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 Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  I looked out the window, thinking about my mother, Toot, and Gramps, and how grateful I was to them—for who they were, and for the stories they’d told. I turned back to Auma, and said, “She still hasn’t gotten over him, has she?” “Who?” “Ruth. She hasn’t gotten over the Old Man.” Auma thought for a moment. “No, Barack. I guess she hasn’t. Just like the rest of us.” The following week, I called Mark and suggested that we go out to lunch. He seemed a bit hesitant, but eventually agreed to meet me at an Indian restaurant downtown. He was more relaxed than he had been during our first meeting, making a few self-deprecatory jokes, offering his observations about California and academic infighting. As the meal wore on, I asked him how it felt being back for the summer. “Fine,” he said. “It’s nice to see my mom and dad, of course. And Joey—he’s really a great kid.” Mark cut off a bite of his samosa and put it into his mouth. “As for the rest of Kenya, I don’t feel much of an attachment. Just another poor African country.” “You don’t ever think about settling here?” Mark took a sip from his Coke. “No,” he said. “I mean, there’s not much work for a physicist, is there, in a country where the average person doesn’t have a telephone.” I should have stopped then, but something—the certainty in this brother’s voice, maybe, or our rough resemblance, like looking into a foggy mirror—made me want to push harder. I asked, “Don’t you ever feel like you might be losing something?” Mark put down his knife and fork, and for the first time that afternoon his eyes looked straight into mine. “I understand what you’re getting at,” he said flatly. “You think that somehow I’m cut off from my roots, that sort of thing.” He wiped his mouth and dropped the napkin onto his plate. “Well, you’re right. At a certain point, I made a decision not to think about who my real father was. He was dead to me even when he was still alive. I knew that he was a drunk and showed no concern for his wife or children. That was enough.” “It made you mad.” “Not mad. Just numb.” “And that doesn’t bother you? Being numb, I mean?” “Towards him, no. Other things move me. Beethoven’s symphonies. Shakespeare’s sonnets. I know—it’s not what an African is supposed to care about. But who’s to tell me what I should and shouldn’t care about? Understand, I’m not ashamed of being half Kenyan. I just don’t ask myself a lot of questions about what it all means. About who I really am.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I should. I can acknowledge the possibility that if I looked more carefully at myself, I would …”

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  She ducks her head to look at me through the hole. She pushes her beak into it as far as it will go, biting the empty air inside. Putting my mouth to my side of my paper telescope I boom into it: ‘Hello, Mabel.’ She pulls her beak free. All the feathers on her forehead are raised. She shakes her tail rapidly from side to side and shivers with happiness. An obscure shame grips me. I had a fixed idea of what a goshawk was, just as those Victorian falconers had, and it was not big enough to hold what goshawks are. No one had ever told me goshawks played. It was not in the books. I had not imagined it was possible. I wondered if it was because no one had ever played with them. The thought made me terribly sad. In a letter to White, Gilbert Blaine explained that he didn’t like goshawks because their ‘crazy and suspicious temperament had alienated him from them, as it had most falconers’. ‘Perhaps for this reason,’ White wrote, years later, ‘I had loved Gos. I always loved the unteachable, the untouchable, the underdog.’ Gos was a queer thing, the opposite of civilised English hearts, and through him White could play many selves: the benevolent parent, the innocent child, the kindly teacher, the patient pupil. And other, stranger selves: through the hawk White could become a mother, a ‘man who for two months had made that bird, almost like a mother nourishing her child inside her, for the subconsciousness of the bird and the man became really linked by a mind’s cord: to the man who had created out of a part of his life’. And in White’s notebooks, the ones written in green ink, he begins writing things late at night in a drunken, expansive hand that never make their way into his book because they are too revealing. The thing he most hates is to have his head stroked, the thing he most likes is to have his tail feathers pulled, stroked, pruned & sorted out. In fact, Gos shows much interest in his backward parts. He is a coprophilite, if not a pansy. He can slice his mutes 3 yards and always turns proudly round to look at them. I, however, who can pee continually for several minutes (and this he supposes to be some form of slicing) excite his interest and envy. There are many ways to read The Goshawk, and one of them is as a work of suppressed homosexual desire – not for flesh, but for blood, for kinship.

• From Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Cycle of Anxious Thoughts (2020)

  I was actually full of faith. An Important Note You may live with low-grade sadness and have for as long as you can remember. Or maybe for you, it’s far worse than that. Two people in my life who love Jesus deeply are fighting regular desires to take their own lives. With the National Alliance on Mental Illness reporting that “one in 5 adults experiences a mental health condition every year,”6 it’s safe to say that mental illness is rampant. If mental illness is a struggle you face, may I please wrap loving arms around you, look you in the eyes, and whisper, “This—your anxiety or depression or bipolar disorder or suicidal thoughts—is not your fault”? You may be suffering from a true chemical breakdown in your body. I get that. Several members of my family depend on medicine to help regulate their brain chemistry. Please hear me: there is no shame in that choice. Praise God for tools that help. I just want you to know—please, lean in close and hear this—that throughout this book, whenever I talk about God giving us a choice about how we think, I am not suggesting that you can think your way out of mental illness. I am not. I have experienced seasons of anxiety so brutal that I was paralyzed. There are seasons when we need help in the form of counseling and medicine. But I hope to show you in the coming pages that in every season there is help that we can access for ourselves. Learning to think a single thought can help us all—those of us who struggle with mental illness and those of us whose struggles are of a different sort. I just didn’t feel very full of faith. What I felt was very beaten up. The tragedy for me was I didn’t have to be spinning out for eighteen months. Neither do you. We don’t have to spin out for eighteen months. We don’t have to spin out for eighteen minutes. We don’t have to spin out at all. I hesitate to say this next thing for several reasons. Maybe you’re skeptical. Maybe you’ve fought specific bondage your entire life, and my answer will seem pat. Maybe you can’t even imagine freedom, let alone work to pursue it. But I am going to say it anyway. I’m going to say it because it is true: You can, in fact, change in an instant. You. And I. Can change. Science proves we can. Our brains are full of neural pathways, some shallow and moldable and some grooves dug deep from a lifetime of toxic thoughts. In both cases, God is mighty to save.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  +(ns] vb. only Niph. sigh, groan, mostly poet. & late (Aram. ,אנח‎ wi? Ethp. ef. As. [and- hu), inku, sigh Zim 2? ‘0 — Pf. 3 fs.70382 La x Jo 18; 3 pl. ISI 15 2 47; 19: NIN) Pr 29° ete. ; Im’. nasa Ez21"; Pt. M8) Ez 21”; נְאָנְחָה‎ La 1 ete. 31. sigh, in token of acs Is24? Pr 29? Lar? ) || 733) v" Ez21" 5 of Jerus. Lar’; mostly abs. but sq. “by Ez 9° (|| P82); sq. ~DY & “by 21%, 2. in physical distress La1™ (|| בש‎ (לְחֶם‎ ; Ex 2% sq. מֶן‎ by reason of .עק||)‎ 3. groan of cattle (7272) 70% TAMIN n.f. sighing, groaning (poet. & late); 0 31+ ; sf ‘DIS Th 3*+ ; ANI Is 21" (sf. with Raphe), tah 0 ‘NAN 1% sighing, groaning, in distress, physical or “Et tal Jb 3: (||FRRY), 23° ? (||), V6; 38" (||MSB), Is 21% 18 15; || יגון‎ p31" Is 35” 51" Je 45°; קול א'‎ 102% pron. 1 pl. we v. infr.‏ אנונר 1 אנחרת‎ n.pr.loc. city in Naphtali Jos 19". Kn (cf. Di) comp. en-Na‘tra, on E. side of Jebel Dahi, little Hermon; 61. Rob™*"***, = . אני אבה‎ pron. 1 5. comm. I (Ul, 828, \\ אנו BK, Ak) Gn 6” 9°” + oft. Following a ptep. as its subj. (to express mostly either a true present or the fut. instans) Gn 187 ‘J8 הִַמְכַמָּה‎ Am . 0700 from Abraham that which, ete., Ju 15 moa adler so" 44” (v. Drs"). oe to a verb, it expresses, in early Hebrew, a real ~ emphasis, as לא אָמַשל אנִי בָּכֶם "8 גו‎ I will not rule over you, 2S 12% lest I take the city, 2 8 17% thus and thus did Ahitophel counsel, and thus and thus ‘JS ‘M¥y" did J counsel; but in later Heb. it is sometimes pleonastic, Ec giut1s20 | | Jn response to a question, "JN alone =I am, It is I, Gn 27% 10 147 1 K 18*+ With ,ה‎ 280 +15 66°. (Syn. ‘DIN, q.v.) FAN pron. 1 pl. comm. we (common in postB. Heb.; cf. also Amh. ea) may be re- garded as the pl. of 8 (W***), only Je 42° Kt, for which Qr substitutes the normal 738. (once Jb33°'238) pron. 1s.‏ אנכי .אנכי comm. I; Gn = 22 15)? 16°+oft. With 4,‏ ¢Nurr”? Jb 21*. (As. andku, Ph. & Moab.‏ הָאָנְכִי not in Ar. 0% Eth.; but ku appears‏ : אנך as the affix of the 1s. in the Eth. verb (e.g.‏ waladku= Heb. md), 9338 and 28 appear‏ to be two parallel formations (both containing‏ Jor ana, & one‏ בי the element ani ] cf. the sf. es‏

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  FNP] vb. make turbid (As. daléhu, disturb, Zim®®™ also in deriv.; Pal. ¥ 93 fig. be anxious, 107 ל‎ conturbavit) —Qal Jmpf. 2 ms., nam Bz e275, 3 is. sf. תּרְלְחַם‎ Ez 32%+v™ (Co (תרפשם‎ ; — stir up, trouble, make turbid (always with feet) sq. מים‎ Ez32° (||D27,—p Baer, and not (ש‎ ; so 32"*" (but **"ץ‎ Co rds. תרפש‎ (ef. v?) for ondsn). TL 4 וד‎ vb. hang, be low, languish (NH Hiph. thin, thin out vines, etc.; As. daldlu, be weak, humble Zim®?™*"; Ay. js direct, guide, js be directed, guided ; jas put in motion, commo- tion ; 3 be in motion, hang, dungle ; 0 Js amorous, coquettish, gesture or behaviour of women)—Qal Pf. DT vy 116°, ד לוי‎ ז‎ pl. דללו ,79% + דלונו‎ Is 0% דלו‎ Is 38" Th 28 (on ליו‎ Pr 26° cf. 3) ;—hang, ‘depend,’ Jb 28* (of one descending a miner’s shaft ||3¥2): be low, of streams Is 19° (|[3277); be ow, brought low, metaph. of distress ~79° 116° 1427; lan- guish, of eyes, look languishingly (Che) Is 38". —WNiph. Jmpf. ירל‎ Is 17*, ויל‎ Ju 6°, — be brought low, laid low Ju 6° fig. of Israel; Is 17* of glory of Jacob. adj. low, weak, poor, thin (especially‏ דלז common in Wisd. lit. and poet.)—?7 Ly 147!+‏ y 82%; 57 Am 2’‏ דל + 17 +*23 Ex‏ 54 6 8 +17t.; 1}? Gn 41°;—weak, thin, of kine Gn‏ (E); of Amnon 2 ₪ 13*; weak, of family‏ 41° of Saul 28 3! (opp. P19) cf. Ju6”; reduced, poor‏ Je 5°‏ (עָשיר (opp. rich) Ly 14% )2( Ru 3” (opp.‏ DY);‏ עָנִי v*) Pr 28" Zp 3” (On‏ ,הגדולים (opp. to‏ mostly subst., a poor (man), the poor Ex 23°‏ (JE); opp. to YY Ex 30% (P) Pr ro* 22%‏ 1S 2° Jb5" ¥72"‏ אביון|| ;"1+ הון opp.‏ ;"28 Pr 14” Is 14” 25* Am 4' 8°; cf. also‏ 1137 *82 Jb20% Pr22° Je39"; reduced, weak, help-‏ Pr 22” Is‏ , (יתום 3180 ||) 82° Jb 34% y‏ (עני ||) less‏ שוע Jb 31"; opp.‏ אלמנה || ;27 Am‏ 26° *זז ro?‏ Pr 19” 217 28%% 297".‏ ?41 ץ Jb 34%;—cf. also‏ +1. דה‎ n.f. 6011., hair, thrum (both from hanging down)—794 Is 38"; estr. nda Ct --"7ך‎ hair, ראשך‎ Ct7°; thrum (threads of warp hanging in loom) in sim. of premature death Ts 38".‏ 1539 יְַצְעָנִי Je 40°‏ בָּלַת ‘Pie. [nba] n.f. the poor—cstr.‏ + 2t.; pl. niba Je 52'°'6-__the poor (coll., weak, helpless ones) Je 407 2 K 24" 25” (in || 16 | as also vy, MT has strangely the pl.) 0 2 דלילה n.pr.f. Delila, Philistine woman,‏ ּלִילֶה+ mistress of Samson Ju 16462012-13.18,‏ tbs n.pr.loc. a city of Judah, Jos 15*.

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  man Hup De al.);‏ 0001 =.[80) 5° ץ לא יר רע Gn 2% 358 (all J), Dt 1; YY 70‏ ידע טוב ורע Ex 32”‏ ביברע הוא Ts 59° 34" 377 Pr3’+8t.;‏ רע מעללים ,”7 רע רשעים, ; (J) he is set on evil‏ deeds of evil‏ 24“ רע ;)3 91 cf. Mi 3*(v.‏ ,25° 18 NYY‏ ;"סז ארח רע ;2% Pr‏ התפכות רע ;5% Je‏ ;20° איש רע ;15% Pr‏ מַחְשָבות רע ;ינז ₪ רע Gr Bi Toy).‏ רע NW 6* (but rd.‏ רע ;285 YI WIN‏ mW) jury calle, ר/‎ Gn 26%+4; estr. רעת‎ 65+; sf. +'35ש רְעָתִי‎ ; Wr + 2* +; רְעָתְכִי‎ Jerr? (txt. dub.); ד רְעַתְכֶם‎ ₪ 127,666.; pl. MY Dt 317+; רְעת‎ Je 44? Ex 237; sf. ODN] 1S 10%+, ete.;—1. evil, misery, distress; NYY INS 1% באה (ה)רעה‎ Ez 7°"; 6. על‎ Is 47" (read באה‎ for ,(בא‎ 26 87+ 5 5; 0. S Je 2" 51"; הביא רעה+‎ Je 4° אֶל+ 2% ז‎ 2817%+8 % Je; על+‎ 1 K 9=2 Ch 7”, 20 1(7+ 6 t. 16+ 8 t.; 458 et על‎ Jerg® 36"; יוּם רעה‎ 1745 t.; יָמִי הרעה‎ +Ec 12! (i.e., spring days, fatal to old people, Wetzst in De®"); רעות‎ evils Dt 317"! (JE), 32% (poem), 34° 40% 88*; AYI NY Am 5% Je 277-84) ₪%.; *ז טא ראה ברעה‎ (JE) Ob*® Est 8°; ראה רעה+‎ 16 44" Woo Pr22°= 27"; יפול ברעה+‎ 17% 28"; בַּרְעָהץ‎ Gn 44% (J) Pr 14% 24 Ner® 1Ch 47” y 107"; רְעָה. ;141° ברעותיכם‎ by nn Ex 32° "(J) 16 8+6 6; 6 bs 29 Je 26°19 40% 2, evil, injury, wrong: עשה רעהץ‎ 28 12% Je 2641"; c. DY Gn 26"(J) Jur? את ד ככ‎ Jt Ti ל.0‎ 18 621K 2*+ 4t.; 6 Oy Je 447; obj. of vbs. חשב‎ Gn 50” (E) Je 36° 48°+ 47 t.; חרש+‎ 18 23° Pr3”; הָשִיב‎ Gn 50”(E)Jug® + 4t.; גמל+‎ Gn Boy (Ex S24 %? Is3° ;"בע‎ wpaNu357(P) 1824 25%4 4 + שלם‎ Gn 445 (J) Je 18% 51% 35 387; my for harm Gn 31” Ex 232 (E) Dt 20% Juz” 28 18” Je 21+ 8 +. Je, Amo’ Zc1™ Pr 6% Ec 5"; LVI 28168 in thy mischief; NVI Ex 32" (J) for mischief; רְעָה רבה‎ Ke 2”; חוּלֶה‎ ny Ee 572". 3. ethical evil, 18 127 24” 26% Is 47 Je 2% +13 t. Je,+18 t.,+foll.: 737(7) NYY Gn 39° Dt 318 (J) + 5 t. + Je 18% (Kt, but Qr (רע‎ ; מעשה רעה‎ Ec 8"; אהב רעה‎ Mi 3°(Kt); שוב מרעה‎ 165 2 44°; רעה מ'‎ WA Ju 20" (v. 1.913); רְעָה‎ ‘BD Je 7” 44°; רעתכם‎ nyt מפני‎ Ho ro”: "2ב 1% על בל 9 ;16117 בגלל ר'‎ 33°; “Dy 107 16 12*; רְעָה‎ WIS Pr 24). [yyn] ג‎ Vb. denom. be evil, bad;— +Qal Pf. 3 ms. גא רע‎ 22" +3 % Vir; 3 fs. n.f. evil, misery, distress, in- 949 רעע

• From A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (BDB) (1907)

  so of trees (acc. om.) ~ 104", fig. of requital Pr18™”, 6.6. {2 of food Jb 19° (fig.); fig. of earth having its fill (of rain) ~ 104”, and (fig. of requital) Pr 18°°*; good sense 12% (del. Jn, so Toy), bad sense 17" 145; c. J of source Is 66" (fig.). 2. more gen., be sated, have desire ~ satisfied: a. abs. Ez 16°°°* (i.e. with harlotry), Je 50 (with plunder), Is53"' (with a given re- sult); of eyes Pr27”, of She’6l and Abaddon v”, ef. 30”; =have abundance Pr 30° (exposure to arrogance). . 6. acc., be satisfied with, have one’s fill of : Je 31", cf. ¥1'7 63% Pr 5° Ec5%, cf. (eye subj.) 4% acc. of sons ~ 17" (si vera 1. but text dub., v. Ol Du, cf. Bae We), days of life, i.e. reach the full limit (+?) 1 Ch 23! 2Ch24”. ¢.c. ב‎ of goodness 68% 6. כ[‎ id. Ec 6% d. c. ל‎ inf, nis לאִתַשָבַּע עין‎ Ec 18 (| (מַלָא‎ 3. have in excess, be surfeited with : a. lit., with honey (acc.) Pr 25". b. fig.=be weary of, c. acc. of offerings Is 17 (subj. "( tossings Jb 7*, poverty Pr 28", shame Hb 2", contempt ו‎ 12 37% 6. ace. pers. Pr 28". ¢. id., 6. ב‎ of troubles ) 88% of reproach La 3”. +Niph. Pt. Y2¥) sated Jb 319%. + Pi. satisfy, Impf. 3 mpl. ישבעו‎ Ez 7" they shall not satisfy their appetite (W522; || N>D); Imv.ms.sf.,subj., AON yay y go" (2acc.). 111101. Pf. 3 ms. wav y1079, 71 consec. 15 587; 2 fs. Ayavn Ez 27°, etc.; Jmpf.3 ms. sf.1ya" 109% 2 ms. "avA Vig Gees TOR: yave) Je 5‘, sf. Wars ץ‎ 817 van 8. H., 7°28 Baer Gi, 660. 70: להַלְבִיע .זפ‎ Tb 387; Pt. Way 103° 145";—1. a. satisfy (esp. with material blessings), subj.”, 6. acc. pers. Je 5/(exposingmen to arrogance), Is 58" (acc. ₪ of refreshment in drought, ב‎ loc., fig. of help and blessing), ץ‎ 107° (acc. YB2 ; || NPD), ef. 103° ב)‎ instr.,on ace.v." IY) ; c.acc. of ground Jb 38" (i.e. with rain); human subj.,c. 800. ¥52 1s58 b. c. 800. of food + pers.,”* subj., ְהָאָכִיל ||( "81 שש‎ 105” 132 147"; 6. acc. יָמִים + .עס‎ FIN gt? c. "5 subj., ace. rei + pers., רצו[‎ ‘M30 "wD v145". d. % subj., 6. acc. of beasts + JD (of Pharaoh, in prophetic fig.) Ez 32*. 2. enrich, subj. Tyre, c. acc. gent. Ez 278 (|| Wyn). >. sate, glut (with the undesired), subj. 7%, 0. acc. pers. + ב‎ rei La 3”, ace. pers.+ rei Jb 9*. n.{m.] satiety, abundance ;—abs.‏ שבעז y 16", "o> Pr 13”; sf.‏ שבע i) Ex 16°+4, estr.‏ Wav Dt 23”, AYIY Ru 2" ;---1. satiety, as to‏ שבעה

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  Her new home is huge. There are bark-covered branches, and perches upholstered in astroturf to massage her feet. There is a bath, a chute through which Tony will drop her food; weedy undergrowth, gravel, a nest-ledge to lie on, a patch of warming sun. Above the wire-mesh roof the Suffolk sky. ‘Well, Mabes,’ I say, unhooding her, ‘This is your home for the next few months.’ She looks down at my hand as it pulls each jess free from her anklets: now she stands on my fist wearing none at all. She cocks an eye up to the moving clouds, then examines her surroundings. She follows the line of the roof to the corners, peers at the cinderblock foundation walls. For a moment we are back in the darkened room on that first day of our meeting. I remember that moment when the hawk first forgot me and flinch inwardly at the knowledge that now she will forget me again. ‘I’ll see you after the summer’s over,’ I say. Forgetting. Remembering. I put my hand out, drag the tips of my fingers down her teardrop-splashed front. The new feathers she will grow will be barred stone-grey and white. The tones of earth and ochre will disappear. Her eyes, when I see her next, will be the deep orange of glowing coals. Everything changes. Everything moves. I lift my hand, cast her towards the nearest perch. She flies, lands, shakes her tail, sees a branch above her and leaps upon it. She’s facing away from me. ‘I’ll miss you,’ I say. No answer can come, and there is nothing to explain. I turn and walk out of the door , leaving the hawk behind. Tony is waiting outside, his eyes crinkled into a smile. ‘Come inside the house,’ he says. He knows what I am feeling. And in I go, where the dogs lie flat on the kitchen floor , tails wagging, and the kettle is whistling, and the house is very warm. Postscript I needed to find out more about White to write this book. So I spent a week in the Harry Ransom Center, the Texas archive where T. H. White’s papers and journals are kept. Reading about muddy English winters while sitting in an air-conditioned library was a very strange experience; outside, vultures soared on tilted wings through ninety-degree heat and grackles hopped on the burning sidewalks. I turned pages, sifted through manuscripts, read through the books he had owned, returned home with stacks of notes and thoughts. But they did not seem enough. There was something else to be done. So one hot July day I drove across England to Stowe. It’s still a school, but its grounds are open to the public. I parked my car in the National Trust car park, paid my entrance fee, clutched a map, and walked up the long lane to the gate. ‘Turn left for the best views,’ the man at the sentry box said.

• From H Is for Hawk (2014)

  She sleeps all the way to Suffolk in my car. Tony’s house is tucked behind trees on a road between two fields and lines of hedgerow elms. I pull into the drive, take Mabel onto my glove and walk across the lawn. He comes out to greet me. We walk together to the high, white-walled aviary behind his mews. He unlocks the door and I step through. Her new home is huge. There are bark-covered branches, and perches upholstered in astroturf to massage her feet. There is a bath, a chute through which Tony will drop her food; weedy undergrowth, gravel, a nest-ledge to lie on, a patch of warming sun. Above the wire-mesh roof the Suffolk sky. ‘Well, Mabes,’ I say, unhooding her, ‘This is your home for the next few months.’ She looks down at my hand as it pulls each jess free from her anklets: now she stands on my fist wearing none at all. She cocks an eye up to the moving clouds, then examines her surroundings. She follows the line of the roof to the corners, peers at the cinderblock foundation walls. For a moment we are back in the darkened room on that first day of our meeting. I remember that moment when the hawk first forgot me and flinch inwardly at the knowledge that now she will forget me again. ‘I’ll see you after the summer’s over,’ I say. Forgetting. Remembering. I put my hand out, drag the tips of my fingers down her teardrop-splashed front. The new feathers she will grow will be barred stone-grey and white. The tones of earth and ochre will disappear. Her eyes, when I see her next, will be the deep orange of glowing coals. Everything changes. Everything moves. I lift my hand, cast her towards the nearest perch. She flies, lands, shakes her tail, sees a branch above her and leaps upon it. She’s facing away from me. ‘I’ll miss you,’ I say. No answer can come, and there is nothing to explain. I turn and walk out of the door, leaving the hawk behind. Tony is waiting outside, his eyes crinkled into a smile. ‘Come inside the house,’ he says. He knows what I am feeling. And in I go, where the dogs lie flat on the kitchen floor, tails wagging, and the kettle is whistling, and the house is very warm. Postscript

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  Still, something had happened between her and Lolo in the year that they had been apart. In Hawaii he had been so full of life, so eager with his plans. At night when they were alone, he would tell her about growing up as a boy during the war, watching his father and eldest brother leave to join the revolutionary army, hearing the news that both had been killed and everything lost, the Dutch army’s setting their house aflame, their flight into the countryside, his mother’s selling her gold jewelry a piece at a time in exchange for food. Things would be changing now that the Dutch had been driven out, Lolo had told her; he would return and teach at the university, be a part of that change. He didn’t talk that way anymore. In fact, it seemed as though he barely spoke to her at all, only out of necessity or when spoken to, and even then only of the task at hand, repairing a leak or planning a trip to visit some distant cousin. It was as if he had pulled into some dark hidden place, out of reach, taking with him the brightest part of himself. On some nights, she would hear him up after everyone else had gone to bed, wandering through the house with a bottle of imported whiskey, nursing his secrets. Other nights he would tuck a pistol under his pillow before falling off to sleep. Whenever she asked him what was wrong, he would gently rebuff her, saying he was just tired. It was as if he had come to mistrust words somehow. Words, and the sentiments words carried. She suspected these problems had something to do with Lolo’s job. He was working for the army as a geologist, surveying roads and tunnels, when she arrived. It was mind-numbing work that didn’t pay very much; the refrigerator alone cost two months’ salary. And now with a wife and child to provide for … no wonder he was depressed. She hadn’t traveled all this way to be a burden, she decided. She would carry her own weight. She found herself a job right away teaching English to Indonesian businessmen at the American embassy, part of the U.S. foreign aid package to developing countries. The money helped but didn’t relieve her loneliness. The Indonesian businessmen weren’t much interested in the niceties of the English language, and several made passes at her. The Americans were mostly older men, careerists in the State Department, the occasional economist or journalist who would mysteriously disappear for months at a time, their affiliation or function in the embassy never quite clear. Some of them were caricatures of the ugly American, prone to making jokes about Indonesians until they found out that she was married to one, and then they would try to play it off—Don’t take Jim too seriously, the heat’s gotten to him, how’s your son by the way, fine, fine boy.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  I had told her I was heading for the cab rank on the King’s Cross Road, since that was the direction in which I must walk in order to rejoin Diana’s driver. Her eyes, which had stayed dry through all her first shock at my news, now began to glisten. She kept her place on the doorstep as I made my slow, awkward way down Green Street. ‘Don’t forget us, love!’ she called out, and I turned to wave. At the parlour window a figure had appeared. Grace! She had unbent enough, then, to watch me leave. I widened the arc of my wave, then caught up my cap and flapped that at her. Two boys turning somersaults on a broken railing stopped their game to give me a playful salute: they took me for a soldier, I suppose, whose leave had all run out, and Mrs Milne for my tearful, white-haired old mother, and Gracie no doubt for my sister or my wife. But for all that I waved and blew kisses, she made me no sign, simply stood with her head and her hands upon the window-pane, which pressed a whiter circle to the centre of her pale brow, and to the end of each blunt finger. At last I let my arm slow, and fall.‘She don’t love yer much,’ said one of the boys; and when I had looked from him back to the house, Mrs Milne had gone. Gracie, however, still stood and watched. Her gaze - cold and hard as alabaster, piercing as a pin - pursued me to the corner of the King’s Cross Road. Even up the steep climb to Percy Circus, where the windows of Green Street are quite hidden from view, it seemed to prick and worry at the flesh upon my back. Only when I had seated myself in the shadowy interior of Diana’s carriage, and made fast the latch of the door, did I feel quite free of it, and secure once again on the path of my new life.But even then there was another reminder of my unpaid debts to the old one. For on our drive along the Euston Road we neared the corner of Judd Street, and all at once I remembered the appointment I had made, to meet my new friend Florence. It was for Friday: that, I realised, was today.

• From The Four Vision Quests of Jesus (2015)

  Therefore, one of the reasons Native American women could never be “squaws” is because if they were life would be grossly out of balance. As in all things, the relationship between human beings had to be kept in harmony as well. Men had certain roles to play in life, women had certain roles to fulfill, but the important thing was that however different they might be, they must be equal on the sacred scales of God. One could not outweigh another. One could not oppress the other. All relationships had to be equal. Both genders had a spiritual authority. Both were empowered by God to be part of the whole. In fact, the levels of equilibrium accorded to the sacred archetypes of male and female were so finely tuned that the point of definition between them could be permeable. Like Polynesian cultures, many Native American cultures understood that there were three genders: male, female, and two-spirit. In contemporary American society the emergence of transgender people into the public consciousness seems like something new. In Native American culture, it is something quite old. The traditional Native Covenant embraced the full spectrum of humanity; no one was excluded from the human family. Young and old, male and female, gay and straight, one spirit and two-spirit: these were all part of the seamless sense of Native community. Consequently, part of the balance included human beings who were male or female in body but the opposite in spirit. They were called “two-spirit people” and honored because they embodied this sacred spiritual balance so clearly in their own lives.6 This sophisticated concept of the human family in the Native Covenant helps to explain theologically why the male friends of Jesus deserted him in the Garden. As Jesus himself understood from his vision in the Garden, he was going to have to make his final vision quest without them. His male friends could not help him. They could not come with him. They were “asleep” to him. In other words, the power of the male spirit could not complete the circle. Another power, another balance, was needed. Matthew 27:55–56 says, “Many women were there, watching from a distance. They had followed Jesus from Galilee to care for his needs. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James and Joses, and the mother of Zebedee’s sons.” One of the most striking things about the story of the crucifixion of Jesus is the absence of men and the presence of women. However the story varies among the gospel writers, this single motif is repeated: the men ran away, the women stayed. There were, according to Catholic tradition, women like Veronica along the path to Golgotha. There were women on the hill where he was crucified. There were women at his tomb when he was resurrected. In the Synoptic gospels the women are portrayed as watching nearby; in John’s story Jesus actually speaks to his mother who is standing below him.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  In the morning, Agong seemed familiar with himself, passing the mirror without spitting at his own face inside it. My mother gave him her hand mirror, introducing himself to himself, and Agong nodded. My mother pointed to herself: your daughter. Then at me: your daughter’s daughter. Agong agreed. He ate a frozen waffle with his fingers, the edges laced with ice. He asked if it was snowing outside and we explained it was ash from the wildfires up north. He wanted to go outside and catch ash in his mouth, but we said the ash was made of corpses, the air carrying bones on its tongue. Inside the house, he watched TV with the sound off, substituting the dialogue with his own memories: Once, I fished with my father. He taught me which ones to throw back: He said if it’s bigger than your dick, butcher it. If it’s not, give it back to the river. But when the week ended and looped back, Agong repeated the stories with words in a dialect I’d never heard before. I tried to rearrange his words back into a narrative, but Agong spoke in a rhythm like swimming, dipping down and out of his own stories until I understood nothing. Once in a river I fished my father raw. He taught me butcher me. He tried to bite off his tongue until my mother held his jaw open and told him to stop, reciting a list of everything inside his body that was still his. Tongue. Bones. Blood. Throat. Mouth. Eyes. Ears. Anus. Neck. Intestines. When we ran out of things inside him, we repeated them all again in different dialects: This is your tongue. These are your teeth. They are not enemies. Agong untied all the leaves from our white birch tree and ate them, copying the squirrels. He didn’t know his own species. I’d read online that memories can be startled back into a person, then pulled out of the mouth like a magician’s scarf. My brother and I tried to scare Agong into remembering us by mimicking the sounds of war. We filled pots with pebbles, popped balloons to impersonate gunfire. Sometimes it worked, and he leapt from the bed as if boiled, fondling the imaginary gun in his waistband, calling us guizi, guizi, guizi. My mother told us to stop—she thought we could trigger another heart attack, which in Agong’s dialect sounded like heart war. Back then I thought a heart attack was when your heart grew legs like a soldier, walked out of your chest, and invaded the nearest body. I thought bowels were a breed of bird, and bowel movements were how they migrated.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  In the kitchen, my mother’s cleaver was pinned above the sink like an earring, its shadow spanning the whole floor. I took it down, holding the wooden handle that still wore her hands’ heat. My mother said Americans waste money on sets of many knives, but we only needed one. A cleaver, she said, does the job of memory. It only knows how to multiply a thing. I asked if the cleaver felt sorry for what it hurt, and she said, There’s no use feeling guilt for what it was built to do. _ My brother farted close to Agong’s face, pulling down his pants and posing his butt cheeks next to Agong’s dreaming mouth. Sometimes Agong woke, skin shimmering in sores. Sometimes his nostrils trumpeted open, breathing it all in. I imagined that his body was full of my brother’s farts, and that one day he’d rise from the bed like a balloon we let go of, a balloon butting the moon aside to replace it. We jarred Agong’s shit and brought it to our zhongyi, who looked at it under light and in the dark, who poked it with a straw and smelled it through one nostril and then the other, reading the odor out loud to us. The zhongyi combed it with a salad fork. We weren’t sure what he was looking for. Maybe death could be unburied from his body like a seed and be replanted in someone else. My brother and I spent hours killing him in our mind, rehearsing our grief early. We invented so many ways to kill him before he died of his own body. We knew he would be proud of us. With a plastic bag. With a deep fryer. With a blow dryer. With a tree branch. With a tire swing. With a rope and a pantry. We didn’t know how old he was, but we figured that was another way we could kill him: cutting him down like a tree to count his rings. At the Chinese pharmacy in Milpitas, my mother asked for a powder that would remarry Agong’s mind to his memories. Instead, they gave her aicao and told her to bathe him in blackened water, summoning the soul back into his body. His soul is inside him, my mother said. It’s just that he doesn’t recognize it. At the back of the store, Agong was grinding a dried ginger root against his teeth, swatting away the sunlight. We paid for the ginger and left, and when Agong saw our reflections in the window, he spat at it. I flinched even though I knew it wasn’t really my face in the window, just the image it widowed. Twice a day, we spoon-fed Agong a mash of bananas and rice. He straddled the armrest of our sofa like a pony, simulating hoof-noises with his boots and neighing through his nose. A strand of spit was yo-yoing from his mouth, descending before he slurped it up again.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  Toward the end of my first week in Nairobi, Zeituni took me to visit our other aunt, Sarah. Auma had remained unwilling to go, but because it turned out that her mechanic lived near Sarah, she offered to give us a ride to her garage; from there, she said, we could travel by foot. On Saturday morning, Auma and I picked up Zeituni and headed east, past cinder-block apartments and dry, garbage-strewn lots, until we finally came to the rim of a wide valley known as Mathare. Auma pulled off to the shoulder and I looked out the window to see the shantytown below, miles and miles of corrugated rooftops shimmering under the sun like wet lily pads, buckling and dipping in an unbroken sequence across the valley floor. “How many people live there?” I asked. Auma shrugged and turned to our aunt. “What would you say, Auntie? Half a million, maybe?” Zeituni shook her head. “That was last week. This week, it must be one million.” Auma started the car back up. “Nobody knows for sure, Barack. The place is growing all the time. People come in from the countryside looking for work and end up staying permanently. For a while, the city council tried to tear the settlement down. They said it was a health hazard—an affront to Kenya’s image, you see. Bulldozers came, and people lost what little they had. But of course, they had nowhere else to go. As soon as the bulldozers left, people rebuilt just like before.” We came to a stop in front of a slanting tin shed where a mechanic and several apprentices emerged to look Auma’s car over. Promising to be back in an hour, Zeituni and I left Auma at the garage and began our walk down a wide, unpaved road. It was already hot, the road bereft of shade; on either side were rows of small hovels, their walls a patchwork of wattle, mud, pieces of cardboard, and scavenged plywood. They were neat, though, the packed earth in front of each home cleanly swept, and everywhere we could see tailors and shoe repairers and furniture makers plying their trades out of roadside stalls, and women and children selling vegetables from wobbly wood tables.

• From Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)

  Walking back to the car, I remembered a story Auma had told me about the Old Man after his fall from grace. One evening, he had told Auma to go to the store and fetch him some cigarettes. She reminded him that they had no money, but the Old Man had shaken his head impatiently. “Don’t be silly,” he told her. “Just tell the storekeeper that you are Dr. Obama’s daughter and that I will pay him later.” Auma went to the store and repeated what the Old Man had said. The storekeeper laughed and sent her away. Afraid to go home, Auma called on a cousin the Old Man had once helped get a job, who lent her the few shillings she needed. When she got home, the Old Man took the cigarettes, scolding her for taking so long. “You see,” he said to her as he opened the pack. “I told you that you would have no problems. Everyone here knows Obama.” I feel my father’s presence as Auma and I walk through the busy street. I see him in the schoolboys who run past us, their lean, black legs moving like piston rods between blue shorts and oversized shoes. I hear him in the laughter of the pair of university students who sip sweet, creamed tea and eat samosas in a dimly lit teahouse. I smell him in the cigarette smoke of the businessman who covers one ear and shouts into a pay phone; in the sweat of the day laborer who loads gravel into a wheelbarrow, his face and bare chest covered with dust. The Old Man’s here, I think, although he doesn’t say anything to me. He’s here, asking me to understand. CHAPTER SIXTEEN [image file=image_rsrc2W2.jpg] BERNARD RANG THE DOORBELL at ten o’clock sharp. He wore faded blue shorts and a T-shirt several sizes too small; in his hands was a bald orange basketball, held out like an offering. “Ready?” he asked. “Almost. Give me a second to put on my shoes.” He followed me into the apartment and stepped over to the desk where I had been working. “You’ve been reading again, Barry,” he said, shaking his head. “Your woman will get bored with you, always spending time with books.” I sat down to tie my sneakers. “I’ve been told.” He tossed the ball into the air. “Me, I’m not so interested in books. I’m a man of action. Like Rambo.” I smiled. “Okay, Rambo,” I said, standing up and opening the door. “Let’s see how you do running down to the courts.” Bernard looked at me doubtfully. “The courts are far away. Where’s the car?” “Auma took it to work.” I went out onto the veranda and started stretching. “Anyway, she told me it’s just a mile. Good for warming up those young legs of yours.”

• From Bestiary (2020)

  The Walking Trees: An Oral Story in the Voice of My MotherWhat I remember about Arkansas is the weather. Same as the island. We saved all that money to fly, and in the end we arrived at the place we left. It rained, rained our sweat. Our blood turned the color of mirrors and mosquitos mated with our skin. I could name every species of tree, copy the posture of their thirst. It was typhoon season when we left Yilan, and it was like the typhoon had saddled us, rode us here. Our farts took the form of wind and fled here. Arkansas was landlocked, the opposite of the island, but the weather here spoke the same sky. It was so humid, the air was white-haired with steam, and we were the ones being boiled of our knees. And the trees that grew there, they looked just like the trees in Yilan, big-hipped and knuckle-boned and mustached with birds. There’s a story where I was born. About trees that could walk. At night, they stood up on their roots and left the earth. They walked through rivers, roped up all the water, and left them dry-mouthed. They walked to the city and kneeled into the cement, planted themselves on the street. They walked to the sea and hollowed themselves into canoes, slid away on their bellies. They walked and walked. And in the morning, the trees were never where you left them. They’d be lounging on their sides, or linking arms in a circle, or gone except for one. And my sisters and I, we went searching for the other trees. We went to all the neighbors and asked what they’d seen. But the trees, they went missing. Walked off. There were these holes in the ground where the roots used to be. They went deep, so deep my ba had to paint circles around the holes with pigblood to warn kids away, keep them from falling in. One time an ox walked into one of the treeholes and broke all its legs. Each leg was pointing in a different direction: at me, at the sea, at my sister, at the trees. My ba shot it with his army pistol. In the forehead, here, where my finger is. Here. Oxen aren’t like pigs, they don’t make a sound when they die. They just fall over. Like trees. My father drove the oxen so hard, they died of being tired. Just fell over in the fields in the middle of plowing a row. And there wasn’t even any meat left on their bodies to eat. They were hip-bones and hide, a molar maybe. All we could eat were the eyes. And my sister said, I bet if we plant those eyes, we could grow a whole new ox. But animals aren’t like trees, they don’t grow back. I learned that. In Arkansas, we were the only ones of our species. Some men carried a gun, but they weren’t soldiers like Ba. They looked at us like we were broken-legged animals to shoot, not because they hated us but because they wanted to save us from the hole we’d fallen into. Every other family had a car or a truck, and they drove to buy food. And we, we walked. We walked miles and miles. We walked to the grocery store and bought our meat in cans and found out later it was cat food. Why do cats get their own kind of food? Why wasn’t our hunger specified? It wasn’t bad, the cat food. It didn’t taste like anything. We stopped being able to taste after we landed. We weren’t fluent in the flavors here. Our tongues receded, beached in the back of our throats, whaling, amputated at the name. We walked until our feet were fish-floppy. We walked like those oxen: to death.

• From Bestiary (2020)

  In Jiangsu, my mother said, where my ba was born, there were daughtertrees. When a daughter was born, every family planted a camphor tree outside their home. Its branches grew parallel to her bones. Sometimes the tree grew scales down its trunk and sprouted a single jellied eye, like a fish, and sometimes the tree had a mouth in the center of the trunk, where birds were born, except these birds had no feathers, just skin, flightless as fists. When the matchmaker walked by your house and saw that the tree had grown to the width of a waist, she knew it was time for your daughter to be married away. The daughtertree was cut down, chiseled into trunks to carry her clothes and bedding. When my mother was born, Agong tried planting a camphor tree outside the military village where they lived, but the soil there was incestuous with the sea and too salty. The tree was salt-sick, its trunk crumbling. Every day, Agong measured its waist with his hands, but it remained the width of his wrists. My mother was relieved: As long as the tree never grew wide enough to be wed, she’d never have to leave home. She asked of every tree she saw: Don’t ever grow a body worth cutting down. It was Agong who felled the tree one morning, plucking the trunk from the ground as easily as an arrow shaft, its only two branches braided together like my mother’s legs when she was born. After he broke the tree into shrapnel with his bare hands, my mother tried plucking the eyelash-fine splinters from his palms, but the shards submarined through his blood, merging wood with marrow. That’s why he was so flammable, why his memories were already smoke. Why he wasn’t allowed to touch the stove, newspapers, our hair, this story, anything that could be translated into fire. _

• From Bestiary (2020)

  My mother said he would kill me for doing that, but instead he sat with me in the kitchen and fed my fist everything that would fit in it: a found fishbone, a peach pit that had rolled under the cabinets, his own thumb. I bit down with my fingers and twisted his thumb until he yanked it back. I wasn’t sorry, but I blew on his thumb with my sock-mouth. It blued anyway. When I saw that my sock-mouth was stronger than my born one, I spent weeks speaking through my fist, holding it up to my mother’s ear and asking her to call me through it. She held my fist like a seashell to her ear, whispered back to it. Only my wrist heard her words, and in bed I tried to replay them, dialing my hand in the dark between my legs, waiting for her voice to come out of me. _ Weeks before his visa expired, my father decided to work a few years at a cousin’s slot machine factory in Jiangsu, where he’d examine and approve the machines before they were sent to Macau. My father had learned most of his English playing Texas Hold ’Em with college kids at the park after dark: Hit me. Raise. Stay. Stay. At night, he renamed all the constellations after card suits, pointing out a spade in the sky, a club, then a heart, telling us stories of his biggest wins. Money’s like the moon, he said. By morning they’re both gone. The night my father left for the airport, we ate a whole fried fish, a broth so thin it evaporated on our tongues before we could swallow, vegetables boiled translucent, ghostly. We ate with our elbows on the table and didn’t speak. We let our knives narrate. My mother caught crickets in the backyard and panfried them with sesame oil. Bent over the table, my father packed his stomach like a suitcase, folding pieces of pork in half before sealing them into his mouth. The fish was for good luck. He’d carry the luck in his body and shit out its bones in another country. When my mother ran out of dish soap, when she didn’t want to pay for water, she spat directly on the dishes. Erased his hunger from every plate. Packing for the mainland, my father folded his steam-ironed white shirts in symmetrical stacks. He took one of the fake-leather belts he wore and left the other one dangling on a hook in the closet, tame without his hands around it. He packed gifts for all his cousins, Band- Aids with cartoon characters printed on them, boxes of Cheerios, disposable dusters. My brother and I sat on his suitcase so he could jimmy the zipper, and the second before it shut, I saw a white sheet sliding out from between two shirts. It was a piece of paper with drawn-on eyes, a half-finished kite.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  It was all as familiar to me as the lines on my own face, and — like one’s face when viewed in a glass - both fascinating and rather dull. No matter how hard I studied it, how fiercely I thought, I shall not gaze at you again for months and months, it looked just as it always did; and at last I turned my eyes away, and walked sadly home.But it was the same there: nothing that I gazed at or touched was as special as I thought it should be, or changed by my going in any way. Nothing, that is, except the faces of my family; and these were so grave, or so falsely merry and stiff, that I could hardly bear to look at them at all.So I was almost glad, at last, when it was time to say farewell. Father wouldn’t let me take the little train to Canterbury, but said I must be driven, and hired a gig from the ostler at the Duke of Cumberland Hotel, to take me there himself. I kissed Mother, and Alice, and let my brother hand me to my seat at Father’s side and place my luggage at my feet. There was little enough of it: an old leather suitcase with a strap about it, that held my clothes; a cap-box for my hats; and a little black tin trunk for everything else. The trunk was a good-bye gift from Davy. He had bought it new, and had my initials painted on the lid in swooning yellow capitals; and inside it he had pasted a map of Kent, with Whitstable marked on it with an arrow - to remind me, he said, where home was, in case I should forget.We did not talk much, Father and I, on the drive to Canterbury. At the station we found the train already in and steaming, and Kitty, her own bags and baskets at her side, frowning over her watch. It wasn’t like my anxious dreams at all: she gave a great wave when she saw us, and a smile.‘I thought you might have changed your mind,’ she cried, ‘at the very last moment.’ And I shook my head - in wonder that she could still think such a thing, after all I’d said!Father was very kind. He greeted Kitty graciously and, when he kissed me good-bye he kissed her, too, and wished her happiness and luck.