Tenderness

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 The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness (2004)

  This insight was not confined to Buddhism, however. The late Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that when we put ourselves at the opposite pole of ego, we are in the place where God is. The Golden Rule requires that every time we are tempted to say or do something unpleasant about a rival, an annoying colleague, or a country with which we are at war, we should ask ourselves how we should like this said of or done to ourselves, and refrain. In that moment we would transcend the frightened egotism that often needs to wound or destroy others in order to shore up the sense of ourselves. If we lived in such a way on a daily, hourly basis, we would not only have no time to worry overmuch about whether there was a personal God “out there”; we would achieve constant ecstasy, because we would be ceaselessly going beyond ourselves, our selfishness and greed. If our political leaders took the Golden Rule seriously into account, the world would be a safer place. I have noticed, however, that compassion is not always a popular virtue. In my lectures I have sometimes seen members of the audience glaring at me mutinously: where is the fun of religion, if you can’t disapprove of other people! There are some people, I suspect, who would be outraged if, when they finally arrived in heaven, they found everybody else there as well. Heaven would not be heaven unless you could peer over the celestial parapets and watch the unfortunates roasting below. But I have myself found that compassion is a habit of mind that is transforming. The science of compassion which guides my studies has changed the way I experience the world. This has been a pattern in my life. Once I had started to study seriously at Oxford, I found that I could no longer conform to convent life. The attitudes that you learn at your desk spill over into your everyday existence. The silence in which I live has also opened my ears and eyes to the suffering of the world. In silence, you begin to hear the note of pain that informs so much of the anger and posturing that pervade social and political life. Solitude is also a teacher. It is lonely; living without intimacy and affection tears holes in you. Saint Augustine of Hippo said somewhere that yearning makes the heart deep. It also makes you vulnerable. Silence and solitude strip away a skin; they break down that protective shell of heartlessness which we cultivate in order to prevent ourselves from being overwhelmed by the suffering of the world that presses in upon us on all sides.

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

  The same feeling of the inseparable communion of saints gave rise to the usage, unknown to the heathens, of consecrated places of common burial.697 For these cemeteries, the Christians, in the times of persecution, when they were mostly poor and enjoyed no corporate rights, selected remote, secret spots, and especially subterranean vaults, called at first crypts, but after the sixth century commonly termed catacombs, or resting-places, which have been discussed in a previous chapter. We close with a few stanzas of the Spanish poet Prudentius (d. 405), in which he gives forcible expression to the views and feelings of the ancient church before the open grave:698 "No more, ah, no more sad complaining; Resign these fond pledges to earth: Stay, mothers, the thick-falling tear-drops; This death is a heavenly birth. Take, Earth, to thy bosom so tender,— Take, nourish this body. How fair, How noble in death! We surrender These relics of man to thy care This, this was the home of the spirit, Once built by the breath of our God; And here, in the light of his wisdom, Christ, Head of the risen, abode. Guard well the dear treasure we lend thee The Maker, the Saviour of men: Shall never forget His beloved, But claim His own likeness again." § 103. Summary of Moral Reforms. Christianity represents the thoughts and purposes of God in history. They shine as so many stars in the darkness of sin and error. They are unceasingly opposed, but make steady progress and are sure of final victory. Heathen ideas and practices with their degrading influences controlled the ethics, politics, literature, and the house and home of emperor and peasant, when the little band of despised and persecuted followers of Jesus of Nazareth began the unequal struggle against overwhelming odds and stubborn habits. It was a struggle of faith against superstition, of love against selfishness, of purity against corruption, of spiritual forces against political and social power.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  I first met my mother inside her lifelong leg and hip pain. Underneath the arm length scar where a steel plate masqueraded as bone. A body in pain for the duration of a life. Every hour of existence. I first met my mother when she signed the scholarship papers setting me free. I first met my mother her singing I see the moon, the moon sees me, the moon sees everyone I want to see, god bless the moon, and god bless me, and god bless everyone I want to see. Her voice carrying me to dream. The weight of father lifting, lifting. If I close my eyes I can see her. I remember the first time I saw her swim, joining me in the deep water, leaving my father standing impotently in chest high water. How powerful her sidestroke. The joy in her face. How beautiful the gleaming white skin of her arms. The long glide of her. The water swallowing the fact of her pain, her marriage, her leg. My mother loved to swim more than anyone I know. Swan. Your Tax Dollars At Work Ernesto Alejo Angel Manuel Rick Ricardo Sonny Lebron Pedro Jimarcus Lidia Notice anything about those names? Six Mexicans, one Italian, one African-American, one Jamaican, one white dishonorably discharged Navy guy wound tighter than dynamite, and me. Compliments of the State of California. The posse. All in day-glo orange vests on the side of the freeway picking up your trash with sticks that have “grabbers” on the ends of them. At least that was one of the week’s assignments. The easiest and least humiliating. Who we were on paper: Breaking and Entering (but not stealing anything. ?) Possession Possession DUI Domestic Violence DUI Possession Driving without a License or Vehicle Registration Fleeing a Crime Scene and Failure to Produce Identification Public Intoxication and Indecent Exposure And a big blond D U I Doing time on a road crew in the hot asphalt and suntan lotion world of San Diego makes you feel like you are in much crappier remake of the movie Cool Hand Luke. Everybody who is tanned and glamorous - the paid for whitey pretty smiles and the paid for bleached blonde color weaves and the paid for total laser hair removal jobs and the paid for body parts - drives by you like you are ice plant or oleander. The stuff in the divider between the zipping lanes of freeway life. When cars go by your hair blows up and hot wind brushes your face. The sound of all that driving and social surface life can make you feel nuts.

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  D. Damien was known for his physical strength and his energy, both of which were valuable to the lepers at Molokai. E. Damien made sure that he visited each leper in his charge—several hundred were Catholics or catechumens, and some were orphaned children. F. In 1884 or 1885, Damien began to show signs that he had contracted leprosy. 1. Although leprosy was not highly contagious, Damien’s years of intimacy with lepers clearly made him vulnerable. 2. Damien’s reference to “we lepers” was now both literally and metaphorically true. G. Damien had, of course, sought to imitate Christ by serving the lepers, and the year before his death, he received an image of St. Francis of Assisi as a gift, which he hung in his bedroom. H. When Father Damien died, he was interred in the leper cemetery at Kalawao. I. Father Damien had become somewhat famous in America and Europe before his death. 1. Although his order made no immediate move to publicize his life or seek his canonization, some laypeople did. 2. Eventually, many of Damien’s things were returned to Belgium to establish a museum, and his body was re-buried in Louvain. 3. In 1938, the formal process of seeking sainthood for Father Damien began. 4. When Hawaii became a state, it chose Damien as one of two Hawaiians whose statues are displayed in the U.S. Capitol. V. Mother Teresa was an ethnic Albanian, born with the name Agnes Gonhxa Bojaxhiu in 1910 in Skopje, now the capital of the nation of Macedonia. A. In 1928, she joined the Order of Sisters of Our Lady of Loreto and was sent to Dublin. B. She arrived in India in 1929, chose Teresa as her new name, and was solemnly professed as a sister in 1937; she worked as a schoolteacher. ©2007 The Teaching Company. 97

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  My father lived a quiet life there for two years until he died. In the morning he would watch T.V. In the afternoon too. Sometimes he would just stare out the window at trees and smile. This man who took the place of the father I’d known before was sweet and docile and kind. Even his eyes were kind. Sometimes, I’d let him see Miles. I never saw the happiness that spread across his face like it did when he was with Miles. I mean in my life with him. Though I rarely let him hold my son, when he did, he looked like a miracle had happened. A boy. A few times Andy and I brought him out to our house in the trees. He marveled at the architecture - muscle memory, I guess. He spoke of the way the light cascaded down the hand crafted wood stairs quite eloquently. The forest took his breath away. He said, “I love it here so much. I wish I could die here.” I think he meant to say “live” here, but I let it go. It was not something I could give him anyway. I’d ask him about things when I’d drive him to do errands or to lunch - I’d say, “Daddy, do you remember being an architect?” “I was an architect? No. No, I don’t think so. Was I?” Or I’d say, do you remember the time when … and I’d try to choose something happy. Like the time he took my mother and me to Trinidad, where his greatest architectural achievement had happened. Steel drum music. A tortoise we saw lay eggs on the white sand beaches. Or living at Stinson Beach. Fruit trees in our yard. The ocean on the breeze. Or my sister singing in The Singing Angels Choir. Or classical music. Or baseball. To all of these he’d smile, sometimes he’d laugh, shake his head yes, maybe a glimpse of something. Mostly he’d stay quiet and look out the window of the car. Once he looked over at me driving and said, “Marilou?” His sister’s name. “No Daddy,” I’d say, “I’m Lidia.” “I know that,” he’d say, and laugh. Among the meager boxes of things he’d brought with him - old photographs and miscellaneous “papers” and a drawing pad and a very fine assortment of pencils and pens - was my first published book. I found it in his room one day. I picked it up and said, “Huh. What are you doing with this thing?” The cover was worn. “Oh, I’ve read that book many times.” “Really. Do you know who wrote it?” “You,” he said, looking up at me with transparent blue eyes, twinning mine. “Yeah, daddy. Me. Have you read all the stories?” “I think so. I can’t remember.” “That’s OK. It doesn’t matter.” “There’s one about swimming.”

• From The Lives of Great Christians (2007)

  A. Kolbe joined the Franciscan Order (Conventuals) as a young man and received a doctorate in Rome. B. He had a deep Marian devotion and founded an organization called Knights of the Immaculate (Mary). C. Kolbe realized the importance of media and founded a newspaper for Catholics in Poland. 1. It later reached a circulation of hundreds of thousands. 2. Eventually, the newspaper was published in other countries. D. Kolbe decided to found a new Franciscan monastery near Warsaw known (in English) as Marytown, and it soon became the largest Franciscan house in the world. E. Kolbe set out to establish a mission in Japan and to print a newspaper there, eventually settling on the outskirts of Nagasaki. F. He returned to Poland and, continuing to believe in the value of new media in the spread of Catholic piety, he established a radio station. G. By this time, the Nazis were in control of neighboring Germany, and in his newspaper columns, Kolbe criticized the Third Reich for its persecution of Jews and establishment of concentration camps; he also criticized Stalin for the horrors that were occurring beyond Poland’s eastern border. H. In 1939, Kolbe was arrested but set free. I. In 1941, he was arrested and transported to Auschwitz. 1. Kolbe, like other detainees, was known by his number— 16670. 2. Despite prohibitions of prayer, he heard confessions, prayed with inmates, and even held masses. 3. One day, one of the men in Kolbe’s barracks escaped, which meant that 10 men would be selected to be starved to death in a hellish dungeon. a. One man chosen to die was Francis Gajowniczek, who cried out that he had a wife and two children. b. Kolbe asked to take this man’s place and was allowed to do so. c. With the other nine, Kolbe was left to starve to death; he was the last to die, killed by a lethal injection, comforting the others and praying to the end. ©2007 The Teaching Company. 93 4. Francis Gajowniczek survived past the end of the war and spent many years telling Kolbe’s story. 5. Maximilian Kolbe was canonized by his fellow Pole John Paul II in 1982, and Francis Gajowniczek was present for that ceremony. V. The martyrs of the Third Reich discussed here are only two of many who were killed for their beliefs. They show us the truth of Tertullian’s belief that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church in modern times as well as in the early Christian centuries. Essential Reading: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison. Diana Dewar, The Saint of Auschwitz. Supplementary Reading: Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  For as a fountain within a narrow compass, is more plentiful, and supplies a tide for more streams over larger spaces, than any one of those streams, which, after a wide interval, is derived from the same fountain; so the relation of that dispenser of Thine, which was to benefit many who were to discourse thereon, does out of a narrow scantling of language, overflow into streams of clearest truth, whence every man may draw out for himself such truth as he can upon these subjects, one, one truth, another, another, by larger circumlocutions of discourse. For some, when they read, or hear these words, conceive that God like a man or some mass endued with unbounded power, by some new and sudden resolution, did, exterior to itself, as it were at a certain distance, create heaven and earth, two great bodies above and below, wherein all things were to be contained. And when they hear, God said, Let it be made, and it was made; they conceive of words begun and ended, sounding in time, and passing away; after whose departure, that came into being, which was commanded so to do; and whatever of the like sort, men’s acquaintance with the material world would suggest. In whom, being yet little ones and carnal, while their weakness is by this humble kind of speech, carried on, as in a mother’s bosom, their faith is wholesomely built up, whereby they hold assured, that God made all natures, which in admirable variety their eye beholdeth around. Which words, if any despising, as too simple, with a proud weakness, shall stretch himself beyond the guardian nest; he will, alas, fall miserably. Have pity, O Lord God, lest they who go by the way trample on the unfledged bird, and send Thine angel to replace it into the nest, that it may live, till it can fly.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Next, into this moment of empathy, extend a simple wish for the person’s release from pain and suffering. Try saying one or more of the following classic phrases, silently, in your own mind and heart, directing your good wishes to this particular person: May your difficulties [misfortune, pain] fade away. May you find peace [ease, strength]. May your burdens be lifted. As with all phrase-based practices, it’s not the words you choose that matter, but rather the feelings these words evoke. Experiment: Try new phrasings until you find a phrase or two that truly moves you, or leads to a subtle shift in the physical sensations of your heart. Remember, you’re not engaging any sort of magical thinking by doing this. Shifting your stream of consciousness toward compassion is no metaphysical trick that instantly whisks away all suffering from this other person’s experience. Your aim with this informal practice is far more humble and realistic. It is simply to condition your own heart to be more open and concerned about the pains and predicaments others inevitably face. Put differently, although your focus is completely on other people in this practice, the person who is most changed by it is you. Celebration: Meeting Another’s Good Fortune with Love At times it can seem all but overwhelming to truly open to the suffering of others. Standing beside and becoming one with those who suffer takes courage, which can, over time, become depleted. But it can also be replenished, for courage is a forever renewable resource. Fortunately, opportunities to recharge your resources for compassion abound. The secret is to be ready for chances to forge yet another variant of love: celebratory love. This lets you connect with others who are experiencing good fortune. Moments of bad fortune, with attendant opportunities to suffer, seem plentiful in this world. Yet, statistically speaking, moments of good fortune, with attendant opportunities for positive emotions, outnumber them by a wide margin. One rigorous examination of people’s day-to-day lives concludes that good events outnumber bad events by margins of about 3 to 1. Put differently, for every episode of bad fortune that you encounter, odds are you also encounter three or more episodes of good fortune to balance it out. Plus, it’s the frequency, not the magnitude of good events, that predicts your overall well-being. The key, of course, is to notice and be open to the good events just as much as you take in the bad. Set aside the mental time travel of worry and rumination. Awaken to the present moment. If you do, you’ll discover that most moments in life offer at least some good fortune to be relished, whether it’s fresh air, a welcomed meal, or the opportunity for companionship. The discovery that good events in people’s lives are more plentiful than bad events can be especially comforting. You might even say that the world conspires to offer up just the right ratio of positivity to negativity for you to thrive.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Witness how this practice affects your body. Know that your body sensations deserve your awareness as much as the phrases or thoughts that emerge from your mind. Gently call forth an image of someone who is currently facing ill fortune or otherwise suffering. Without getting mired in these difficulties, explore their scope. Then, lightly remind yourself of this person’s good qualities, and how much you would wish to ease his or her pain or lighten his or her load. Say the following classic phrases, or your own versions of them, slowly and from your heart. May you find safety, even in the midst of pain (or misfortune, difficulties). May you find peace, even in the midst of pain. May you find strength, even in the midst of pain. May you find ease, even in the midst of pain. Repeat these ancient wishes one by one, with each breath you take. Let each phrase infuse and soften your heart. Visualize yourself simply standing beside this person, recognizing his or her courage in the face of whatever difficulty life now delivers. As your practice deepens, experiment with new ways to soften and expand your heart’s capacity. Shift your focus to new people who are suffering, whether they’re people you know well or not. Keep in mind that your aim is not to make this or any other person’s pain or adversity magically disappear. Rather your aim is to condition your own heart to move in toward others’ suffering when you see it, to open up to it a bit more, so that you may offer comfort and strength, rather than to turn away in self-protection. If you find that the words of this practice stand in the way of your ability to call forth true tenderness, try simplifying your focus. Draw on images. Visualize before you the difficulty that this other person faces, whether it’s physical or emotional pain or uncertainty. Imagine what this difficulty might look like. Give it a color and a shape. Where do you see it in relation to the person on whom you focus? Next, visualize your own heart as it yearns to be compassionate. Imagine that this is your well of healing positivity. Imagine its color, shape, and movements. Is it bright or golden? How much does it expand? Now, with these visual details painted in your mind’s eye, imagine that as you breathe in, you inhale the other person’s ill fortune, lifting a portion of it away from him or her. As you inhale, let this ill-fortune enter in and be transformed by your steady, loving heart, pausing for just a moment before you exhale to witness this change. Then, as you breathe out, imagine that you are giving some thread, however small, of good fortune to this person, relief from his or her pain or suffering. Visualize this process of hope and change with each breath you take.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  Breathe in pain. Add your own compassionate wishes to the mix, and breathe out a small infusion of comfort. Breathe in threats, softening them by adding your love into the mix, and breathe out safety. Breathe in despair; breathe out peace. Breathe in feelings of being overcome, and breathe out strength. Breathe in the suffering person’s difficulties, and breathe out ease. As you end this practice session, know that you can access this growing supply of compassion anytime you wish. Try This Micro-moment Practice: Create Compassion in Daily Life You can also practice compassion informally. Opportunities to do so are plentiful in the full buzz of daily life, as you walk from your car to your office, as you stand in the checkout line, or sit in a meeting. Why not replace random mind-wandering with simple mental activities that build your capacity to connect with others compassionately? The only investment you make is in the currency of emotional energy, not time or money. All it takes is a willingness to retrain your heart and mind to see others differently. Here’s how to dive in: In these “found” moments, take in the faces and body postures of others. These need not be people with whom you are currently interacting. Mere passersby are great targets for informal practice. Think of it as harmless people-watching, albeit with respectful distance and loving intent. Consider your commute. On the train, in the car, or in the parking lot, instead of staying wrapped up in your own thoughts, take time to notice the people around you. Imagine the ways—small or large—that they might be suffering right now. It can be helpful to remember that no situation is 100 percent good (or bad). Each moment, for each person walking this earth, contains some unique blend of good and bad fortune. As Armistead Maupin writes, describing Mona’s Law in the book series Tales of the City: You can have a great job, a great apartment, and a great relationship, but never all three at the same time. With this awareness in mind, take a close look at those others with whom you cross paths. Look for nonverbal signs, however small, of their suffering —a grimace, a furrowed brow, a heavy sigh, or slumped posture—any clue that this other person is carrying some burden on his or her shoulders or in his or her heart. Witness this suffering with your whole body, not just with your eyes and your mind. See if you can feel in your own body and your own heart the heavy load that this person endures. All people suffer. At some level, whatever flavor of difficulty another faces will feel somewhat familiar to you.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  She was ‘white of heart’, in the expressive Arabic phrase, and painting the darkness of Justine’s head and shoulders she suddenly felt as if, stroke by stroke, the brush itself had begun to imitate caresses she had neither foreseen nor even thought to permit. As she listened to that strong deep voice recounting these misfortunes, so desirable in that they belonged to the active living world of experience, she caught her breath between her teeth, trying now to think only of the unconscious signs of good breeding in her subject: hands still in the lap, voice low, the reserve which delineates true power. Yet even she, from her inexperience, could do little but pity Justine when she said things like ‘I am not much good, you know. I can only inflict sadness, Arnauti used to say. He brought me to my senses and taught me that nothing matters except pleasure — which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.’ Clea was touched by this because it seemed clear to her that Justine had never really experienced pleasure — one has to be generous for that. Egotism is a fortress in which the conscience de soi-même, like a corrosive, eats away everything. True pleasure is in giving, surely. ‘As for Arnauti, he nearly drove me mad with his inquisitions. What I lost as a wife I gained as a patient—his interest in what he called “my case” outweighed any love he might have had for me. And then losing the child made me hate him where before I had only seen a rather sensitive and kindly man. You have probably read his book Moeurs. Much of it is invented — mostly to satisfy his own vanity and get his own back on me for the way I wounded his pride in refusing to be “cured” — so-called. You can’t put a soul into splints. If you say to a Frenchman “I can’t make love to you unless I imagine a palm-tree,” he will go out and cut down the nearest palm-tree.’ Clea was too noble to love otherwise than passionately; and yet at the same time quite capable of loving someone to whom she spoke only once a year. The deep still river of her heart hoarded its images, ever reflecting them in the racing current, letting them sink deeper into memory than most of us can. Real innocence can do nothing that is trivial, and when it is allied to generosity of heart, the combination makes it the most vulnerable of qualities under heaven.

• From Love 2.0: Finding Happiness and Health in Moments of Connection (2013)

  On to which of your good qualities would they shine a light? Gently hold those descriptions of you that surface in your mind and let them soak in. Recall your many actions that underlie these characterizations of you. Allow yourself to see those actions as deep indicators of your worth. Draw sustenance from the positive regard in which these cherished others hold you. Relax yourself into its warmth, feeling the safety and security it offers you. Now visualize the unfurling of good wishes emanating from each person’s heart to yours. Like the spokes of a wheel, these wishes connect the outer ring of your circle of supporters to you, its hub. At this point, you might visualize all of those gathered speaking the classic phrases of LKM in unison, with your own name inserted: May you, [your name here], feel safe and protected. May you, [your name], feel happy and peaceful. May you, [your name], feel healthy and strong. May you, [your name], live with ease. Adopting this loving observers’ perspective on yourself can offer an “appreciative jolt” that allows you to see—and truly feel—how it is that you add value to those around you. From this perspective, you can better discern your good qualities. Of course, you still have your own unique set of less-than-good qualities as well. If your mind gets pulled toward those, gently invite yourself to table those shortcomings for now. You can always examine them later. This is a rare moment to spotlight the good in you and you don’t want to miss it. Another way to bypass your obstacles to self-love is to visualize yourself together with any or all of these individuals and to speak the phrases of LKM as “we”: May we feel safe. May we feel happy. May we feel healthy. May we live with ease. You can think here of the good qualities that you and this other person (or persons) share, and visualize the good wishes that emanate from your heart as surrounding and infusing the two (or more) of you. You might find that thinking of yourself together with these cherished others provides a more comfortable stepping stone on the path leading you to direct love toward yourself.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  How to Love Your Mother After She’s Dead I FIRST MET MY MOTHER WHEN SHE WAS BORN WITH one leg more than six inches shorter than the other. A scar running kid-eye high up the length of her outer leg. From knee to hip. Stretching upward like wide pearled and waxen tracks. The eyes of a child fix on things. In the mornings while she dressed I would put my face so close to it I could feel my eyes shiver. I first met my mother when I was born cesarean. Babies wouldn’t fit through the tilt of her hips and birth canal without their skulls caving in. When they reached in to slice the caul - that amniotic membrane between her body and mine-my eyes were already open. I first met my mother in her childhood. In the operating rooms and hospitals that were her home for years and years. Inside the body casts. Next to the ridicule of hordes of gremlin children. Hobbling atop a shoe with a four inch wooden block attached. I first met my mother the day my father threw a fist intimately close to her head just missing her cheekbone and instead opened up a gaping mouth in the kitchen wall that stayed like that for years. I first met my mother the day my father’s mother said in her presence, “I don’t know why you had to marry a cripple.” I first met my mother when she told me the only man who ever loved her right was gay, and he died “a death that laid waste to his body, Belle.” Before anyone knew what AIDS was. I first met my mother the day she told me she could see things that weren’t there, except that they were, like armies crossing the freeway at night, like sea serpents over the side of the Golden Gate Bridge, like a UFO in the sky above her house in Port Arthur, Texas, like rabid poodles in the pear tree of our house at Stinson Beach. I was 12. I first met my mother the night I had to wipe her smear of a 55-year old self off of the casino floor in Biloxi, Mississippi. The skin of her face was as soft and pelted as a baby’s head. I first met my mother the night before my first of three marriages, when she turned to me and said, I almost married a rodeo man. His name was J.T. The next morning at my wedding, out on a beach in Corpus Christi, in the stage of menopause wherein your periods go nuts, she bled, a giant red wound blooming behind her if she’d been shot in the ass. I first met my mother inside the fury of our arguments - matching each other’s rage all through my puberty and her middle age, how strangely glorious her never backing down, no one ever winning, just two women’s voices like claps of thunder drowning out the world.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  A slow laugh made its way through the chests of the other men. And smiles. They’d smile like nothing you’ve ever seen before. All that dark skin opening. They slapped my back or put a hand on my shoulder and shook their heads, laughing, laughing. They laughed in a way that somehow felt good. “But you with us now, sistah?” Jimarcus would say, shaking his headful of dreads. After that they all started calling me “Doctor.” You know what they wanted? They wanted me to teach them how to talk more like everyone else. They wanted more English. On road crew my hands blistered so badly from hacking down sea grass with giant dull-bladed loppers near Sea World I couldn’t hold a cup of coffee. On road crew if there was heavy lifting my scoliosis spastic back hurt so bad when I got home every night I’d go straight to a bath and lay in it and cry. On road crew we spray washed graffiti and painted it over with mindless gray paint. We laid tar. We carried concrete and wood and glass away from condemned buildings. Once Rick cut his arm and punched a hole in a wall. He got extra days for that. I surmised Rick was also in anger management classes. Our assignments were mostly cleaning up the world so people can pretend it’s not dirty, chaotic, out of control, a giant world-sized compost heap. Once we cleaned toilets in day use area parks. You haven’t lived until you have to pull tampons and needles and condoms and cigarette butts out of a john. Yellow plastic gloves just don’t seem to quite make you feel better. I got the closest with Ernesto. Ernesto played classical guitar. I never heard him or saw him play but I watched him air guitar it when he described it. I’d ask him about it on breaks and at lunch and he’d Spanglish it out to me - what I didn’t need language for was how beautiful he looked talking about music. Or his hands. After awhile he began to ask me to translate things. A word at a time. “Dr. Lidia. What is English meterse en líos? What is English un llamamiento a la compassion?” To get into trouble. To call for compassion. All those weeks we labored. We sweat. It is a “we” I have not been able to use as a word the same way since. There isn’t a proper translation. The eighth week of road crew we’d split up in teams under an overpass near Balboa park. The trees and bushes were thick and lush so we had the mercy of shade. Things smelled like water was near, but it was probably the highly advanced sprinkler system that helps keep Balboa park green and sparkly and fit for tourists.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  When we got back to the group none of us said a fucking thing about our bum. Rick would have popped a spring in that geared up little skull of his and beat the shit out of our bum. And look, there was no way we were going to tell the clean-shaven officer Kyle. He would have arrested our bum. We already knew what it felt like to be arrested. Multiple times. We already knew what it felt like to fuck up. To be passed out drunk. To stink. To not want to be alive. To wake up with your face on the pavement. To use words but find your sentences doubling back and betraying you. To stay in a hotel for a week when you hear on TV the police are doing a sweep. To have no one who understands. To be passing - leading a double life. Maybe we didn’t yet know what it was like to have swollen genitals the size of Texas, but metaphorically - some body part out of control - some piece of you gone freakish - kind of we did. So we just left him there. In a kind of peace. Next to his own shit. Vagabundo. The last week of my period of service we had to pull weeds along this giant paved road that led up to some fancy ass facility of some sort up on the hill. In a wealthy neighborhood filled with white people with Mexican and Filipino house cleaners. The “trees” that lined the grand lane were tiny, so the only shade you could get was on part of your face and maybe a shoulder. We went through the giant yellow plastic vat of water in the first two hours - I think it was something like 98 degrees that day. Goddamn those little paper cone cups. By the last week my body had become used to the labor. I didn’t get blisters and my wrists didn’t ache and I’d stocked up on Vicodin so my back felt like anyone’s. I didn’t get dizzy in the sun and I brought enough food in my sack lunch and I smoked Jimarcus’ cigarettes and Ernesto and I took our breaks together to practice English. I was not unhappy. I had a pretty great tan. But really, I was going home, to my plush little bouge life. Half of them were going to jail. Ernesto disappeared partway through the ninth week. So that “we” I’m using? Well. It’s just language. At the top of the hill we got to rest. The shade of an enormous Torrey Pine tree umbrellaed out and held us so we could feel the coolness of breeze. We drank water. We ate our pathetic little brown sack lunches. I thought about Ernesto playing guitar, but my guess is he wasn’t.

• From The Chronology of Water (2011)

  At some point that night I walked out onto our little Holiday Inn balcony and Virginia was smoking a cigarette on hers. I looked over at her. My god. This person I had watched go from young woman to warrior beauty. It took my breath away. I never told her this, but what I thought … daughter. I almost couldn’t breathe with the wonder. “Those are death sticks, you know,” I said. “Yeah,” she said. “I love you, you know.” “Yeah. I do. Me too.” Her eyes filling with tears across the distance. We were driving to a house Andy had found and rented on the internet. Such a risky move - finding the next chapter of your life in cyberspace. But so gloriously risky. Because this was a hacker. A guy who had cybersquatted Bill Gates. When he was at the computer, whole geographies emerged you’d never thought of. The house looked filled with light and space when I looked at the internet photos. I knew the value of light and space. And there were trees in the photos. Everywhere. The house was inside something called the Bull Run Wilderness near Sandy, Oregon. When I asked Andy “Why this house? Is it near my job?” He said, “No, it’s not near your job. But it is sanctuary.” At the time, I didn’t know exactly what he meant. But something in my skin trusted him. The road to the house off of I-84 wound around forests and snuck alongside the Sandy River. I saw a few people riding the river on inner tubes. I saw fly fishermen. Kayakers. I saw the land rise and fall like it does in Oregon wilderness. Alders. Oaks. Maples. Douglas Firs. Everything it seemed, evergreen. I thought briefly of my father - how he loved the Northwest. I thought how maybe that feeling he had was something yet good between us. Then the word father left altogether, since it was nothing about my future. Up we drove. When we arrived at the house I began crying. Gut wrenching crying. A crying that must have taken years, pulled up from the depths. The house was made from two octagonals. The first octagonal had the main room and wooden stairs made by a master carpenter leading up to a sleeping loft. The sleeping loft had 360 degree windows so that if you were, say, in bed, all you saw was trees. The second octagonal had a kitchen with cabinets you’d pay a fortune for in the city - the deep cherry and blond wood like inside trees.

• From Justine (Alexandria Quartet vol. 1) (1957)

  Some of these encounters with poor exhausted creatures driven to extremity by physical want are interesting, even touching, but I have lost any interest in sorting my emotions so that they exist for me like dimensionless figures flashed on a screen. ‘There are only three things to be done with a woman’ said Clea once. ‘You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.’ I was experiencing a failure in all these domains of feeling. I record this only to show the unpromising human material upon which Melissa elected to work, to blow some breath of life into my nostrils. It could not have been easy for her to bear the double burden to her own poor circumstances and illness. To add my burdens to hers demanded real courage. Perhaps it was born of desperation, for she too had reached the dead level of things, as I myself had. We were fellow-bankrupts. For weeks her lover, the old furrier, followed me about the streets with a pistol sagging in the pocket of his overcoat. It was consoling to learn from one of Melissa’s friends that it was unloaded, but it was nevertheless alarming to be haunted by this old man. Mentally we must have shot each other down at every street corner of the city. I for my part could not bear to look at that heavy pock-marked face with its bestial saturnine cluster of tormented features smeared on it — could not bear to think of his gross intimacies with her: those sweaty little hands covered as thickly as a porcupine with black hair. For a long time this went on and then after some months an extraordinary feeling of intimacy seemed to grow up between us. We nodded and smiled at each other when we met. Once, encountering him at a bar, I stood for nearly an hour beside him; we were on the point of talking to each other, yet somehow neither of us had the courage to begin it. There was no common subject of conversation save Melissa. As I was leaving I caught a glimpse of him in one of the long mirrors, his head bowed as he stared into the wineglass. Something about his attitude — the clumsy air of a trained seal grappling with human emotions — struck me, and I realized for the first time that he probably loved Melissa as much as I did. I pitied his ugliness, and the blank pained incomprehension with which he faced emotions so new to him as jealousy, the deprivation of a cherished mistress.

• From Wild (2012)

  Moments later, he did, sitting on the bench of Ed’s picnic table, after we arrived at our camp and the men gathered around to introduce themselves. I watched as Tom carefully peeled off his filthy socks, clumps of worn-out moleskin and his own flesh coming off with them. His feet looked like mine: white as fish and pocked with bloody, oozing wounds overlaid with flaps of skin that had been rubbed away and now dangled, still painfully attached to the patches of flesh that had yet to die a slow, PCT-induced death. I took off my pack and unzipped a pocket to remove my first aid kit. “Have you ever tried these?” I asked Tom, holding out a sheet of 2nd Skin—thankfully, I had packed more into my resupply box. “These have saved me,” I explained. “I don’t know if I could go on without them, actually.” Tom only looked up at me in despair and nodded without elaborating. I set a couple of sheets of 2nd Skin beside him on the bench. “You’re welcome to these, if you’d like,” I said. Seeing them in their translucent blue wrappers brought to mind the condom in my back pocket. I wondered if Tom had packed any; if Doug had; if my bringing them had been such a dumb idea after all. Being in Tom and Doug’s presence made it seem slightly less so. “We thought we’d all go up to Grumpie’s at six,” Ed said, looking at his watch. “We’ve got a couple hours. I’ll drive us all up in my truck.” He looked at Tom and Doug. “Meanwhile, I’d be happy to get you boys a snack.” The men sat at the picnic table, eating Ed’s potato chips and cold baked beans, talking about why they chose the pack they chose and the pros and cons of each. Someone brought out a deck of cards, and a game of poker started up. Greg paged through his guidebook at the end of the table near me, where I stood beside my pack, still marveling at its transformation. Pockets that had been bursting full now had tiny cushions of room. “You’re practically a Jardi-Nazi now,” said Albert, in a teasing tone, seeing me gazing at my pack. “Those are the disciples of Ray Jardine, if you don’t know. They take a highly particular view about pack weight.” “It’s the guy I was telling you about,” added Greg.

• From Wild (2012)

  “You got him! Thank you,” she called, smiling broadly, her eyes twinkling. With the exception of the small pack on her back, she looked like a woman out of a fairy tale, elfin, plump, and rosy-cheeked. A small boy walked behind her and a big brown dog followed him. “I let go for a moment and off he went,” the woman said, laughing and taking the llama’s rope from me. “I figured you’d catch him—we met your friends up the way and they said you’d be coming along. I’m Vera and this is my friend Kyle,” she said, pointing to the boy. “He’s five.” “Hello,” I said, gazing down at him. “I’m Cheryl.” He had an empty glass maple syrup bottle full of water slung over his shoulder on a thick string, which was odd to see—glass on the trail—and it was also odd to see him. It had been ages since I’d been in the company of a child. “Hello,” he replied, his seawater-gray eyes darting up to meet mine. “And you’ve already met Shooting Star,” said Vera, patting the llama’s neck. “You forgot Miriam,” Kyle said to Vera. He placed his small hand on the dog’s head. “This is Miriam.” “Hello, Miriam,” I said. “Are you having a good time hiking?” I asked Kyle. “We’re having a wonderful time,” he answered in a strangely formal tone, then went to splash his hands in the spring. I chatted with Vera while Kyle tossed blades of grass into the water and watched them float away. She told me she lived in a little town in central Oregon and backpacked as often as she could. Kyle and his mother had been in a horrible situation, she said in a low voice, living on the streets of Portland. Vera had met them only a few months before, through something they were all involved in called Basic Life Principles. Kyle’s mother had asked Vera to take Kyle on this hike while she got her life straightened out. “You promised not to tell people about my problems!” Kyle yelled vehemently, charging over to us. “I’m not telling about your problems,” Vera said amiably, though it wasn’t true. “Because I’ve got big problems and I don’t want to tell people I don’t know about them,” Kyle said, his eyes going to mine again. “A lot of people have big problems,” I said. “I’ve had big problems.” “What kinds of problems?” he asked. “Like problems with my dad,” I said uncertainly, wishing I hadn’t said it. I hadn’t spent enough time with children to be exactly sure how honest one should be with a five-year-old. “I didn’t really have a dad,” I explained in a mildly cheerful tone.

• From Tipping the Velvet (1998)

  He had meant it as a joke; they had none of them thought I really would forget them. Now, however, it must seem to them that I had.I closed the trunk with a bang; I had felt my eyes begin to smart. When Kitty came running to see what the noise was, I was weeping.‘Hey,’ she said, and put her arm about me. ‘What’s this? Not tears?’‘I thought of home,’ I said, between my sobs, ‘and wanted to go there, suddenly.’She touched my cheek, then put her fingers to her lips and licked them. ‘Pure brine,’ she said. ‘That’s why you miss it. I’m amazed you have managed to survive this long away from the sea, without shrivelling up like a bit of old seaweed. I should never have taken you away from Whitstable Bay. Miss Mermaid ...’I smiled, at last, to hear her use a name I thought she had forgotten; then I sighed. ‘I would like to go back,’ I said, ‘for a day or two ...’‘A day or two! I shall die without you!’ She laughed, and looked away; and I guessed that she was only partly joking, for in all the months that we had spent together, we had not been separated for so much as a night. I felt that old queer tightness in my breast, and quickly kissed her. She raised her hands to hold my face; but again she turned her gaze away.‘You must go,’ she said, ‘if it makes you sad like this. I shall manage.’‘I shall hate it too,’ I said. My tears had dried; it was I, now, who was doing the consoling. ‘And anyway, I shan’t be able to go until we close at Hoxton - and that is weeks away.’ She nodded, and looked thoughtful.It was weeks away, for Cinderella was not due to finish until Easter; in the middle of February, however, I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly at liberty. There was a fire at the Britannia. There were always fires in theatres in those days - halls were regularly being burned to the ground, then built up again, better than before, and no one thought anything of it; and the fire at the Brit had been small enough, and no one got injured.