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 My Life on the Road (2015)

  Ironically, as that young Puerto Rican man also said, the men least likely to be in prison seemed to be those who committed crimes against women—at least anything short of murder. The average rapist has raped seven to eleven times before being arrested. Men guilty of domestic violence stay in their homes while their victims go to shelters—if they’re lucky. We must not let prisons stay a secret. It dawned on me that for prisoners, getting out of that secret space is progress, but because I am free, progress for me is going in. While writing this chapter, for instance, I heard about the unPrison Project. It provides children’s books to mothers in prison so they have another way to connect with their children during visits, minds fly over prison walls, and mothers also improve their literacy. Seventy percent of all people in prison return within five years, but of those who get help there with literacy, only 16 percent return. Who can argue with that?Deborah Jiang-Stein, the inventor of the unPrison Project, invited me to go with her to the Shakopee women’s prison, near Minneapolis, Minnesota. —WE MEET OUTSIDE THE prison with both the surprise of strangers and the instant intimacy of people who share work. I had read her book Prison Baby: A Memoir, and she has read my writing. I know she was born to an incarcerated and addicted mother, was lucky to survive withdrawal from the heroin she had absorbed from her mother’s body and blood, and was also lucky to spend her first year in a rare prison with a nursery so she could be with her mother. Then she was adopted by a Jewish family of teachers who gave her the gift of education, a gift she passes on to women like her mother, who was in and out of prison all her life. Deborah refers to herself as multiracial, and one can see Asian and many other influences in her expressive face. You might say she is a universal person. She went through a hard childhood of being obviously different from her adoptive family, yet not being told the secret of her birth. She, too, experienced teenage years of addiction and rebellion until she finally discovered her true story. With the end of secrecy, she discovered her mission. Since she is way more familiar than I am with prison routine, she guides me through filling out forms, removing jewelry, leaving everything but our indoor clothing in a locker, and passing through metal detectors. When we are finally in the halls of the prison itself—surprising because they are bright and clean, and depressing because there is no way out—we see five mothers with very young children. I am sad because I know this is a rare visiting day. Deborah is glad because she knows this prison is rare in allowing maternal visits at all.

• From Querelle (1953)

  But never for a moment did he think of doing so. It was too late for that. The phrase had a soothing effect on him. He heard himself saying it very calmly. The rage became transformed into a great sorrow, heavy and solemn, emanating from his chest to wrap his entire body and spirit into an infinite sadness that was to be his permanent condition. He walked on a while in the midst of the fog, hands in pockets, always certain of the elegance of his bearing, glad to retain it even in this solitude. There wasn't much of a chance of his meeting Roger. They had not agreed on a meeting. Gil thought of the kid. He saw his face, lit up with that smile that always appeared when he was listening to a song. The face was not quite the same as Paulette's, whose s1nile was not so clear, but' was troubled by her femininity, which destroyed the natural ease in the smiles of Gil and Roger. " 'Twixt her thighs, oh wowl La Paulette, what hasn't she got there, between her thighs!" And went on, almost murmuring it out loud : 108 I JEAN GENET 41Her pussy! Her little pussy! Her cunt!" · He thought of it, imbuing the words with a tenderness that turned them into a desperate incantation. "Her damp little pussy! Her little thighs." He continued the line of thought : 44Mustn't call them her 'little thighs,' she's got beautiful thighs, Paulette has. She's got nice fat thighs, and up there between them there's that little furry pussy." He had a hard-on. In the midst of his sadness-or shame-and obliterating it, he now recognized the existence of a new, yet already proven certainty. He was discovering himself again. All his being was now running down into his prick, to make it hard. It was just a part of him, but it had this providential vigor that was capable of keeping his shame at bay. By siphoning off the shame which was oozing from his body, into the prick, replenishing its spongy tissues, Gil felt himself growing harder, stronger, prouder again. There could be no doubt that it was a moment to call to his aid all the fluids which bathed his internal organs. Instinctively he looked for the darkest and most out-of-the-way spot on the esplanade. Paulette's smile was alternating with that of her brother. In a state of extreme animation Gil's mind's eye wandered down the thighs, raised the skirt, there were her garters. Above those (his thoughts slowed down a little) there wa_s white skin, suddenly darkened by the presence of a fleece which he just couldn't get a stationary, a fixed image of, under the spotlight of his desire. And in one go, after running up under her dress and lingerie, his prick came out again at just about the level of Paulette's breasts : he would be able to see better with the tip of his prick.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “Where are you from?” Lionel asked, and then, because the question seemed too personal, even though they had just fucked, he said, “Not that you have to tell me.” “Bangor,” Charles said. “Maine.” “What’s it like there?” “Cold. Wet. Empty,” he said. “It’s kind of a bleak place.” “That seems dramatic.” Charles didn’t say anything after that, and Lionel was afraid that he had been too sharp. He put his hand on Charles’s chest and moved closer to him beneath the blanket. The bed’s complaint under his shifting weight drew his attention to the fact that he was yet again sharing this lumpy mattress with another person. So remarkable was the thought that he could not hold it still, and it slipped down out of his awareness. It was just as well. “Sorry,” Lionel said. “What are you sorry for?” “You got quiet.” “If I’m quiet, I’m quiet.” “Okay,” Lionel said, “sorry for being sorry.” Charles flicked the bruise on Lionel’s cheek with the same casual gesture he’d used to spin his fork around last night. Lionel could still feel the indentations of Charles’s teeth. The skin was swollen and a little tender from the hickey. But it was nothing, really. By morning it would be gone. It seemed sad that it would fade or that things had to end. When he was a child, that had depressed him. When his mother read him stories, he’d bawl at the end even if the little duck found its way back to its mother or the bears and the girl became friends or green eggs and ham were eaten. It didn’t matter if the story had a happy ending or if things turned out okay and all the scary things were put away. He hated that vertiginous feeling of things ending. That sense of the world dropping off under his feet. It had been the same at math camp. Everyone rolling up their sleeping bags, putting away their clothes for one last time. Saying good-bye, or pointedly not saying good-bye. There was, too, something unsurprising in all that. After all, his father had left them suddenly. Or it had seemed sudden, at least to Lionel. One day, his dad had packed up for a trip the way he always did. But then weeks went by, and when he asked his mother where his father had gone, she turned to him and said, as if describing the weather forecast, that he wasn’t coming back and that Lionel should get used to it.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Where to?” “To the country, to my brother’s,” answered Sergey Ivanovitch. “Then you’ll see my wife. I’ve written to her, but you’ll see her first. Please tell her that they’ve seen me and that it’s ‘all right,’ as the English say. She’ll understand. Oh, and be so good as to tell her I’m appointed secretary of the committee.... But she’ll understand! You know, _les petites misères de la vie humaine,_” he said, as it were apologizing to the princess. “And Princess Myakaya—not Liza, but Bibish—is sending a thousand guns and twelve nurses. Did I tell you?” “Yes, I heard so,” answered Koznishev indifferently. “It’s a pity you’re going away,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch. “Tomorrow we’re giving a dinner to two who’re setting off—Dimer-Bartnyansky from Petersburg and our Veslovsky, Grisha. They’re both going. Veslovsky’s only lately married. There’s a fine fellow for you! Eh, princess?” he turned to the lady. The princess looked at Koznishev without replying. But the fact that Sergey Ivanovitch and the princess seemed anxious to get rid of him did not in the least disconcert Stepan Arkadyevitch. Smiling, he stared at the feather in the princess’s hat, and then about him as though he were going to pick something up. Seeing a lady approaching with a collecting box, he beckoned her up and put in a five-rouble note. “I can never see these collecting boxes unmoved while I’ve money in my pocket,” he said. “And how about today’s telegram? Fine chaps those Montenegrins!” “You don’t say so!” he cried, when the princess told him that Vronsky was going by this train. For an instant Stepan Arkadyevitch’s face looked sad, but a minute later, when, stroking his mustaches and swinging as he walked, he went into the hall where Vronsky was, he had completely forgotten his own despairing sobs over his sister’s corpse, and he saw in Vronsky only a hero and an old friend. “With all his faults one can’t refuse to do him justice,” said the princess to Sergey Ivanovitch as soon as Stepan Arkadyevitch had left them. “What a typically Russian, Slav nature! Only, I’m afraid it won’t be pleasant for Vronsky to see him. Say what you will, I’m touched by that man’s fate. Do talk to him a little on the way,” said the princess. “Yes, perhaps, if it happens so.” “I never liked him. But this atones for a great deal. He’s not merely going himself, he’s taking a squadron at his own expense.” “Yes, so I heard.” A bell sounded. Everyone crowded to the doors. “Here he is!” said the princess, indicating Vronsky, who with his mother on his arm walked by, wearing a long overcoat and wide-brimmed black hat. Oblonsky was walking beside him, talking eagerly of something. Vronsky was frowning and looking straight before him, as though he did not hear what Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “All I say is,” answered Agafea Mihalovna, evidently not speaking at random, but in strict sequence of idea, “that you ought to get married, that’s what I say.” Agafea Mihalovna’s allusion to the very subject he had only just been thinking about, hurt and stung him. Levin scowled, and without answering her, he sat down again to his work, repeating to himself all that he had been thinking of the real significance of that work. Only at intervals he listened in the stillness to the click of Agafea Mihalovna’s needles, and recollecting what he did not want to remember, he frowned again. At nine o’clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a carriage over the mud. “Well, here’s visitors come to us, and you won’t be dull,” said Agafea Mihalovna, getting up and going to the door. But Levin overtook her. His work was not going well now, and he was glad of a visitor, whoever it might be. Chapter 31 Running halfway down the staircase, Levin caught a sound he knew, a familiar cough in the hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught sight of a long, bony, familiar figure, and now it seemed there was no possibility of mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that this tall man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not his brother Nikolay. Levin loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Just now, when Levin, under the influence of the thoughts that had come to him, and Agafea Mihalovna’s hint, was in a troubled and uncertain humor, the meeting with his brother that he had to face seemed particularly difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy visitor, some outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his uncertain humor, he had to see his brother, who knew him through and through, who would call forth all the thoughts nearest his heart, would force him to show himself fully. And that he was not disposed to do. Angry with himself for so base a feeling, Levin ran into the hall; as soon as he had seen his brother close, this feeling of selfish disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible as his brother Nikolay had been before in his emaciation and sickliness, now he looked still more emaciated, still more wasted. He was a skeleton covered with skin. He stood in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the scarf off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile, submissive and humble, Levin felt something clutching at his throat.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  Some contributors do indeed withhold their funds from this college, which is hurtful. But when the trustees hold firm to their support for free speech on campus, new contributions make up for the loss of the old. If anything, the archbishop has only brought more media coverage of an era of declining church membership, aging priests, shutdowns of a dozen historic churches, the revelations of sexual abuse by priests, and many other troubles that caused him to be summoned to the Vatican for a tactical consultation. On the day itself, I’m impressed to see a small protest plane circling over the amphitheater, pulling an anti-abortion banner. Someone yells out, “Look, the right-to-lifers have an air force!” There is laughter. The event goes right on. Even though I know this lonely little plane is a commercial one that can be hired for birthdays, weddings, and advertising, the symbolism of its constant circling makes me sad. Talking later to Dolores Huerta, my friend of thirty years—a lifetime organizer of farm workers and efforts to elect progressive women—I tell her that I can’t shake the sadness of this symbolic distance between an airplane representing the church and the real lives of women on the ground. She reminds me of the organizer’s mantra: Roots can exist without flowers, but no flower can exist without roots. Religion may be a flower, but people are its roots. Three months later, Archbishop John Quinn retires at the age of sixty-six, nine years ahead of schedule. San Francisco newspapers report that he was too distant from the people. • In rural Oklahoma, where oil wells grow in fields next to cattle and winter wheat, I’m talking with a university auditorium full of students in a postlecture discussion. Most people are trying to figure out how to make their daily lives more fair—whether it’s who gets tenure or who gets the kids ready for school—but I notice that an all-white group of twenty or so people in Jesus T-shirts are not taking part. Finally, a young T-shirted man stands up to protest my support for legal abortion, which is odd because we haven’t been talking about abortion at all. He says abortion isn’t even in the Constitution, so how can it be protected by it? A female college student who looks about twelve rises to say that women aren’t included in the Constitution either, but now that we’re citizens, we have reproductive freedom as part of a constitutional right to privacy. If the Founding Fathers had included Founding Mothers, that freedom would have been in the Bill of Rights to begin with. The crowd applauds. I can see we’ve reached the magical point when people start to answer each other’s questions. I can just listen and learn.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  I didn’t know exactly why; I still don’t. I know it has something to do with my high school boyfriend—it usually does, right? Well, “boyfriend” is probably a loose term: we’d met on a youth group ski trip during which I’d given him an unreciprocated hand job without as much as a kiss. The lack of reciprocation continued as our relationship evolved into a hookup game of “defend the goal”—his goal, my defense—including after junior prom, when I’d almost let him enter me in the parking lot of a shuttered CVS, but stopped short because I decided that losing my virginity on prom night—to someone I wasn’t even technically dating—was too cliché. Some of the details of the night a week later are crystal clear—we were in the backseat of my two-door Honda Civic, it was dark, we were in a parking lot, and Lauryn Hill’s “To Zion” was playing on my car stereo. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to have sex with him, but the boundaries I put up were weak at best, and he dutifully approached them over and over until I conceded. It was painful and brief—I remember he didn’t orgasm, which was unusual. And though my life no longer involves being pressured into sex in a car with a boy that I didn’t really want and never enjoyed, it’s hard to escape wondering why it is that, in encounters I wanted and even initiated, it’s rare that I seek the same pleasure I want to give to other people. I know that there is a huge divide between feeling pressured into having sex too quickly by a high school boyfriend and being sexually abused, but some version of those violations and so many others have so thoroughly shaped all of my sexual and romantic relationships that I no longer really can imagine a world in which I could have sex that didn’t resonate with some sort of trauma. Rape interferes with how my partners and I can experience joy and connection even within incredibly loving, supportive, and nonnormative relationships. Rape culture means that even as someone who realized just how nonconsensual that high school relationship was just a few months after it ended, I still struggle with the repercussions of that experience and the many that followed it. Even though I had the strength to confront that boyfriend over AOL Instant Messenger to tell him just how I felt about our relationship (in the form of a badly written and very emo poem, of course), I kept doing sexual things that I didn’t really want to do for years after.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “We have a railway now,” he said in answer to his uncle’s question. “It’s like this, do you see: two sit on a bench—they’re the passengers; and one stands up straight on the bench. And all are harnessed to it by their arms or by their belts, and they run through all the rooms—the doors are left open beforehand. Well, and it’s pretty hard work being the conductor!” “That’s the one that stands?” Stepan Arkadyevitch inquired, smiling. “Yes, you want pluck for it, and cleverness too, especially when they stop all of a sudden, or someone falls down.” “Yes, that must be a serious matter,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, watching with mournful interest the eager eyes, like his mother’s; not childish now—no longer fully innocent. And though he had promised Alexey Alexandrovitch not to speak of Anna, he could not restrain himself. “Do you remember your mother?” he asked suddenly. “No, I don’t,” Seryozha said quickly. He blushed crimson, and his face clouded over. And his uncle could get nothing more out of him. His tutor found his pupil on the staircase half an hour later, and for a long while he could not make out whether he was ill-tempered or crying. “What is it? I expect you hurt yourself when you fell down?” said the tutor. “I told you it was a dangerous game. And we shall have to speak to the director.” “If I had hurt myself, nobody should have found it out, that’s certain.” “Well, what is it, then?” “Leave me alone! If I remember, or if I don’t remember?... what business is it of his? Why should I remember? Leave me in peace!” he said, addressing not his tutor, but the whole world. Chapter 20 Stepan Arkadyevitch, as usual, did not waste his time in Petersburg. In Petersburg, besides business, his sister’s divorce, and his coveted appointment, he wanted, as he always did, to freshen himself up, as he said, after the mustiness of Moscow.

• From Querelle (1953)

  "Listen, you've got to go and talk to Robert. I've thought it over. There ain't nobody but him, and his buddies, can get me out of this mess." Naively, Gil believed that the local heavies would greet him with open arms and make him a member of their gang. He believed in the existence of such a gang, a dangerous one, another society that was fighting against society itself. That evening Roger left the penitentiary in a very confused state of mind. He was happy that Gil had felt desire for him, for a moment ( even though it had been based on a confusion with his sister) ; he was annoyed with himself for having drawn back from Gil's kiss; he felt proud to know that the greatness of his friend was about to be recognized, and that it was he; Roger, who had been chosen to establish contact with the supreme powers. Now, whenever he had the oppo.rtunity, Querelle would go, round about dusk, for a walk, unobtrusively strolling in the direction of his hidden treasure. On these occasions he let sadness appear on his face. He felt himself already garbed in convict uniform, slowly meandering along, a ball and chain round his ankle, in a landscape of monstrous palm trees, a region of dream and death, from which neither morning nor any acquittal granted by men could ever save him again. The certainty of living in a world that is the silent double of the one in which you are actually moving about invested Querelle with a certain kind of disinterest, which endowed him, in its turn, with a spontaneous understanding of things. As a rule indiffer- 163 I QUERELLE ent to plants or objects-but had he ever confronted them?now he understood them intuitively. The taste of everything is isolated by some singularity, first recognized by the eye, then communicated to the palate : hay is hay primarily because of that characteristic yellowish·gray powder the sense of taste first expects and then experiences. It is the same with any vegetable species. The eye may allow some confusion, but the mouth won't stand for it, and thus Querelle was slowly proceeding through a universe of savors, of recognitions within recognitions. One evening he ran into Roger. It didn't take the sailor long to know who the boy was, and to succeed in penetrating to Gil's hiding place. THE GLORY OF

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  They had last spoken on the night Francisco left for trade school in Georgia. They were in their room, Hartjes lying on the bed, Francisco stuffing clothes into a garbage bag. It was hot, their shirts sticking to their backs. Francisco sat on the edge of the bed, looked over his shoulder at Hartjes, and said, “I’m out of here, kid.” Hartjes shoved at him and said, “Shut up,” because it made him feel good. Francisco stood up, hoisted the black bag over his shoulder. He leaned down and they knocked fists. A friend of his gave him a ride to the bus depot, and then total silence until he called to say that Hartjes’s mother was dead. “Oh,” Hartjes had said that Tuesday on the phone four weeks before. “Oh, all right.” And then Francisco had hung up, and that was that. The apples were not for Hartjes. They were for his friend Simon, who lived in the country. They were not for Simon, either, in fact, but for Simon’s goats. The goats were named Helena, Maria, Bertram, Vicky, Dude, and Guy. Helena was a boy goat, the others were girls. Simon had named them before he knew their sexes, after picking them out at two different farms three years or so before, when they were all babies and awkward, barely weaned at all, when it was still possible to mistake a boy goat for a girl and vice versa if you didn’t know what you were doing. Hartjes cut the apples up for the goats and fed them from the sloping front porch. They had grown accustomed to his way of doing things on these Tuesday visits, and they formed a neat little line and filed up to him one at a time to receive from his palm a chunk of apple. He patted their sides, felt the bristle of their fur, watched the tufts of steam issue from their nostrils. The horizontal bars of their pupils shivered. Their eyes were pale blue. He fed them from a plastic bag, lifting chunk after chunk until they were all gone, and the goats, brushing his palms with their tongues, nipping at his fingertips, gave up on him. Off they wandered to find food elsewhere.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  This former inmate at a Texas prison recognized one of the military guards, who had worked at the prison before joining the military. As a former inmate, he wanted George W. Bush, governor of Texas at the time, to be held accountable for privatizing twenty-six prisons in that state alone. It doesn’t take long to discover the main engine behind this profit-making motive: the American Legislative Exchange Council—a center of corporate political activism that also opposes tax increases and environmental protections—writes legislation and lobbies for the privatization of prisons. It has helped to elect about 30 percent of all our state legislators. If today’s graduating university students indentured by debt want to find a cause, they can look at most state legislatures, where tax dollars that should go into state universities are put into building and running government-owned prisons for profit. Prison privatization is our fault, too, as citizens and voters. Most Americans don’t know who their state legislators are. We may not know how much of our tax money is going into private profit. Even telephone companies routinely charge more for calls to and from prison, and prisoners and their families have to pay. In New York City, the amount spent on housing, feeding, and guarding one person in prison for a year could pay tuition at Harvard for more than three years.7 We can get to know and lobby our state legislators or anybody who holds the keys. Send books to prison libraries. Find a link to a person or activity there. Visit somebody who needs visitors. Advocate for the wrongly convicted. It’s a lot easier to break through the secrecy from the outside than it is from the inside. Though now we are finally hearing the phrase mass incarceration, it’s easy to miss the complicated realities behind it. I never would have known were it not for accidental chances to listen to past and present prisoners. For me, this secret prison world began to surface when Ms. magazine sent a few free subscriptions to women’s prisons in the late 1970s, and then gave birth to a full-blown prison and shelter program. Letters, stories, and poems came back. Women in prison wanted us to know they needed a movement, too. Then women who had been in prison began to turn up at feminist meetings and conferences, on campuses, at YWCAs, anywhere. A few said they had felt safer in prison than they did on the outside—a tragedy in itself. Most talked about the absence of their children, privacy, sunshine, trust, toilet paper, and their own clothes. Some had been denied a self-defense plea, or been preyed upon sexually by male guards, or been punished permanently by losing custody of children. A few had been shackled even while giving birth. Others had families who were too far away to visit—a gendered punishment in itself, since states may have only one women’s prison, and a federal prison might be even farther away.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  tell me, where is our ancient Terence, Cæcilius, Plautus, and Varro if thou knowest; tell me if they are dammed, and in what ward.” “They, and Persius, and I, and many others,” my Leader answered, “are with that Greek to whom the Muses gave suck more than to any other, in the first circle of the dark prison. Ofttimes we talk of the mount which hath our fostermothers ever with it. Euripides is there with us, and Antiphon, Simonides, Agathon, and many other Greeks, who once decked their brows with laurel. 11 There are seen of thy people Antigone, Deiphyle and Argia, and Ismene so sad as she was. There is seen she who showed Langia; there is Tiresias’ daughter, and Thetis, and Deidamia with her sisters.” 12 Now were both poets silent, intent anew on gazing around, freed from the ascent and from the walls; and already four handmaids of the day were left behind, and the fifth was at the chariot pole, directing yet upward its flaming horn, 13 when my Leader: “I think it behoves us to turn our right shoulders to the edge and circle the mount as we are wont to do.” Thus custom there was our guide, and we took up our way with less doubt because of the assent of that worthy spirit. They journeyed on in front, and I, solitary, behind; and I hearkened to their discourse which gave me understanding in poesy. But soon the sweet converse was broken by a tree 14 which we found in the midst of the way, with fruit wholesome and pleasant to smell. And even as a pine tree grows gradually less from bough to bough upwards, so did that downwards; I think so that none may go up. On the side where our path was blocked, a clear spring fell from the high rock and spread itself above the leaves. The two poets drew near the tree; and a voice from within the foliage cried: “Of this food ye shall have scarcity.” Then it said: “Mary thought more how the wedding-feast might be honourable and complete, than of her own mouth, which now answers for you. 15 And the Roman women of old were content with water for their drink, 16 and Daniel despised food and gained wisdom. 17 The first age was fair as gold; it made acorns savoury with hunger, and every stream nectar with thirst. 18 Honey and locusts were the meat which nourished the Baptist in the wilderness; therefore he is glorious, and so great as in the Gospel is revealed to you.” 19 1. Matt. v. 6: Beati qui [esuriunt et] sitiunt justitiam; “Blessed are they which do [hunger and] thirst after righteousness.” The words of this Beatitude that have been placed in square brackets are reserved for the Angel of the sixth terrace (see Canto xxiv). 2. Juvenal, the satirist, lived ca. A.D. 47-130; he praises Statius in the seventh Satire. 3.

• From Querelle (1953)

  17% I JEAN GENET "It wasn't me, I swear! I can't tell you who did it, I don't know nothing about it. But I'm telling you, by all that's sacred, I swear I didn't do it." "The papers said they was sure it was you, all right. I'm willing to believe you, but you'd have so in e explaining to do if the cops got you. See, they found your cigarette lighter, right by that stiff. Anyhow , you better keep the profile low." Gil resigned himself to the second murder. When the mon strousness o_f his deed had first blurred his vision, he had thought of turning himself in. He had thought that once the police had recognized his innocence of the second crime, they would let him go, so that he could go and hide again because of the first one. He thought they would respect the rules of the game. The insanity of this train of thought soon became apparent to him. Thus, little by little, Gil took the murder of the sailor upon himself. He tried to think of reasons for doing it. Sometimes he wondered who the true murderer might be. He interrogated himself to find our how he had managed to lose his cigarette lighter at the scene of the crime. "I would really like to know who did it. I hadn't even noticed I didn't have that lighter any more." "I'm telling you, you better stay put. I'll talk to my buddies and see what we can do for you. I'll come and see you as often as I'm able. I'll even give your little buddy here some coins so he can buy you some stuff to eat and some smokes." "That's damn white of you. Thanks." But the moment before, in order to lose himself, to concen trate himself into his stare and disperse it among the shadows, Gil had used up too much of his energy to be able to express his gratitude with the fuii warmth of his being. He was tired. An immense sadness had crept over his face, dragging down the comers of the mouth Querelle recalled seeing in a different state-a little moist, gay, open in song. His body was sagging on the comer of the crate, and his entire gestalt was that of some one who thinks : "What the fucking hell am I going to do

• From Querelle (1953)

  Nevertheless, as soon as Roger vanished, he became for Querelle a "mysterious link," more precious than he had realized until then. It was his absence that gave the boy such a rare quality and sudden importance. Querelle smiled, but could not help being worried by the fact that the boy was the go-between of two murderers, and, it seemed, a quick and lively one. He was now running along the imaginary connecting line whose very spirit he was, and he could choose to extend or shorten it, at his pleasure. Roger was, in fact, walking briskly. His separation from Querelle made him feel more solemn than before, because he knew that he was bringing Gil the essence of Querelle, in other words that in Querelle which he vaguely understood to be the motive force that propelled Querelle in Gil's direction. He knew that in him, a mere boy in short pants whose cuffs had been turned up over the solid thighs, now was vested all the pomp and circumstance due to ambassadors-and seeing the child's serious demeanor one could well understand why such delegates are always more heavily decorated than their masters. On his frail person, laden down .with a thousand ceremonial chains, converged Gil's almost haggard attention, as he sat there in his lair, and Querelle's patience, as he stood waiting by the gateway to the domain. Querelle took out a cigarette and lit it, then stuck both his hands back in the 161 I QUERELLE pockets of his pcacoat. He wasn't thinking at all. Nothing stirred in his imagination. His consciousness was attentive, soft and shapeless, though still a little troubled by the sudden importance of the boy he was waiting for. ''It's me. Roger." Quite close to him Gil's voice came in a whisper: "Is he beret' "Yes. I told him to wait for me. You want me to go and get him?" Sounding somewhat tense, Gil replied : "Yup. Bring him here. Get going." \Vhen Querelle arrived in front of the den, Roger prcr claimed, in a loud and clear voice: "This is it, we're here. Gil, we're here." The boy was overwhelmed by misery at the sudden feeling that his life was coming to an end with those very words. He felt himself shrinking, losing his raison d' etre. All the treasures with which he had been entrusted for a couple of minutes were now melting away, very quickly. He fully knew, now, the vanity of mankind, and how it melteth away like wax. He had labored faithfully to bring about a meeting that would abolish him. His whole life had been involved in this giant task of ten minutes' duration, and now his glory dimmed, almost disappeared, taking with it the high proud sense of joy that had made him swell up: to a size great enough to accommodate Querelle, whom he had described, whose words he had reported, and Gil, whom he had conveyed to Querelle. "Here, brought you some ciggies."

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  8 A mountain is there, called Ida, which once was glad with waters and with foliage; now it is deserted like an antiquated thing. Rhea of old chose it for the faithful cradle of her son; 9 and the better to conceal him, when he wept, caused cries to be made on it. Within the mountain stands erect a great Old Man, 10 who keeps his shoulders turned towards Damietta, and looks at Rome as if it were his mirror. His head is shapen of fine gold, his arms and his breast are pure silver; then he is of brass to the cleft; from thence downwards he is all of chosen iron, save that the right foot is of baked clay; and he rests more on this than on the other. Every part, except the gold, is broken with a fissure that drops tears, which collected perforate that grotto. Their course descends from rock to rock into this valley; they form Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon, then, by this narrow conduit, go down

• From Escape (2007)

  Merril had several older daughters—former nusses—who were my age and still unmarried in their early twenties. Tension was building in FLDS communities in Colorado City, Hildale, Salt Lake, and Canada because there were so many girls who were getting older and were still unmarried. The prophet usually arranged hundreds of marriages for girls every year. But when Uncle Rulon became head of the FLDS he fell behind in arranging marriages. Part of the problem was that he’d always lived in Salt Lake City and didn’t know most of the families who lived in Colorado City and Hildale. Parents feared that if their daughters weren’t assigned in marriage they would begin to think that they could choose someone for themselves. When complaints were made to Uncle Rulon, he told fathers to place their daughters in marriages themselves. We all knew this was what was happening, but no one spoke of it because it was against the precepts of the FLDS. A man could receive revelations from God about his family, but only the prophet received divine revelations about matchmaking. Merril took several of his wives with him to Salt Lake City when he went for the priesthood meeting on the third weekend of the month. Tammy and I were sharing a hotel room. The night of the priesthood meeting she came into our room in a daze. Tammy sat on the bed and stared at the wall, trancelike. “Tammy, is something wrong?” I asked. She walked over to a table and cradled her head in her hands. A few moments later she pounded her fist on the table. “Yes! There’s something wrong and I’m a bad person for feeling this way.” I was perplexed and could not imagine what might have happened. Tammy turned to me with tears streaming down her face. Uncle Rulon had just married Bonnie, who was Barbara and Ruth’s little sister. Bonnie was in her early twenties; Uncle Rulon was in his early eighties. Tammy grabbed a Kleenex and wiped the tears from her face. “Carolyn, I can’t stand this! This is what happened to me and I hate to see it happening to another girl. I know what it is like to have to marry a man who is so much older. You don’t have anything in life to live for anymore.” Her chest was heaving with sobs. All the grief in her life from having had to marry Uncle Roy when she was a young girl overwhelmed her. Tammy’s life had been stolen from her just as Bonnie’s was being stolen now. Tammy had been eighteen and Uncle Roy eighty-eight when she was assigned to him in marriage. She told me that Uncle Roy was so old he had only slept with her a few times in the decade that they were married. During most of their marriage he was sick and bedridden. Tammy never felt she had any kind of relationship with him at all.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  When I was in the open, on the fifth circle, I saw people about it who wept, lying on the ground all turned downwards. “Adhæsit pavimento anima mea,” 5 I heard them say with such deep sighs that hardly were the words understood. “O chosen of God, whose sufferings both justice and hope make less hard, direct us towards the high ascents.” If ye come secure from lying prostrate, and desire to find the way most quickly, let your right hands be ever to the outside.” 6 Thus prayed the poet, and thus a little in front of us was answer made; wherefore I noted what else was concealed in the words, 7 and turned mine eyes then to my Lord; whereat he gave assent with glad sign to what the look of my desire was craving. When I could do with me according to my own mind, I drew forward above that creature whose words before made me take note, saying: “Spirit, in whom weeping matures that without which one cannot turn to God, stay a while for me thy greater care. Who thou wast, and why ye have your backs turned upward, tell me, and if thou wouldst that I obtain aught for thee yonder, whence living I set forth.”

• From Escape (2007)

  We spent the last day of our trip driving through California’s redwood forest and shopping in San Francisco’s Chinatown. My father had been in real estate and often took us with him when he had to travel. I’d been to San Francisco and the redwood forest with him several times before when I was younger. I was fortunate to have seen as much as I did before I married Merril because it opened my eyes and taught me a lot about the world outside my own. But it felt weird to see these places with a strange man and know that he was now my husband. Merril made a big point of buying some cheap Chinese fans for his daughters and wives. We drove through much of the night to get back home to Colorado City. Merril stayed with me for an hour or two before heading into Barbara’s bedroom. My first impression the next morning was that the house was immaculate and well organized. I’d soon see that this was a sham. The first clue that something might be off was when Ruth came out of the kitchen, where she’d been preparing breakfast, to greet Merril, who’d emerged from Barbara’s room showered and dressed. He kissed her and said, “It’s good to see you, Ruthie.” Ruth nodded stiffly. “It is very good to see you. It was hard not to talk to you all week.” That seemed odd. Merril was always on the phone. I’d assumed when he wasn’t talking to Barbara, he was speaking to his other wives, Ruth and Faunita. Merril responded by asking Ruth to gather up his beautiful daughters and lovely wives. He took my hand and led me back into my bedroom. Kissing me, he asked me to get the fans we’d bought in Chinatown. I dug the fans out of my suitcase and went into the kitchen. Barbara was there, and I noticed her eyes were red and swollen. It looked like she had been crying all night. Merril’s ten teenage daughters—the nusses—surrounded him like a tribe of smiling girls. He had four other daughters between the ages of nine and twelve and they were part of the adoring chorus around him. Everyone seemed excited about the fans from Chinatown. It seemed fake and unnatural to me, but not to them. After the fans were handed out to his wives and daughters, Merril turned and handed me the last one, saying, “This fan is for my lovely wife Carolyn as a memory of our first trip together.” He then announced that he and Barbara were leaving that morning for Page and his construction company. Merril told me to help Ruth in the kitchen and spend time getting to know his family.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  So did her belief that Franklin and Eleanor understood our lives at the bottom, even though they were born at the top. “Always look at what people do,” as my mother said, “not at who they are.” She also was sure the Roosevelts wanted us to become independent, not dependent. Since, like most children, I said things like “It’s not fair” and “You are not the boss of me,” this idea made me love them even more. Not all my mother’s stories had a happy ending. When I saw a mysterious newspaper photo of police dragging dark-skinned people through city streets, she explained there were race riots in nearby Detroit—because the Depression had never ended for people called Negroes. I imagined people making soup from potato peelings and coats from blankets, yet somehow I couldn’t imagine my family being attacked by police. She also sat with me as we listened to a radio drama about a mother and child trying to survive in a place called a concentration camp. I knew my mother didn’t want to frighten me, only to teach me something serious, and this made me feel important and grown-up. In later years, I wondered if she meant such small doses of hard realities to immunize me against the depression that, in her, could be triggered by as little as a sad movie or a hurt animal. Yet I never asked why my happy-go-lucky father had zero interest in politics. Both were kind and loving, just very different. I was eleven when President Roosevelt died. By then, my mother and I were living in the small town in Massachusetts where we had moved after she and my father separated. I can still see the exact look of the cracks in the sidewalk where I was riding my bike when my mother came out to tell me. It was hard to believe that Franklin and Eleanor would no longer be part of our lives. It was harder still when I realized that not everyone was sorry. Some in that town blamed the president for getting us into World War II, and others thought his idea of a United Nations would just let foreigners tell us what to do. A newspaper cartoon said, “Goodbye to President Rosenfeld.” My mother explained that no, Roosevelt wasn’t Jewish; it was just that prejudiced people linked together things they didn’t like. Our only companion in mourning was an elderly man across the street who wore a tie with FDR woven into it, something he showed to us as if to coconspirators. My mother was brave enough to put a black-draped photo of the president in our front window, but not brave enough to explain it to the neighbors. I was beginning to suspect that conflict follows politics as night follows day, yet the mere thought of conflict was enough to depress my already depressed mother.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  So many independence movements were active in the early 1900s that New York tabloids printed fearful articles about the “Yellow Peril” of Asia joining the “Black Peril” of Africa to encircle the globe. The young Ho Chi Minh of those days is described in Jean Lacouture’s classic biography as slender and beardless, wearing a dark suit, a high-collared shirt, and “a small hat perched on top of his head, looking delicate and unsure of himself, a bit lost, a bit battered, like Chaplin at his most affecting.” When I walk past old New York buildings he might have seen, I try to imagine him looking at them, too. Due to the last-minute chaos and printing problems of the first issue of New York, my article is cut by two-thirds. It becomes so concentrated that readers will have to pour water on it.6 Still, I hope the Prophet of the Diner sees it. Now as I write this almost four decades later, Ho Chi Minh, who owned nothing in his life but a typewriter, remains the only leader ever to defeat the United States in a war. We dropped more bombs on Vietnam than on all of Europe during World War II. About sixty thousand U.S. troops died; twice as many Vietnamese soldiers died; and nearly two million civilians in North and South Vietnam lost their lives. Both here and in a now-independent, unified, and prosperous Vietnam, where tourists travel, there are still broken families, traumatized veterans, chemicals in the soil—and much more. In South Korea when I visited in this new millennium, newspaper headlines were protesting Agent Orange, stored underground by the United States on its way to deforesting North Vietnam. Now it was leaking and poisoning the water table. According to the wisdom of Indian Country on my own continent, it takes four generations to heal one act of violence. What if Americans had heard the Prophet in the Diner? VI.In 1978 Father Harvey Egan, pastor of St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Minneapolis, invites me to join him on a Sunday morning and give the homily or sermon to his congregation. This isn’t as surrealistic as it sounds. He has invited other laypeople, from union organizers to peace activists, and at least one woman, Maggie Kuhn, founder of the Gray Panthers. He also welcomes gays and lesbians into his congregation, supports peace movements from here to Latin America, and generally behaves in a way that he and many other Catholics believe Jesus had in mind. Though it’s just a coincidence that his church bears the name of a woman who was burned at the stake for being a heretic who wore men’s clothes (not for being a witch, as Hollywood told us), I think Father Egan enjoys inviting someone who’s been regarded as a jeans-wearing heretic, too. He himself prays to God the Mother to make up for centuries of Catholic priests and popes who pray only to God the Father.