Trust

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 How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  When tested under more natural circumstances, a chimp’s affective niche appears to be broader than many experiments suggest. For this insight, we have to thank the primatologist Tetsuro Matsuzawa at Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute. Matsuzawa has accomplished a truly impressive task. He has three generations of chimps who live in an outdoor compound built to look like a forest. Each day, chimps come to the lab by choice to do experiments. Sometimes they are rewarded, of course, but to emphasize this is to miss the point. These animals have a long-term, trusting relationship with Matsuzawa and the other human experimenters at the institute. A mother chimp will hold her baby on her lap and allow a human to run an experiment with her infant. For example, one study tested human and chimp infants as they learned concepts for mammals, furniture, and vehicles (using lifelike miniatures). This learning proceeded with no rewards as each infant was tested while sitting on his or her mother’s lap. The infant’s proximity to the mother, in relation to the trusting bond with the human experimenter, may have been enough to bring this situation into the chimp infant’s affective niche. Incredibly, the chimp and human infants formed concepts equally well under these conditions. Still, the human infants spontaneously manipulated the objects, like moving toy trucks around, making concept formation more likely, whereas the chimps did not.22 Matsuzawa’s troupe would be ideal for learning the limits of a chimp’s conceptual abilities. We could test infant chimps, whose conceptual systems are still malleable, in a natural environment on their mothers’ laps, perhaps conducting concept-building experiments like those in chapter 5. Would chimp infants be able to use a nonsense word like “toma” to group together objects or images that share little perceptual similarity, as human infants can? At present, however, we have no firm evidence that chimps can form goal-based concepts. They cannot imagine something completely novel, like a flying leopard, even though they and macaques have a network that’s analogous to the human default mode network (part of the interoceptive network). They cannot consider the same situation from different points of view. They can’t imagine a future that is different from the present. They also do not realize that goal-based information resides inside the heads of other creatures. That’s why chimps and other great apes most likely cannot create goal-based concepts. When rewarded, apes can learn a word, but they cannot spontaneously use the word to form a mental concept with a goal, like “Things That Taste Good with Termites.”23 Any concept can be goal-based—recall that “Fish” can be a pet or a dinner—but emotion concepts are only goal-based, so it seems very likely that chimps cannot learn emotion concepts like “Happiness” and “Anger.” Even if they can learn an emotion word like “angry,” it’s not clear that they can understand it or use it in a goal-based way, like categorizing another creature’s actions as anger.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  I would only spend one hour awake each time. I did the math: for the next four months, 120 days total, I would spend only forty hours in a conscious state. “Sweet dreams,” said Ping Xi. His face was wan, fleshy, something blurry about it—maybe it was the Vaseline on his chin—but his eyes were sharp, hooded, dark, clear, and although I understood that he was foolish, I trusted his resolve. He wouldn’t let me out of there. He was too conceited to fail to keep his word, and too ambitious to give up the opportunity to take advantage of my offer. A woman out of her mind, locked in an apartment. I shut the door in his face. I heard him slide in the key and lock it. I took the first of forty Infermiterol, went into the bedroom, fluffed the pillow, and lay down. • • • THREE NIGHTS LATER, I came to in pitch darkness, crawled off the mattress, turned on the lights, and went into the living room, expecting to find scratches at the door, evidence of a wild animal being held against her will. But I found nothing. Ping Xi hadn’t even crossed out the days on the calendar. My apartment was almost unrecognizable in its blankness, clean and empty. I could imagine some well-dressed real estate agent bursting in —a floral scarf fluttering like a sail from her upheld arm as she extolled the virtues of the unit to a newly married couple: “High ceilings, hardwood, all the original molding, and quiet, quiet. From those windows, you can even see the East River.” The agent’s suit was canary yellow. The couple, I imagined, were the ones whose photo I’d taken a few days earlier on the Esplanade. My memory had blundered into my imagination, but I knew what was what. I understood that three days had passed without me, and there was a long way ahead. I saw no trace of Ping Xi until I went to the kitchen: Pabst Blue Ribbon beer cans; tin foil smeared with the contents of what I could assume was a burrito; the New York Times from February 2. I wrote a list of things I desired on a Post-it and stuck it to the table: “Ginger ale, animal crackers, Pepto-Bismol.” And then, “Remove all garbage after each visit! Cross out the days!” I guessed Ping Xi had been over to take measurements or talk or sketch plans for some video project, but had made no real work yet. I just had that feeling. I pulled a slice of pizza from the fridge and ate it cold, with my eyes closed, swaying under the fluorescent light streaming down from overhead and reflecting back up off the kitchen floor. I should have bought a sunlamp. The thought occurred to me, then rang a bell that I’d left in a boring corner of my mind to remind myself to take my vitamins. I gulped grayish water from the tap.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Yet even as she obeyed this command, she could see what the room was. There were deep shelves cut into the walls all along three sides of it, and on these shelves on pallets, slept the many slaves, both male and female. But she could not see Prince Alexi. She did see a beautiful black-haired girl with very plump little buttocks who appeared quite deep asleep, and a blond-haired young man who appeared to be strapped on his back, though she could not tell, and others, all of whom were in a drowsy state, if not dozing. And before her were many tables in a row, and among them pots of steaming water from which came a delicious fragrance. "This is where you will be bathed and groomed always," said Lord Gregory in that same cold voice, "and when the Prince has had quite enough of sleeping with you as though you were his love, you shall sleep here too, and at any time when the Prince has no specific orders for you. Your groom is named Leon. He will care for you in all details, and to him you shall show the same respect and obedience you show to everyone." Beauty saw before her the slender figure of a young man, directly beside Lord Gregory. And as he drew nearer, Lord Gregory snapped his fingers and told her to show her respect. At once Beauty kissed his boots. "To the lowest scullery maid you owe this respect," Lord Gregory said, "and should I ever detect the slightest haughtiness in you, I shall punish you severely. I am not as...shall we say, impressed with you as is your Prince." "Yes, my Lord," Beauty answered respectfully, but she was angry. She felt she had shown no haughtiness. But Leon's voice calmed her immediately. "Come, my dear," he said, gesturing with a pat of his hand against his thigh for her to follow him, and it seemed Lord Gregory disappeared as Leon led her into a brick-lined alcove where a large wooden tub stood steaming. The scent of the herbs was very strong. Leon gestured for her to rise up again, and taking her hands, he lifted them over her head and told her to kneel in the tub. She climbed into it at once and felt the delicious warm water come almost up to her sex. Leon wrapped her hair in a circle on the back of her head and fixed it with several pins. She could see him clearly now. He was older than the Page boys, but just as fair, and his hazel eyes were very appealing in their gentleness. He told her to keep her hands behind her neck and that he was going to give her a thorough cleansing and that she must enjoy it.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  To be sure, toe-curlingly passionate sex can be an important part of marital intimacy, but it is a grave mistake to think it’s the essence of long-term intimacy. Like every other kind of hunger, sexual desire tends to be smothered by its satisfaction. Squire says that thinking of marriage as an enduring romance is unrealistic: “It’s not like you want to rip your clothes off with somebody that you’re sleeping with for the thousandth time. We should know going into it that the nature of love and sex changes from what it begins as, and that a great love affair doesn’t necessarily make a great marriage.”7 High-libido sex can just as easily be an expression of the utter absence of intimacy: consider the notorious one-night stand, the prostitute, basic physical release. Couples might find that the only route to preserving or rediscovering intensity reminiscent of their early days and nights requires confronting the open, uncertain sky together. They may find themselves having their most meaningful, intimate conversations if they dare to talk about the true nature of their feelings. We don’t mean to suggest these will be easy conversations. They won’t be. There are zones where it’s always going to be difficult for men and women to understand one another, and sexual desire is one of them. Many women will find it difficult to accept that men can so easily dissociate sexual pleasure from emotional intimacy, just as many men will struggle to understand why these two obviously separate (to them) issues are often so intertwined for many women. But with trust, we can strive to accept even what we cannot understand. One of the most important hopes we have for this book is to provoke the sorts of conversations that make it a bit easier for couples to make their way across this difficult emotional terrain together, with a deeper, less judgmental understanding of the ancient roots of these inconvenient feelings and a more informed, mature approach to dealing with them. Other than that, we really have little helpful advice to offer. Every relationship is a constantly changing world that requires specific attention. Other than warning you to be wary of those who offer one-size-fits-all relationship advice, our best counsel echoes that of Polonius to Laertes (in Hamlet): “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man [or woman].”

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  You build concepts for the smallest physical details, like fleeting bits of light and sound, and for incredibly complex ideas like “Impressionism” and “Things Not to Bring on Airplane Rides.” (The latter includes loaded guns, herds of elephants, and your boring Aunt Edna.) Your brain’s concepts are a model of the world that keeps you alive, serves to meet your body’s energy needs, and ultimately determines how well you propagate your genes. What is not inevitable, however, is that you have particular concepts. Sure, everyone may have some basic concepts as a function of their wiring, such as “Positive” versus “Negative,” but not every mind has distinct concepts for “Feeling” and “Thinking.” Any set of concepts that helps you regulate your body budget and stay alive, as far as your brain is concerned, will do just fine. The emotion concepts that you learned in childhood are just one salient example. Concepts are not just “in your head.” Suppose you and I are chatting over coffee, and when I make some witty remark, you smile and nod. If my brain predicted your smile and your nod, and the visual input to my brain confirms these movements, then my own prediction—say, to nod back at you— becomes my behavior. You in turn might have predicted my nod, along with a host of other possibilities, which causes a change in your sensory input, which interacts with your predictions. In other words, your neurons influence one another not only through direct connections but indirectly through the outside environment, in an interaction with me. We are performing a synchronized dance of prediction and action, regulating each other’s body budgets. This same synchrony is the basis of social connection and empathy; it makes people trust and like each other, and it’s crucial for parent-infant bonding. 15 Your personal experience, therefore, is actively constructed by your actions. You tweak the world, and the world tweaks you back. You are, in a very real sense, an architect of your environment as well as your experience. Your movements, and other people’s movements in turn, influence your own incoming sensory input. These incoming sensations, like any experience, can rewire your brain. So you’re not only an architect of your experience, you’re also an electrician. Concepts are vital to human survival, but we must also be careful with them because concepts open the door to essentialism. They encourage us to see things that aren’t present. Firestein opens Ignorance with an old proverb, “It is very difficult to find a black cat in a dark room, especially when there is no cat.” This statement beautifully sums up the search for essences. History has many examples of scientists who searched fruitlessly for an essence because they used the wrong concept to guide their hypotheses.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Affect has far-reaching consequences beyond simple feeling. Imagine you are a judge presiding over a prisoner’s parole case. You are listening to the inmate’s story, hearing about his behavior in prison, and you have a bad feeling. If you agree to parole, he could hurt someone else. Your hunch is that you should keep him locked up. So you deny parole. Your bad feeling, which is unpleasant affect, seems like evidence that your judgment was correct. But could your affect have misled you? This exact situation was the subject of a 2011 study of judges. Scientists in Israel found that judges were significantly more likely to deny parole to a prisoner if the hearing was just before lunchtime. The judges experienced their interoceptive sensations not as hunger but as evidence for their parole decision. Immediately after lunch, the judges began granting paroles with their customary frequency.43 When you experience affect without knowing the cause, you are more likely to treat affect as information about the world, rather than your experience of the world. The psychologist Gerald L. Clore has spent decades performing clever experiments to better understand how people make decisions every day based on gut feelings. This phenomenon is called affective realism, because we experience supposed facts about the world that are created in part by our feelings. For example, people report more happiness and life satisfaction on sunny days, but only when they are not explicitly asked about the weather. When you apply for a job or college or medical school, make sure you interview on a sunny day, because interviewers tend to rate applicants more negatively when it is rainy. And the next time a good friend snaps at you, remember affective realism. Maybe your friend is irritated with you, but perhaps she didn’t sleep well last night, or maybe it’s just lunchtime. The change in her body budget, which she’s experiencing as affect, might not have anything to do with you.44 Affect leads us to believe that objects and people in the world are inherently negative or positive.* Photographs of kittens are deemed pleasant. Photographs of rotting human corpses are deemed unpleasant. But these images do not have affective properties inside them. The phrase “an unpleasant image” is really shorthand for “an image that impacts my body budget, producing sensations that I experience as unpleasant.” In these moments of affective realism, we experience affect as a property of an object or event in the outside world, rather than as our own experience. “I feel bad, therefore you must have done something bad. You are a bad person.” In my lab, when we manipulate people’s affect without their knowing, it influences whether they experience a stranger as trustworthy, competent, attractive, or likable, and they even see the person’s face differently.45

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  To be sure, toe-curlingly passionate sex can be an important part of marital intimacy, but it is a grave mistake to think it’s the essence of long-term intimacy. Like every other kind of hunger, sexual desire tends to be smothered by its satisfaction. Squire says that thinking of marriage as an enduring romance is unrealistic: “It’s not like you want to rip your clothes off with somebody that you’re sleeping with for the thousandth time. We should know going into it that the nature of love and sex changes from what it begins as, and that a great love affair doesn’t necessarily make a great marriage.”7 High-libido sex can just as easily be an expression of the utter absence of intimacy: consider the notorious one-night stand, the prostitute, basic physical release. Couples might find that the only route to preserving or rediscovering intensity reminiscent of their early days and nights requires confronting the open, uncertain sky together. They may find themselves having their most meaningful, intimate conversations if they dare to talk about the true nature of their feelings. We don’t mean to suggest these will be easy conversations. They won’t be. There are zones where it’s always going to be difficult for men and women to understand one another, and sexual desire is one of them. Many women will find it difficult to accept that men can so easily dissociate sexual pleasure from emotional intimacy, just as many men will struggle to understand why these two obviously separate (to them) issues are often so intertwined for many women. But with trust, we can strive to accept even what we cannot understand. One of the most important hopes we have for this book is to provoke the sorts of conversations that make it a bit easier for couples to make their way across this difficult emotional terrain together, with a deeper, less judgmental understanding of the ancient roots of these inconvenient feelings and a more informed, mature approach to dealing with them. Other than that, we really have little helpful advice to offer. Every relationship is a constantly changing world that requires specific attention. Other than warning you to be wary of those who offer one-size-fits-all relationship advice, our best counsel echoes that of Polonius to Laertes (in Hamlet): “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man [or woman].”

• From Querelle (1953)

  Dede turned his head, signaling a last farewell from the comer of his eye, but his friend took this to be a wink of complicity at Dede's own mirror image. Dede had scarcely closed the door when he felt his muscles melt, his extremities soften as in the execution of a graceful bow. It was the same feeling he had experienced while playing around Mario's face : he had been overcome by a weakness, quickly restrained, that had awakened in him a longing-his neck already bending forward, languidly-to rest his head on Mario's thick thigh. "Dedet" He opened the door again. 56 I JEAN GENET "What is it?" Mario came toward him, looked him straight in the eye. He said, in a gentle whisper: "You know I trust you, don't you, buddy?" Surprise in his eyes, mouth half--open, Dede looked at the detective without answering, without seeming to understand. "Come back in for a minute . . ." Gently Mario drew him into the room and shut the door. "I know you'll do your best to find out what's going on. But, as I said, I trust you. Nobody must get to know that I am here in your room. All right?" The detective put his large, gold-beringed hand on the little informer's shoulder, then pulled him close to his chest: "We've been working together for quite some time now, eh, buddy? Now you're on your own. I count on you." He kissed him on the side of the head and let him go. This was only the second time since they had gotten to know one another that he had called the boy �'buddy." Mario considered this fairly low-class language, but it was effective in sealing their friendship. Dede took off do'Yn the stairs. Natural young tough that he was, it did not take him long to shake off his gloom. He stepped out into the street. Mario had listened to his familiar footfall-bouncy, sure and steady-as he descended the wooden staircase of the miserable little hotel. In two strides, for the room was small and Mario a big man, he was by the window. He pulled aside the thick tulle curtain, yellowed by smoke and dirt. Before him were the narrow street and the wall. It was dark. Tony's power was growing. He was turning into every shadow, every patch of the thickening fog into which Dede was now plunging. Querelle jumped ashore from the patrol boat. Other sailors came after him, Vic among them. They were coming from Le Vengeur. The boat would be there to take them back on board sllortly before eleven. The fog was very dense, so substantial that it seemed as if the day itself had taken on material form. 57 I QUERELLE

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  “Ah! here he is!” he cried, bringing his big hand down heavily on his epaulet. Vronsky looked round angrily, but his face lighted up immediately with his characteristic expression of genial and manly serenity. “That’s it, Alexey,” said the captain, in his loud baritone. “You must just eat a mouthful, now, and drink only one tiny glass.” “Oh, I’m not hungry.” “There go the inseparables,” Yashvin dropped, glancing sarcastically at the two officers who were at that instant leaving the room. And he bent his long legs, swathed in tight riding breeches, and sat down in the chair, too low for him, so that his knees were cramped up in a sharp angle. “Why didn’t you turn up at the Red Theater yesterday? Numerova wasn’t at all bad. Where were you?” “I was late at the Tverskoys’,” said Vronsky. “Ah!” responded Yashvin. Yashvin, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral principles, but of immoral principles, Yashvin was Vronsky’s greatest friend in the regiment. Vronsky liked him both for his exceptional physical strength, which he showed for the most part by being able to drink like a fish, and do without sleep without being in the slightest degree affected by it; and for his great strength of character, which he showed in his relations with his comrades and superior officers, commanding both fear and respect, and also at cards, when he would play for tens of thousands and however much he might have drunk, always with such skill and decision that he was reckoned the best player in the English Club. Vronsky respected and liked Yashvin particularly because he felt Yashvin liked him, not for his name and his money, but for himself. And of all men he was the only one with whom Vronsky would have liked to speak of his love. He felt that Yashvin, in spite of his apparent contempt for every sort of feeling, was the only man who could, so he fancied, comprehend the intense passion which now filled his whole life. Moreover, he felt certain that Yashvin, as it was, took no delight in gossip and scandal, and interpreted his feeling rightly, that is to say, knew and believed that this passion was not a jest, not a pastime, but something more serious and important. Vronsky had never spoken to him of his passion, but he was aware that he knew all about it, and that he put the right interpretation on it, and he was glad to see that in his eyes. “Ah! yes,” he said, to the announcement that Vronsky had been at the Tverskoys’; and his black eyes shining, he plucked at his left mustache, and began twisting it into his mouth, a bad habit he had. “Well, and what did you do yesterday? Win anything?” asked Vronsky. “Eight thousand. But three don’t count; he won’t pay up.”

• From Querelle (1953)

  56 I JEAN GENET "What is it?" Mario came toward him, looked him straight in the eye. He said, in a gentle whisper: "You know I trust you, don't you, buddy?" Surprise in his eyes, mouth half--open, Dede looked at the detective without answering, without seeming to understand. "Come back in for a minute . . ." Gently Mario drew him into the room and shut the door. "I know you'll do your best to find out what's going on. But, as I said, I trust you. Nobody must get to know that I am here in your room. All right?" The detective put his large, gold-beringed hand on the little informer's shoulder, then pulled him close to his chest: "We've been working together for quite some time now, eh, buddy? Now you're on your own. I count on you." He kissed him on the side of the head and let him go. This was only the second time since they had gotten to know one anot her that he had called the boy �'buddy." Mario considered this fairly low-class language, but it was effective in sealing their friendship. Dede took off do'Yn the stairs. Natural young tough that he was, it did not take him long to shake off his gloom. He stepped out into the street. Mario had listened to his familiar footfall-bouncy, sure and steady-as he descended the wooden staircase of the miserable little hotel. In two strides, for the room was small and Mario a big man, he was by the window. He pulled aside the thick tulle curtain, yellowed by smoke and dirt. Before him were the narrow street and the wall. It was dark. Tony's power was growing. He was turning into every shadow, every patch of the thickening fog into which Dede was now plunging. Querelle jumped ashore from the patrol boat. Other sailors came after him, Vic among them. They were coming from Le Vengeur. The boat would be there to take them back on board sllortly before eleven. The fog was very dense, so substantial that it seemed as if the day itself had taken on material form.

• From Querelle (1953)

  Querelle had absolute confidence in his star. That star owed its existence to the very confidence the sailor had in it-it was, in a sense, the point at which his confidence pierced his dark night : his confidence in, exactly, nothing but his own confidence; for the star to retain its greatness and its brilliance, that is to say, its efficacy, Querelle had to retain his confidence in it-which was his belief in himself-and first of all, his smile, so that not even the lightest cloud could come behveen his star and him, so that its rays did not lose any of their energy, so that not even the most vaporous little \visp of doubt could ever tam�sh his star. He remained suspended from· it while recreating it every second of his life. Thus it afforded him effective protection. The thought of seeing it snuffed out created a kind of vertigo in Querelle. He lived at top speed. His attention, always directed toward the nourishment of his star, forced him to a precision of movements that a softer life would not have called forth in him (nor would it have been necessary there) . Always alert, he saw all obstacles more clearly and instantly knew what action to take to surmount them. Only when he was exhausted, if he ever was, fear could take hold of him. His certainty that he had a star arose out of a complex of circumstances (what we call good luck ) , equally random as it was structured, and in such a beautiful, rose-windowlike way, . 238 I JEAN GENET that it is tempting to look fpr some metaphysical reason for it. Long before he had enlisted in the Navy Querelle had heard the song called "The Star of Love." All the sailors have a star Protecting them in Heaven above. When nothing hides it from their sight Ill·luck has no power over them. On drunken nights the dock workers would have one of their good voices perform it. The man in question would play hard to get, would ask for drinks, but would then get to his feet and up onto the table and stand there, surrounded by his mates, and let the words of the dream flow out of his gap-toothed mouth to enchant them : It is you, Nina, I have chosen From among all the other stars of the night And you are, without knowing it The Star of my life . . . Then a bloody nocturnal tragedy would unroll, the somber story of the shipwreck of a brightly·lit ship, symbolizing the shipwreck of love. The dock workers, the fishermen, and the sailors would applaud. Leaning on one elbow against the zinctopped bar, his legs crossed, Querelle would hardly look at them. He did not envy them their muscles or their pleasures.

• From Querelle (1953)

  tss I JEAN GENET raising his head, he whistled the same refrain again, even more quietly than before. The fog was too dense for him to be able to see Roger. · "G"l . th ? Th" . R " 1 , IS at you . . . . 1s IS oger. "Come on down. I have to talk to you." With infinite c3:re Roger shut the window again. Mter a few moments he opened the front door, barefoot, clad only in a shirt. Gil entered without making the least bit of sound. "Better talk very quietly, sometimes the old lady can't sleep. And that happens to Paulette, too." "You got anything to eat?" They were standing in the main room where the mother slept, and they could hear her breathing. In the dark, Roger squeezed Gil's hand and whispered: "St ay right there, I'll go see." Very gently he slid open the lid of the bread bin and came back with a piece of bread. Groping for Gil's hand, he put the bread in it . Gil was standing motionless in the middle of the room. , "Listen, Roger, can you come and see me tomorrow?" "Where?" Their words were carried on the lightest of breaths, circulat ing from one mouth to the other. "In the old naval penitentiary. I'm hiding out there. Use the gate on the Arsenal side. I'll expect you in the evening. But don't let anybody see you." "Sure, you can count on me, Gil." "You've had no trouble? Did the cops come and talk to you?" "Ye ah, but I didn't tell them anything." Roger came closer. He grabbed hold of Gil's arms and whispered: "I swear, I'll be there." The little_ mason pressed the boy close to him, and Roger's

• From Querelle (1953)

  Up on the second floor a window opened without a sound. Roger's voice floated down in a whisper : "Gil." Very cautiously, Gil moved closer. At the foot of the wall, tss I JEAN GENET raising his head, he whistled the same refrain again, even more quietly than before. The fog was too dense for him to be able to · see Roger. "G"l 1 , . IS th ? at you . . . . Th" 1s . IS R " oger. "Come on down. I have to talk to you." With infinite c3:re Roger shut the window again. Mter a few moments he opened the front door, barefoot, clad only in a shirt. Gil entered without making the least bit of sound. "Better talk very quietly, sometimes the old lady can't sleep. And that happens to Paulette, too." "You got anything to eat?" They were standing in the main room where the mother slept, and they could hear her breathing. In the dark, Roger squeezed Gil's hand and whispered: "Stay right there, I'll go see." Very gently he slid open the lid of the bread bin and came back with a piece of bread. Groping for Gil's hand, he put the bread in it. Gil was standing motionless in the middle of the room. , "Listen, Roger, can you come and see me tomorrow?" "Where?" Their words were carried on the lightest of breaths, circulating from one mouth to the other. "In the old naval penitentiary. I'm hiding out there. Use the gate on the Arsenal side. I'll expect you in the evening. But don't let anybody see you." "Sure, you can count on me, Gil." "You've had no trouble? Did the cops come and talk to you?" "Yeah, but I didn't tell them anything." Roger came closer. He grabbed hold of Gil's arms and whispered : "I swear, I'll be there." The little_ mason pressed the boy close to him, and Roger's 159 I QUERELLE breath on his eyes excited him as much as if he had been kissed on cheek or mouth. He said : "See you tomorrow then." Roger opened the street door with the same prudence as before. Gil went out. On the doorstep he held on to Roger and after a second's hesitation asked : "He croaked?" "I'll tell you all about it tomorrow." Their hands separated in the dark, and Gil slunk back to the penitentiary, all the while chewing on the chunk of bread.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  But by the time I came home from India, communal travel had come to seem natural to me. I had learned that being isolated in a car was not always or even usually the most rewarding way to travel: I would miss talking to fellow travelers and looking out the window. How could I enjoy getting there when I couldn’t pay attention? I stopped making excuses for being the rare American who didn’t want to own a car. I even stopped citing environmental excuses, or explaining that Jack Kerouac didn’t drive either. As he said, he didn’t “know how to drive, just typewrite.” I did sometimes quote public opinion polls that rated New Yorkers as the happiest of Americans. Why? Because in the nondriving capital of the nation, we actually see each other in the street instead of being isolated in speeding tin cans. But the truth is, I didn’t decide on not driving. It decided on me. Now when I’m asked with condescension why I don’t drive—and I am still asked—I just say: Because adventure starts the moment I leave my door. I.I am in a taxi on my way with a friend to JFK, an airport named after a president who was assassinated only six years before. Our older driver is like a rough trade character from a Tennessee Williams play—complete with an undershirt revealing tattoos, and an old Marine Corps photo stuck in the frame of his hack license. Clearly, this is his taxi and his world. My friend and I are acting a lot like lovers, which we are. We are also hyperaware that the driver is looking at us in the rearview mirror. That’s because, while we waited with our luggage in a darkening street, a low-slung car full of white teenagers sped by, leaving behind in the evening air the lethal word “Nigger!” Now I can feel us struggling to forget that surreal attack and stay ourselves. When we reach the airport, the driver slides open the divider between the front and back seat. Both my friend and I grow tense. I always think that talking into that opening makes me feel as if I’m ordering French fries, but this time, I am grateful for the barrier. We have no idea what the driver thinks of us. The driver thrusts something through the opening. It turns out to be an old battered photo of a young man in a suit, standing with his arm around a plump and smiling young woman who is clutching her purse with both hands. “That’s me and my wife when we got married,” he says. “Except for when I was in Korea, we haven’t spent a night apart for forty years. She’s my best friend, my sweetheart—but believe me, we weren’t supposed to get married. Her family is Jewish from Poland, mine is Sicilian Catholic—they wouldn’t even speak to each other until after their first grandchild was born.

• From My Life on the Road (2015)

  I learn that there are several kinds of drastic nerve blocks that could diminish her pain and leave her mind clear. But such procedures can be done only in a hospital. Wilma’s caregiving team has a conference with Dr. Grim, who says a local ambulance could take her to and from the hospital—more than two hours or so each way. We talk to Wilma. She thinks about it. The ambulance comes and parks in the yard just in case. She decides she might die in transit, or become too hooked to tubes to leave the hospital, and she wants to be at home in Indian Country. She thanks us for giving her a choice. To me, she says with some of her old humor, “You’re an organizer to the end.” It also reminds me of an organizing principle: Anybody who is experiencing something is more expert in it than the experts. From that moment on, I accept Wilma’s wisdom. Seeing that I need a task, Wilma’s daughters assign me the duty of making sure each visitor’s contribution is recorded on a list in the kitchen. I write names down next to rhubarb and peach pies, vats of sweet iced tea, and trays of cornbread. A high school student carries in crates of bottled water, and a silent man in overalls mows the lawn just because it needs it. Wilma’s family wants to be able to thank each person, hence the list. Once again the individual honors the community, and vice versa. I finally understand why Winterhawk, Charlie’s son by an earlier marriage, turned down a scholarship to Dartmouth and stayed here instead. It was not just land that brought Wilma home; it was also community. At the long kitchen table, knowing Wilma creates a bond among us, and strangers talk. The husband of her dear friend who died in the car crash has been here for days, and explains that Wilma helped to raise their daughter. Gail Small, Wilma’s friend and one of the activists she admires and profiled in her book Every Day Is a Good Day, has come all the way from the Northern Cheyenne Nation in Montana. There, Gail has waged a lifetime battle to keep extractive and exploitive energy companies from destroying the land, and to keep religious schools from abusing the next generation. As she says, “Children were sexually molested by priests and nuns, then came home to spread the cancer themselves.” She started not only an environmental group called Native Action, but also a high school on the reservation. Oren Lyons has come from his home in upstate New York, the headquarters of the governing body of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy, or Haudenosaunee.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  And I thereon: “The deep things which grant me here the largess to appear before me, are from the eyes of them below so hidden that their existence is there only in belief, whereon is built the lofty hope; and so of substance it embraceth the intention;8 and from this belief needs must we syllogize without further sight; therefore it includes the intention of argument.” Then heard I: “If all that is acquired down below by teaching were so understood, there were no room left for the wit of sophist.” Thus was breathed forth from that enkindled love; then did it add: “Right well hath now been traversed this coin’s alloy and weight; but tell me if thou hast it in thy purse.” Whereupon I: “Yea, so bright and round I have it that for me is no perhaps in its impression.” Then issued from the deep light that was glowing there: “This dear gem on which all virtue is up-budt, whence came it to thee?” And I: “The ample shower of the Holy Spirit which is poured over the old and over the new parchments, is syllogism that hath brought it to so sharp conclusion for me, that, compared to it, all demonstration seemeth blunt to me.” Then heard I: “That old and that new proposition which bringeth thee to such conclusion,9 wherefore dost hold it for divine discourse?” And I: “The proof which doth unfold the truth to me lieth in the works that followed, for which nature ne’er heated iron yet, nor hammered anvil.” The answer came to me: “Say, who assureth thee that these works were? The very script that would attest itself, no other, sweareth it to thee.” “If the world turned to Christianity,” I said, “without miracles, this one is such that the others are not the hundredth of it; for thou didst enter poor and hungry upon the battlefield to sow the good plant which was erst a vine, but now has grown a thorn.” This ended, the high holy court made God we praise ring through the spheres, in melody such as up there is sung. And that baron who so from branch to branch, examining, had drawn me now, that we were nigh unto the utmost leaves, began again: “The grace which holdeth amorous converse with thy mind hath oped thy mouth till now as it behoved to open; so that I sanction that which forth emerged; but now behoveth thee to utter what it is thou dost believe, and whence it offered it to thy believing.” “O holy father, thou spirit who now seest that which of old thou didst so believe that thou didst overcome more youthful feet drawing anigh the sepulchre,”10 I began, “thou wouldst have me here make plain the form of my eager belief, and dost also ask the cause of it; whereto I answer: I believe in one God, sole and eternal, who moveth all the heaven, himself unmoved, with love and with desire.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  The more time I spent with Walter, the more I was persuaded that he was a kind, decent man with a generous nature. He freely acknowledged that he’d made poor decisions, particularly where women were concerned. By all accounts—from friends, family, and associates like Sam Crook—Walter generally tried to do the right thing. I never regarded our time together as wasted or unproductive. In all death penalty cases, spending time with clients is important. Developing the trust of clients is not only necessary to manage the complexities of the litigation and deal with the stress of a potential execution; it’s also key to effective advocacy. A client’s life often depends on his lawyer’s ability to create a mitigation narrative that contextualizes his poor decisions or violent behavior. Uncovering things about someone’s background that no one has previously discovered—things that might be hard to discuss but are critically important—requires trust. Getting someone to acknowledge he has been the victim of child sexual abuse, neglect, or abandonment won’t happen without the kind of comfort that takes hours and multiple visits to develop. Talking about sports, TV, popular culture, or anything else the client wants to discuss is absolutely appropriate to building a relationship that makes effective work possible. But it also creates genuine connections with clients. And that’s certainly what happened with Walter. — Shortly after my first trip to see Walter’s family, I received a call from a young man named Darnell Houston who told me that he could prove that Walter was innocent. His voice shook with nerves but he was determined to speak to me. He didn’t want to talk on the phone, so I drove down to meet with him one afternoon. He lived in a rural part of Monroe County on farmland that his family had worked since the time of slavery. Darnell was a sincere young man, and I could tell he’d been debating for a while whether to contact me. When I arrived at his home, he walked out to greet me. He was a young black man in his twenties who had joined the “Jheri curl” craze. I had already noticed that the popular process of chemically treating black hair to make it looser and easier to style had come to Monroeville; I’d seen several black men, young and old, sporting the look with pride. The cheerful bounce of Darnell’s hair contrasted with his worried demeanor. As soon as we sat down, he got right to business. “Mr. Stevenson,” he began. “I can prove that Walter McMillian is innocent.” “Really?” “Bill Hooks is lying. I didn’t know he was even involved in that case until they told me he was part of how they put Walter McMillian on death row. First, I didn’t believe Bill could have been part of this, but then I found out that he testified that he drove by that cleaners on the day that girl was killed, and that’s a lie.” “How do you know?”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  But by that virtue through which I move my steps on such a wild way, give us some one of thine whom we may follow, that he may show us where the ford is, and carry over him upon his back, for he is not a spirit to go through the air.” Chiron bent round on his right breast, and said to Nessus: “Turn, and guide them then; and if another troop encounter you, keep it off.” We moved onwards with our trusty guide, along the border of the purple boiling, wherein the boiled were making loud shrieks. I saw people down in it even to the eyebrows; and the great Centaur said: “These are tyrants who took to blood and plunder. Here they lament their merciless offences; here is Alexander; 9 and fierce Dionysius, 10 who made Sicily have years of woe;

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  What you watching? Tell me, what you watching?” He had frightened me, which he could see—it made him laugh. I smiled to show him I knew how foolish I was being. “I’m just here to—” “Read?” he demanded, taking my book away and shutting it. “Shi-i-i …” he hissed again, steam running out before the t. “You here to meet someone, boy?” He’d disengaged himself and turned to stare at me. Although his eyes were serious, militantly serious, the creasing of the wrinkles beside them suggested imminent comedy. “No,” I said, quite audibly. He handed the book back to me. “I’m here because I want to run away from my father’s house,” I said. “I thought I might find someone to go with me.” “Whar you planning to run to?” “New York.” There was something so cold and firm and well-spoken about me—the clipped tones of a businessman defeating the farmer’s hoaxing yarn—that the man dropped his chin into his palm and thought. “What’s today?” he asked at last. “Saturday.” “I myself taking the Greyhound to New Yawk Tuesday mawning,” he said. “Wanna go?” “Sure.” He told me that if I’d bring him forty dollars on Monday evening he’d buy me my ticket. He asked me where I lived and I told him; his willingness to help me made me trust him. Without ever explicitly being taught such things, I’d learned by studying my father that at certain crucial moments—an emergency, an opportunity—one must act first and think later. One must suppress minor inner objections and put off feelings of cowardice or confusion and turn oneself into a simple instrument of action. I’d seen my father become calm when he’d taken Blanche’s daughter to the hospital. I’d also watched him feel his way blindly with nods, smiles and monosyllables toward the shadowy opening of a hugely promising but still vague business deal. And with women he was ever alert to adventure: the gauzy transit of a laugh across his path, a minor whirlpool in the sluggish flow of talk, the faintest whiff of seduction.… I, too, wanted to be a man of the world and dared not question my new friend too closely. For instance, I knew a train ticket could be bought at the last moment, even on board, but I was willing to assume either that a bus ticket had to be secured in advance or that at least he thought it did.

• From Martin Luther (2016)

  An early portrait of 1509 shows Spalatin with delec- table curls, dressed in a simple grey gown with a black lining which combines academic reserve with courtly display. A woodcut from 1515 depicts a serious young man in sober garb, meditating on the Cross. But Spalatin was not a courtier by birth. His father was a tanner, and he came from Spalt near Nuremberg. One of the ‘new men’, he had risen through education. He joined the court but knew that, as a - commoner, he was not an aristocrat’s equal; there was also specula- tion that he may have been illegitimate. While he was a trusted servant and important advisor — and on occasion intimate enough to be present when the Elector did his toilette before dinner — he was not invited to join the table afterwards.* Spalatin seems to have had a sure touch for negotiation and manoeuvre, a grasp of the possible and a sense of realism which Luther lacked. Like Luther he was educated in Greek as well as Latin, and he became part of the humanist circles around Conrad Mutian and Nikolaus Marschalk at the University of Erfurt. He did not possess Luther’s abrasive self-confidence, and was a poor speaker. But the two men formed a hugely creative partnership. Spalatin bought books for the university library and supported university reforms that brought in biblical studies and those of the Church Fathers. Together they made a series of brilliant appointments, of whom Melanchthon was the star. Repeatedly Luther would recommend people to Spalatin, asking for small favours, pensions from Friedrich or seeking posts for them. Spalatin worked tirelessly in the service of the Elector, often late into the night; he nevertheless found time to translate Luther’s Latin works into German, and did so with a fine musical sense.? We have just Luther’s side of the friendship, because it is only his letters that have survived — carefully catalogued and reverentially THE DIET OF WORMS 175 34. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Georg Spalatin Honouring the Cross, 1515. annotated, often in Greek, by Spalatin.° As the sheer number of Luther’s letter indicates — over 400 — this was perhaps the central rela- tionship in his life in between 1518 and 1525: he wrote more letters to Spalatin than to anyone else, even though they saw each other regularly.