, the bizarrely colorful regalia of the ruling class. I wore the polos layered; I ridged collars upright, like gills. Meanwhile, my mother bagged groceries in Carmenita. I deposited much of what I made in tips into my mother’s account, helping with basic necessities: rent, medical bills, but each week I still had a little extra, which, if I’d saved, I could have given at once, instead of asking that she wait. – Fifteen minutes before the gates opened at Michelangelo’s, I found Paul. I asked if he’d thought about the promotion he’d said was possible. He stood at the reservations pulpit, writing in his tight script on the back of a menu. Sure, I’ve thought about it, he said, not looking up. His gold pen scratched out a line. Is anything decided? I asked. The pen scraped. His belt-halved gut bulged out, grazing the zinc edge, like an animal about to lunge. It fit his look of menace: if provoked, his flesh might achieve its escape. I glanced past him, trying not to stare. In a torn baseball cap, a man slumped against the other side of the glass. It had started raining. Paul? What’s that? he said. Do I qualify for the job?

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  I flinched; noticing, he said, fast, No, it’s what I’d do if I, I love Sichuan food. Phoebe, forget it. I’m joking! Just come. If you don’t go, I won’t. It was fine. I let it pass, though I heard what he’d implied, the insult left unsaid, that he’d enroll in a cooking class if he didn’t have his own, real pursuits. Well, he had a point. I saw them spin, like tops: a lifetime’s stack of plates I hadn’t been allowed to wash, whirligig red-gold globes of fruit I hadn’t peeled. I still couldn’t cut an apple without nicking myself. When I tried, knives slipped. Dishes fell, goblin-bewitched. The logic behind this upbringing: if I didn’t learn how to be in a kitchen, no one could keep me there. It wasn’t a spell. It was a gift, one I had put to no use at all. – In the spring, I learned my grades might prohibit going to Beijing with Will. I let it be what happened; I failed. I’ll miss you, I said. I kissed his hairline. He turned away, his forehead pinched, high. I didn’t like causing him pain, but I couldn’t have tagged along. I kissed him, again. I didn’t stop until he turned back to me, still so trustful: like a child, finding solace with the person who’d hurt him in the first place. I took Will to his flight, then I returned, alone, to Noxhurst. The suite locked shut. Its silence rang like an alarm. I sat on the futon, at a loss. I didn’t have a friend in town. The June hours swelled, humid, dull, waiting to be filled. At parties, listless bodies held iced drinks to hot, moist skin. The college had no air-conditioning, and I kept thinking I should get a window unit. If I bought it, though, I’d be obliged to haul it home. I’d have to install it. I thought of the time a pigeon had flown into my suite, how it had crashed, flapped, rattling around, the trapped bird too panicked to find an exit. It dotted the living room white with shit. I was shrieking; Julian, too. Liesl ran to the landing, but Will stayed calm. He caught the pigeon with an upended trashcan. Sliding a flattened shoebox beneath the plastic lip, he carried it out. If Will were here, he’d have long since solved the air-conditioning problem. Instead, I sprawled on damp sheets. I listened to flash storms, too hot to sleep. Will’s fund in Beijing required most of his time; often, he couldn’t talk. Julian was living in Manhattan. I could have gone to him, except that, like Will, he’d objected to the plan of staying in Noxhurst. I predict anguish, he’d said. Phoebe, you’re a capable girl, but I’m afraid being alone isn’t a skill. It’s a disposition. I didn’t want to prove him right; still, one night, I had to call him.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  18 “Behold, its blood was not brought into the Holy Place; you certainly should have eaten the goat in the sanctuary, just as I commanded.” 19 Then Aaron said to Moses, “This very day they have [obediently] presented their sin offering and their burnt offering before the LORD , but [such terrible things] as these have happened to me [and to them]; if I [and my sons] had eaten a sin offering today would it have been acceptable and pleasing in the sight of the LORD ?” [Hos 9:4 ] 20 When Moses heard that, he was satisfied. Leviticus 11 Laws about Animals for Food 1 T he LORD spoke again to Moses and Aaron, saying to them, 2 “Speak to the children of Israel, saying, ‘Among all the animals which are on the earth, these are the animals which you may eat. [Mark 7:15–19 ] 3 ‘You may eat any animal that has a divided hoof [that is, a hoof split into two parts especially at its distal extremity] and chews the cud. 4 ‘Nevertheless, you are not to eat these, among those which chew the cud or divide the hoof: the camel, because it chews the cud but does not divide the hoof; it is [ceremonially] unclean to you. 5 ‘And the a shaphan, because it chews the cud but does not divide the hoof; it is unclean to you. 6 “And the hare, because it chews the cud but does not divide the hoof; it is unclean to you. 7 “And the swine, because it divides the hoof and makes a split hoof, but does not chew the cud; it is unclean to you. 8 “You shall not eat their meat nor touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you. 9 ‘These you may eat, whatever is in the water: whatever has fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, these you may eat; 10 but whatever does not have fins and scales in the seas and in the rivers, of all the teeming life in the waters, and of all the living creatures that are in the waters, they are [to be considered] detestable to you. [1 Cor 8:8–13 ] 11 ‘They shall be b hated things to you. You may not eat their meat; you shall detest their carcasses. 12 ‘Everything in the water that does not have fins and scales is detestable to you. Avoid the Unclean 13 ‘These you shall detest among the birds; they are not to be eaten, for they are c hated things: the eagle and the vulture and the buzzard, 14 the kite, every kind of falcon, 15 every kind of raven, 16 the ostrich, the nighthawk, the sea gull, every species of hawk, 17 the little owl and the cormorant and the great owl, 18 the white owl, the pelican, the carrion vulture, 19 the stork, all kinds of heron, the hoopoe, and the bat.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  I quit the Exhibit visits. I received an email from Leigh asking if I’d like to get a bite to eat sometime, but I didn’t know what to write. One day sped past, then several, until I thought it would be more insulting if I wrote, at this late point, than if I didn’t respond at all. The note might have been lost in transit, or she’d written to the wrong Will Kendall. – While I still had Phoebe with me, hot in my arms, singing Ella Fitzgerald back to life as I washed the dishes, I knew what I was losing, and it ached as if she’d already gone. The expected rift came in late March. I was home; she planned to have gimlets with Julian at the Colonial. I’d heard his reproaches tolling from Phoebe’s earpiece when he called. I miss you, angel, he’d said. Bix misses you. He says no one’s asked for his house special in ages, and how could you be unkind to Bix? I was in the kitchen, fixing a salad. I sliced a red onion lengthwise, then into minute squares. I swept the last diced bits off the knife: piled amethysts, I thought, a geode. I had the idea I’d show it to Phoebe. I’d finished most of a bottle of wine. She was in the bedroom, door open, trying to zip up a dress. It was a black shift I liked, and I laughed as I said, I’m coming, I’ll help. She flinched at the sound, but she’d left the door open. It shouldn’t have been a surprise that I’d noticed she was changing. She backed up to the wall, bent elbows slanting above her head. No, I can do it, she said. Let me help, I insisted. I’ll zip the dress. I spun Phoebe to face the wall, lighthearted, but then I saw that, in the space where the knit dress gaped open, she had a back crisscrossed with welts, bruises. In spots, the skin had broken. Some of the marks had partially healed. Others looked fresh, a dull red. Phoebe, I said. What is this? She pulled away from me, flushing. Phoebe, please— It’s nothing. Who did this to you? She walked out of the room, and I followed. We sat at the kitchen table. I asked if I should call the police, if she was in pain. No. Phoebe, what happened? She’d tell me, she said. But first, I had to listen. They’d been holding group penances. In turn, they detailed how they’d failed God, then asked the others to help them with physical notes of what they’d resolved. One night, they sang to God while they knelt on uncooked rice grains, hands up until their arms collapsed. They fasted. The flesh is strong; the mind, frail. We believe with our bodies, she said.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  Understanding the o ld testament 24 God said, “The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; what if he now reaches out and takes fruit from the Tree of Life also, and eats of it and lives forever?” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he had been taken. It is unlikely that the Israelites understood God here in a petty, jealous way. The words were not supposed to leave readers thinking that the man should have run from the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life before God remembered it was there. Eating of the Tree of Knowledge has ended the special sort of life that was only supplied by breath from God, absent in the creation of the animals. Eating from the Tree of Life would perpetuate the other sort of living, physical life. God is worried that the man will live forever in the condition of toil and patriarchy, which would be a fate worse than death. Just as the naming of Eve and covering with skin are not the blessings they look like, the exclusion from the Tree of Life might not be the punishment looks like. Nevertheless, this is a bad ending. Verse 24 says, “He drove him out and settled him to the east of the Garden of Eden.” The word used there for “drove out” is garesh, which can also mean “divorce.” To be exiled from Eden is a divorce from God, a loss of fellowship with God. Questions to Consider Y Was the serpent right because everything he predicted came true? Y Cognitive science tells us naked people are more inclined to think about death and to remember they are animals, and that people reminded they are animals are more inclined to think about death. Does this help explain Adam and Eve’s knowledge that they were naked? Suggested Reading Meyers, Discovering Eve. ABRAHAM, THE FATHER OF THREE FAITHS LECTURE 5 Abraham—whom God calls to become the father of a new nation in the land of Canaan—is considered the spiritual father of three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For all three, his story illustrates what religious faith means, though there are some differences in how. Those differences underline some of the distinctions of the three modern faiths. Abraham’s Beginning The story of Abraham truly begins in chapter 12 of Genesis. At this point in the Old Testament, his name is given as Abram. Genesis 12:1 states that God said to Abraham, “‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great.’” 5

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The lady, hearing this, heaved a deep sigh and marvelled sore, supposing none had ever known it, albeit, in the days when he was slain who had been buried for Tedaldo, there had been some whispering thereof, for certain words not very discreetly used by Tedaldo's confidant, who knew it; then answered, 'I see that God discovereth unto you all men's secrets, wherefore I am resolved not to hide mine own from you. True it is that in my youth I loved over all the ill-fortuned youth whose death is laid to my husband's charge, which death I have bewept as sore as it was grievous to me, for that, albeit I showed myself harsh and cruel to him before his departure, yet neither his long absence nor his unhappy death hath availed to tear him from my heart.' Quoth the pilgrim, 'The hapless youth who is dead you never loved, but Tedaldo Elisei ay.[176] But tell me, what was the occasion of your falling out with him? Did he ever give you any offence?' 'Certes, no,' replied she; 'he never offended against me; the cause of the breach was the prate of an accursed friar, to whom I once confessed me and who, when I told him of the love I bore Tedaldo and the privacy I had with him, made such a racket about my ears that I tremble yet to think of it, telling me that, an I desisted not therefrom, I should go in the devil's mouth to the deepest deep of hell and there be cast into everlasting fire; whereupon there entered into me such a fear that I altogether determined to forswear all further converse with him, and that I might have no occasion therefor, I would no longer receive his letters or messages; albeit I believe, had he persevered awhile, instead of getting him gone (as I presume) in despair, that, seeing him, as I did, waste away like snow in the sun, my harsh resolve would have yielded, for that I had no greater desire in the world.' [Footnote 176: _i.e._ It was not the dead man, but Tedaldo Elisei whom you loved. (_Lo sventurato giovane che fu morto non amasti voi mai, ma Tedaldo Elisei si._)]

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Meanwhile, broad day come and these things being recounted to Messer Negro, he betook himself, sorrowful unto death, to the palace, in company with many of his friends, and being there acquainted by the Provost with the whole matter, demanded resentfully[249] that his daughter should be restored to him. The Provost, choosing rather to accuse himself of the violence he would have done her than to be accused of her, first extolled the damsel and her constancy and in proof thereof, proceeded to tell that which he had done; by reason whereof, seeing her of so excellent a firmness, he had vowed her an exceeding love and would gladly, an it were agreeable to him, who was her father, and to herself, espouse her for his lady, notwithstanding she had had a husband of mean condition. Whilst they yet talked, Andrevuola presented herself and weeping, cast herself before her father and said, 'Father mine, methinketh there is no need that I recount to you the story of my boldness and my illhap, for I am assured that you have heard and know it; wherefore, as most I may, I humbly ask pardon of you for my default, to wit, the having without your knowledge taken him who most pleased me to husband. And this boon I ask of you, not for that my life may be spared me, but to die your daughter and not your enemy.' So saying, she fell weeping at his feet. [Footnote 249: Lit. complaining, making complaint (_dolendosi_).] Messer Negro, who was an old man and kindly and affectionate of his nature, hearing these words, began to weep and with tears in his eyes raised his daughter tenderly to her feet and said, 'Daughter mine, it had better pleased me that thou shouldst have had such a husband as, according to my thinking, behoved unto thee; and that thou shouldst have taken such an one as was pleasing unto thee had also been pleasing to me; but that thou shouldst have concealed him, of thy little confidence in me, grieveth me, and so much the more as I see thee to have lost him, ere I knew it. However, since the case is so, that which had he lived, I had gladly done him, to content thee, to wit, honour, as to my son-in-law, be it done him, now he is dead.' Then, turning to his sons and his kinsfolk, he commanded that great and honourable obsequies should be prepared for Gabriotto.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  I couldn’t find a way in. Out on the sidewalk, alone, I watched the crowds reveling inside. With Phoebe, the walls lifted. Invitations spilled out; warmth, life. I also pledged a fraternity, Phi Epsilon, when I heard about its influential alumni, the class portraits lined with well-known faces. I wasn’t eating enough, but at parties, in the Phi Epsilon house, alcohol was plentiful. I drank more. Still, I kept my grades high. I barely slept; I wanted every prize. I intended to outdo all these people I lied to imitate, the lotus-eaters who sprawled on the lawn. I finished the last final exam, an evening class, then I stumbled home. I fell in bed. I planned to celebrate with Phoebe at the Colonial, but instead, when I opened my eyes again, I saw that mild light filled the room. It was late morning. I’d slept through the night. I called Phoebe: she was on the train, going to the airport. I came by your suite when I didn’t hear from you, she said. If Julian hadn’t left for Berlin, I’d have recruited him to pick the lock. I kept calling. I heard your phone from out on the landing. I should have just let you sleep, but I wanted to see you— I spent most of the break in ice-piled Noxhurst, working extra shifts at the restaurant. In late fall, Paul had finally given me a promotion; I couldn’t have left during the holiday rush. I thought, too, that I should save a little cash while I had the time. I helped see Michelangelo’s through New Year’s Eve, an upheaval of white-peach Bellinis and smashed flutes, banderoles and tricolored spumoni (a Conti tradition, I heard Paul tell a table), then I flew home to Carmenita. It was the first trip back since I’d started school. I’d anticipated the pleasure I’d see on my mother’s face, but then, almost as soon as the plane landed, I wanted to leave again. Outlines softened, salt in liquid; I felt how easily I could dissolve into the life I’d left behind. Ripped flip-flops still held the stain of old footprints. She asked me to attend church. I said I couldn’t; I offered to drive, past the graffiti-blotched traffic signs I didn’t need to consult. I let her out, then left in a rush to evade old friends who, still God-wild, pitied me. Radio stations I’d left preset hadn’t changed. Last spring, while she was being held captive in the hospital, I avoided the house. Instead, I’d taken to driving around town at night to look in at people’s lives. Intact families sat in the blue wash of television light, tranquil, like drowned statues. I noticed, too, that she’d kept up the habit of red lipstick, the starlet’s hue my father used to like.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  For me, that is. I understand people find it useful, but, okay, let’s assume I wish my mother hadn’t died. It’s not worth examining. Julian says the most dispiriting words in the English language are “Red or white?” but, obviously, he’s wrong. What’s worse is “Last night, I dreamed,” and— She riffed like this until I stopped. If I tried again, insisting she find help, Phoebe’s smile widened. It lit the girl up. In a glade of light, she slipped away. It was an act; I knew that, but I suppose I let it happen. Even now, I’ll admit, if I recall these night fits, part of me wants to protest that this wasn’t Phoebe: that the girl I loved, for instance, during a childhood trip to Delphi, went jumping through its ruins. Since she hadn’t told me much else about it, I’d filled in the details until I might have been there, too, our earliest lives conjoined. On the crowded bus ride from Athens to Delphi, this Phoebe slept against my arm. The guide lectured into a microphone. It’s the omphalos, he said. The holiest site, navel of the Hellenic world. In time, the bus rolled to a halt. Phoebe stood in the white, hot wash of sun; she rubbed light-blind eyes. Despite the heat, I held Phoebe’s hand. I kept it in mine while we leaped the ancient stones, raising exuberant brumes of dust. – The day after the Cape Cod trip, as we left the apartment, I asked if I could attend the next Jejah meeting. Right, Phoebe said, with a laugh. I explained I wasn’t kidding. Pulling on a white pashmina, she looked at me through its soft folds. It was raining again. I held the umbrella for both of us. We walked to Latham Hall while I told Phoebe partial truths. I’ve noticed the effect it’s had on you, I said. You’ve spent so much time with this group. I want to know more about it. Since it’s important to you, I can’t help being curious. She kept her face tucked down, hidden in the cashmere pile, until, lifting her head, she said she’d give John Leal a call. We’d arrived at the Latham gate. She hesitated, phone in hand. I left Phoebe the umbrella, and I said I’d walk ahead. I waited in front of the dining hall, shielded from rain by the stone arcade. Croquet wickets littered the ground. That morning, I’d passed a group of old men in pastels and wan hats, batting mallets: alumni, I figured. But in the fog they’d been wraiths, sprung from time. Balls tocked, skinkling, through delicate arches. My head pulsed. I’d had too much to drink the previous evening. She was still on the phone. I watched as she talked. Hanging up, she came to tell me he’d apologized, but it wasn’t possible. The group just didn’t have the space.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  15 “And I will put enmity (open hostility) Between you and the woman, And between your seed (offspring) and her e Seed; He shall [fatally] bruise your head, And you shall [only] bruise His heel.” [Gal 4:4 ] 16 To the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply Your pain in childbirth; In pain you will give birth to children; Yet your desire and longing will be for your husband, And he will rule [with authority] over you and be responsible for you.” 17 Then to Adam the LORD God said, “Because you have listened [attentively] to the voice of your wife, and have eaten [fruit] from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’; The ground is [now] under a curse because of you; In sorrow and toil you shall eat [the fruit] of it All the days of your life. 18 “Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 “By the sweat of your face You will eat bread Until you return to the ground, For from it you were taken; For you are dust, And to dust you shall return.” 20 The man named his wife Eve (life spring, life giver), because she was the mother of all the living. 21 The LORD God made tunics of [animal] skins for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us (Father, Son, Holy Spirit), knowing [how to distinguish between] good and evil; and now, he might stretch out his hand, and take from the tree of life as well, and eat [its fruit], and live [in this fallen, sinful condition] forever”— 23 therefore the LORD God sent Adam away from the Garden of Eden, to till and cultivate the ground from which he was taken. 24 So God drove the man out; and at the east of the Garden of Eden He [permanently] stationed the f cherubim and the sword with the flashing blade which turned round and round [in every direction] to protect and guard the way (entrance, access) to the tree of life. [Rev 2:7 ; 22:2 , 14 , 19 ] Genesis 4 Cain and Abel 1 N OW THE man a Adam knew Eve as his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, and she said, “I have obtained a man (baby boy, son) with the help of the LORD .” 2 And [later] she gave birth to his brother Abel. Now Abel kept the flocks [of sheep and goats], but Cain cultivated the ground. 3 And in the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground. 4 But Abel brought [an offering of] the [finest] firstborn of his flock and the b fat portions.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Exodus 33 The Journey Resumed 1 T he LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Depart, go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought from the land of Egypt, to the land which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel), saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ 2 “I will send an Angel before you and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. [Ex 23:23 ; 34:11 ] 3 “Go up to a land [of abundance] a flowing with milk and honey; for I will not go up in your midst, because you are a stiff-necked (stubborn, rebellious) people, and I might destroy you on the way.” 4 When the people heard this sad word, they mourned, and none of them put on his ornaments. 5 For the LORD had said to Moses, “Say to the sons of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked (stubborn, rebellious) people! If I should come among you for one moment, I would destroy you. Now therefore, [penitently] take off your ornaments, so that I may know what to do with you.’ ” 6 So the Israelites left off all their ornaments [in repentance], from Mount Horeb (Sinai) onward . 7 Now Moses used to take his own tent and pitch it outside the camp, far away from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting [of God with His own people]. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the [temporary] tent of meeting which was outside the camp. 8 Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise and stand, each at his tent door, and look at Moses until he entered the tent. 9 Whenever Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the doorway of the tent; and the LORD would speak with Moses. 10 When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the tent door, all the people would rise and worship, each at his tent door. 11 And so the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, just as a man speaks to his friend. When Moses returned to the camp, his attendant Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent. Moses Intercedes 12 Moses said to the LORD , “See, You say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but You have not let me know whom You will send with me. Yet You have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in My sight.’ 13 “Now therefore, I pray you, if I have found favor in Your sight, let me know Your ways so that I may know You [becoming more deeply and intimately acquainted with You, recognizing and understanding Your ways more clearly] and that I may find grace and favor in Your sight.

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  It was the outer margin of one little universe and nobody knew what lay beyond it. There were years full of evenings when the habit of marriage astonished him, when its repetition comforted him like nothing else ever had. Then this period came to an end. He had two kids, a house and a lawn mower, a Pontiac station wagon with simulated wood paneling on the side, a new Firebird, and a Labrador retriever named Daisy Chain. He loved his wife and children, and he hated all evidence of them. The noise of children, and the terrible quiet just after, which augured—always, every single day—some broken heirloom or injury: it squeezed the life out of him a little bit at a time. His worry was ceaseless. His son, Paul, had picked his little nose and grabbed at his crotch in public. His daughter had exposed herself to a boy at the country club. Almost any life was feasible at his salary, but this was the one he had. It was seventeen years since he had met his wife, and in seventeen more years it would be 1990 and his son would be thirty-three and he would be fifty- six. Until recently he had believed that the elderly were born that way, unlucky. Now he knew how effortless that transformation was. His son would be there to remind him. In 1996, Paul would be his present age, thirty-nine, while he would be sixty-two, his mother’s age at the time of her death. His wife would be sixty, and she would be remarkably skeletal. Her church attendance would be regular. —Janey! Hood draped his prim, salmon-colored button-down shirt around his shoulders. He pocketed an escaped collar stay. Whose? His? In one hand, the bottle, the other, the drink. His vodka. A mourning dove was complaining out in back of the house. A car passed on Valley Road. Hood was sad. He opened the door. At the top of the stair, he called her name. Janey had assured him that the house was empty, that Mikey and Sandy were over with friends for the night— committing acts of vandalism, probably, ringing doorbells and running—that Jim was in the city for a week. Still, Hood thought he heard voices. He fled back into the guest room and sat in the uncomfortable wicker chair. He zippered his pants, pulled on his socks. He married Elena and they had the kids in ’57 and ’59 and they traded up in houses and they traded up in cars. To afford the family car, the Corvair, in ’63, Hood had been forced to trade in the Jaguar he had driven in college. It was all economics now. Or maybe he overlooked the subtlety of feeling that hid beneath economics. Beneath math. He made $48,000 a year not including the annual bonus. Income from stock held by Elena, $3,600; income from his own bad investments, a little less. Savings account.

• From Understanding the Old Testament (2019)

  Understanding the old testament 24 God said, “The man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; what if he now reaches out and takes fruit from the Tree of Life also, and eats of it and lives forever?” So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he had been taken. It is unlikely that the Israelites understood God here in a petty, jealous way. The words were not supposed to leave readers thinking that the man should have run from the Tree of Knowledge to the Tree of Life before God remembered it was there. Eating of the Tree of Knowledge has ended the special sort of life that was only supplied by breath from God, absent in the creation of the animals. Eating from the Tree of Life would perpetuate the other sort of living, physical life. God is worried that the man will live forever in the condition of toil and patriarchy, which would be a fate worse than death. Just as the naming of Eve and covering with skin are not the blessings they look like, the exclusion from the Tree of Life might not be the punishment looks like. Nevertheless, this is a bad ending. Verse 24 says, “He drove him out and settled him to the east of the Garden of Eden.” The word used there for “drove out” is garesh, which can also mean “divorce.” To be exiled from Eden is a divorce from God, a loss of fellowship with God. Questions to Consider YWas the serpent right because everything he predicted came true? YCognitive science tells us naked people are more inclined to think about death and to remember they are animals, and that people reminded they are animals are more inclined to think about death. Does this help explain Adam and Eve’s knowledge that they were naked? Suggested Reading Meyers, Discovering Eve. ABRAHAM, THE FATHER OF THREE FAITHS LECTURE 5 Abraham—whom God calls to become the father of a new nation in the land of Canaan—is considered the spiritual father of three faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For all three, his story illustrates what religious faith means, though there are some differences in how. Those differences underline some of the distinctions of the three modern faiths. Abraham’s Beginning The story of Abraham truly begins in chapter 12 of Genesis. At this point in the Old Testament, his name is given as Abram. Genesis 12:1 states that God said to Abraham, “‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great.’” 5

• From The Decameron (1353)

  It was then (even as we yet see it used) a custom that the kinswomen and she-neighbours of the dead should assemble in his house and there condole with those who more nearly pertained unto him, whilst his neighbours and many other citizens foregathered with his next of kin before his house, whither, according to the dead man's quality, came the clergy, and he with funeral pomp of chants and candles was borne on the shoulders of his peers to the church chosen by himself before his death; which usages, after the virulence of the plague began to increase, were either altogether or for the most part laid aside, and other and strange customs sprang up in their stead. For that, not only did folk die without having a multitude of women about them, but many there were who departed this life without witness and few indeed were they to whom the pious plaints and bitter tears of their kinsfolk were vouchsafed; nay, in lieu of these things there obtained, for the most part, laughter and jests and gibes and feasting and merrymaking in company; which usance women, laying aside womanly pitifulness, had right well learned for their own safety. Few, again, were they whose bodies were accompanied to the church by more than half a score or a dozen of their neighbours, and of these no worshipful and illustrious citizens, but a sort of blood-suckers, sprung from the dregs of the people, who styled themselves _pickmen_[8] and did such offices for hire, shouldered the bier and bore it with hurried steps, not to that church which the dead man had chosen before his death, but most times to the nearest, behind five or six[9] priests, with little light[10] and whiles none at all, which latter, with the aid of the said pickmen, thrust him into what grave soever they first found unoccupied, without troubling themselves with too long or too formal a service. [Footnote 8: _i.e._ gravediggers (_becchini_).] [Footnote 9: Lit. _four_ or six. This is the equivalent Italian idiom.] [Footnote 10: _i.e._ but few tapers.]

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  12 “Hear my prayer, O LORD , and listen to my cry; Do not be silent at my tears; For I am Your temporary guest, A sojourner like all my fathers. 13 “O look away from me, that I may smile and again know joy Before I depart and am no more.” Psalm 40 God Sustains His Servant. To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. 1 I waited patiently and expectantly for the LORD ; And He inclined to me and heard my cry. 2 He brought me up out of a horrible pit [of tumult and of destruction], out of the miry clay, And He set my feet upon a rock, steadying my footsteps and establishing my path. 3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear [with great reverence] And will trust confidently in the LORD . [Ps 5:11 ] 4 Blessed [fortunate, prosperous, and favored by God] is the man who makes the LORD his trust, And does not regard the proud nor those who lapse into lies. 5 Many, O LORD my God, are the wonderful works which You have done, And Your thoughts toward us; There is none to compare with You. If I would declare and speak of your wonders, They would be too many to count. 6 Sacrifice and meal offering You do not desire, nor do You delight in them; You have opened my ears and given me the capacity to hear [and obey Your word]; Burnt offerings and sin offerings You do not require. [Mic 6:6–8 ] 7 Then I said, “Behold, I come [to the throne]; In the scroll of the book it is written of me. 8 “I delight to do Your will, O my God; Your law is within my heart.” [Jer 31:33 ; Heb 10:5–9 ] 9 I have proclaimed good news of righteousness [and the joy that comes from obedience to You] in the great assembly; Behold, I will not restrain my lips [from proclaiming Your righteousness], As You know, O LORD . 10 I have not concealed Your righteousness within my heart; I have proclaimed Your faithfulness and Your salvation. I have not concealed Your lovingkindness and Your truth from the great assembly. [Acts 20:20 , 27 ] 11 Do not withhold Your compassion and tender mercy from me, O LORD ; Your lovingkindness and Your truth will continually preserve me. 12 For innumerable evils have encompassed me; My sins have overtaken me, so that I am not able to see. They are more numerous than the hairs of my head, And my heart has failed me. 13 Be pleased, O LORD , to save me; O LORD , make haste to help me. 14 Let those be ashamed and humiliated together Who seek my life to destroy it; Let those be turned back [in defeat] and dishonored Who delight in my hurt.

• From Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

  In the wood all was utterly inert and motionless, only great drops fell from the bare boughs, with a hollow little crash. For the rest, among the old trees was depth within depth of grey, hopeless, inertia, silence, nothingness. Connie walked dimly on. From the old wood came an ancient melancholy, somehow soothing to her, better than the harsh insentience of the outer world. She liked the _inwardness_ of the remnant of forest, the unspeaking reticence of the old trees. They seemed a very power of silence, and yet a vital presence. They, too, were waiting: obstinately, stoically waiting, and giving off a potency of silence. Perhaps they were only waiting for the end; to be cut down, cleared away, the end of the forest, for them the end of all things. But perhaps their strong and aristocratic silence, the silence of strong trees, meant something else. As she came out of the wood on the north side, the keeper's cottage, a rather dark, brown stone cottage, with gables and a handsome chimney, looked uninhabited, it was so silent and alone. But a thread of smoke rose from the chimney, and the little railed-in garden in the front of the house was dug and kept very tidy. The door was shut. Now she was here she felt a little shy of the man, with his curious far-seeing eyes. She did not like bringing him orders, and felt like going away again. She knocked softly, no one came. She knocked again, but still not loudly. There was no answer. She peeped through the window, and saw the dark little room, with its almost sinister privacy, not wanting to be invaded. She stood and listened, and it seemed to her she heard sounds from the back of the cottage. Having failed to make herself heard, her mettle was roused, she would not be defeated. So she went round the side of the house. At the back of the cottage the land rose steeply, so the backyard was sunken, and enclosed by a low stone wall. She turned the corner of the house and stopped. In the little yard two paces beyond her, the man was washing himself, utterly unaware. He was naked to the hips, his velveteen breeches slipping down over his slender loins. And his white slim back was curved over a big bowl of soapy water, in which he ducked his head, shaking his head with a queer, quick little motion, lifting his slender white arms, and pressing the soapy water from his ears, quick, subtle as a weasel playing with water, and utterly alone. Connie backed away round the corner of the house, and hurried away to the wood. In spite of herself, she had had a shock. After all, merely a man washing himself; common-place enough, Heaven knows!

• From The Ice Storm (1994)

  This was the Adventure in Contentment. To find in the circumstances around you the lemonade, the sustenance, the opportunity of the day. This is a gift indeed. As Hugh Prather said, Elena remembered: “open / and alert / empty / and available / human / and / alive waiting / (without purpose) / ready / (without wanting) / existing (without needing).” Nonetheless, when Elena learned about the key party, she was stuck in Benjamin’s own constrictive system of decision making. It was hard for her to open up, to be in her own needs, wants. She was stuck in the moment when Benjamin would somehow, through some prestidigitation, attach their house key, with its little equine key ring, to Janey Williams’s hand. She was attached to the look on her son’s face when Janey and Benjamin would slip out the front door, on some Saturday morning, to have breakfast in Darien or Norwalk, where no one would see them. No one but the other couples slipping out. In this blue mood, she snuck in the door, past Dot and Rob Halford, past the Armitages, the Sawyers, the Steeles, the Boyles, the Gormans, the Jacobsens, the Hamiltons, the Gadds, the Earles, the Fullers, the Buckleys, the Regans, the Bolands, the Conrads, the Millers. Past the old families of New Canaan, the Benedicts, the Bootons, the Carters, the Newports, the Eels, the Finches, the Hanforts, the Hoytts, the Kellers, the Lockwells, the Prindels, the Seelys, the Slausons, the Talmadges, the Tarkingtons, the Tuttles, the Wellses. And past the new elite crop of divorced New Canaanites—Chuck Spofford, June Devereaux, Tommy Finletter, Nina Kellogg. She avoided the living room, where Janey Williams was already situated, heading instead for the kitchen and the library. Here she darted around conversations for an hour or more, never staying long enough to complete a thought or register an intimacy. She helped Dot, who disdained caterers, load up the hors d’oeuvre trays. Then she had a conversation with George Clair, a man her husband couldn’t stand. Seemed nice enough. After this, her first stop was the bathroom, where she sat for a while crying and applying prudent amounts of the makeup before the medicine-cabinet mirror. Right then, it didn’t seem like much had changed or that much would change. But the fact is that most of us have mood changes as each part of our P-A-C (Parent-Adult-Child) makes its contribution to our behavior. “Sometimes the reasons for our mutability are elusive or do not seem to be related to any special signal in the present.” While Elena was crying, though, Mark Boland entered the bathroom without knocking—it had no satisfactory latch—and found her—legs uncrossed and panties stretched between her kneecaps like a fancy wrapping paper—applying tan lipstick. Combs surrounded her, stuck up on all four walls. Dot Halford collected combs. Boland blushed terribly, stammered an apology, and slammed the door.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen said: ‘Go on,’ and her voice sounded husky. ‘Oh, my dear—it’s so dreadfully hard to tell you. The pay was rotten, not enough to live on—I used to think that they did it on purpose, lots of the girls used to think that way too—they never gave us quite enough to live on. You see, I hadn’t a vestige of talent, I could only dress up and try to look pretty. I never got a real speaking part, I just danced, not well, but I’d got a good figure.’ She paused and tried to look up through the gloom, but Stephen’s face was hidden in shadow. ‘Well then, darling—Stephen, I want to feel your arms, hold me closer—well then, I—there was a man who wanted me—not as you want me, Stephen, to protect and care for me; God, no, not that way! And I was so poor and so tired and so frightened; why sometimes my shoes would let in the slush because they were old and I hadn’t the money to buy myself new ones—try to think of that, darling. And I’d cry when I washed my hands in the winter because they’d be bleeding from broken chilblains. Well, I couldn’t stay the course any longer, that’s all. . . .’ The little gilt clock on the desk ticked loudly. Tick, tick! Tick, tick! An astonishing voice to come from so small and fragile a body. Somewhere out in the garden a dog barked—Tony, chasing imaginary rabbits through the darkness. ‘Stephen!’ ‘Yes, my dear?’ ‘Have you understood me?’ ‘Yes—oh, yes, I’ve understood you. Go on.’ ‘Well then, after a while he turned round and left me, and I just had to drag along as I had done, and I sort of crocked up—couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t smile and look happy when I went on to dance—that was how Ralph found me—he saw me dance and came round to the back, the way some men do. I remember thinking that Ralph didn’t look like that sort of man; he looked—well, just like Ralph, not a bit like that sort of man. Then he started sending me flowers; never presents or anything like that, just flowers with his card. And we had lunch together a good few times, and he talked about that other man who’d left me. He said he’d like to go out with a horsewhip—imagine Ralph trying to horsewhip a man! They knew each other quite well, I discovered; you see, they were both in the hardware business. Ralph was out after some big contract for his firm, that was why he happened to be in New York—and one day he asked me to marry him, Stephen.