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 in Janet's work there seems to be an underlying theory of emotion — and also of behaviour in general — which would reintroduce finality without mentioning it. In his general expositions concerning psychasthenia or affectivity he insists, as we have said, upon the automatic character of the diversion, but in many of his descriptions he gives us to understand that the patient falls back upon the inferior behaviour in order not to maintain the superior behaviour. Here, it is the patient himself who proclaims his defeat even before he engages in the struggle, and the emotional behaviour supervenes to mask his inability to pursue the line of adapted behaviour. Let us return to the example we were citing above: the patient who comes to see Janet wants to entrust him with the secret of her troubles and a minute description of her obsessions. But she cannot: this is social behaviour that is too difficult for her. Then she bursts into tears. But is she weeping because she can say nothing? Is her sobbing a vain effort to do so, a diffuse upheaval that represents the decomposition of the behaviour she has found too difficult? Or rather, is she not crying precisely in order not to say anything? Between these two interpretations the difference may seem small at first sight: by both hypotheses a course of behaviour proves impossible to maintain, and according to either there is a replacement of this behaviour by diffuse manifestations. Besides, Janet passes freely from the one to the other; that is what makes his theory ambiguous. For in reality there is an abyss of difference between the two interpretations. The former is, in effect, purely mechanistic and — as we have seen — is at bottom fairly close to James's views. The latter, on the other hand, really introduces something new: it alone truly deserves the name of a psychological theory of the emotions; it alone treats emotion as a way of behaving. For, indeed, if we are here reintroducing finality, we can well conceive that emotional behaviour is not a disorder at all; that it is an organized pattern of means directed to an end. And these means are summoned up in order to mask, replace or reject a line of conduct that one cannot or will not pursue. At the same time, the explanation of the diversity of emotions becomes easy: they represent, each one of them, a different way of eluding a difficulty, a particular way of escape, a special trick.

• From Opening Up by Writing It Down (2016)

  Soon after the first expressive writing study was submitted, Jamie teamed up with Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, a clinical psychologist, and her husband, Ronald Glaser, an immunologist, both with the Ohio State University College of Medicine. In the mid-1980s, they were leaders of a new field called psychoneuroimmunology—the mind–body exploration of how mental states and strong emotions might influence the immune system. Together they were blazing a trail by showing that overwhelming experiences such as divorce, major exams in college, and even strong feelings of loneliness adversely affected immune function. They had recently published an article showing that relaxation therapy among the elderly could improve the action of the immune system. The work by Jan and Ron was groundbreaking because it relied on techniques that directly measured the action of T-lymphocytes, natural killer cells, and other immune markers in the blood. It made good sense for Jan, Ron, and Jamie to work together—so they set out to see if expressive writing could directly influence these direct measures of how the immune system was functioning. The experiment that they designed together was similar to the first confession study. Fifty students wrote for 20 minutes a day for four consecutive days about one of two topics. Half wrote about their deepest thoughts and feelings concerning a trauma. The remaining 25 students were expected to write about superficial topics. The major difference was that all the students consented to have their blood drawn the day before writing, after the last writing session, and again six weeks later. As before, the experimental volunteers poured out their hearts in their writing. The tragedies they disclosed were comparable to those in the first experiment. Instances of rape, child abuse, suicide attempts, death, and intense family conflict were common. Again, those who wrote about traumas initially reported feeling sadder and more upset each day of writing, relative to those who wrote about superficial topics. Collecting the blood and measuring immune function was a novel experience that added to the frenzy. As soon as the blood was drawn, it was driven to the airport to make the last flight to Jan and Ron’s lab in Columbus, Ohio. Once the blood samples arrived, the people in the immunology lab worked around the clock in an assembly-line manner. The procedure involved separating the blood cells and placing a predetermined number of white cells in small petri dishes. Each dish contained differing amounts of various foreign substances, called mitogens. The dishes were then incubated for two days to allow the white blood cells time to divide and proliferate in the presence of the mitogens.

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  [image file=image_rsrc1KJ.jpg] 6 The Tragic Love of Two EnemiesTHE LORD OF THE PROVINCE ETJIGO WAS called Jibudayu Mashikura. One day his chief minister, Gyobu Tokuzawa, summoned his master's first page, Senpatji Akanashi, who was in the vestibule with the other pages, whispering: 'I have something to say to you, Akanashi. Come with me.'And, leading him to a secret place behind the trees in the garden, he said to him: 'My master has ordered me to choose someone very Strong to kill his courtier Shingokeï Dizaki, and I can think of no one better fitted than you for this mission. Go then to Shingokefs house and kill him. I am sure that my master has an excellent reason for having him destroyed.' Senpatji asked: 'What is the offence which Shingokeï must expiate? 'But the minister himself did not know. Then Senpatji said to him: '1 have confidence in your word, yet I should like to hear this order from my master's own lips.'So the minister brought Senpatji before the Lord, who, as Senpatji kneeled before him, said: 'Senpatji, you must kill Shingokei, as my minister has told you.' Senpatji returned to his house very sad at having to kill Shingokei, who was one of his best friends. Nevertheless he went to that man's house and, after a short conversation, killed him, saying: 'It is at the command of my master.'Shingokei's slaves tried to seize the murderer; but Senpatji calmed them by saying: 'I have acted on my master's order, and you must obey him.' The Lord confiscated all Shingokei's property and his wealth. His widow was inconsolable. She was the daughter of a retired samurai of the neighbouring Province, and had married Shingokei the year before with customary rites, for Shingokei and her father were old friends. They loved each other tenderly, and her husband's death Stunned her. She wished to die with him and follow him into the other world; but she was pregnant, and could not kill herself because of the child she carried in her womb. So she left the Province, bitterly bewailing her husband's and her own sad destiny. After a long solitary journey full of hardship she came to another very remote Province in the mountains, and decided to live there. Some time after, quite alone and without assistance, she gave birth to a son. She took infinite care of the child, working with her needle to gain a livelihood; for in all the village there was not a single woman who could sew. The two lived thus together in poverty in that place.

• From Opening Up by Writing It Down (2016)

  That a group of college students had experienced so many horrors and, at the same time, had so readily revealed them was remarkable. The grim irony is that, by and large, these were 18-year-old kids attending an upper-middle-class college with above-average high school grades and good College Board scores. These were the people who were portrayed as growing up in the bubble of financial security and suburban tranquility. What must it portend for those brought up in more hostile environments? The results of the study were fascinating, but also a bit unexpected. Compared to people in the control group, we found that people who wrote about traumatic experience evidenced: • Immediate increases in feelings of sadness and anxiety after writing. Students likened it to the feelings that they had after watching a sad movie. Writing about emotional topics does not produce some kind of immediate release or euphoria. • Long-term drops in visits to the student health center for illness. Those who wrote about emotional upheavals had half the number of illness-related visits to the health center in the six months after the study than people in the control condition. • Greater sense of value and meaning as a result of writing. Not only did people express this in questionnaires afterward, but students would sometimes stop Jamie on campus and thank him for letting them be in the experiment. The overall pattern of results was exciting. But for every question that the experiment had answered, a dozen more questions appeared. Perhaps the most basic issue concerned the trustworthiness of these findings. Were the effects real? Does writing about traumas really affect physical health? Perhaps the experiment had just affected people’s decisions to visit the student health center. Or even worse, maybe the findings were simply due to chance. Every now and then, for example, you can toss a coin ten times and come up with heads every time. Additional studies needed to be conducted. Freewriting As a useful practice exercise, and one that can enhance creativity and foster your capacity for expression, find a quiet time and place to practice writing. For this exercise, write whatever comes into your mind for 10 to 20 minutes. Try to write the entire time without stopping. Don’t worry about style or grammar; the important thing is to keep writing continuously for the entire session. Just let yourself write, a sort of limbering-up exercise. We will return to more structured expressive writing later in the book. EXPLORING THE IMMUNE SYSTEM: WRITING ABOUT TRAUMAS IS BETTER THAN WE THOUGHT

• From The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World—and Us (2017)

  Hamlet’s personal realization that Ophelia’s beauty is not an indicator of her honesty follows the same course as Fisher’s two-stage model of evolution by mate choice. Hamlet begins his relationship with Ophelia in a rosy state of Wallacean contentment, in which her beauty is an honest indicator of the inner quality of her soul and her commitment to him. Yet this inherently unstable relationship cannot endure, just as Fisher proposed that correlation between display traits and quality would be eroded by the emerging advantages of attraction—the power of beauty. In defense of Ophelia, however, she is not acting with sexual autonomy. She has shunned and lied to Hamlet under the coercive instructions of her father. (I haven’t focused a lot on the sexual coercion of offspring by parents, but this is a great example from literature.) In the final act when Ophelia goes mad, she finally expresses some of her true, autonomous sexual desires. She sings a bawdy(!) tale of her own Valentine’s Day deflowering by a deceptive rogue (perhaps Hamlet?). She then imagines herself as Hamlet’s queen, addresses her wise counselors and fine courtiers, and orders the servants to bring around her carriage. In her madness, Ophelia can finally reveal her real desires and fantasy. Constrained in life from realizing her sexual self because of her father’s coercion, Ophelia is only liberated and self-realized through madness and death. This is, perhaps, Shakespeare’s cautionary tale about the social risks of the pursuit of female sexual autonomy in Elizabethan society. Indeed, Ophelia’s demise is the second tragedy of Hamlet. “The fox knows many things”: Berlin (1953). dominated, indeed hijacked, by adaptationist Hedgehogs: See David Hull’s Science as a Process (1988) and Ron Amundson’s The Changing Role of the Embryo in Evolutionary Thought (2005). the painful history of political and ethical abuse: For an authoritative social history of eugenics, see Kevles (1985).

• From Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality (2007)

  Love is handing your heart to someone and taking the risk that they will hand it back because they don’t want it. That’s why it’s such a crushing ache on the inside. We gave away a part of ourselves and it wasn’t wanted. Love is a giving away of power. When we love, we give the other person the power in the relationship. They can do what they choose. They can do what they like with our love. They can reject it, they can accept it, they can step toward us in gratitude and appreciation. Love is a giving away. When we love, we put ourselves out there, we expose ourselves, we allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Love is giving up control. It’s surrendering the desire to control the other person. The two—love and controlling power over the other person—are mutually exclusive. If we are serious about loving someone, we have to surrender all of the desires within us to manipulate the relationship. So if you were God—which I realize is an odd way to begin a sentence—but if you were God, the all-powerful creator of the universe, and you wanted to move toward people, you wanted to express your love for the world in a new way, how would you do it? If you showed up in your power and control and might, you would scare people off. This is what happens at the giving of the Ten Commandments.8 The first two commandments are in the first person: “You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image . . . for I, the Lord . . .” But starting with the third commandment, someone else is talking: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord . . .” The rabbis believed that this is because God was speaking directly to the people in the first two commands, but they couldn’t handle it. As it says in the text, “They trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, ‘Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.’ ”9 So, the rabbis reasoned, the switch in person is because Moses gave them the remaining eight commandments. Just God speaking is too much to bear. If you’re God and you want to express ultimate love to your creation, if you want to move toward them in a definitive way, you have a problem, because just showing up overwhelms people. You wouldn’t come as you are. You wouldn’t come in strength. You wouldn’t come in your pure, raw essence. You’d scare everybody away. The last thing people would perceive is love. So how would you express your love in an ultimate way? How do you connect with people in a manner that wouldn’t scare them off but would compel them to want to come closer, to draw nearer?

• From My Life and Loves, Vol. 1 (of 4) (1922)

  “On Monday,” I replied, and her dear eyes grew sombre and her lips quivered. “You’ll write?” she asked, “please do, Frank! No matter what happens I shall never forget you: you’ve helped me, encouraged me more than I can say. Did I tell you, I’ve got a place in Crew’s bookstore? When I said I had learned to love books from you, he was glad and said ‘if you get to know them as well as he did, or half as well, you’ll be invaluable’; so you see, I am following in your footsteps, as you are following in Smith’s.” “If you knew how glad I am that I’ve really helped and not hurt you, Rose?” I said sadly, for Lily’s accusing voice was still in my ears. “You couldn’t hurt anyone,” she exclaimed, almost as if she divined my remorse, “you are so gentle and kind and understanding.” Her words were balm to me and she walked with me to the bridge where I told her she would hear from me on the morrow. I wanted to know what she would think of the books and cape. The last thing I saw of her was her hand raised as if in benediction. I kept the Sunday morning for Sommerfeld and my friend Will Thompson and the rest of the day for Sophy. Sommerfeld came to the office before nine and told me the firm owed me three thousand dollars: I didn’t wish to take it; could not believe he had meant to go halves with me but he insisted and paid me. “I don’t agree with your sudden determination,” he said, “perhaps because it was sudden; but I’ve no doubt you’ll do well at anything you take up. Let me hear from you now and again and if you ever need a friend, you know where to find me!” As we shook hands I realised that parting could be as painful as the tearing asunder of flesh. Will Thompson, I found, was eager to take over the hoardings and my position in Liberty Hall; he had brought his father with him and after much bargaining I conveyed everything I could, over to him for three thousand five hundred dollars, and so after four year’s work I had just the money I had had in Chicago four years earlier! I dined in the Eldridge House and then went back to the office to meet Sophy who was destined to surprise me more even than Lily or Rose: “I’m coming with you,” she announced coolly, “if you’re not ashamed to have me along; you goin’ Frisco,—so far anyway—” she pleaded divining my surprise and unwillingness. “Of course, I’ll be delighted,” I said, “but—” I simply could not refuse her. She gurgled with joy and drew out her purse: “I’ve four hundred dollars”, she said proudly, “and that’ll take this child a long way.”

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  We studied our fingernails. I noticed a long scuff across the toe of my right boot.“I know there are others out there who have stories of how Brother Randall’s testimony blessed and changed your lives. I invite you to come on up.”Pam’s husband walked up the prayer ramp and took the microphone. “Randall taught me a lot, and some of it was about what not to do. I remember the time he convinced me we could make extra money by charging people who came to the tent twenty-five cents to park. The money was nothing compared to the whipping Brother Terrell gave us. Randall also taught me the rules of fasting; if you can get it through a straw, it ain’t cheatin’.”Only the family laughed. We were not here to testify for Brother Randall. We were here to say good-bye, or hello, depending on how things went, to the boy Randall. My sisters approached the front of the church next. There were those who thought it wrong that these girls, women now, never publicly acknowledged by Brother Terrell, should speak in his church, but this was not their day. Without rehashing or explaining anything, my sister Carol said Randall was the first to welcome them into the family and had treated them as sisters from the beginning. Lisa spoke of how Randall loved to fish and how he had taken them fishing with his daughter. Laura recounted the time Randall took them to their first circus.When the family remembrances were finished, someone introduced Brother Terrell. The door at the back of the platform opened, and a small, silver-haired man with hunched shoulders stepped forward. He looked like an old man, not the fiery prophet I remembered. He wandered aimlessly about, crying into the microphone. He walked down the prayer ramp and peered into the casket. Family members cast worried looks at one another. He pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his suit jacket and wiped at his eyes. He tried to speak and sobbed instead. At another funeral someone would have led the grieving father away. But this was Brother Terrell, and no one was going to lead him anywhere. After a few minutes, he pulled himself together and began to speak. His speech was slow and halting as he recalled the many times death had tried to take Randall from him. He said no matter where he was in the world, he had always sensed when his son was sick. He talked about the times he had called Randall and urged him to fight the most recent death sentence the doctors had given him. He talked about calling his son from Haiti, India, and Africa and praying for him, and how Randall always got better. He paused in front of the open casket where his son lay.The crowd called out encouragement. “Help him, Jesus.

• From The Principle of Desire (2013)

  But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was knowing he could do nothing about Beth’s decision, or even offer his support. It had been days since Ed had talked to her, and it was driving him crazy. She was in her house, sad and alone, trying to figure out impossible life crap and probably feeling terrible, which made him feel terrible. He couldn’t take much more of that. * * * Grading freshman work was miserable under the best of circumstances. When Beth herself was miserable, it was all she could do to get through the short answer tests without screaming. But she had to grade, or she’d get behind. Grading also gave her something to do besides check her email, where she knew she would see another message from Aaron. He’d called, he’d written. Her house was in full bloom, fresh flowers on every available surface. She had at least two pounds of chocolates sitting, uneaten, on her kitchen counter. But that wasn’t the problem. What she didn’t see was the problem. No emails from Ed. No calls, no texts. Damn him, he was doing exactly what he’d said he was going to. But if Aaron cared enough to violate her request for time to think, why didn’t Ed? She knew that was ridiculous and unfair, which was why she had left all the emails unanswered and refused to eat the chocolates. The reason why classical conditioning and operant conditioning are different is because classical conditiong works on ur reflexes and operant conditiong is stuff u can control consiously. Beth wasn’t even sure how to grade some of this stuff. She had standards, but if she failed every student who slipped into text-speak or misspelled a word, her entire class would have to repeat the semester. And she really didn’t want to see most of them again. Skinner used rats for his experiments because he read that book about moving your cheese and figured working with actual rats would be a good place to start learning about human motivation. Furthermore, building mazes for rats requires far fewer materials than building human-sized mazes. Lastly, some humans are lactose intolerant and not positively reinforced by cheese, making rats the smarter choice. And some of the smarter ones weren’t even pretending to try. That was the most depressing thing of all, the wasted potential. This kid was clearly somewhat intelligent, but hadn’t even managed to grasp the difference between positive reinforcement and reward. ??? I forgot this test was supposed to be 2day. Sorry. :-( No, really, the most depressing thing of all was when potential seemed but a distant dream.

• From The Second Sex (1949)

  Throughout the ancien régime the cultural domain is the most accessible to women who try to assert themselves. Yet none reached the summits of a Dante or a Shakespeare; this can be explained by the general mediocrity of their condition. Culture has never been the privilege of any but the feminine elite, never of the masses; and masculine geniuses often come from the masses; even privileged women encountered obstacles that barred their access to the heights. Nothing stopped the ascent of a Saint Teresa, a Catherine of Russia, but a thousand circumstances conspired against the woman writer. In her small book A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf enjoyed inventing the destiny of Shakespeare’s supposed sister; while he learned a little Latin, grammar, and logic in school, she was closed up at home in total ignorance; while he poached, ran around in the countryside, and slept with local women, she was mending kitchen towels under her parents’ watchful eyes; if, like him, she bravely left to seek her fortune in London, she could not become an actress earning her living freely: either she would be brought back to her family and married off by force; or seduced, abandoned, and dishonored, she would commit suicide out of despair. She could also be imagined as a happy prostitute, a Moll Flanders, as Daniel Defoe portrayed her: but she would never have run a theater and written plays. In England, Virginia Woolf notes, women writers always engender hostility. Dr. Johnson compared them to “a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.” Artists care about what people think more than anyone else; women narrowly depend on it: it is easy to imagine how much strength it takes for a woman artist simply to dare to carry on regardless; she often succumbs in the fight. At the end of the seventeenth century, Lady Winchilsea, a childless noblewoman, attempts the feat of writing; some passages of her work show she had a sensitive and poetic nature; but she was consumed by hatred, anger, and fear: Alas! a woman that attempts the pen, Such an intruder on the rights of men, Such a presumptuous creature is esteemed, The fault by no virtue can be redeemed.*

• From Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932)

  The same technology, which drew the fangs of nature’s enmity of man, also created a society in which the intensity and extent of social cohesion has been greatly increased, and in which power is so unevenly distributed, that justice has become a more difficult achievement. Perhaps it is man’s sorry fate, suffering from ills which have their source in the inadequacies of both nature and human society, that the tools by which he eliminates the former should become the means of increasing the latter. That, at least, has been his fate up to the present hour; and it may be that there will be no salvation for the human spirit from the more and more painful burdens of social injustice until the ominous tendency in human history has resulted in perfect tragedy. Human nature is not wanting in certain endowments for the solution of the problem of human society. Man is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellowmen; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own. With the higher mammals man shares concern for his offspring; and the long infancy of the child created the basis for an organic social group in the earliest period of human history. Gradually intelligence, imagination, and the necessities of social conflict increased the size of this group. Natural impulse was refined and extended until a less obvious type of consanguinity than an immediate family relationship could be made the basis of social solidarity. Since those early days the units of human cooperation have constantly grown in size, and the areas of significant relationships between the units have likewise increased. Nevertheless conflict between the national units remains as a permanent rather than a passing characteristic of their relations to each other; and each national unit finds it increasingly difficult to maintain either peace or justice within its common life. While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves. Though educators ever since the eighteenth century have given themselves to the fond illusion that justice through voluntary co-operation waited only upon a more universal or a more adequate educational enterprise, there is good reason to believe that the sentiments of benevolence and social goodwill will never be so pure or powerful, and the rational capacity to consider the rights and needs of others in fair competition with our own will never be so fully developed as to create the possibility for the anarchistic millennium which is the social utopia, either explicit or implicit, of all intellectual or religious moralists.

• From The Fixed Stars (0)

  I have a picture of June at Dino’s from around that time, before the bar and the booths were built. A square of white light falls from the high windows, and June sits on the floor where it lands, perched on the edge of a two-by-four, with the doll she calls Big Baby. She’s wearing a pair of grape-purple Puma high-tops with Velcro straps, and she’s looking somewhere above the camera, eyebrows a little up, mouth pursed, like she’s about to say something. She looks like a doll herself. The photo was taken by a friend who’d been visiting town with her husband. A few weeks later, my friend called with unexpected news: she and her husband had separated. When I look at the photo now, in one of the albums I keep for June, it too seems like a picture of a marriage that’s ending. 9We went to see family for Christmas, and when we got home, rather than thrill as I usually did at being back in our own bed, I felt like I had disappeared en route. Everything and everyone seemed far away. It had been seven months since jury duty, and I had never lost count. I felt worse, not better. To hide from the shame—or was it to escape everything else? To give in to the fantasies?—I tunneled under, sunk even further into my head. I told no one what I was thinking. A friend was having a big birthday at the end of January, and he invited a bunch of us to a rental cabin in the snow. Brandon took the weekend off, and to celebrate the occasion, we bought new winter gloves, hats, and snow pants. For June, I brought along a brand-new copy of Candy Land, my favorite board game as a child. I had grand visions of us playing it, visions that evaporated as soon as I set it up, when I remembered it’s an instant nap for anyone over age ten and June was enraged that it had rules. Instead, we rented cross-country skis. The first afternoon, even June made it a few yards. Then a friend took her back to the cabin, and the two of us got to ski on our own for a while, on a path through the woods. I hadn’t been on skis since I was a kid, and I’d forgotten how quiet it was, the smooth and efficient swish of polyethylene through groomed tracks. We’d needed this, to move together through the cold winter air. Our noses ran, and we licked our lips and wiped them on our sleeves. In the cabin, the heat vent was too close to the bed. I couldn’t sleep, so I watched my husband and our child, these people I called mine, sweat sticking their twin hair to their twin faces. I put on my headlamp and boots and shuffled to the outhouse. Orion glittered above the tree line.

• From Educated (2018)

  I didn’t wait long. It pains me that you think it is acceptable to ask this. A wife does not go where her husband is not welcome. I will not be party to such blatant disrespect. * The message was long and reading it made me tired, as if I’d run a great distance. The bulk of it was a lecture on loyalty: that families forgive, and that if I could not forgive mine, I would regret it for the rest of my life. The past, she wrote, whatever it was, ought to be shoveled fifty feet under and left to rot in the earth . Mother said I was welcome to come to the house, that she prayed for the day when I would run through the back door, shouting, “I’m home!” I wanted to answer her prayer—I was barely more than ten miles from the mountain—but I knew what unspoken pact I would be making as I walked through that door. I could have my mother’s love, but there were terms, the same terms they had offered me three years before: that I trade my reality for theirs, that I take my own understanding and bury it, leave it to rot in the earth. Mother’s message amounted to an ultimatum: I could see her and my father, or I would never see her again. She has never recanted. —THE PARKING LOT HAD filled while I was reading. I let her words settle, then started the engine and pulled onto Main Street. At the intersection I turned west, toward the mountain. Before I left the valley, I would set eyes on my home. Over the years I’d heard many rumors about my parents: that they were millionaires, that they were building a fortress on the mountain, that they had hidden away enough food to last decades. The most interesting, by far, were the stories about Dad hiring and firing employees. The valley had never recovered from the recession; people needed work. My parents were one of the largest employers in the county, but from what I could tell Dad’s mental state made it difficult for him to maintain employees long-term: when he had a fit of paranoia, he tended to fire people with little cause. Months before, he had fired Diane Hardy, Rob’s ex-wife, the same Rob who’d come to fetch us after the second accident. Diane and Rob had been friends with my parents for twenty years. Until Dad fired Diane. It was perhaps in another such fit of paranoia that Dad fired my mother’s sister Angie. Angie had spoken to Mother, believing her sister would never treat family that way. When I was a child it had been Mother’s business; now it was hers and Dad’s together.

• From Four Days to Glory: Wrestling with the Soul of the American Heartland (2005)

  The loss of Dan to college had perhaps left North-Linn without a headliner, but as a team, Brad Bridgewater’s group actually looked deeper and tougher than before. With more than thirty athletes now crowded into the little wrestling room, Bridgewater was grateful that the school board had agreed to kick in $50,000 toward the cost of the new facility that would more than triple the size of the current place. Still, what that sweat in the old auto shop had produced this year for Bridgewater was five state qualifiers, including a motivated Tyler Burkle and two LeCleres, Nick and Chris. There was a chance for a strong finish in the team standings. It wasn’t to be easy, and that felt especially true around the LeClere house. From the beginning of the season, Doug had noticed a different Nick on the mat, and over time he came to believe that his son was suffering from Dan’s absence. Nick had been so used to having Dan in the wrestling room—as much as he did at home, perhaps more so. Nick had had to answer to Dan’s level of effort and Dan’s ability to ignore distraction; these were qualities to be met, if not actually exceeded. Now, with Dan gone, Nick needed to summon his will and find his inspiration mostly from the inside—and he had to do this while dealing with his father’s expectation, the expectation that Doug had shifted now from Dan fully to Nick. At one point during the season, Doug explained that Nick “just doesn’t have the speed, the quickness and the determination that he showed last year. I really think he misses Daniel that much.” Nick was 14-0 with eight pins at the time. In Des Moines, Nick managed to become an integral component of perhaps the greatest team in North-Linn history and leave himself and his father wanting more. The Lynx finished second to Don Bosco in the Class 1A standings, earning the school’s first team trophy from the State Tournament, and they sent three wrestlers to the finals of their respective weight classes: Ryan Mulnix, Tyler Burkle and Nick. Chris LeClere finished his freshman season with a promising eighth-place showing, with teammate Ben Morrow going seventh at his weight class. Burkle capped an undefeated season with a 12–0 rout of his opponent at 152 pounds, earning the championship in his senior year. But Nick, after turning in an inspired effort in winning his semifinal match, went flat in the 145-pound finals, losing a 7–1 decision that left him hurting and Doug both disappointed and determined. “Nick has one last chance to be a state champion [next season] and I will do everything to help him get that done,” Doug wrote in an e-mail. “I’m having a very hard time with it, but I will move on.” Still, even Doug knew that North-Linn had just completed a season for the books. The future, even without Dan, looked bright. At Linn-Mar of Marion, the mood also was upbeat.

• From Three Women (2019)

  The kindest nurse came in, then, and said, Hmm, chicken wings! Lucky lady! And my mother got it up for her in a way she didn’t for me. I have a good kid, she said, and patted my arm. After the nice nurse left my mother looked at me. Her face was so gray. Only at night when they pumped other people’s blood into her did she get pink, resemble the woman I used to know. Who cleaned her house tirelessly, who polished her copper pots weekly and ate sunflower seeds, noisily, unrepentantly, in movie theaters. Are you ready? she asked me. Yes, I said. I got close to her face. I touched her cheek. It was still warm and I knew it wouldn’t be for long. Don’t let them see you happy, she whispered. Who? Everyone, she said wearily, as though I had already missed the point. She added, Other women, mostly. I thought it was the other way around, I said. Don’t let the bastards get you down. That’s wrong. They can see you down. They should see you down. If they see you are happy, they will try to destroy you. But who? I asked again. And what do you mean? You sound crazy. I was young still, I had been without a father for only a few years. I had not yet gone out into the world alone and been bitten. On top of this I was a split person; my father had told me I could have it all. That I was the only thing that mattered. My mother taught me we were flies. We were all in the waiting room of overstuffed hospitals. All of us consigned to whatever ward could take us. Her eyes closed then. The eyelids fluttered, actually. It was more dramatic than it needed to be. Even in that moment, a smokestack of twigs, she wanted me to be aware of the weight of her life. One hot night in July 2018, Arlene Wilken gets ready for bed. She puts on the nightly news and pulls the covers up to her waist. The other side of the bed is empty. On the television the news anchor is talking about the latest teacher-student scandal in North Dakota. There are so many, it’s a hotbed, it keeps happening. Arlene turns up the volume. The anchor, Mike Morken, is not one of those Arlene can’t stand to listen to, who during the trial cast her daughter as the girl who tried to wreck the home of the Teacher of the Year. Morken didn’t hurl judgment like everyone else in the square cold state.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Brian stuttered when he spoke, and his eyelids fluttered like nervous butterflies. “I’m th-th-thirteen,” he said, after telling us his name. “Hopefully I’ll s-s-s-stop twitching when I’m f-f-f-fourteen, ’cause no one likes t-t-t-t-to hang out with a twitcher.” I thought I would hang out with a twitcher, but I was too shy to say so and, also, I figured a thirteen-year-old boy wouldn’t want anything to do with an eight-year-old girl. A little blond boy hung over the edge of the bunk bed, his hands dangling like he was about to jump into a handstand. “I’m Charlie,” he said. “I’m nine and my parents are in jail but I’ve got grandparents who like to see me when they have time. Are your parents in jail?” Norm shook his head no and I shook my head yes—though I knew my previously jailed father was dead. Charlie didn’t notice. He just kept talking. “That’s Hannah.” Charlie pointed to the girl in the bunk below him. Then he pointed to the boy in the bunk across from him. “And that’s Jason. They’re brother and sister, just like you. Hannah is ten and Jason is—” “I’m eleven,” Jason said. “Hannah doesn’t speak,” Charlie said. Hannah didn’t look up. With her head dropped like that I could see how knotted her wavy hair was. I felt bad for her that she didn’t have a sister like Gi to comb out her hair every night and every morning. And then I felt bad for myself because who was going to comb my hair now? “Hannah hasn’t talked in a year,” Jason said. “But I like talking, so I do it all the time.” Hannah continued to look at her knees, Brian jerked and spasmed, and Charlie hung like a little white-haired chimp while Jason monologued about how his dad lost his job and started getting drunk every day. His dad didn’t mean to hurt anyone, Jason claimed, but he couldn’t help himself when he was drunk and so the social worker thought he and Hannah were better off here while their parents worked things out. And then Jason asked, “So why are you here?” I looked at Norm so that he would answer. I didn’t want to say what was in my head: We’re here because two nights ago, my mother beat my sister so badly her entire body looked like a swollen, purple piece of meat; we’re here because we were so hungry, we stole butter from the grocery store and ate it raw; we’re here because we had no hot water and no heat all through last winter; we’re here because our mother takes off for months at a time, and when she returns she drinks and curses and smokes and brings strange men into the house.

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

  5; דל || ;88% ע' וגו‎ 126" 2 3%; MINI’ Is 00 "ד ז לוו‎ y, 11,°3¥33 ;—God does not forget hem yg 2a (Kt) כל‎ but has compassion on them Is 49”, saves 34’, delivers 35°, and bestows various favours 68" 140%, the ‘king also judges 727" ; and delivers 72". 4. hum- ble, lowly, Zc 9° (victorious king); opp. לְצִים‎ Pr 3% (Kt); opp. 0°83 16 (Kt); עינים.קקס עם עני‎ רמות‎ yy 18%=2 8 22%. Py n.m. affliction, poverty ;—’y Ex3'+; 29 Dt 16°+, WY עוני ,107% ש‎ 28 16” ) but 20. עכיי‎ ; >Qr עוני‎ ( ; sf. "DY Gn 3x24, WV 164, ae ;—1. affliction, Ib a6 ak 44s 83 1071 19° Lax? 3°; ארץ ע'‎ Gn 41 (E); יָמִי ע'‎ Th 30% Lax’; כור ע'‎ Is 48"; ע'‎ an Tb 36°; אסְירִי ע'‎ y107"; בָּנִי ע/‎ Pr 31°; ‘y ראה‎ Gn 31” (E), Ex 3 ial (J), Dt 267 2K es Ne 9° Jb 10” yo" 285 31° 119’ Lat 3', ins. also before "OY 1S 9° ₪ Th We Dr Kit Bu HPS; ‘ya ראה‎ Gn 20% (J), 1 ₪ 11 25 16” (v. supr.); שמע ע'‎ Gn 16" (J); העלה מע'‎ Ex 3%(J); עני‎ ond Dt 16°. 2. poverty, בְּעָנְיִי הכינותי זהב‎ 1 Ch 22%. 1 ] תעבית‎ [ n.£. humiliation, by fasting (cf. / Pi.Hithp.; NH’n= fasting), sf. YWHEz 9°. vb. sing (Ar. césing, chant, ss‏ ענה ו singing, chanting, etc.; Syr. wiX sing respon-‏ hymn, refrain; poss. As. enti,‏ -ב-ם 1-22[ sively,‏ resound )7( ; Egypt. anni is loan-word 00. to‏ Bondi®) ;—Qal Pf. 3 ms. 11 consec. Je 51";‏ Ex 15”;‏ ותע] Impf. 3 ms. 739° Je 25°; 3 fs.‏ "21 גוא Imv. VY‏ ;.660 18 ₪ ד fpl. APIVAL‏ 3 Ex 32***;—-sing, utter‏ ענת "Inf, estr.‏ ץ tunefully, Ex 15 (E) and Miriam sang to (5)‏ them ; of uttering shout (17%), as in vintage‏ על" :51 Je25°(subj.; 47s pers.), in attack‏ ל.6 Ex 32™8(E);‏ קול ענות M23‏ (חַלוּשָה) pers.);‏ "ך4 דש rei vel pers. laudat. Nu 21” (JE; well);‏ the women‏ 187 8 ז 708+ ;37 Ezr‏ ,)2 || 5( ;29° ”21 יעני במחלות לאר ; sang, and said‏ (cf. || v2).—Is 14”‏ ”'119 ש ace. rei laudat.‏ V. .עון‎ Pi. intens.: עברכ .על‎ Is 27° sing sweetly of it; Inf.M3v קול:‎ Ex 3 21* (E) the sound of distinct singing; cf. niay? ץ‎ n-pr.m. 11011168 :—1. Gn 36° (read‏ | עְנָה Wis Di) vit: -18.20.25.25.29 __ =I Ch y*3- tay,‏ החגי 0 ‘hn‏ (‘nephew’ of 1) Gn 36°"=1 Ch 1. ones‏ .2 A(i)va(v) (cf. n-prm. jy, Safa, Hal" ***).‏ Pw.‏ .: .+ ענוק | יצ Kt‏ ענו (Vv of fouls; Ko" 2® ep, Am jes turn‏ ענז 777 ’¥(9) abs. Ex 19° +; py aside, whence [fr. movements] ; 112 goat, cf. As. enzu; Syr. Ji, estr. six; also JuUxX; [41+ goat-herd ; Ph. Palm. ty; NH (rare (

• From The Great Believers (2018)

  Back to Fiona: “I was saying that my very first patron was a collector named Esmé Sharp, do you remember her? And she just emailed last week asking for a first look at some stuff before Art Basel this spring. Nothing changes! I’m still making work for the same audience.” Jake had disappeared but now he was back, lingering outside the circle. He had rolled up his sleeves; his arms were all muscle and vein. At his left elbow, the bottom of a tattoo. The name was a distant bell to Fiona. Esmé Sharp. Someone circling Richard when his career took off, someone she might have met when she was driving back to Chicago from Madison on weekends, pregnant or with a newborn Claire. Or maybe she’d met her after they moved back to the city in ’93, Damian teaching at U of C and Fiona going out of her mind, bored to death in the place she’d once found endlessly vibrant. The early nineties were a haze; Claire had been born in the summer of ’92, and Fiona was in the throes of what anyone today would easily spot as extended postpartum depression, on top of the PTSD she’d carried with her from the ’80s. She’d lied to her doctor that everything was splendid, and he hadn’t pushed further. She tried taking graduate classes at DePaul, but couldn’t bring herself to complete a single paper. She watched morning television, interviews with celebrities whose names she didn’t know. She sat on benches while Claire circled playgrounds and dug her fat fingers into cold sandboxes and got herself stuck on top of slides. It wasn’t till Claire started preschool and Fiona began working for the resale shop—around the time Richard left for Paris—that everything came clear. It was as if someone had handed her new glasses around 1995, turned up the color, unmuted the city. Just in time for Fiona to realize how unhappy she was with Damian, his little lectures, his teeth-licking. She began fucking a man she met at yoga , for the love of God, and even as it slowly eroded her marriage, it helped her wake up. But by then Richard was gone. Esmé must have been from that lost time, a boat in a foggy harbor. “Et qu’est-ce que vous faites, dans la vie? ” a woman asked Fiona. She said, “Je—j’ai une boutique. En Chicago.” God, she wanted to leave. Richard rescued her, talking quickly; she assumed he was disabusing the crowd of the notion that Fiona sold fancy shoes. She heard “le SIDA ,” which she’d always found a prettier acronym than AIDS. Well, everything about AIDS had been better all along in France, in London, even in Canada. Less shame, more education, more funding, more research. Fewer people screaming about hell as you died. She sidled up to Jake and whispered. “Help me find more gauze,” she said. “You want me to ask the hosts?” “No.

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

  vb. be ill, unwell (NH 4 sorrow-‏ [דוה]ז ful, miserable, not in physical sense; cf. Ar.‏ G95 be ill; Eth. LO: As. perh. deriv.‏ ]13-[ NYT, Joa, Los‏ ,דוי di't, illness Zim?® "7 ; Aram.‏ אֶשָה.. . במ be sad) —Qal Inf. estr. ANIA NAY‏ ו bed of‏ ‘41 ו YI‏ ד!' n.[m.] illness,‏ דוי הַמָּה languishing (Che); sg. estr. (Ew De Di)‏ yond 13 Jb 67 they (i.e. my sufferings) are like‏ disease (VB loathsomeness) in my meat, cf. Di; but txt. dub. tay adj. faint, unwell—1)7 La 5”, f. 117 Ly 15°43 5; 1. faint, La 1% (|| TRY) 517. 2. unwell, menstruous Ly 15% 20%; Is 307 m7 perh. = כְּלִי‎ 6. sickness—cstr. sg.‏ *7'7, גנ גד [מִדוְה]1 pl., as 7°21); estr.‏ מדוי mp Dt 28" (rd.‏ מִצְרִיִם (חלי || (both‏ *ך Dt‏ מדוי pl. DY‏ Tp] adj. faint (on form cf. BaX®*”)— דוי‎ Ts 1°4 2t.—faint, always of heart Is 1° | (eRe fig. of condition of people); Je 8% La 1” of sorrow and distress. 1 די‎ n.m. ink (NH id., Aram. 87, 165; Ar. %|43 inkbottle, inkhorn, Ges-Dietr Fl NHWB‘*“ der. fr. / דוה‎ in assumed sense of slowly flowing; Fl comp. Ar. ככ ב‎ thin skin on surface of milk, cf. also Olt 2) oN WIA עַלְהְהַפְַפָר‎ AND Je 36%, cf. Lag 5 On erasible quality of Hebrew ink cf. RS OTIC, 400 f. ed. 2, 71. : 2 further Liz Low Stphische Requisiten 7 ete. bei den Juden, 1870, i. 145 ff. Bs vb. rinse, cleanse away‏ ,דוח]זז by rinsing, washing (N H Hiph., Aram.‏ Aph. id.; cf. As. 0/6 D1?*"")—Hiph. Pf sf.‏ but rd. IN fr.‏ הדיחני Kt Je51% Qr‏ הדיחנו mpl.‏ 3 ;*4 15 יָדִיח (Hi, ef. 50%); 707: 3 ms.‏ נדח 4 (הַקָדִים wT 2 Ch 4°+ Ez 40% (Co conj.‏ rinse, victims to be offered in sacrifice Ez 40%, so,‏ 2Ch 4° (cf. supr.) 2. fig. cleanse by washing‏ Is 4% of removing guilt.‏ .דאג Ket v. 384 sub‏ דויג t [77] vb. pound, beat (in mortar) (NH & Aram. id., Ar. WIS; cf. also As. déku, kill מדכה COT**).—Qal Pf. 3 pl. 73703 323 (milra’) No x1° )|| חי‎ Unb). Tra n.f. mortar, Nu 11°. TMD D7 n.f. an unclean bird, perh. hoopoe, & B Saad al. (cf. Di Kn Ly 11”) Ly Ee Dir spread slander, perh. orig.‏ דום (NH‏ דום (דממה ,דמם whisper, cf.‏ 11. דומה‎ n.f. silence ;—’ שש שאול=ד‎ 94", TT ץ‎ 115"; also Is 21" מקָא דוּמָה‎ 76 of silence, 1.6. of concealment, hidden meaning, ace. to Ew Di, but v. 1.4, 3.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  And although I fell several times in my yard that summer, each time I was able to get myself back up and continue on. One afternoon, just as the summer was ending, I remember my mother peering through the dining room window with the saddest look on her face I had ever seen, as I once again struggled to drag myself around the yard. She had watched me try to walk in my braces many times before, encouraging me and telling me how proud she was, but on this afternoon she was no longer able to hide her sorrow. Years later, my mother would confide that seeing me for the first time attempting to walk with my braces in my backyard, occasionally losing my balance, falling and picking myself up, reminded her of Jesus Christ and the Stations of the Cross. I would try to smile, lifting one of my crutches above my head and shaking it in a show of triumph to let her know everything was okay, but my mother just kept staring at me, seeming as if she was about to cry. “What’s wrong, Mom?” I asked her when I got back into the house later that day, but all she could do was continue to look at me with those sad eyes, telling me how it hurt her to see me struggling each day, my body all twisted and atrophied, dragging myself exhausted around the yard. “It really hurts me to see you out there. It’s too much, Ronnie. It’s too much. Maybe the doctors were right. Maybe you should just accept the fact that you’ve got to be in a wheelchair. It’s not good for you. It’s too much of a strain on your heart. I watch you, Ronnie, and it hurts me. I love you, Ronnie. I just don’t want to see you suffer anymore.” I had hoped that my mother would continue to be encouraging and supportive of my attempt to walk again. Didn’t she and the others understand what I was trying to do? I tried not to let the neighbors’ uneasy stares and my mother’s sadness and doubts bother me, but by the end of that summer I was putting on the braces and dragging myself around the yard less and less, feeling depressed and spending more time getting drunk at Arthur’s Bar. One night in late August I came home very drunk and pushed myself back into my house, up the wooden ramp my father had built when I was at the hospital. I pushed my wheelchair down the hallway to my room, trying not to wake my mother and father or any of my brothers and sisters.