Yearning

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 Push (1996)

  I get me a room over on Convent Avenue from old light-skinned dude got one of those big old prewar apartments, renting out rooms. Tell me when his mother had the place she rent room to Marcus Garvey. My question is, did Marcus Garvey get heat? It's at rooming place I meet Rita Romero, who is in class, who tell me about school which is how I get in this book. the end, no the BEGINNING HARLEM BUTCH by Jermaine Hicks Why you wanna be a man? Why you wanna be a man man man why you wanna be a man? why you wanna be a man man man? Look it never occurred to me to dress like a man! For Chrissake, what the fuck is that? I was dressing like myself. Myself. I'm 7: "Hurry up! Get dressed or you'll be late for school!" my mother is shouting. The whole block can hear her for sure. She has a mouth like an express train. She has to be out the door by eight to make sure she's not late for the white woman she works for. My father is already gone by 6 a.m. Every morning. I look down from the top of the bunk beds to my brother's empty unmade bed. The sheet is a gray tangle twisting out underneath dingy blue poly blankets. His brown corduroy pants are red flags signalling something in my 7 year old soul. I jump out the top bunk, pick up the pants and put them on. That was seventeen years ago. They were not my pants but I felt they should be. I, how to describe a feeling so deep it's like a river? How can a river be wrong? "Take off those pants!" "No! " "Those are your brother's pants." "Git me some." "They're not lady like." "So what!" "It's wrong!" "Why?" How can a river be wrong a river that engorges my clitoris and fills me? Ms Rain, rivers, what makes rivers run? "Huh?" A river, what makes it go, run? "Well, I don't really know. I never studied rivers in college. I mean, I imagine some type of gravity, the riverbed's resistance to absorption; you know rainfall, water running down hill—" A river ever run wrong? "What?" Run wrong, a river ever run wrong? "Well, they overflow—flood—" she flailed. Yes, that was the word, flailed, flailed helplessly Ms. Rain did. "In 1811, the Mississippi flowed backwards due to an earthquake." If I didn't have a record I'd join the Navy, Be ON water, IN water all the time! (I could have passed my G.E.D. test months, no a year ago. Ms Rain is upset I won't take it.

• From Wild (2012)

  “But we didn’t pay,” I’d said to Vince in our second and final session together. The next time I saw him, he’d explain that he was leaving his position; he’d give me the name and number of another therapist. “After my parents divorced, I realized that my father’s absence from my life was, sadly, a good thing. There weren’t any more violent scenes,” I said. “I mean, imagine my life if I’d been raised by my father.” “Imagine your life if you’d had a father who loved you as a father should,” Vince countered. I tried to imagine such a thing, but my mind could not be forced to do it. I couldn’t break it down into a list. I couldn’t land on love or security, confidence or a sense of belonging. A father who loved you as a father should was greater than his parts. He was like the whirl of white on the YOU ARE HERE poster behind Vince’s head. He was one giant inexplicable thing that contained a million other things, and because I’d never had one, I feared I’d never find myself inside that great white swirl. “What about your stepfather?” Vince asked. He glanced at the notebook on his lap, reading words he’d scrawled, presumably about me. “Eddie. He detached too,” I said lightly, as if it were nothing to me at all, as if it were almost amusing. “It’s a long story,” I said in the direction of the clock that hung near the YOU ARE THERE poster. “And time’s almost up.” “Saved by the bell,” Vince said, and we laughed.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Morton —so quietly perfect a thing, yet the thing of all others that she must fly from, that she must forget; but she could not forget it in these surroundings; they reminded by contrast. Curious what Brockett had said that evening about putting the sea between herself and England. . . . In view of her own half- formed plan to do so, his words had come as a kind of echo of her thoughts; it was almost as though he had peeped through a secret keyhole into her mind, had been spying upon her trouble, By what right did this curious man spy upon her ~ this man with the soft, white hands of a woman, with the movements befitting those soft, white hands, yet so ill-befitting the rest of his body? By no right; and how much had the creature found out when his eye had been pressed to that secret keyhole? Clever — Brockett was fiendishly clever — all his whims and his foibles could not disguise it. His face gave him away, a hard, clever face with sharp eyes that were glued to other people’s keyholes. That was why Brockett wrote such fine plays, such cruel plays; he fed his genius on live flesh and blood. Carnivorous genius. Moloch, fed upon live flesh and blood! But she, Stephen, had tried to feed her inspiration upon herbage, the kind, green herbage of Morton. For a little while such food had sufficed, but now her talent had sickened, was dying perhaps—or had she too fed it on blood, her heart’s blood when she had written The Furrow? If so, her heart would not bleed any more — perhaps it could not — perhaps it was dry. A dry, withered thing; for she did not feel love these THE WELL OF LONELINESS 267 days when she thought of Angela Crossby — that must mean that her heart had died within her. A gruesome companion to have, a dead heart. Angela Crossby — and yet there were times when she longed intensely to see this woman, to hear her speak, to stretch out her arms and clasp them around the woman’s body — not gently, not patiently as in the past, but roughly, brutally even. Beastly — it was beastly! She felt degraded. She had no love to offer Angela Crossby, not now, only something that lay like a stain on the beauty of what had once been love. Even this memory was marred and defiled, by herself even more than by Angela Crossby.

• From Another Country (1962)

  But was it music in the air, or trouble in the air? He began whistling another song: Trouble in mind, I’m blue, But I won’t be blue always, ’Cause the sun’s going to shine In my back door someday. Why back door? And the sky now seemed to descend, no longer phosphorescent with possibilities, but rigid with the mineral of choices, heavy as the weight of the finite earth, onto his chest. He was being pressed: I’m pressing on, Ida sometimes sang, the upward way! What in the world did these songs mean to her? For he knew that she often sang them in order to flaunt before him privacies which he could never hope to penetrate and to convey accusations which he could never hope to decipher, much less deny. And yet, if he could enter this secret place, he would, by that act, be released forever from the power of her accusations. His presence in this strangest and grimmest of sanctuaries would prove his right to be there; in the same way that the prince, having outwitted all the dangers and slaughtered the lion, is ushered into the presence of his bride, the princess. I loves you, Porgy, don’t let him take me. Don’t let him handle me with his hot hands. To whom, to whom, did she sing this song? The blues fell down this morning. The blues my baby gave to me. Water trickled past his ear, onto his wrist. He did not move and the slow tears rolled from the corners of his eyes. “You’re groovy, too,” he heard Belle say. “For real?” “For real.” “Let’s try to make it to Spain. Let’s really try.” “I’ll get dressed up Monday, uptown style”—she giggled—“and I’ll get a job as receptionist somewhere. I hate it, it’s such a drag, but, that way, we can get away from here.” “Do that, baby. And I’ll get a job, too, I promise.” “You don’t have to promise.” “But I do.” He heard their kiss, it seemed light and loving and dry, and he envied them their deadly and unshakable innocence. “Let’s ball.” “Not here. Let’s go downstairs.” He heard Lorenzo’s laugh. “What’s the matter, you shy?” “No.” He heard a giggle and a whisper. “Let’s go down.” “They’re stoned out of their heads, they don’t care.” She giggled again. “Look at them.” He closed his eyes. He felt another weight on his chest, a hand, and he looked into Harold’s face. Terribly weary and lined and pale, and his hair was damp and curled on his forehead. And yet, beneath this spectacular fatigue, it was the face of a very young boy which stared at him. “How’re you doing?” “Great.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  They would sometimes go far afield in the car, and one night they stopped at an inn and had dinner — Angela ringing up her husband with the old and now threadbare excuse of a breakdown. They dined in a quiet little room by themselves; the scents of the garden came in through the window — warm, significant scents, for now it was May and many flowers multiplied in that garden. Never before had they done such a thing as this, they had never dined all alone at a wayside inn miles away from their homes, just they two, and Stephen stretched out her hand and covered Angela’s where it rested very white and still on the table. And Stephen’s eyes held an urgent question, for now it was May and the blood of youth leaps and strains with the sap in early summer. The air seemed breathless, since neither would speak, afraid of disturbing the thick, sweet silence — but Angela shook her head very slowly. Then they could not eat, for each was filled with the same and yet with a separate longing; so after a while they must get up and go, both conscious of a sense of painful frustration. They drove back on a road that was paved with moonlight, and presently Angela fell fast asleep like an unhappy child — she had taken her hat off and her head lay limply against Stephen’s shoulder. Seeing her thus, so helpless in sleep, Stephen felt strangely moved, and she drove very slowly, fearful of waking the woman who slept like a child with her fair head against her shoulder. The car climbed the steep hill from Ledbury town, and presently there lay the wide Wye valley whose beauty had sad- dened a queer little girl long before she had learnt the pain of all beauty. And now the valley was bathed in whiteness, while here 216 THE WELL OF LONELINESS and there gleamed a roof or a window, but whitely, as though all the good valley folk had extinguished their lamps and retired to their couches. Far away, like dark clouds coming up out of Wales, rose range upon range of the old Black Mountains, with the tip of Gadrfawr peering over the others, and the ridge of Pen-cerrig- calch sharp against the skyline. A little wind ruffled the bracken on the hillsides, and Angela’s hair blew across her closed eyes so that she stirred and sighed in her sleep. Stephen bent down and began to soothe her.

• From Another Country (1962)

  “Let’s have a drink,” he said, and took the bottle from her bag. “How much do I owe you?” She told him, and he paid her, shyly, with some crumpled bills which were lying on the mantelpiece, next to his keys. He moved into the kitchen, tearing the wrapper off the bottle. She watched him as he found glasses and ice. His kitchen was a mess and she longed to offer to clean it up for him, but she did not dare, not yet. She moved heavily to the bed and sat down on the edge of it and picked up the play. “I can’t tell if that play’s any good or not. I can’t tell any more, anyway.” Whenever he was unsure, his Southern accent became more noticeable. “Which character are you playing?” “Oh, I’m playing one of the bad cats, the one they call Malcolm.” She looked at the cast of characters and found that Malcolm was the son of Egan. The script was heavily underlined and there were long notes in the margin. One of these notes read, On this, maybe remember what you know of Yves, and she looked at the underlined sentence, No, I don’t want no damn aspirin. Man got a headache, why don’t you let him find out what kind of headache it is? Eric called, “Do you want water, or just ice?” “A little water, thanks.” He came back into the room and handed her her highball. “I play the last male member of a big, rich American family. They got rich by all kinds of swindles and by shooting down people, and all that jazz. But I can’t do that by the time I’m a man because it’s all been done and they’ve changed the laws. So I get to be a big labor leader instead, and my Dad tries to get me railroaded to jail as a Communist. It gives us a couple of nice scenes. The point is, there’s not a pin to choose between us.” He grinned. “It’ll probably be a big, fat flop.” “Well, just make sure we have tickets to opening night.” A brief silence fell, and her we resounded more insistently than the drums of Shostakovich. “Oh, I’m going to try to pack the house with my friends,” he said, “never fear.” Silence fell again. He sat down on the bed beside her, and looked at her. She looked down. “You make me feel very strange,” he said. “You make me feel things I didn’t think I’d ever feel again.” “What do I make you feel?” she asked. And then, “You do the same for me.” She sensed that he was taking the initiative for her sake. He leaned forward and put one hand on her hand; then rose, and walked away from her, leaving her alone on the bed. “What about Richard?”

• From Wild (2012)

  "Fox," I whispered in the gentlest possible voice I could, as if by naming him I could both defend myself against him and also draw him nearer. He raised his fine-boned red head, but remained standing as he'd been and studied me for several seconds more before turning away without alarm to continue walking across the clearing and into the trees. "Come back," I called lightly, and then suddenly shouted, "MOM! MOM! MOM! MOM!" I didn't know the word was going to come out of my mouth until it did. And then, just as suddenly, I went silent, spent.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are mutable, but in Him are they firmly stablished; else would they pass, and pass away. In Him then be they beloved; and carry unto Him along with thee what souls thou canst, and say to them, “Him let us love, Him let us love: He made these, nor is He far off. For He did not make them, and so depart, but they are of Him, and in Him. See there He is, where truth is loved. He is within the very heart, yet hath the heart strayed from Him. Go back into your heart, ye transgressors, and cleave fast to Him that made you. Stand with Him, and ye shall stand fast. Rest in Him, and ye shall be at rest. Whither go ye in rough ways? Whither go ye? The good that you love is from Him; but it is good and pleasant through reference to Him, and justly shall it be embittered, because unjustly is any thing loved which is from Him, if He be forsaken for it. To what end then would ye still and still walk these difficult and toilsome ways? There is no rest, where ye seek it. Seek what ye seek; but it is not there where ye seek. Ye seek a blessed life in the land of death; it is not there. For how should there be a blessed life where life itself is not?

• From Another Country (1962)

  Then a faint smile touched his lips. “Okay. But I can’t walk far. I got to get back.” They began to walk. “I want to get out of this town,” Eric said, suddenly. “You and me both,” said LeRoy. “Maybe we can go North together,” Eric said, after a moment, “where do you think’s best? New York? or Chicago? or maybe San Francisco?” He had wanted to say Hollywood, because he had a dim notion of trying to become a movie star. But he could not really imagine LeRoy as a movie star, and he did not want to seem to want anything LeRoy could not have. “I can’t be thinking about leaving. I got my Ma and all them kids to worry about.” He looked at Eric and laughed, but it was not an entirely pleasant laugh. “Ain’t everybody’s old man runs a bank, you know.” He picked up a pebble and threw it at a tree. “Hell, my old man don’t give me no money. He certainly won’t give me any money to go North. He wants me to stay right here.” “He going to die one day, Eric, he going to have to leave it to somebody, now who you think it’s going to be? Me?” And he laughed again. “Well, I’m not going to hang around here the rest of my life, waiting for my papa to die. That’s certainly not much to look forward to.” And he tried to laugh, to match his tone to LeRoy’s. But he did not really understand LeRoy’s tone. What was wrong between them today? For it was no longer merely the world—there was something unspoken between them, something unspeakable, undone, and hideously desired. And yet, on that far-off, burning day, though this knowledge clamored in him and fell all around him, like the sun, and everything in him was aching and yearning for the act, he could not, to save his soul, have named it. It had yet to reach the threshold of his imagination; and it had no name, no name for him anyway, though for other people, so he had heard, it had dreadful names. It had only a shape and the shape was LeRoy and LeRoy contained the mystery which had him by the throat. And he put his arm around LeRoy’s shoulder and rubbed the top of his head against LeRoy’s chin. “Well, you got it to look forward to, whether you like it or not,” LeRoy said. He put one hand on Eric’s neck. “But I guess you know what I got to look forward to.”

• From Another Country (1962)

  I got to get back.” They began to walk. “I want to get out of this town,” Eric said, suddenly. “You and me both,” said LeRoy. “Maybe we can go North together,” Eric said, after a moment, “where do you think’s best? New York? or Chicago? or maybe San Francisco?” He had wanted to say Hollywood, because he had a dim notion of trying to become a movie star. But he could not really imagine LeRoy as a movie star, and he did not want to seem to want anything LeRoy could not have. “I can’t be thinking about leaving. I got my Ma and all them kids to worry about.” He looked at Eric and laughed, but it was not an entirely pleasant laugh. “Ain’t everybody’s old man runs a bank, you know.” He picked up a pebble and threw it at a tree. “Hell, my old man don’t give me no money. He certainly won’t give me any money to go North. He wants me to stay right here.” “He going to die one day, Eric, he going to have to leave it to somebody, now who you think it’s going to be? Me?” And he laughed again. “Well, I’m not going to hang around here the rest of my life, waiting for my papa to die. That’s certainly not much to look forward to.” And he tried to laugh, to match his tone to LeRoy’s. But he did not really understand LeRoy’s tone. What was wrong between them today? For it was no longer merely the world—there was something unspoken between them, something unspeakable, undone, and hideously desired. And yet, on that far-off, burning day, though this knowledge clamored in him and fell all around him, like the sun, and everything in him was aching and yearning for the act, he could not, to save his soul, have named it. It had yet to reach the threshold of his imagination; and it had no name, no name for him anyway, though for other people, so he had heard, it had dreadful names. It had only a shape and the shape was LeRoy and LeRoy contained the mystery which had him by the throat. And he put his arm around LeRoy’s shoulder and rubbed the top of his head against LeRoy’s chin. “Well, you got it to look forward to, whether you like it or not,” LeRoy said. He put one hand on Eric’s neck. “But I guess you know what I got to look forward to.” And Eric felt that he wished to say more, but did not know how. They walked on a few seconds in silence and LeRoy’s opportunity came.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  Therefore I fell among men proudly doting, exceeding carnal and prating, in whose mouths were the snares of the Devil, limed with the mixture of the syllables of Thy name, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, our Comforter. These names departed not out of their mouth, but so far forth as the sound only and the noise of the tongue, for the heart was void of truth. Yet they cried out “Truth, Truth,” and spake much thereof to me, yet it was not in them: but they spake falsehood, not of Thee only (who truly art Truth), but even of those elements of this world, Thy creatures. And I indeed ought to have passed by even philosophers who spake truth concerning them, for love of Thee, my Father, supremely good, Beauty of all things beautiful. O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did even then the marrow of my soul pant after Thee, when they often and diversely, and in many and huge books, echoed of Thee to me, though it was but an echo? And these were the dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee, they, instead of Thee, served up the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of Thine, but yet Thy works, not Thyself, no nor Thy first works. For Thy spiritual works are before these corporeal works, celestial though they be, and shining. But I hungered and thirsted not even after those first works of Thine, but after Thee Thyself, the Truth, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: yet they still set before me in those dishes, glittering fantasies, than which better were it to love this very sun (which is real to our sight at least), than those fantasies which by our eyes deceive our mind. Yet because I thought them to be Thee, I fed thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in them taste to me as Thou art; for Thou wast not these emptinesses, nor was I nourished by them, but exhausted rather. Food in sleep shows very like our food awake; yet are not those asleep nourished by it, for they are asleep. But those were not even any way like to Thee, as Thou hast now spoken to me; for those were corporeal fantasies, false bodies, than which these true bodies, celestial or terrestrial, which with our fleshly sight we behold, are far more certain: these things the beasts and birds discern as well as we, and they are more certain than when we fancy them. And again, we do with more certainty fancy them, than by them conjecture other vaster and infinite bodies which have no being. Such empty husks was I then fed on; and was not fed. But Thou, my soul’s Love, in looking for whom I fail, that I may become strong, art neither those bodies which we see, though in heaven; nor those which we see not there; for Thou hast created them, nor dost Thou account them among the chiefest of Thy works. How far then art Thou from those fantasies of mine, fantasies of bodies which altogether are not, than which the images of those bodies, which are, are far more certain, and more certain still the bodies themselves, which yet Thou art not; no, nor yet the soul, which is the life of the bodies. So then, better and more certain is the life of the bodies than the bodies. But Thou art the life of souls, the life of lives, having life in Thyself; and changest not, life of my soul.

• From Little Women (1868)

  "Did you believe that I should go with no farewell to those who haf been so heavenly kind to me?" he asked so reproachfully that she felt as if she had insulted him by the suggestion, and answered heartily... "No, I didn't. I knew you were busy about your own affairs, but we rather missed you, Father and Mother especially." "And you?" "I'm always glad to see you, sir." In her anxiety to keep her voice quite calm, Jo made it rather cool, and the frosty little monosyllable at the end seemed to chill the Professor, for his smile vanished, as he said gravely... "I thank you, and come one more time before I go." "You are going, then?" "I haf no longer any business here, it is done." "Successfully, I hope?" said Jo, for the bitterness of disappointment was in that short reply of his. "I ought to think so, for I haf a way opened to me by which I can make my bread and gif my Junglings much help." "Tell me, please! I like to know all about the—the boys," said Jo eagerly. "That is so kind, I gladly tell you. My friends find for me a place in a college, where I teach as at home, and earn enough to make the way smooth for Franz and Emil. For this I should be grateful, should I not?" "Indeed you should. How splendid it will be to have you doing what you like, and be able to see you often, and the boys!" cried Jo, clinging to the lads as an excuse for the satisfaction she could not help betraying. "Ah! But we shall not meet often, I fear, this place is at the West." "So far away!" and Jo left her skirts to their fate, as if it didn't matter now what became of her clothes or herself. Mr. Bhaer could read several languages, but he had not learned to read women yet. He flattered himself that he knew Jo pretty well, and was, therefore, much amazed by the contradictions of voice, face, and manner, which she showed him in rapid succession that day, for she was in half a dozen different moods in the course of half an hour. When she met him she looked surprised, though it was impossible to help suspecting that she had come for that express purpose. When he offered her his arm, she took it with a look that filled him with delight, but when he asked if she missed him, she gave such a chilly, formal reply that despair fell upon him. On learning his good fortune she almost clapped her hands. Was the joy all for the boys? Then on hearing his destination, she said, "So far away!" in a tone of despair that lifted him on to a pinnacle of hope, but the next minute she tumbled him down again by observing, like one entirely absorbed in the matter... "Here's the place for my errands.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  I never asked Limori how she came to be a psychic working in Vancouver or who her friends were before she became our leader. She didn’t reveal much about herself or her past, unless a story could be offered in the context of her path to becoming God’s right hand. Upon reflection, I can see that chatting about who she was and what her past looked like and what her dreams might have been before we met her would have brought her down to our level, and that was something she would have wanted to avoid. What she needed us to believe about her was that she was omniscient; sharing details of her childhood or non-spiritual experiences from her adult life would have dulled the lustre of the image she was constructing for us. There’s nothing more dangerous than a little bit of the truthSome of what Limori said was admirable and true. I think this was the most dangerous thing about her (and possibly about other gurus – I am grateful that my experience extends to only one). “Learn to meditate – it’s good for you.” “Be in your heart – try not to judge people.” These things are true and noble and right no matter who says them. The fact that my heart and mind and body resonated with the truth of some of what Limori said made it difficult for someone as young and confused as I was to separate the wheat from the chaff. I don’t know if that’s everyone’s experience of their involvement with a cult, but it was mine. Unfortunately, in order to follow someone like Limori one is not allowed to choose which pieces of the dogma to believe and which parts to dismiss; it’s an all-or-nothing deal. You’re either with us or against us. The parts of her doctrine and teaching that were true made me want the rest of what she said to be true as well. As I said in Chapter 1, it was my spiritual yearning and a desperation to find meaning in my life that led me to Limori. I now believe that spiritual yearning is so common in human beings that it is one of the primary reasons cults exist. We are all part of the divine; we were all created by the great creator, be that an old man on a throne of clouds with a flowing white beard or the universal force that quantum physics is getting close to being able to explain. Whatever it is, we are part of something, of that I am convinced, but our humanness, our bodies, which make us feel individual, and our thoughts, which separate us from each other, deceive us into believing that we are separate and different from the divine, the universe, God, the Force, call it what you will. But somewhere inside each of us our instinct knows this is not true. We are not separate.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  When my mother told me that she was learning to meditate I was shocked, not because it seemed wrong in any way, but because I had managed to belong to my family for a little more than two decades without the topic of spiritual matters ever being raised. And I mean ever. When I was growing up, our family didn’t go to church, but not because my parents were anti-religion. It just never seemed to come up. Now, though, my mother was using words like meditate and energy , and this was as surprising to me as if she had announced that she’d become a tattoo artist or was learning to play the didgeridoo. Sure, I knew that people did meditate, but until that moment my world had never collided with the spiritual one (orthodox or otherwise). She was searching for answers, I later realized, and given the atmosphere in Vancouver in those days she, and later I, was in the perfect place to conduct that search. Vancouver is a unique city at any time, given its beauty, location and mild climate; despite its big-city cosmopolitan elements, its sensibilities lean firmly toward the left and New Age. Greenpeace, with its unique and previously unheard-of brand of environmental activism, was born in a church meeting room at the corner of 49th and Oak in 1972. Before Live Aid or the Boomtown Rats, Bob Geldof was a music journalist for Vancouver’s free weekly newspaper, The Georgia Straight . The year 1970 saw the birth of Banyen Books & Sound, which would become one of North America’s most comprehensive bookstores, focusing on spirituality, healing arts and Earth wisdom. It still exists today. In short, there was a vibe of searching that seemed to linger in the very air. The feeling was that things could not continue the way they had been. It was the New Age and many in Vancouver wholeheartedly embraced the changes. My unsettled personal circumstances and emotional make-up left me vulnerable to influence by a charismatic leader at this time, especially given a cultural environment that encouraged freedom of exploration and thinking. Vancouver was (and perhaps still is) tilted more than slightly toward embracing the values of personal freedom and alternative spiritual exploration. Just ask the people who own the hydroponic stores around town. And naturally, as with any societal trend or vibe, there are those who will work toward change in positive ways (à la Greenpeace) and those who will notice the zeitgeist and use it only for their own personal end. By the end of the first night at the meditation circle, I was hooked on Limori and to the spiritual answers she was offering. Heck, I was hooked before she opened her mouth, such was the depth of my longing to find meaning and purpose in my life and my need to feel I belonged somewhere, anywhere. She had me at hello.

• From Cult: A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery (2013)

  Experts say that when we experience a period of great transition or upheaval we become vulnerable to cults and cult leaders. However, obviously not every person who experiences transition or enormous change in their life joins a cult. Why are some people vulnerable and others not? I can only use my own life as an example of this vulnerability. I was twenty-two years old, with no job, an incomplete degree in psychology, no home of my own and no friends, in a new city, with very little sense of who I was or who I should be. As with any circumstance in life, timing was everything. For me, joining a group that would turn out to be a cult required the perfect mix of ingredients, like a complicated soufflé. There was the sense of not knowing who I was, mixed in with a period of great physical upheaval, tossed together with a need for a community, a deep yearning for understanding of how life worked and a sincere desire to leave the world better than I found it. Now add a charismatic and stealthily manipulative authority figure, whose eccentricities were intriguing but not yet dangerous, someone not at the full strength of her power but close to the beginning of her journey as a guru, so her actions and words were not yet threatening or bizarre enough to repel. Slowly and carefully blend all these elements together, et voilà! A devoted disciple is born. 2Into the MysticalOne man’s magic is another man’s engineering. —Robert A. Heinlein T he inauspicious start of my relationship with Michael was the polar opposite of the dramatic way it would end ten years later. We met on my first night at the meditation circle. He and my mother had come to know each other in the group and so, as she and I chose our seats and the circle began to form, she introduced me to him. My mother was on my right side and Michael was on her right. As she introduced us Michael leaned around her to say hello and shake my hand. Later, he would say that as he leaned around and our eyes met, he heard a click in his head. I had no such inkling or intuition about what we would come to mean to one another. In fact, I don’t clearly remember this meeting at all, but he retold the story several times, years later, when we began to date. I do remember that he came over for dinner a few weeks after we met. My mother and Michael, in addition to knowing each other from the meditation circle, worked together at an environmental newspaper that Sheila and her husband, Warren, had just started up. My mother was the editor of the newspaper and one of the writers. Michael wrote articles for the publication, as well as providing business-related advice to Sheila and Warren.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  What innumerable toys, made by divers arts and manufactures, in our apparel, shoes, utensils and all sorts of works, in pictures also and divers images, and these far exceeding all necessary and moderate use and all pious meaning, have men added to tempt their own eyes withal; outwardly following what themselves make, inwardly forsaking Him by whom themselves were made, and destroying that which themselves have been made! But I, my God and my Glory, do hence also sing a hymn to Thee, and do consecrate praise to Him who consecrateth me, because those beautiful patterns which through men’s souls are conveyed into their cunning hands, come from that Beauty, which is above our souls, which my soul day and night sigheth after. But the framers and followers of the outward beauties derive thence the rule of judging of them, but not of using them. And He is there, though they perceive Him not, that so they might not wander, but keep their strength for Thee, and not scatter it abroad upon pleasurable weariness. And I, though I speak and see this, entangle my steps with these outward beauties; but Thou pluckest me out, O Lord, Thou pluckest me out; because Thy loving-kindness is before my eyes. For I am taken miserably, and Thou pluckest me out mercifully; sometimes not perceiving it, when I had but lightly lighted upon them; otherwhiles with pain, because I had stuck fast in them. To this is added another form of temptation more manifoldly dangerous. For besides that concupiscence of the flesh which consisteth in the delight of all senses and pleasures, wherein its slaves, who go far from Thee, waste and perish, the soul hath, through the same senses of the body, a certain vain and curious desire, veiled under the title of knowledge and learning, not of delighting in the flesh, but of making experiments through the flesh. The seat whereof being in the appetite of knowledge, and sight being the sense chiefly used for attaining knowledge, it is in Divine language called The lust of the eyes. For, to see, belongeth properly to the eyes; yet we use this word of the other senses also, when we employ them in seeking knowledge. For we do not say, hark how it flashes, or smell how it glows, or taste how it shines, or feel how it gleams; for all these are said to be seen. And yet we say not only, see how it shineth, which the eyes alone can perceive; but also, see how it soundeth, see how it smelleth, see how it tasteth, see how hard it is. And so the general experience of the senses, as was said, is called The lust of the eyes, because the office of seeing, wherein the eyes hold the prerogative, the other senses by way of similitude take to themselves, when they make search after any knowledge.

• From The Fermata (1994)

  I was driving in the slow lane. My window was open; the car was booming with air noise. My left (wristwatched) arm was outside; I was making my hand into a wing shape to see whether I could create lift, and making it dive and climb against the wind. A woman driving a small blue car appeared in the rear-view mirror. No expression is as impassive as a woman’s seen in a rear-view mirror: it has an impassiveness so impartial and comprehensive that it cries out to be surprised. She was going faster than I was and impassively began to pass me; I lost sight of her for a minute as she entered that place where passing cars don’t exist—a kind of Fold-effect of the rear- and side-view mirrors. I accelerated very slightly, so that when she did pass, it would take longer. I had only seen her face for an instant, in fact I had only had time to notice that she was a woman of twenty or so with lots of thickly wavy multihued fair hair driving alone, but my very sketchy simplistic sense of her windshielded face merged with my equally simplistic sense of the headlights of her unflashy blue car to turn her instantly into a well-developed character in my imagination. As she invisibly pulled closer to me in the fast lane and I heard her tires singing and sensed how close she was to me, the idea that she was soon going to pass me became swoonsomely powerful: the steering wheel seemed to become flexible and expand in widening ripples; I felt that I was a glowing lump of something melting on the fly. I could not believe that in a matter of thirty seconds or so this person was going to pull up next to me and that I would be able to look over at her; when she did I felt I would shout or weep.

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

  I was uncomfortably aware that I should reflect further on this strange ambiguity, but there was no chance of that during the publicity campaign. I had some sensitive interviews at the BBC, but the cheaper newspapers and journals had turned me into something called “a survivor.” These interviewers took it for granted that the convent had been a ghastly aberration and that I was now completely at home in secular life. Look, the Express pictures said, here she is in her own flat, taking a casserole out of the oven! There she is chatting like any other girl on the telephone, wearing dungarees, having a glass of wine in the pub! Woman’s Realm even photographed me leaping over a puddle in Highbury Fields, presumably jumping for joy at my release. I did not know how to counter this, because there was an element of truth in the survival myth. It was true that I was no longer a Roman Catholic; it was true that the convent experience had been damaging in many ways; and true that I had no intention of going back. It was true that I wasn’t even a Christian any longer, and that the mere thought of going to church made me feel physically sick. Interviewers constantly congratulated me on my triumph over adversity, and for getting rid of an imbecilic religious worldview. And each time I admitted that I had indeed severed all links with convents and churches, my dissociation from the spiritual became more of a reality, in the way that elusive matters do when you put them into words. Yet I was uneasily aware that this was not the whole truth. I was not that joyous girl, leaping in the air, happy and at ease with the world, wholly integrated with secular life. And I could no longer maintain, as I had on the day of Jacob’s baptism, that I no longer had any hunger for what I used to call God. By writing Through the Narrow Gate, I had recalled and thus reawakened some of that longing for the sacred that had carried me into the religious life. But what could I realistically do with this nostalgia for transformation and transcendence? In a world that was now empty of God, I could see no place for it and did not understand what, if anything, it meant.

• From The Erotic Engine (2011)

  The eighteenth century in Japan, an era known as the mid-Edo period, was a time of great social and technological change. At the start of the previous century, a shogun named Tokugawa Ieyasu had established a de facto capital in the small fishing village of Edo, on the coast of Japan’s largest island, Honshu. (Edo would be renamed Tokyo in 1868.) Edo grew at breakneck pace, part of a pan-Japanese trend toward rapid urbanization and modernization. Tokugawa rule was built on a class system, which divided the populace into four main strata: warriors, peasants, artisans and merchants (plus the inevitable fifth category of social outcasts). These rigid divisions did little to allow for upward social mobility, but they did allow Japan to experience nearly three centuries of growth, peace and prosperity. Though merchants were near the bottom of the class system, meaning they had little in the way of political power, many grew wealthy beyond their low social standing. All in all, this was an exciting time to be Japanese. That is, unless you were one of thousands of farm girls kidnapped from your home and taken to a walled city within the capital where you were forced into a life of prostitution, serving Edo’s vastly male-dominated population. These girls were allowed out of the Yoshiwara brothel district exactly once a year (to see the cherry blossoms), unless a parent died, in which case they could visit their family. When they turned twenty-five, they were kicked out into a city and a world that was completely unfamiliar to them. Wealthy merchants, many of whom had more money than they knew what to do with, would compete with each other to determine who could pay the most for a night with the most desirable of these sex workers—some paying the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars for a single visit (all fees going to the brothel owners, of course, not the women). For those who lost in these battles of financial machismo, consolation came in the form of pornography—if you couldn’t buy the girl, you could buy the fantasy. And so sprang up an ancillary industry based on erotic images known as shunga, highly stylized depictions of men engaged in various sex acts with prostitutes. The vast preponderance of these images portrayed the very highest ranking prostitutes. Shunga allowed men to enjoy the fantasy not just of sex but also of the affluence that would give them access to the most expensive sex available.

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

  Even though she once told me that I had a voice like a broken knife grinder, I had to sing in the choir, and though I could never hit the higher notes and was ruefully aware of the tunelessness of my efforts, I was beginning to appreciate the spiritual quality of plainsong—the way the music circled meditatively around the words and drew attention to a phrase or obscure preposition that could easily have passed unnoticed, but which proved to have rich meaning. Now it looked as if the days of the chant were numbered, and though Mother Walter would have cut out her tongue rather than criticize the Vatican, she was convinced that this would be an irreparable loss. “Of course the council is inspired by the Holy Spirit,” she was saying, “but it is hard to see how we can replace a musical tradition that goes back hundreds of years. Just think: Saint Bernard would have sung the same chant as we do. So would Thomas Aquinas and Francis of Assisi. And now we have to listen to those silly children playing guitars.” For a moment, the measured calm of her voice faltered and her face darkened in a way we had learned to dread. “But Mother”—Sister Mary Jonathan, a novice who was a year ahead of me and who had been my guardian angel when I had begun my novitiate, spoke up eagerly—“surely the changes needn’t necessarily be a disaster? After all, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with playing a guitar at Mass, is there?” Mother frowned. “I should have thought,” she replied coldly, “that this is a matter we need not discuss.” We all bent our heads obediently over our needlework, distancing ourselves. The topic had been portentously closed. No one would dream of taking it any further, against the expressed wish of our superior. “But some people,” Sister Mary Jonathan continued to my astonishment, “might go to church initially to enjoy the guitar because they like that kind of music. We’ve learned to love the chant, but lots of people can’t understand the Latin, and the music is so different from anything they are used to that they can’t make anything of it.” Mother Walter laughed shortly. It came out as an angry bark. “Anyone who needs a guitar to get them to Mass must have a pretty feeble faith!” Her eyes hardened and her lower lip protruded in a scowl. The tension in the room was almost palpable. Nobody ever answered back like that, and the rest of us were sewing as though our lives depended upon it. But I found myself looking hopefully at Sister Mary Jonathan, willing her to go on. I used to be able to do that, I thought wonderingly. I used to like exploring different points of view, building up an argument step by step, sharpening an idea against somebody else’s mind.