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 I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  Just then the doorbell rang, and there was the hospice doctor. This was the first time I had met him. I invited him in and steadied myself and my COVID mask for the conversation about Dad’s status. The pandemic was good for one thing: those damn masks helped me hide my quivering lips whenever I was attempting to choke back tears. (Having become more emotionally brave, I’d retired the anchovies and dead mice by then.) “We’re going to take good care of you, Ken,” the doctor said. “And we’re going to make sure that you’re comfortable, but at this point you know we can’t fix the disease, right?” “Yes, I do, Doctor,” Dad replied, as I could feel the tears welling. “Now is a good time to tie up any loose ends, too. Have you sorted out your will yet?” “Yes, I’m all set there.” “Have you chosen if you want to be buried or cremated?” “Yes. I’ve decided to be cremated.” “Are you religious?” “I follow my own path with that.” “Well, if you want to see the chaplain, just let us know and we’ll send him.” You got this, Kris. You got this. Hold fast. Damn, this was rough. “What about porn?” My sorrow instantly shut down. Dad looked stunned, so the doctor continued, “While you can still get around with your walker, you might want to get rid of it if you have any. This way no one else will have to deal with it after you’re gone.” Dad burst into laughter. “That won’t be a problem, Doctor.” From then on, “Dr. Porn,” as we took to calling him, was Dad’s favorite, straight-shooting visitor. At first, hospice scared me because I was a newbie and had no clue what to expect. For instance, I didn’t know that hospice was a service, not a place (though there are hospice facilities). Multiple times per week, a team of compassionate nurses and other professionals skilled at end-of-life care came to check on Dad. They monitored his vitals and adjusted his medications. They groomed and bathed him, allowing my mom more time to just be his wife. They ordered medical supplies and equipment like a hospital bed, wheelchair, and walker. They even offered grief counseling for us all and continued to provide it for over a year past his death. During the final hours, they were with us 24-7, teaching us what was happening and how to respond to it. When we freaked out because Dad’s stomach was filling up with fluid, they gently explained that this was normal. His liver was starting to shut down, which was why his legs were also so swollen. Luckily, they were able to drain his abdomen every other day, providing him relief.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  This is to be expected, and so is the lengthy amount of time it takes to feel like a human being who wants to get out of pajamas as a complete wardrobe and wash her hair again. That’s because grief isn’t linear. It will work us over in whatever way it wants, and on its own damn schedule. We can’t just snap our fingers and be done with the devastation. We also can’t amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole. Believe me, I’ve tried. For most of my life, I’ve done everything in my power to run from the big, scary feelings explored in this book—the socially unacceptable emotions that we’re not “supposed” to feel, like rage, powerlessness, and utter despair. But a few years ago, when my father was dying, my world was falling apart, and I was on the verge of reaching my 20-year milestone of living with my own shit pickle—a stage IV cancer diagnosis (yup, it’s not gone, neat, or tidy)—I suddenly lost the energy to run. So I decided to try something different: I stopped and faced my feelings. Eager to find a framework that resonated, I began researching how grief and other difficult emotions affect our brains, bodies, and lives—even when we’re unaware of it. Could understanding these big kahunas help me understand myself and others better? Could accepting grief as a part of me that needed to be cared for—just like my skin or heart or the dozens of tumors that I’ve learned to coexist with—help me feel even the slightest bit whole again? I didn’t know, but I needed to try. So, I slowly and gently started applying the practices, insights, and therapies I was discovering to my own pain, and over time, I eventually began to feel better—not cured, but better. Which is exactly what can happen for you. Let’s be honest: feelings are slippery little suckers. When we deny them, they get pissed off and come out in other, more destructive ways. Uncared for pain can morph into anger, violence, addiction, anxiety, hypervigilance, hyperdrive, guilt, procrastination, hopelessness, and, of course, the consuming of copious amounts of wine. It shrinks our worlds and makes us feel stuck—at home, at work, in our bodies, in our relationships, and in our hearts. Burying pain can also make us sick or, at the very least, constipated. But here’s what can happen when we’re brave enough to take care of our hearts: our messy emotions can teach us how to be free—not free from pain but free from the fear of pain and the barrier it creates to fully living.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  “Me, too, Dad,” I said reflexively. When I thought about it, though, I wasn’t sure if it was true. In order to really be able to talk about “anything,” I’d have to learn how to talk about dying. Why was this so hard? I bought books on Buddhism, listened to the meditations, took the classes, and hired the professionals. But nothing prepared me for this. We learn so many important skills for navigating life. Essential hygiene practices: check. Don’t take rides from strangers: check. How to use jumper cables: check (or just call AAA). Supporting someone we love through their last breath: crickets. Even with all the preparation in the world—even when we think we know what we’re doing—practicing it is a whole other skill. Dad had opened a big door, one he needed to explore, but I wasn’t capable of accompanying him through it yet, so I hid behind anal prolapses as an escape from my own discomfort. The next night, we celebrated his birthday at a beautiful restaurant with a gorgeous view of the water. The air was warm, salty, and slightly breezy—the temperature just right. The ocean shimmered like a Monet painting sparkling with magic-hour light. Even our table was the best in the house (I made sure of it, as I didn’t want to leave anything to chance). Dad ordered a great bottle of wine, as he always did. Brian, my normally stoic husband, was tasked with kicking off the birthday toast. One sentence in, his lips began quivering, unleashing a chain reaction of feels that rippled throughout the table. Mom’s eyes welled up. I retreated to my mental safe house—What would it be like to be the ocean? I wondered, as I willed my tears away with thoughts. Something that endures and remains no matter how life changes. But I wasn’t the ocean; I was a hurting human, surrounded by other hurting humans who didn’t know how to express their big feelings, let alone realize that it might be appropriate. Just then Dad swooped in to save us, allowing us to breathe again. “Thank you for coming here to celebrate this special day with me,” he said, gazing at the ocean I was trying to become. “You know, if I could do it all again, I’d give myself more like this. Summer has always been my busy season. And even though I could have, I rarely took a day off to experience something like this. So figure out what your ‘more like this’ looks like and make it happen sooner; don’t save it for your golden years.” Before I had a chance to let his words sink in, words that would become my compass in this next stage of life, he lobbed the final bomb that demolished my brittle defenses. “I hope you’ll all come back here on my birthday from time to time. This is a good spot to remember me. I love you all.”

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘by apologizing for things that were no fault of yours.’ ‘No,’ said Kiki. She meant to continue, but, once again, everything fell away. She just knew she could no longer crouch. She took her feet out from under her and sat down on the wood. ‘Yes, you sit down and we can talk properly. Whatever problems our husbands may have, it’s no quarrel of ours.’ Nothing followed. Kiki felt and saw herself in this unlikely position, sitting on the floor beneath a woman she did not know. She looked out over the garden and sighed stupidly, as if the charm of the scene had only this moment struck her. ‘Now, what do you think,’ Mrs Kipps said slowly, ‘of my house?’ This question, implicit in Kiki’s social dealings with the women of Wellington, was another she had never been asked outright before. ‘Well, I think it’s absolutely lovely.’ This answer seemed to surprise the occupant. She moved forward, lifting her chin from where it rested on her chest. ‘ Really . I cannot say that I like it so much. It’s so new . There’s nothing in this house except money, jangling. My house in London, Mrs Belsey – ’ ‘Kiki, please.’ ‘ Carlene ,’ she replied, pressing a long hand to her own, exposed  On Beauty throat. ‘It’s so full of humanity – I could hear petticoats in the hallway. I miss it so much, already. American houses . . .’ she said, peering over her right shoulder and down the street. ‘They always seem to believe that nobody ever loses anything, has ever lost anything. I find that very sad. Do you know what I mean?’ Kiki instinctively bristled – after a lifetime of bad-mouthing her own country, these past few years she had grown into a new sensitivity. She had to leave the room when Howard’s English friends settled into their armchairs after dinner and began the assault. ‘American houses? How do you mean? You mean, you’d rather a house with, like, a history?’ ‘Oh . . . well, it can be put this way, yes.’ Kiki was further wounded by the sense she had said something to disappoint, or, worse, something so dull it was not worth replying to. ‘But you know, actually this house does have a kind of history, Mrs – Carlene – it’s not a very pretty one, though.’ ‘Mmm.’ Now this was simply impolite. Mrs Kipps had closed her eyes. The woman was rude. Wasn’t she? Maybe it was a cultural difference. Kiki pressed on.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  You used the analyst as a substitute for everything. Whenever any kind of closeness threatened, you sent me to a goddamned analyst.” “Where the hell would you be now without the analyst? You’d still be rewriting one poem over and over. You’d still be unable to send work anywhere. You’d still be terrified of everything. When I met you, you were running around like a lunatic, never working steadily at anything, full of a million plans that never got finished. I gave you a place to work, encouraged you when you hated yourself, believed in you when you didn’t believe in yourself, paid for your goddamned analyst so you could grow and develop as a human being instead of floundering around with all the other members of your crazy family. Go blame me for all your problems. I was the only one who ever gave you support and encouragement and this is all you can do in return—go running after some asshole Englishman and whining to me about not knowing what you want. Go to hell! Follow him wherever you want, I’m going back to New York.” “But I want you ,” I said, crying. I wanted to want him. I wanted it more than anything. I thought of all the times we’d spent together, the miserable times we’d come through together, the times when we’d been able to comfort each other and encourage each other, the way he’d stood behind my work and steadied me when I looked as if I was ready to hurl myself off some cliff. The way I’d endured the army with him. The years put in. I thought of all we knew about each other, the way we’d worked to stay together, the stubborn determination that had held us together when all else failed. Even the misery we’d shared seemed a greater bond than anything I had with Adrian. Adrian was a dream. Bennett was my reality. Was he grim? Well then, reality was grim. If I lost him, I wouldn’t be able to remember my own name. We put our arms around each other and began to make love, crying. “I wanted to give you a baby there,” he said, thrusting deeper and deeper into me. The next afternoon I was back with Adrian, lying on a blanket in the Vienna woods, the sun coming down through the trees. “Do you really like Bennett or do you just enumerate his virtues?” Adrian asked. I picked a long green weed and chewed it. “Why do you ask such incisive questions?” “I’m not incisive at all. You’re just transparent.” “Great,” I said. “I mean it. Don’t you think fun figures at all in life? Or is it all this sickly stuff about ‘my analysis—his analysis,’ ‘love-me-love-my-disease.’ You and Bennett do seem to whine an awful lot. And apologize an awful lot.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best—a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system—a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love? In the time I had to kill there in the dark of Reva’s childhood bedroom, I decided I would test myself to see what was left of my emotions, what kind of shape I was in after so much sleep. My hope was that I’d healed enough over half a year’s hibernation, I’d become immune to painful memories. So I thought back to my father’s death again. I had been very emotional when it happened. I figured any tears I still had left to cry might be about him. “Your father wants to spend his last days in the house,” my mother had said on the phone. “Don’t ask me why.” He had been dying in the hospital for weeks already, but now he wanted to die at home. I left school and took the train up to see him the very next day, not because I thought it would mean so much to him to have me there, but to prove to my mother that I was a better person than she was: I was willing to be inconvenienced by someone else’s suffering. And I didn’t expect that my father’s suffering would bother me very much. I barely knew him. His illness had been secretive, as though it were part of his work, something that ought not concern me, and nothing I’d ever understand. I missed a week of classes sitting at home, watching him wither. A huge bed had been installed in the den, along with various pieces of medical equipment that I tried to ignore. One of two nurses was always there, feeling my father’s pulse, swabbing his mouth with a soggy little sponge on a stick, pumping him with painkillers. My mother stayed mostly in her bedroom, alone, coming out every now and then to fill a glass with ice. She’d tiptoe into the den to whisper something to the nurse, hardly saying a word to me, barely looking at my father. I sat on the armchair by his bed pretending to read a course packet on Picasso. I didn’t want to embarrass my father by staring, but it was hard not to. His hands had grown bony and huge. His eyes had sunk into his skull and darkened. His skin had thinned.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  Harold’s face creased into the picture of distressed aesthetic sensitivity, as if Howard had just put his foot through The Mona Lisa . The Mona Lisa . A painting Harold loves. When Howard was having his first pieces of criticism printed in the sorts of papers Harold never buys, a customer of Harold’s had shown the butcher a cutting of his son writing enthusiastically about Piero Manzoni’s Merda d’Artista . Harold closed the shop and went down the road with a handful of twopence to use the phone. ‘Shit in a jar? Why can’t you write about somefing lovely, like The Mona Lisa ? Your mum would be so proud of that. Shit in a jar? ’ ‘There’s no need for that, Howard,’ said Harold soothingly now. ‘It’s just my way of talking – I ain’t seen you in so long, just happy to see you, aren’t I, just trying to find something to say, you know . . .’  On Beauty Howard, with what he considered to be superhuman effort, said nothing further. Together they watched Countdown . Harold passed his son a little white pad on which to do his calculations. Howard scored well through the word round, doing better than both the contestants of the show. Meanwhile Harold struggled. His highest was a five-letter word. But in the numbers round, the power changed hands. There are always a few things our parents know about us that nobody else does. Harold Belsey was the only person who knew that when it came to the manipulation of numbers, Dr Howard Belsey, M.A., Ph.D., was a mere child. Even the most basic of multiplications required a calculator. He had been able to hide this for more than twenty years in seven different universities. But in Harold’s living room the truth would out. ‘One hundred and fifty-six,’ announced Harold, which was the target amount. ‘What you got, son?’ ‘A hundred and . . . No, I’m nowhere. Nothing.’ ‘Got you, Professor!’ ‘You did.’ ‘Yeah, well . . .’ agreed Harold, nodding as the contestant on the television explained her rather convoluted ‘workings out’. ‘ ’Course you can do it that way, love, but mine’s a damn sight prettier.’ Howard laid down his pen and pressed his hands to his temples. ‘You all right, Howard? You’ve had a face like a smacked arse since you got in here. Everything all right at home?’ Howard looked up at his father and decided to do something he never did. Tell him the truth. He expected nothing from this course of action. He was talking to the wallpaper as much as to this man. ‘No, it’s not all right.’ ‘No? What’s the matter? Oh, God, no one’s dead, are they, son? I couldn’t stand it if anyone’s dead!’ ‘ No one’s dead,’ said Howard. ‘Bloody out with it, then – you’ll give me a heart attack.’

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  He hates her for stumbling. Now we have told you everything. Except the story. We look down from the very top of a spiral staircase in a Left Bank hotel as they climb to the fifth floor. She follows him around and around. We watch the tops of their heads bobbing upward. Then we see their faces. Her expression petulant and sad. His jaw set in a stubborn way. He keeps clearing his throat nervously. They come to the fifth floor and find a room. He opens the door without any struggle. The room is a familiar seedy hotel room in Paris. Everything about it is musty. The chintz bedspread is faded. The carpeting is ravelling in the corners. Behind a pasteboard partition are the sink and bidet. The windows probably look out on rooftops, but they are heavily draped with brown velour. It has begun to rain again and the rain can be heard tapping its faint Morse code on the terrace outside the windows. She is remarking to herself how all the twenty-franc hotels in Paris have the same imaginary decorator. She cannot say this to him. He will think her spoiled. But she tells herself. She hates the narrow double bed which sags in the middle. She hates the bolster instead of a pillow. She hates the dust which flies into her nose when she lifts the bedspread. She hates Paris. He is taking off his clothes, shivering. You will remark how beautiful his body is, how utterly hairless, how straight his back is, how his calves are lean with long brown muscles, how his fingers are slim. But his body is not for her. He puts on his pajamas reproachfully. She stands in her stocking feet. “Why do you always have to do this to me? You make me feel so lonely.” “That comes from you.” “What do you mean it comes from me? Tonight I wanted to be happy. It’s Christmas Eve. Why do you turn on me? What did I do?” Silence. “What did I do?” He looks at her as if her not knowing were another injury. “Look, let’s just go to sleep now. Let’s just forget it.” “Forget what?” He says nothing. “Forget the fact that you turned on me? Forget the fact that you’re punishing me for nothing? Forget the fact that I’m lonely and cold, that it’s Christmas Eve and again you’ve ruined it for me? Is that what you want me to forget?” “I won’t discuss it.” “Discuss what? What won’t you discuss?” “Shut up! I won’t have you screaming in the hotel.” “I don’t give a fuck what you won’t have me do. I’d like to be treated civilly. I’d like you to at least do me the courtesy of telling me why you’re in such a funk.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  C A N T O V ILike a successful gamester who must cleave his way by payments through the host whose quickened sense of friendship overflows in obstructive congratulations and reminiscences, so Dante must pay his way by promises through the crowd of souls to whom he has power of granting such precious boons. Of some of these souls he tells us news, not without side thrusts of warning or reproach at the living When again free to converse with his guide, Dante asks him to explain the seeming contradiction between the anxiety of these souls for the prayers of others, and his (Virgil’s) declaration that the divine Fates cannot be bent by prayer. Virgil explains, firstly, that no bending of the divine will is involved in the granting of prayer; secondly, that his rebuke was uttered to souls not in grace; and, finally, that the complete solution of such questions is not for him (Virgil), but for Beatrice; at the mention of whose name Dante wishes to make greater speed in ascending the mountain, whereto Virgil answers that the journey is of more days than one. The Poets, now in the shade of the mountain (since they are on its eastern slope and the sun is already west of north) so that Dante no longer casts a shadow, and is therefore not instantly to be recognized as a living man, perceive the soul of Sordello gazing upon them like a couching lion; but on hearing that Virgil is a Mantuan, he breaks through all reserve and embraces him as his fellow-countryman. The love of these two fellow-citizens calls back to Dante’s heart the miserable dissensions that rend the cities of Italy, and the callousness with which the Emperors leave them to their fate. But from the reproaches thus launched against the Italians, Florence is sarcastically excepted, till the sarcasm breaks down in a wail of reproachful pity. [image file=image_rsrcA5N.jpg] WHEN THE GAME of dice breaks up, he who loses stays sorrowing, repeating the throws, and sadly learns: with the other all the folk go away: one goes in front, another plucks him from behind, and another at his side recalls him to his mind. He halts not and attends to this one and to that: those to whom he stretches forth his hand press no more; and so he saves him from the crowd. Such was I in that dense throng, turning my face to them, now here, now there, and by promising freed me from them. There was the Aretine1 who by the savage arms of Ghin di Tacco met his death; and the other2 who was drowned as he ran in chase. There was praying with outstretched hands Federigo Novello, and he of Pisa who made the good Marzucco3 show fortitude. I saw Count Orso,4 and the soul severed from its body through hatred and envy, so it said, and not for any sin committed—

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  There was no big drama. Things were quiet. I imagined what I’d say to my mother if she suddenly reappeared now in Reva’s basement. I imagined her disgust at the cheapness of things, the mustiness of the air. I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to ask her. I had no burning urge to proclaim any fury or sadness. “Hello,” was as far as I got in our hypothetical dialogue. I got up out of bed and fished through one of the cardboard boxes on Reva’s bureau. In her senior yearbook, I found only one photo of her, the standard portrait. Hers stood out in the rows of boring faces. She had big frizzy hair, chubby cheeks, overplucked eyebrows that zoomed across her forehead like crooked arrows, dark lipstick, thick black eyeliner. Her gaze was slightly off center, vague, unhappy, possessed. She looked like she’d been much more interesting before she left for college—a Goth, a freak, a punk, a reject, a delinquent, an outcast, a fuckup. As long as I’d known her, she’d been a follower, a plebeian, straitlaced and conformist. But it seemed as though she’d had a rich, secretive interior life in high school, with desires beyond the usual drinking and foosball soirees suburban Long Island had to offer. So, I gathered, Reva moved to Manhattan to go to college and decided she’d try to fit in—get skinny, be pretty, talk like all the other skinny, pretty girls. It made sense that she’d want me as her best friend. Maybe her best friend in high school had been one of the weirdos, like her. Maybe she’d had some kind of disability—a gimp arm, Tourette’s, Coke-bottle glasses, alopecia. I imagined the two of them together in that black basement bedroom listening to music: Joy Division. Siouxsie and the Banshees. It made me a little jealous to think of Reva being depressed and dependent on anyone but me. After my mother’s funeral, I went back to school. My sorority sisters didn’t ask if I was okay, if I wanted to talk. They all avoided me. Only a few left notes under my door. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this!” Of course, I was grateful to be spared the humiliation of a patronizing confrontation by a dozen young women who would probably have just shamed me for not “being more open.” They weren’t my friends. Reva and I were in French class together that year. We were conversation partners.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘Of course she would,’ said Kiki. Tears pricked her eyes. She squeezed Jerome’s hand and he, surprised by this emotion, returned the pressure. Without any announcement, or at least not one the Belseys heard, the crowd began to file into the church. The interior was as simple as the exterior suggested. Wood beams ran between stone walls, and the rood screen was of a dark oak, plainly carved. The stained glass was pretty, colourful, but rather basic, and there was only one painting, high on the back wall: unlit, dusty and too murky to make anything of at all. Yes, when you looked up and around you – as one instinctively does in a church – everything was much as you might have imagined. But then your eyes came to earth again, and at this point all those who had entered this church for the first time suppressed a shudder. Even Howard – who liked to think himself ruthlessly unsentimental when it came to matters of architectural modernization – could find nothing to praise. The stone floor had been completely covered by a thin, orange-and-grey capsule carpet; many large squares of fuzzy industrial felt slotted together. The pattern therein was of smaller orange boxes, each with its own sad grey outline. This orange had grown brownish under the influence of many feet. And then there were the pews, or rather their absence. Every single one had been ripped out and in their place rows of conference chairs – in this same airport-lounge orange – were placed in a timid half-circle meant to foster (so Howard envisioned) the friendly, informal atmosphere in which tea mornings and community meetings are conducted. The final effect was one of unsurpassable ugliness. It was not hard to reconstruct the chain of logic behind the decision: financial distress, the money to be had from selling nineteenth-century pews, the authoritarian severity of horizontal aisles, the inclusiveness of semicircles. But no – it was still a crime. It was too ugly. Kiki sat down with her family on the uncomfortable little plastic chairs. No doubt Monty wanted to prove he was a man of the people, as powerful men so often like to do – and at his wife’s expense. Didn’t Carlene deserve better than a small ruined church on a noisy main road?  On Beauty

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Although Nabokov called attention to the elements of parody in his work, he repeatedly denied the relevance of satire. One can understand why he said, “I have neither the intent nor the temperament of a moral or social satirist” (Playboy interview), for he eschewed the overtly moral stance of the satirist who offers “to mend the world.” Humbert’s “satires” are too often effected with an almost loving care. Lolita is indeed an “ideal consumer,” but she herself is consumed, pitifully, and there is, as Nabokov said, “a queer, tender charm about that mythical nymphet.” Moreover, since Humbert’s desperate tourism is undertaken in order to distract and amuse Lolita and to outdistance his enemies, real and imagined, the “invented” American landscape also serves a quite functional thematic purpose in helping to dramatize Humbert’s total and terrible isolation. Humbert and Lolita, each is captive of the other, imprisoned together in a succession of bedrooms and cars, but so distant from one another that they can share nothing of what they see—making Humbert seem as alone during the first trip West as he will be on the second, when she has left him and the car is an empty cell.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Dark and hollow-eyed was each one, pallid of face, and so wasted away that the skin took form from the bones. I do not believe that Erysichthon became thus withered to the very skin by hunger, when greatest fear he had thereof.2 I said in thought within me: “Behold the people that lost Jerusalem when Mary fed on her child.”3 Their eye-sockets seemed gemless rings: he who reads “omo” in the face of man would clearly have recognized there the “m.”4 Who, not knowing the reason, would believe that the scent of fruit and that of water had thus wrought, by begetting desire? Already I was in astonishment at what thus famishes them, because of the reason not yet manifest, of their leanness, and of their sad scurf, when lo, from the hollow of the head a shade5 turned its eyes to me and fixedly did gaze; then cried aloud: “What grace is this to me?” Never had I recognized him by the face, but in his voice, was revealed to me, that which was blotted out in his countenance. This spark rekindled within me all my knowledge of the changed features, and I recognized the face of Forese. “Ah stare not,” he prayed, “at the dry leprosy which discolours my skin, nor at any default of flesh that I may have, but tell me sooth of thyself, and who those two spirits are that there make thy escort; abide thou not without speaking to me.” “Thy face,” answered I him, “which in death I wept for once, gives me now not less grief, even unto tears, seeing it so disfigured. Therefore tell me, in God’s name, what strips you so; make me not talk while I am marvelling, for ill can he speak who is full of other desire.” And he to me: “From the eternal counsel virtue descends into the water, and into the tree left behind, whereby I thus do waste away. All this people, who weeping sing, sanctify themselves again in hunger and thirst, for having followed appetite to excess. The scent which issues from the fruit, and from the spray that is diffused over the green, kindles within us a desire to eat and to drink. And not once only, while circling this road, is our pain renewed, I say pain and ought to say solace; for that desire leads us to the tree, which led glad Christ to say: ‘Eli’ when he made us free with his blood.”6 And I to him: “Forese, from that day on which thou didst change the world for a better life, not five years have revolved till now. If power to sin more came to an end in thee ere the hour supervened of the holy sorrow which weds us anew to God, how art thou come up here? I thought to find thee yet down below, where time for time is repaid.”7

• From On Beauty (2005)

  ‘And so this girl comes to me – into my house, this morning, without warning – to ask me to recommend to the board that she be kept in a class that she is illegally attending. She thinks because she is in my church, because she has helped with our charity work,  On Beauty that I will bend the rules for her. Because I am, as they say here, her ‘‘brother’’? I told her I was unwilling to do that. And we see the result. A tantrum!’ ‘Ah . . .’ said Kiki, and folded her arms. ‘Now, I know about this. If I’m not mistaken, my daughter’s fighting in the opposite corner.’ Monty smiled. ‘So she is. She gave an extremely impressive speech. I fear she might give me a run for my money.’ ‘Oh, honey,’ said Kiki, shaking her head the way people do in church, ‘I know she will.’ Monty nodded graciously. ‘But what about your pie?’ he asked, affecting a heartbroken face. ‘I suppose this means the houses of Kipps and Belsey are once again at war.’ ‘No . . . I don’t see why that should be so. All’s fair in love and . . . and academia.’ Monty smiled again. He checked his watch and rubbed a hand over his belly. ‘But unfortunately it is time , not ideology, that comes in the way of your pie and me. I must get to college. I wish we could spend the morning eating it. It was truly thoughtful of you to bring it.’ ‘Oh, another time. But are you walking into town?’ ‘Yes, I always walk. Are you going that way?’ Kiki nodded. ‘In which case, let us perambulate together,’ he said rolling his r magnificently. He put both hands on his knees and stood up, and, as he did, Kiki noticed the blank wall behind him. ‘Oh!’ Monty looked up at her inquiringly. ‘No, it’s just – the painting – wasn’t there a painting there? Of a woman?’ Monty turned to look at the blank space. ‘As a matter of fact there was – how did you know that?’ ‘Oh, well – I spent some time with Carlene in here and she spoke about that painting. She told me how much she loved it. The woman was a goddess of some kind, wasn’t she? Like a symbol. She was so beautiful.’ ‘Well,’ said Monty, turning back to face Kiki, ‘I can assure you  on beauty and being wrong she is still beautiful – she has simply moved location. I decided to hang her in the Black Studies Department, in my office. It’s . . . well, she’s good company,’ he said sadly. He held his forehead for a moment in his hand. Then he crossed the room and opened the door to let Kiki out.

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Except for the fact that we had no clocks, our apartment was not much different from the typical young officer’s quarters in the compound. The furniture was of the hideous German overstuffed variety made right after the war and given to the Americans as part of the reparation. No doubt it was made even uglier than usual in revenge. It was sickly beige to begin with, but now, after twenty years of hard labor, it had mellowed, stained, and splotched to a mottled urine-yellow which bore the marks of many household pets and children and early-morning beer-barfs. We had done our best to cover these hippopotamuslike couches and elephantine chairs with bright shawls and pillows and tapestries. We had covered the walls with posters and the windowsills with plants. We had filled the shelves with most of our own books (shipped, at great expense, by the government). But still, the place was depressing. Heidelberg itself was dismal. A beautiful town in which it rains ten months of the year. The sun struggles to appear for days, comes out for an hour or so, and then retreats again. And we were living in a prison of sorts. A spiritual and intellectual ghetto which we literally could not leave without being jailed. Bennett was lost in the army and in his own depression. He had no help to offer me. I had none to offer him. I used to walk the streets of the old town alone in the rain. I spent hours wandering through department stores fingering merchandise I knew I’d never buy, dreaming in crowds, overhearing long conversations which at first I understood only snatches of, listening to the demonstration hucksters barking out the virtues of stretch wigs, false fingernails, carving sets, meat grinders, chopping blocks…. “Meine Damen und Heren…” they begin, and every long sentence is interlarded with that phrase. It rings in your ears after a while. All the potato-shaped ladies would stand around me, forming a gray wall of loden cloth. Germany is patrolled by armies of gray-coated ladies in Tyrolean hats and sensible shoes and jowls crimson with exploded capillaries. Up close, their cheeks seem laced with tiny fireworks caught, as in a photograph, at the moment of bursting. These sturdy widows are everywhere: carrying string bags with bananas sticking out, riding broad-assed on narrow bicycle seats, taking the rain-streaked trains from München to Hamburg, from Nürnberg to Freiburg. A world of widows. The final solution promised by the Nazi dream: a Jewless world without men.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  With one hand absently holding on to the blinds’ strings, Howard looked out of the window on to Wellington’s yard. Here was the white church and the grey library, antagonizing each other on opposite sides of the square. A pot-pourri of orange, red, yellow and purple leaves carpeted the ground. It was still warm enough, but only just, for kids to sit on the steps of the Greenman, reclining on their own knapsacks, wasting time. Howard scanned the scene for Warren or Claire. The news was that they were still together. This from Erskine, who got it from his wife Caroline, who was on the board of trustees at the Wellington Institute of Molecular Research where Warren spent his days. It was Kiki who had told Warren; the explosion had happened – but no one had died. It was just walking wounded as far as the eye could see. No packed bags, no final door slams, no relocation to different colleges, different towns. They were all going to stay put and suffer. It would be played out very slowly over years. The thought was debilitating. Everybody knew about it. Howard expected that the shorthand, water-cooler version, currently circulating the college would be ‘Warren’s forgiven her’ said with pity mixed with a little contempt – as if that covered it, the feeling. People said ‘She’s forgiven him’ about Kiki, and only now was Howard learning of the levels of purgatory forgiveness involves. People don’t know what they’re talking about. At the water cooler Howard was just another middle-aged professor suffering the expected mid-life crisis. And then there was the other reality, the one he had to live. Last night, very late,  On Beauty he had peeled himself off the crushing, too short divan in his study and gone into the bedroom. He lay down in his clothes, above the quilt, next to Kiki, a woman he had loved and lived with his entire adult life. On her bedside table he could not avoid seeing the packet of anti-depressants, sitting alongside a few coins, some earplugs, a teaspoon, all crushed in a small wooden Indian box with elephants carved upon its sides. He waited almost twenty minutes, never sure if she was awake or not. Then he put his hand, above the quilt, very softly, somewhere on her thigh. She began to cry. ‘Ah got a good feelin’ about this semester,’ said Smith, and whistled and released his sprightly Southern chuckle. ‘Expectin’ standing room only.’ On to the blackboard Smith was poster-gumming a reproduction of Rembrandt’s Dr Nicolaes Tulp Demonstrating the Anatomy of the

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  But when he said: “Leave him, and press on, for here ’tis well that with sail and with oars, each one urge his bark along with all his might”; erect, even as is required for walking I made me again with my body, albeit my thoughts remained bowed down and shrunken. I had moved me, and willingly was following my master’s steps, and both of us already were showing how light of foot we were, when he said to me: “Turn thine eyes downward: good will it be, for solace of thy way, to see the bed of the soles of thy feet.” As in order that there be memory of them, the tombs on the ground over the buried bear figured what they were before; wherefore there, many a time men weep for them, because of the prick of remembrance which only to the pitiful gives spur; so saw I sculptured there, but of better similitude according to the craftsmanship, all that which for road projects from the mount. I saw him who was created nobler far than other creature, on one side descending like lightning from heaven.1 I saw Briareus,2 transfixed by the celestial bolt, on the other side, lying on the earth heavy with the death chill. I saw Thymbræus, I saw Pallas and Mars, armed yet, around their father, gazing on the scattered limbs of the giants.3 I saw Nimrod4 at the foot of his great labour, as though bewildered, and looking at the people who were proud with him in Shinar. O Niobe,5 with what sorrowing eyes I saw thee graven upon the road between seven and seven thy children slain! O Saul,6 how upon thine own sword there didst thou appear dead on Gilboa, which thereafter felt nor rain nor dew! O mad Arachne,7 so saw I thee already half spider, sad upon the shreds of the work which to thy hurt was wrought by thee! O Rehoboam, now thine image there seems no more to threaten; but full of terror a chariot beareth it away ere chase be given!8 It showed—the hard pavement—again how Alcmæon made the luckless ornament seem costly to his mother.9 It showed how his sons flung themselves upon Sennacherib within the temple, and how, him slain, there they left him.10 It showed the destruction and the cruel slaughter which Tomyris wrought when she said to Cyrus: “For blood thou didst thirst and with blood I fill thee!”11 It showed how in a rout the Assyrians fled, after Holofernes was slain,12 and also the relics of the assassination. I saw Troy in ashes and in ruins: O Ilion, thee how base and vile it showed—the sculpture which there is discerned!13 What master were he of brush or of graver, who drew the shades and the lineaments, which there would make every subtle wit stare?

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  My brain? It made no sense. Irritation was what I knew best—a heaviness on my chest, a vibration in my neck like my head was revving up before it would rocket off my body. But that seemed directly tied to my nervous system—a physiological response. Was sadness the same kind of thing? Was joy? Was longing? Was love? In the time I had to kill there in the dark of Reva’s childhood bedroom, I decided I would test myself to see what was left of my emotions, what kind of shape I was in after so much sleep. My hope was that I’d healed enough over half a year’s hibernation, I’d become immune to painful memories. So I thought back to my father’s death again. I had been very emotional when it happened. I figured any tears I still had left to cry might be about him. “Your father wants to spend his last days in the house,” my mother had said on the phone. “Don’t ask me why.” He had been dying in the hospital for weeks already, but now he wanted to die at home. I left school and took the train up to see him the very next day, not because I thought it would mean so much to him to have me there, but to prove to my mother that I was a better person than she was: I was willing to be inconvenienced by someone else’s suffering. And I didn’t expect that my father’s suffering would bother me very much. I barely knew him. His illness had been secretive, as though it were part of his work, something that ought not concern me, and nothing I’d ever understand. I missed a week of classes sitting at home, watching him wither. A huge bed had been installed in the den, along with various pieces of medical equipment that I tried to ignore. One of two nurses was always there, feeling my father’s pulse, swabbing his mouth with a soggy little sponge on a stick, pumping him with painkillers. My mother stayed mostly in her bedroom, alone, coming out every now and then to fill a glass with ice. She’d tiptoe into the den to whisper something to the nurse, hardly saying a word to me, barely looking at my father. I sat on the armchair by his bed pretending to read a course packet on Picasso. I didn’t want to embarrass my father by staring, but it was hard not to. His hands had grown bony and huge. His eyes had sunk into his skull and darkened. His skin had thinned.

• From On Beauty (2005)

  he’s completely untutored, but – no, yes, he is. He’s extremely charismatic, very good-looking. Very good-looking. Carl’s a rapper, really – he’s a very good rapper – and he is talented – he’s enthusiastic. He’s great to teach. Erskine, please – is there anything you can do here? Something you can find this kid to do on campus?’ ‘I have it. Let’s give him tenure!’ They both laughed, but Claire’s laugh slid to a whimper. She propped her elbow on the desk and rested her face in her hand. ‘I just don’t want to kick him back out on to the street. I really  on beauty and being wrong don’t. We both know the likelihood is that next month the board is going to vote against discretionaries and then he’ll be out on his ass. But if he had something else to do that . . . I know I probably should never have accepted him into the class in the first place, but now I’ve made this undertaking and I’m feeling like I’ve bitten off more . . .’ Claire’s phone started to ring. She held up her index finger in front of her face and took the call. ‘Can I . . . ?’ mouthed Erskine, standing and holding the printouts up in the air. Claire nodded. Erskine waved goodbye with his umbrella. Erskine’s great talent – aside from his encyclopedic knowledge of African literature – lay in making people feel far more important than they actually were. He had many techniques. You might receive an urgent message from Erskine’s secretary on your voicemail, which arrived simultaneously with an e-mail and a handwritten note in your college box. He might take you aside at a party and share with you an intimate story from his childhood that, as a recently arrived female graduate from UCLA, you could not know had already been intimately shared with every other female student in the department. He was skilled in the diverse arts of false flattery, empty deference and the appearance of respectful attention. It might seem, when Erskine praised you or did you a professional favour, that it was you who were benefiting. And you might indeed benefit. But, in almost every case, Erskine was benefiting more. Putting you forward for the great honour of speaking at the Baltimore conference simply saved Erskine from having to attend the Baltimore conference. Mentioning your name in connection with the editorship of the anthology meant that Erskine himself was free of one more promise he had made to his publisher, which, due to other commitments, he was unable to fulfil. But where is the harm in this? You are happy and Erskine is happy! Thus did Erskine run his academic life at Wellington. Occasionally, however, Erskine came across difficult souls whom he could not make happy. Mere praise did not pacify their tempers or ease their dislike and suspicion of him. In these cases, Erskine  On Beauty

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Reva opened the bathroom door and handed me an old hairbrush with a long wooden handle. There was a spot on the back that was all scratched up. When I held it under the light, I could make out teeth marks. I sniffed it but couldn’t detect the smell of vomit, only Reva’s coconut hand cream. “I’ve never seen you in a suit before,” Reva said stiffly when she came out of the bathroom. The dress she wore was tight with a high center slit. “You look really put together,” she said to me. “Did you get a haircut?” “Duh,” I said, handing her back the brush. We put our coats on and went upstairs. The living room was empty, thank God. I filled my McDonald’s cup with coffee again as Reva stood at the fridge, shoving cold steamed broccoli in her mouth. It was snowing again. “I’m warning you,” Reva said, wiping her hands. “I’m going to cry a lot.” “It would be weird if you didn’t,” I said. “I just look so ugly when I cry. And Ken said he’d be there,” she told me for the second time. “I know we should have waited until after New Year’s. Not like it would have made a difference to my mom. She’s already cremated.” “You told me.” “I’ll try not to cry too hard,” she said. “Tearing up is OK. But my face just gets so puffy.” She stuck her hand in a box of Kleenex and pulled out a stack. “You know, in a way, I’m glad we didn’t have to get her embalmed. That’s just creepy. She was just a sack of bones, anyway. She probably weighed half of what I weigh now. Well, maybe not half exactly. But she was super skinny. Skinnier than Kate Moss, even.” She stuck the tissues in her coat pocket and turned off the lights. We went out the kitchen door into the garage. There was a storage freezer in the corner, shelves of tools and flowerpots and ski boots, a few old bikes, stacks of blue plastic storage bins along one wall. “It’s unlocked,” Reva said, motioning to a small silver Toyota. “This was my mom’s car. I started it last night. Hopefully I can start it again now. She hadn’t been driving it, obviously.” Inside, it smelled like menthol rub. There was a polar bear bobblehead on the dash, an issue of the New Yorker and a bottle of hand cream on the passenger seat. Reva started the car, sighed, clicked the garage door opener clipped to the visor, and started crying. “See? I warned you,” she said, taking out the wad of tissues. “I’m just going to cry while the car heats up. Just a sec,” she said. She cried on, gently shaking under her puffy jacket.