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 History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Merswin’s two chief writings are entitled Das Bannerbüchlein, the Banner-book, and Das Buch von den neun Felsen, the Nine Rocks. The former is an exhortation to flee from the banner of Lucifer and to gather under the blood-red banner of Christ.491 The Nine Rocks, written in the form of a dialogue, 1352, opens with a parable, describing innumerable fishes swimming down from the lakes among the hills through the streams in the valleys into the deep sea. The author then sees them attempting to find their way back to the hills. These processes illustrate the career of human souls departing from God into the world and seeking to return to Him. The author also sees a "fearfully high mountain," on which are nine rocks. The souls that succeed in getting back to the mountain are so few that it seemed as if only one out of every thousand reached it. He then proceeds to set forth the condition of the eminent of the earth, popes and kings, cardinals and princes; and also priests, monks and nuns, Beguines and Beghards, and people of all sorts and classes. He finds the conditions very bad, and is specially severe on women who, by their show of dress and by their manners, are responsible for men going morally astray and falling into sin. Many of these women commit a hundred mortal sins a day. Rulman then returns to the nine rocks, which represent the nine stages of progress towards the source of our being, God. Those who are on the rocks have escaped the devil’s net, and by climbing on up to the last rock, they reach perfection. Those on the fifth rock have gained the point where they have completely given up their own self-will. The sixth rock represents full submission to God. On the ninth the number is so small that there seemed to be only three persons on it. These have no desire whatever except to honor God, fear not hell nor purgatory, nor enemy nor death nor life. The Friends of God, who are bent on something more than their own salvation, are depicted in the valley below, striving to rescue souls from the net in which they have been ensnared. The Brethren of the Free Spirit resist this merciful procedure. The presentation is crude, and Scripture is not directly quoted. The biblical imagery, however, abounds, and, as in the case of the ancient allegory of Hermas, the principles of the Gospel are set forth in a way adapted, no doubt, to reach a certain class of minds, even as in these modern days the methods of the Salvation Army appeal to many for whom the discourses of Bernard or Gerson might have little meaning. 492

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Everyone murmured that it was better she knew now that he was an asshole. But they didn’t say asshole. They said “unable to commit” and “love avoidant” and “terrified of intimacy.” It was sweet the way they wanted her to be okay. They seemed like they were really rooting for her. Strangely, in that moment, they all looked like children to me. I saw them each as they might have been as children: not in body, but an innocence inside. I remembered that each of them had mothers who once loved them. Their mothers loved them and just wanted them to be happy. How strange that every person had a mother. It made me sad that people had mothers who stuck around a very long time. I imagined the mothers who didn’t die would play with their daughters’ hair every day, brush the stray pieces off the forehead, tickle their necks, stroke the crowns of their heads. After my mother died and Annika went back to school, my father offered to play with my hair before bed. It was a kind gesture, but we both knew it was just too weird. He wasn’t the touchy-feely sort. More of a head patter. “Play with my hair,” I would say to my teenage friends, but when they played with my hair it was never enough. I needed more than the friends were able to give. I envied my friends who could have their hair played with for a few minutes and then simply be done with it. They could take it or leave it. They knew that their mothers could come in later to finish the job, without them even having to ask. So they took it all lightly. They did this with their lovers too. I looked at Brianne’s cheeks, straining desperately to be young, and wondered what her face had looked like as a little girl. She found it unfair, terrifying, that time was actually passing. Time wasn’t supposed to pass. Or it was supposed to pass for everyone else but her. I understood this. I was scared too. I wanted to stroke her cheek and tell her that she didn’t have to put anything else in it. That she was still young in some essential way. A wave of pain rose inside me that I had never known could be so palpable. I felt that it was going to kill me, and tried to shove it down. The pushing back against it left me with a choking feeling. Who even knew what was killing me more: the pain itself or the fight against the pain? I was seeing, hearing, and feeling too much. I felt that if I did not leave the room in that moment that I would suffocate on something—the feeling or the resistance to the feeling—and I would die.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  56.The following evening I packed my suitcase. I thought about my little sweaters and dresses floating in the water as I packed up each one. It made me feel sad. I kept thinking the words belonging and my belongings. Dominic was no longer in the pantry. I wasn’t sure who had come and taken him away. It smelled heavily of ammonia, but I swore I could still smell death. Annika had gone back inside the pantry. She was just sitting there on the floor with Dominic’s bowl and a squeaky toy in the shape of a duck. She looked up at me. “This was his favorite toy,” she said, giving it a squeeze. “Did you know that? Did I tell you that?” “Yes. We played with it together a lot,” I lied. “Good.” She smiled. “I wanted him to have the most beautiful life.” “Annika, I am so sorry. I want you to know I’m grateful to you.” “I knew I should have come home. I should have listened to my intuition. But you told me you could handle it. You said that nothing bad was going to happen to him, that he would be fine.” “I know. If there is some way I can make this up to you—” “No, it isn’t your fault,” she said. “It’s my fault.” “You couldn’t have known. Even the vet didn’t know how sick he was exactly.” “I will never forgive myself,” she said. “Never.” “Annika,” I said. There was nothing else left to say. I held out my hand to help her up. She took it, but instead of standing up, she brought me down to the floor to sit with her. With our backs pressed against the wall I held her hand with both of my hands. I softly stroked her skin, so that it was warmed. I felt nervous doing this, as though I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate. Why wouldn’t it be appropriate? We were sisters, after all. It was such a small act, but it felt so intimate. It was the gentleness and surety of the way I touched her hand that made me feel strange, as though I didn’t know I knew how to do this. I wondered who or what inside me was doing it. It was motherly, almost. “Do you want me to play with your hair?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said. I put my knees up so she could lean against them. Then I rubbed the back of her neck and the scalp area behind her ears. “Mmmm, that feels nice,” she said.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  After a period of lying low, we seem to have found our way back to the easy repartee we had established so quickly early on, and of course I am determined to stay in touch with #4, hoping for a repeat opportunity of mind- blowing sex. All that I want to share with Michael right now I share with them instead, expressing concern with how all of her belongings will be transported to her room and how I am terrible at goodbyes even when it’s just a normal “See you later!” I recall the first time Michael and I drove Daisy to sleepaway camp when she was just eight years old. I started crying as we drove up the dirt road to the camp and he sternly reprimanded me, “Get it together, Laura. You can cry all you want after we drop her but for now it’s your job to send her off, not fall apart.” I knew that he was right, and it wasn’t until I gave her a hug and quickly walked away with my head down that I realized Michael was not walking next to me. Glancing behind me, I saw him on his knees in the grass, eye level with Daisy, saying “OK, just one more hug” many times more than once. I walked back and gently took hold of his elbow, saying, “It’s time to leave now, Michael.” I had felt like a confident parent then, doing my part to gracefully separate from my oldest child; I was both moved and annoyed by his inability to do the same. Here I am eleven years later, ready to repeat the scene and launch this child into the world, but now I need to be brave without any support as I am very much alone. Texting #3 and #4 about this monumental event is wholly inadequate – they don’t know her, they hardly even know me. #3 has told me sweetly that he could show up in the parking lot with a school hat on and pretend he’s part of a move-in committee, and #4 has said that he’s going to wrap me in a long hug and keep me there a while the next time he sees me. The morning we are to leave, they both text to wish me luck. It breaks my heart that from Michael I do not hear even a small peep, as if he’s given up on us. CHAPTER 17 Easy Access Mission College Drop-off accomplished, I am gifted a small, precious window of time when the kids go to my parents’ house for the night. I contemplate what to do: settle in with a glass of wine and a book I won’t be able to focus on, or attempt to conjure up that bold vixen who tells strange men that she is available, ready and able. One foot in front of the other, I remind myself, just keep moving forward.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  And Brianne, well, at least she had something to live for besides plastic surgery. Something to tether her to the Earth. Maybe she wasn’t totally lying when she said she had a full life. Or, at least, that her life felt full. Who was I to judge anyone? I certainly didn’t know any more than they did, crawling in here on my hands and knees. I told them about Jamie and the pregnancy. I pretended that was the cause of my tears. It was something legible, a rejection they could understand. To recount the tale of Theo would be too far beyond their comprehension. What could I even say? I’m mourning a man I’ve been seeing secretly this whole time. He might be in his forties but he looks twenty-one. No, I didn’t meet him online, I met him in the ocean. By the way, he has a tail. It was hard to grieve like this, to mourn one man while pretending to be mourning another. Why were some sadnesses so much more permissible than others? Why did it seem like everyone was going to be okay except for me? Even Chickenhorse was in good spirits, letting the group know that she had finally decided to try going on a date. She met a guy at the dog park and he invited her to a pit-bull rescue benefit. “I assume he’s an asshole,” she said. “But I don’t think he’s married. So I’m going.” — When group ended I stayed back a minute to talk to Dr. Jude. “Lucy,” she said, blowing the dust off a book called Low Self-Esteem and Addiction: The Siamese Twins . “It’s good to see you back. I’m sorry you are suffering.” “Thanks,” I said, wiping my nose. She offered me a tissue. “Can I ask you a question?” I said. “Sure.” “When you said that you were content without anyone—that a person could be content without anyone—did you mean it?” “Oh, Lucy,” she said. “Because I just feel like that’s a lie. I think everyone is looking for someone. And I think that if they aren’t, they’re just pretending.” “That isn’t necessarily true,” she said. “Me, I’m just happy to be alive. Do you really want to know what I think? Well, let me tell you something that you don’t know about me. I’m a breast cancer survivor.” “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s okay,” she said. “I had stage-three breast cancer when I was only forty-nine. I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it. In fact, I didn’t think I would.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  ‘A fine lot, n’est-ce pas?’ he would say with a grin, ‘See that man? Ah, yes—a really great poet. He drank himself to death. In those days it was absinthe—they liked it because it gave them such courage. That one would come here like a scared white rat, but Crénom! when he left he would bellow like a bull—the absinthe, of course—it gave them great courage.’ Or: ‘That woman over there, what a curious head! I remember her very well, she was German. Else Weining, her name was—before the war she would come with a girl she’d picked up here in Paris, just a common whore, a most curious business. They were deeply in love. They would sit at a table in the corner—I can show you their actual table. They never talked much and they drank very little; as far as the drink went those two were bad clients, but so interesting that I did not much mind—I grew almost attached to Else Weining. Sometimes she would come all alone, come early. “Pu,” she would say in her hideous French; “Pu, she must never go back to that hell.” Hell! Sacrénom—she to call it hell! Amazing they are, I tell you, these people. Well, the girl went back, naturally she went back, and Else drowned herself in the Seine. Amazing they are—ces invertis, I tell you!’ But not all the histories were so tragic as this one; Monsieur Pujol found some of them quite amusing. Quarrels galore he was able to relate, and light infidelities by the dozen. He would mimic a manner of speech, a gesture, a walk—he was really quite a good mimic—and when he did this his friends were not bored; they would sit there and split their sides with amusement. And now Monsieur Pujol was laughing himself, cracking jokes as he covertly watched his clients. From where she and Mary sat near the door, Stephen could hear his loud, jovial laughter. ‘Lord,’ sighed Pat, unenlivened as yet by the beer; ‘some people do seem to feel real good this evening.’ Wanda, who disliked the ingratiating Pujol, and whose nerves were on edge, had begun to grow angry. She had caught a particularly gross blasphemy, gross even for this age of stupid blaspheming. ‘Le salaud!’ she shouted, then, inflamed by drink, an epithet even less complimentary. ‘Hush up, do!’ exclaimed the scandalized Pat, hastily gripping Wanda’s shoulder. But Wanda was out to defend her faith, and she did it in somewhat peculiar language.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Let us listen to some of his most characteristic sentiments: "It is sufficient to attend to the demon [the good genius] within, and to reverence it sincerely. And reverence for the demon consists in keeping it pure from passion and thoughtlessness and dissatisfaction with what comes from God and men."580 "Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good."581 "Do not disturb thyself. Make thyself all simplicity. Does any one do wrong? It is to himself that he does the wrong. Has anything happened to thee? Well; out of the universe from the beginning everything which happens has been apportioned and spun out to thee. In a word, thy life is short. Thou must turn to profit the present by the aid of reason and justice. Be sober in thy relaxation. Either it is a well-arranged universe or a chaos huddled together, but still a universe."582 "A man must stand erect, and not be kept erect by others ."583 Have I done something for the general interest? Well, then, I have had my reward. Let this always be present to my mind, and never stop [doing good]."584 "What is thy art? to be good."585 "It is a man’s duty to comfort himself and to wait for the natural dissolution, and not to be vexed at the delay."586 "O Nature: from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return."587 "Willingly give thyself up to Clotho" [one of the fates], "allowing her to spin thy thread into whatever things she pleases. Every thing is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered."588 "Consider that before long thou wilt be nobody and nowhere, nor will any of the things exist which thou now seest, nor any of those who are now living. For all things are formed by nature to change and be turned, and to perish, in order that other things in continuous succession may exist."589 "It is best to leave this world as early as possible, and to bid it friendly farewell."590 These reflections are pervaded by a tone of sadness; they excite emotion, but no enthusiasm; they have no power to console, but leave an aching void, without hope of an immortality, except a return to the bosom of mother nature. They are the rays of a setting, not of a rising, sun; they are the swansong of dying Stoicism. The end of that noble old Roman was virtually the end of the antique world.591 The cosmopolitan philosophy of Marcus Aurelius had no sympathy with Christianity, and excluded from its embrace the most innocent and most peaceful of his subjects.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  fruit in the eleventh and twelfth. Secular and sacred learning was confined to the clergy and the monks. The great mass of the laity, including the nobility, could neither read nor write, and most contracts were signed with the mark of the cross. Even the Emperor Charlemagne wrote only with difficulty. The people depended for their limited knowledge on the teaching of a poorly educated priesthood. But several emperors and kings, especially Charlemagne and Alfred, were liberal patrons of learning and even contributors to literature. Scarcity of Libraries. One of the chief causes of the prevailing ignorance was the scarcity of books. The old libraries were destroyed by ruthless barbarians and the ravages of war. After the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens, the cultivation and exportation of Egyptian papyrus ceased, and parchment or vellum, which took its place, was so expensive that complete copies of the Bible cost as much as a palace or a farm. King Alfred paid eight acres of land for one volume of a cosmography. Hence the custom of chaining valuable books, which continued even to the sixteenth century. Hence also the custom of erasing the original text of manuscripts of classical works, to give place to worthless monkish legends and ascetic homilies. Even the Bible was sometimes submitted to this process, and thus "the word of God was made void by the traditions of men."800 The libraries of conventual and cathedral schools were often limited to half a dozen or a dozen volumes, such as a Latin Bible or portions of it, the liturgical books, some works of St. Augustin and St. Gregory, Cassiodorus and Boëthius, the grammars of Donatus and Priscianus, the poems of Virgil and Horace. Most of the books had to be imported from Italy, especially from Rome. The introduction of cotton paper in the tenth or eleventh century, and of linen paper in the twelfth, facilitated the multiplication of books.801 § 139. Educational Efforts of the Church. The mediaeval church is often unjustly charged with hostility to secular learning. Pope Gregory I. is made responsible for the destruction of the Bibliotheca Palatina and the classical statues in Rome. But this rests on an unreliable tradition of very late date.802 Gregory was himself, next to Isidore of Seville (on whom he conferred the pall, in 599), the best scholar and most popular writer of his age, and is lauded by his biographers and Gregory of Tours as a patron of learning.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  1352, opens with a parable, describing innumerable fishes swimming down from the lakes among the hills through the streams in the valleys into the deep sea. The author then sees them attempting to find their way back to the hills. These processes illustrate the career of human souls departing from God into the world and seeking to return to Him. The author also sees a "fearfully high mountain," on which are nine rocks. The souls that succeed in getting back to the mountain are so few that it seemed as if only one out of every thousand reached it. He then proceeds to set forth the condition of the eminent of the earth, popes and kings, cardinals and princes; and also priests, monks and nuns, Beguines and Beghards, and people of all sorts and classes. He finds the conditions very bad, and is specially severe on women who, by their show of dress and by their manners, are responsible for men going morally astray and falling into sin. Many of these women commit a hundred mortal sins a day. Rulman then returns to the nine rocks, which represent the nine stages of progress towards the source of our being, God. Those who are on the rocks have escaped the devil’s net, and by climbing on up to the last rock, they reach perfection. Those on the fifth rock have gained the point where they have completely given up their own self-will. The sixth rock represents full submission to God. On the ninth the number is so small that there seemed to be only three persons on it. These have no desire whatever except to honor God, fear not hell nor purgatory, nor enemy nor death nor life. The Friends of God, who are bent on something more than their own salvation, are depicted in the valley below, striving to rescue souls from the net in which they have been ensnared. The Brethren of the Free Spirit resist this merciful procedure. The presentation is crude, and Scripture is not directly quoted. The biblical imagery, however, abounds, and, as in the case of the ancient allegory of Hermas, the principles of the Gospel are set forth in a way adapted, no doubt, to reach a certain class of minds, even as in these modern days the methods of the Salvation Army appeal to many for whom the discourses of Bernard or Gerson might have little meaning. 492 Rulman Merswin is regarded by Denifle, Strauch and other critics as the author of the works ascribed to the Friend of God from the Oberland, and the inventor of this fictitious personage.493 The reason for this view is that no one else knows of the Oberlander and that, after Rulman’s death, attempts on the part of the Strassburg brotherhood to find him, or to find out something about him, resulted in failure.

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  they insult and strike them, tear out their hair, have them stripped and cruelly flogged, and then throw them into prison in cages and cruel irons.’ All Christian organizations, lay or secular, flogged Indians at times. On the other hand, in some ways the Indians adapted themselves enthusiastically to mission civilization. Zummarago, writing to Charles v, noted: ‘The Indians are great lovers of music, and priests who hear their confessions tell me they are converted more by music than by anything else.’ In the enclaves, terrific religious ceremonies were developed. The Indians learned singing and especially plain-chant more easily than anything else, and they took rapidly to a wide variety of instruments – clarinets, cornets, trumpets, fifes, trombones, Moroccan and Italian flutes, drums, bowed guitars and many others. Juan de Grijalva wrote: ‘There is not an Indian village even of 20 inhabitants which is without trumpets and a few flutes to enrich the services.’ It is typical of Philip II’s niggling attention to detail that he tried to reduce the numbers of singers and instrumentalists in these villages in 1561 – with no success. Equally futile were official bans on liturgical extravaganzas, including wild dancing, which grew up round religious fiestas. But if these protected enclaves were intended (and the policy of the orders was never clear, even to themselves) to produce a distinctively native and self-sustaining form of Christianity, they were total failures. They necessarily involved the concept of tutellage. Travellers could not stay there for more than two days. In Mexico, no Europeans, mestizos, negroes or mulattoes were allowed to settle in them. In parts of Brazil and Paraguay, the Jesuits, with their customary efficiency, created entire colonies, or reductiones as they were called, stretching over thousands of square miles. By 1623 there were over a score of them, encompassing 100,000 inhabitants, and they continued to expand, especially after 1641 when the Portuguese authorities forebade access to these territories and allowed the Jesuits to maintain private armies to defend them. The friars also had their armed bands, and indeed were sometimes accused of fighting pitched battles with each other, with the seculars, and with the authorities themselves. In a way this idea of protecting vulnerable natives and their way of life from intruding European civilization is a modern one; but the instinct was paternalistic and necessarily condescending. ‘All the Indians’, Philip II was told, ‘are like nestlings whose wings have not grown enough yet to allow them to fly for themselves . . . religious, as your Majesty should know, are their true mothers and fathers.’ There was an invincible reluctance to admit that the fledglings might grow up, or assist them to do so. The Dominicans refused to found any secondary schools, and it was always against their policy to teach Latin – the key to advance of any kind – to Indians. The Franciscans and Augustinians were less dogmatic, and they in fact discovered that the natives took to Latin more easily than Spaniards.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  The rain must have mingled with Mademoiselle’s tears, for the weather had broken and now it was raining. It was surely a desolate day for departure, with the mist closing over the Severn Valley and beginning to creep up the hillsides. . . . Stephen made her way to the empty schoolroom, empty of all save a general confusion; the confusion that stalks in some people’s trail—it had always stalked Mademoiselle Duphot. On the chairs, which stood crooked, lay odds and ends meaning nothing—crumpled paper, a broken shoehorn, a well-worn brown glove that had lost its fellow and likewise two of its buttons. On the table lay a much abused pink blotting pad, from which Stephen had torn off the corners, unchidden—it was crossed and re-crossed with elegant French script until its scarred face had turned purple. And there stood the bottle of purple ink, half-empty, and green round its neck with dribbles; and a pen with a nib as sharp as a pin point, a thin, peevish nib that jabbed at the paper. Chock-a-block with the bottle of purple ink lay a little piety card of St. Joseph that had evidently slipped out of Mademoiselle’s missal—St. Joseph looked very respectable and kind, like the fishmonger in Great Malvern. Stephen picked up the card and stared at St. Joseph; something was written across his corner; looking closer she read the minute handwriting: ‘Priez pour ma petite Stévenne.’ She put the card away in her desk; the ink and the blotter she hid in the cupboard together with the peevish steel nib that jabbed paper, and that richly deserved cremation. Then she straightened the chairs and threw away the litter, after which she went in search of a duster; one by one she dusted the few remaining volumes in the bookcase, including the Bibliothèque Rose. She arranged her dictation notebooks in a pile with others that were far less accurately written—books of sums, mostly careless and marked with a cross; books of English history, in one of which Stephen had begun to write the history of the horse! Books of geography with Mademoiselle’s comments in strong purple ink: ‘Grand manque d’attention.’ And lastly she collected the torn lesson books that had lain on their backs, on their sides, on their bellies—anyhow, anywhere in drawers or in cupboards, but not very often in the bookcase.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Each time I hit my head I said sorry. “That’s okay. Rub your clit,” he said. “Don’t tell me what to do.” “Sorry,” he said. “And don’t come inside me.” But he came inside me, and in less than a minute, making a face that looked like a dying warrior, a hissing sound escaping his open mouth. “Damn,” he sighed after he had finished expelling his load of little Uta Hagens into my vagina. “That was great. Did you come?” “Um, definitely not.” I laughed. Was he kidding? I would have to be a better actress for that. I guess he thought I was hypersexual and came instantly, tossing orgasm after orgasm into the wind. Who else would fuck a stranger in his car? Most people wanted to avoid being fondled by their driver. I imagined his sperm in there, trying to talk to my egg, and my egg ignoring them. What were his sperm saying? It’s a tough town, but I’m hoping to get an agent this year, said his sperm. Just shut the fuck up, said my egg. “Well,” he said, patting me on the ass. “I hope you give me a good rating.” “Oh, for sure,” I said. “Five stars.” 56. The following evening I packed my suitcase. I thought about my little sweaters and dresses floating in the water as I packed up each one. It made me feel sad. I kept thinking the words belonging and my belongings . Dominic was no longer in the pantry. I wasn’t sure who had come and taken him away. It smelled heavily of ammonia, but I swore I could still smell death. Annika had gone back inside the pantry. She was just sitting there on the floor with Dominic’s bowl and a squeaky toy in the shape of a duck. She looked up at me. “This was his favorite toy,” she said, giving it a squeeze. “Did you know that? Did I tell you that?” “Yes. We played with it together a lot,” I lied. “Good.” She smiled. “I wanted him to have the most beautiful life.” “Annika, I am so sorry. I want you to know I’m grateful to you.” “I knew I should have come home. I should have listened to my intuition. But you told me you could handle it. You said that nothing bad was going to happen to him, that he would be fine.” “I know. If there is some way I can make this up to you—” “No, it isn’t your fault,” she said. “It’s my fault.” “You couldn’t have known. Even the vet didn’t know how sick he was exactly.” “I will never forgive myself,” she said. “Never.” “Annika,” I said. There was nothing else left to say. I held out my hand to help her up.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Those women knew how to embrace whichever assembly-line man they were given. They knew how to breathe new life into him day after day and see what they had as special. They were like living psalms. There were no holes in their lives. Those women had never met a void a day in their life. They simply didn’t see any. “Can I just say something?” said Sara. “Diana, I’m sorry, but if I had a husband who took good care of me—and I looked like you—and had young children who loved me, I would be so happy. I would just—be happy.” “Dr. Jude, I’m feeling judged,” said Diana. But Sara didn’t stop. “Stan left again. We got in a fight about a historical documentary. The Roosevelts. He said that I was the most annoying woman he had ever encountered and then he just left. I don’t know where he is staying. Maybe the spa? Maybe another woman’s house? I don’t know who would want him. We were supposed to go to a workshop this weekend. An ‘Opening the Heart’ course—a refresher for me, and basics for him. I was so excited. I was finally going to have a workshop boyfriend. I paid for both of us and everything. And you know what? I don’t even want to go now. I don’t want to open my heart! Now I’m going to have to go by myself. I’m going to be the woman alone again.” I looked around the room and felt sad for all of us. We were built differently from other people—constructed in some fundamental way that was unlike those who could cope with love. Maybe we felt the same emotions as everyone else, but we felt them more intensely. Sappho felt more too, this I knew. Sappho was one of us. If she wasn’t overwhelmed by emotions, why then would she have needed to sing? Chickenhorse said she had canceled her date with the guy from the dog park. She said that she had gotten a weird feeling from him. “Weird in what way?” asked Dr. Jude. “I don’t know. He was wearing one of those newsboy caps. And when I thought about the cap, I felt triggered. I just don’t trust any man in one of those caps. It’s like a flashing red no.” “What is it specifically about that hat? Have you had a negative experience with a man in one of those hats in the past?” asked Dr. Jude. “No,” said Chickenhorse. “The truth is…maybe it’s me. I know you want me to start dating again. I know you think I’m ready. But I don’t think I’m ready. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be ready.” I wondered if this was what recovery looked like, the only option for women like us. Was it better to be somewhat sane without a man than to be crazy with one? Dr.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  “This time, I’m still doing me,” she said. “I’m still self-dating. But it’s also nice to always have a partner now at salsa dancing. He does warm-ups with me before improv class too. True, I have to pay for everything. And technically he has nowhere else to go. But he’s here for me now. The way I see it, if he didn’t want to be with me he could still be sleeping at the Korean spa. Those floor mats are not so uncomfortable. He does have a choice. He’s not forced to live with me. He’s choosing me.” Sara said she wanted to stay in group and also stay with Stan. Dr. Jude said she didn’t recommend it, but she wasn’t going to kick her out. “You’ll see,” said Sara. “I’m really flourishing. I’m even thinking of getting into spoken word.” I wondered if Sara was totally kidding herself or if she was proof that the seemingly impossible could be done after all: the mending of an old, unhealthy relationship into a new, healthy one that didn’t destroy you. Should I have been more responsive to Jamie when he had first started texting? Why had I ignored him to chase a relationship that was only sustainable when confined to a rock? Clearly I had made some kind of wrong decision or I wouldn’t be back here, head in hands, seated next to Dr. Jude’s framed poster of Jungian archetypes. What was worse, still, was that the others all seemed to have gotten better without me. Even Diana had been totally clean, off the tennis boys for over a week, and was paying more attention to her children. “Regardless of how I feel about my husband, whether I lust after him anymore or not, my children are what I really live for. I’m doing this for them. So that I can be present. It wasn’t fair to be sitting at the kitchen table with them while they ate pizza, running off every five minutes to check my phone in the living room to see if a twenty-three-year-old had texted me. I wasn’t able to be there for them. And they could sense it.” “How do you feel?” asked Dr. Jude. “A little sad,” she said. “But so much better. I’m not as on edge as I was. My worth isn’t dictated by text messages.” Brianne, too, had found some solace in her son.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  It has been cathartic, allowing me to sort out my feelings as I put them into words on my computer screen or into the Wonder Woman Moleskine notebook #6 bought me, and my friends who work in publishing have told me they think it could be a book. I want nothing more than to take my heap of messy emotions and even messier dating stories and smooth them out, craft them together into a cohesive narrative, but the thought of revealing myself so publicly and outing Michael’s indiscretion are roadblocks I can’t get past. When they come back a few minutes later, Georgia holds up her coconut for me victoriously and puts the straw into my mouth so I can take a sip. “Look at Mama with her bunny hairdo and big sunglasses and tropical bikini,” Michael says. Georgia eyes me, then shrugs her shoulders. “She looks fine, I guess.” “What do you mean, she looks fine?” he continues. “You should feel proud that you have such a pretty mommy!” Georgia eyes me skeptically and then hands me her coconut so she can jump in the pool. I am perplexed by Michael, unable to decide if he simply forgets that we aren’t a couple anymore, or if he remembers but doesn’t feel that should stop him from doling out compliments. I remember when I first met him, how I found his tendency to blurt out unsolicited opinions to be refreshing at times, disconcerting at others. It’s not that I don’t appreciate any and all compliments, but the way he says this now, so adoringly, is a painful reminder of how I once felt so cherished by him. It had seemed to me from our very beginning together that he was smitten with me; I cannot for the life of me figure out when that stopped being the case. “I’m worried about Blaze,” he says as he plops himself down on the double- wide chaise longue I am sprawled across. “He wasn’t himself this morning, he was kind of subdued.” I am mid-swallow when he says this and I start coughing, the thin coconut milk coming back up my throat. He looks at me quizzically and when I catch my breath, I suggest that maybe Blaze was just tired. “It was weird. You know how he always has so much energy and gets excited to do his whole coconut machete show for Georgia? He looked sad, kind of sedated,” he says. “I wouldn’t worry. It may turn out he’s simply human like the rest of us and is having an off day,” I say, trying to play it cool as questions race through my mind. Could I have worn him out? Could he be feeling guilty?

• From A History of Christianity (1976)

  Pius would continue to proclaim it: ‘To bear witness of the truth is the highest debt we owe to the office we hold and the times we live in.’ This had been the theme of papal triumphalism for some seventy years, since Pius IX had issued his Syllabus of Errors; in a sense, it was a theme inherent in the whole of Augustinian Christianity. Gregory VII and Innocent III had called on the world to align itself with the policies and precepts of the imperial papacy, and had anathematized those of its rulers who declined to do so. When the world refused to obey him, the Pope looked on it with sorrow, and predicted doom. It was a natural and traditional pontifical attitude. But of course there was another form of Christianity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries – Protestant triumphalism, which we have seen proclaiming itself at the Edinburgh world mission conference in 1910. It identified Christianity with modern progress and democracy, and the burgeoning success of the American ideal and system with its Protestant ethics. One rejected the modern world; the other not only accepted it but to some extent claimed paternity. Both of these Christian theories were based on the assumption that the acceptance or rejection of Christianity was the only real formative element in society, and the criterion by which it should be judged. Both evolved against a cultural background in which Christianity inevitably dominated any discussion of truth and falsehood, right or wrong, good and evil. It was the moral air in which all-powerful western man lived, and adjusted his perspectives. Should Christians fight the modern world and by a supreme spiritual effort wrench it from its disastrous course? Or should they take advantage of the boundless opportunities offered by modernity to deliver the Christian message afresh? These questions were regarded not merely as relevant but as absolutely essential to the whole future of human society. The history of twentieth-century Christianity is the history of the attempt to answer them but equally of the effort to prevent them from seeming academic. In October 1939, Pius XII delivered his admonition from his citadel on the assumption, in which he profoundly believed, that Christianity in general, and pontifical Christianity in particular, were ideologically, and indeed institutionally detached from the horrors of the modern world. But here he was deceived by analogy. Immediately after the declaration of papal infallibility in 1870, the Italian crown had seized Rome and the papal territories had been incorporated in the new Italian State. Successive popes had refused to accept this situation, inevitable though it was, and had remained entrenched in the Vatican, refusing to recognize the Italian regime, or its government and parliament, or to set foot in the usurped eternal city. The fortress image had, as it were, become an actual one – of the defiant ‘prisoner in the Vatican’; and it remained vivid even after papacy and State were reconciled in the Lateran Treaty of 1929.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  He tells me about his day and a meeting he had with a client. I feel a twinge of sadness at the feeling of cozy domesticity this scene elicits, two adults catching up at the end of their day. I feel the ache of not having a partner anymore, the only person in my life who would care whether or not the washing machine was fixed or that I had received a phone call from Daisy that afternoon telling me she had made her first two friends at school. My head is spinning – from the passionate sex I just had with #4 to the romantic dinner date to the stinging rejection when we got back to his house to my sitting here with such ease in #3’s kitchen. I feel mercurial, like I’m fostering different personalities to see which one I will ultimately adopt. With #4, I’m the six-years-older MILF who can’t get enough, with #3, I’m the patient end-of-day sounding board, and underlying both of these personas is the memory of the devoted wife I was to my husband, who theoretically I could still go back to if I could find him. I hear a voice urging me to keep going, leap forward, don’t look back, pedal faster, have more sex, learn more, explore more, discover more – more, more, more – and then another voice yelling a command to stop and retreat, don’t abandon the life you know, decamp for safer pastures. If I could clarify whether I am losing or finding myself, I would find the key to the door I am meant to unlock. “I’m so tired,” I say suddenly. #3, wiping down the counter, pauses to glance at me and invites me to sleep over. I nod my head in assent. Upstairs in the narrow bathroom, he loans me toiletries and together we brush our teeth with his natural toothpaste that makes me wish I had a powerful dose of chemical mouthwash, moving around each other in an intimate dance that feels familiar even though it’s our first time doing it. In his bed, naked beneath a cotton sheet, a window fan gently blowing on us, we kiss. I know that I could tell him I’m bone-tired and he would graciously accept it, that the pressure to have sex with him is self-inflicted.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Stephen as she drove through that devastated country would find herself thinking of Martin Hallam—Martin who had touched the old thorns on the hills with such respectful and pitiful fingers: ‘Have you ever thought about the enormous courage of trees? I have and it seems to me amazing. The Lord dumps them down and they’ve just got to stick it, no matter what happens—that must need some courage.’ Martin had believed in a heaven for trees, a forest heaven for all the faithful; and looking at those pitiful, leafy corpses, Stephen would want to believe in that heaven. Until lately she had not thought of Martin for years, he belonged to a past that was better forgotten, but now she would sometimes wonder about him. Perhaps he was dead, smitten down where he stood, for many had perished where they stood, like the orchards. It was strange to think that he might have been here in France, have been fighting and have died quite near her. But perhaps he had not been killed after all—she had never told Mary about Martin Hallam. All roads of thought seemed to lead back to Mary; and these days, in addition to fears for her safety, came a growing distress at what she must see—far more terrible sights than the patient wounded. For everywhere now lay the wreckage of war, sea-wrack spued up by a poisonous ocean—putrefying, festering in the sun; breeding corruption to man’s seed of folly. Twice lately, while they had been driving together, they had come upon sights that Stephen would have spared her. There had been that shattered German gun-carriage with its stiff, dead horses and its three dead gunners—horrible death, the men’s faces had been black like the faces of negroes, black and swollen from gas, or was it from putrefaction? There had been the deserted and wounded charger with its fore-leg hanging as though by a rag. Near by had been lying a dead young Uhlan, and Stephen had shot the beast with his revolver, but Mary had suddenly started sobbing: ‘Oh, God! Oh, God! It was dumb—it couldn’t speak. It’s so awful somehow to see a thing suffer when it can’t ask you why!’ She had sobbed a long time, and Stephen had not known how to console her.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  2There is nothing more difficult to attain to than the art of being a perfect guide. Such an art, indeed, requires a real artist, one who has a keen perception for contrasts, and an eye for the large effects rather than for details, above all one possessed of imagination; and Brockett, when he chose, could be such a guide. Having waved the professional guides to one side, he himself took them through a part of the palace, and his mind re-peopled the place for Stephen so that she seemed to see the glory of the dancers led by the youthful Roi Soleil; seemed to hear the rhythm of the throbbing violins, and the throb of the rhythmic dancing feet as they beat down the length of the Galerie des Glaces; seemed to see those other mysterious dancers who followed step by step, in the long line of mirrors. But most skilfully of all did he recreate for her the image of the luckless queen who came after; as though for some reason this unhappy woman must appeal in a personal way to Stephen. And true it was that the small, humble rooms which the queen had chosen out of all that vast palace, moved Stephen profoundly—so desolate they seemed, so full of unhappy thoughts and emotions that were even now only half forgotten. Brockett pointed to the simple garniture on the mantelpiece of the little salon, then he looked at Stephen: ‘Madame de Lamballe gave those to the queen,’ he murmured softly. She nodded, only vaguely apprehending his meaning. Presently they followed him out into the gardens and stood looking across the Tapis Vert that stretches its quarter mile of greenness towards a straight, lovely line of water. Brockett said, very low, so that Puddle should not hear him: ‘Those two would often come here at sunset. Sometimes they were rowed along the canal in the sunset—can’t you imagine it, Stephen? They must often have felt pretty miserable, poor souls; sick to death of the subterfuge and pretences. Don’t you ever get tired of that sort of thing? My God, I do!’ But she did not answer, for now there was no mistaking his meaning. Last of all he took them to the Temple d’Amour, where it rests amid the great silence of the years that have long lain upon the dead hearts of its lovers; and from there to the Hameau, built by the queen for a whim—the tactless and foolish whim of a tactless and foolish but loving woman—by the queen who must play at being a peasant, at a time when her downtrodden peasants were starving. The cottages were badly in need of repair; a melancholy spot it looked, this Hameau, in spite of the birds that sang in its trees and the golden glint of the afternoon sunshine.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  His breath always tasted fresh, a little salty but not fishy. He tasted like ocean air. In the living room he was sitting up in the sunlight that shone through the big glass windows, the blanket wrapped around him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Why?” I asked. “I think I brought some darkness in here with me. The sadness, moving from sea to land, sometimes I can’t shake it. I thought if anything I would feel scared, but coming here I couldn’t help but think, What’s the point? I mean, I guess the point is that we have an experience. I guess that is the point. I just, well, I am going to live a long time. And have lived a long time. I have seen a lot of people come and go.” I wondered how many people. How many women, human women? Mermaids? I wanted to say I would be with him forever. But I didn’t know if that was what he wanted me to say. I couldn’t make that promise. I realized it wasn’t my impending departure for Phoenix that stopped me from offering the words. And it wasn’t my fear of intimacy. It was still my fear of rejection. “But you seem so young,” I said. “No, I’m not. I’ve been alive for a very long time. I’m not eternal. I can die. But we don’t usually get sick, not in the body anyway. Something about the saltwater. It brines us and keeps us young. It keeps illness from entering.” “So how old are you exactly?” “Honestly, I don’t really know. It’s not a thing down there. Maybe forty?” “That’s how old I am,” I said. “Almost. Wow, I’m younger than you.” “I told you you’re young,” he said. “I might be even older than that actually.” “Who are your parents?” “They are like me, but also very much not like me. They look like me, or my mother does anyway, but more content with their existence. They never leave the water. They aren’t scared, they simply have no interest,” he said. “Anyway, hoisting and dragging myself like that, on the sand, it made me feel tired. Sometimes I get so tired, even in the water. It’s like physical things don’t make me physically tired, but they make me mentally tired. Mental things make me feel that way too.” “Everything is just so much,” I said. “All the time.” “It is,” he said. “And I was scared I wasn’t going to be able to, you know.” He laughed. “Get it up?” I said. “Yeah,” he said. “Not because I don’t want you or because I don’t have it in me physically, but because of that mental exhaustion. I can doubt myself. I become more susceptible.” “Theo,” I soothed him.