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 The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  The truth always shows itself with the ass. A cock in an ass operates like the arrow on a lie-detector test. The ass doesn’t know how to lie, it can’t lie: it hurts, physically, if you lie. The pussy, on the other hand, can lie at the mere entry of a dick in the room—does so all the time. Pussies are designed to fool men with their beckoning waters, ready opening, and angry owners. I’ve learned so much, maybe the thing of most importance, from getting fucked in the ass—how to surrender. All I learned from the other hole was how to feel used and abandoned. My pussy proposes the question; my ass answers. Ass-fucking is the event in which Rainer Maria Rilke’s hallowed dictum to “live the question” is, in fact, finally embodied. Anal penetration resolves the dilemma of duality that is introduced and magnified by vaginal penetration. Ass-fucking transcends all opposites, all conflicts—positive and negative, good and bad, high and low, shallow and deep, pleasure and pain, love and death—and unifies them, renders all one. This, for me, is therefore The Act. Butt-fucking offers spiritual resolution. Who knew? If I were asked to choose for the rest of my life only one place of penetration, I would choose my ass. My pussy has been too wounded by false expectations and uninvited entries, by movements too selfish, too shallow, too fast, or too unconscious. My ass, knowing only him, knows only bliss. The penetration is deeper, more profound; it rides the edge of sanity. The direct path through my bowels to God has become clear, has been cleared. Norman Mailer sees the sexual routes in reverse: “So that was how I finally made love to her, a minute for one, a minute for the other, a raid on the Devil and a trip back to the Lord.” But Mailer is a man, a perpetrator, a penetrator, not a recipient, not a submissive. He hasn’t been, I assume, in my compromising position. My yearning is so large, so gaping, so cavernous, so deep, so long, so wide, so old and so young, so very young, that only a big cock buried deep in my ass has ever filled it. He is that cock. The cock who saved me. He is my answer to every man who came before him. My revenge. I see his cock as a therapeutic instrument. Surely only God could have thought of such a cure for my bottomless wound—the wound of the woman whose daddy didn’t love her enough. Perhaps the wound is not psychological in source at all, but truly the space inside that yearns for God. Perhaps it is merely the yearning of a woman who thinks she cannot have Him. A woman whose daddy told her long ago that there is no God. But I want God.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  The truth always shows itself with the ass. A cock in an ass operates like the arrow on a lie-detector test. The ass doesn’t know how to lie, it can’t lie: it hurts, physically, if you lie. The pussy, on the other hand, can lie at the mere entry of a dick in the room—does so all the time. Pussies are designed to fool men with their beckoning waters, ready opening, and angry owners. I’ve learned so much, maybe the thing of most importance, from getting fucked in the ass—how to surrender. All I learned from the other hole was how to feel used and abandoned. My pussy proposes the question; my ass answers. Ass-fucking is the event in which Rainer Maria Rilke’s hallowed dictum to “live the question” is, in fact, finally embodied. Anal penetration resolves the dilemma of duality that is introduced and magnified by vaginal penetration. Ass-fucking transcends all opposites, all conflicts—positive and negative, good and bad, high and low, shallow and deep, pleasure and pain, love and death—and unifies them, renders all one. This, for me, is therefore The Act. Butt-fucking offers spiritual resolution. Who knew? If I were asked to choose for the rest of my life only one place of penetration, I would choose my ass. My pussy has been too wounded by false expectations and uninvited entries, by movements too selfish, too shallow, too fast, or too unconscious. My ass, knowing only him, knows only bliss. The penetration is deeper, more profound; it rides the edge of sanity. The direct path through my bowels to God has become clear, has been cleared. Norman Mailer sees the sexual routes in reverse: “So that was how I finally made love to her, a minute for one, a minute for the other, a raid on the Devil and a trip back to the Lord.” But Mailer is a man, a perpetrator, a penetrator, not a recipient, not a submissive. He hasn’t been, I assume, in my compromising position. My yearning is so large, so gaping, so cavernous, so deep, so long, so wide, so old and so young, so very young, that only a big cock buried deep in my ass has ever filled it. He is that cock. The cock who saved me. He is my answer to every man who came before him. My revenge. I see his cock as a therapeutic instrument. Surely only God could have thought of such a cure for my bottomless wound—the wound of the woman whose daddy didn’t love her enough. Perhaps the wound is not psychological in source at all, but truly the space inside that yearns for God. Perhaps it is merely the yearning of a woman who thinks she cannot have Him. A woman whose daddy told her long ago that there is no God. But I want God.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Finding Paradise began decades ago with my search for God. I’ve been looking for Him since I was five, when my family moved to the Bible Belt. Everyone there seemed to know God personally except me. I asked my father. He was right about everything. “No, there is no God,” he explained. “That is for people who need it. We don’t.” But I did. Everyone at school was God-fearing and churchgoing. Could they all be wrong, and their parents, too? I was certified at birth an atheist. The deed was done. I figured that I could break the big news to all my classmates that God didn’t exist, or I could investigate God on my own, just in case they were right about Him. Now I think that one can come to believe in two ways. Either you are indoctrinated by your family and that belief stays with you for life, despite rebellion or evidence to the contrary; or you have an actual experience of God that is powerful enough to contradict your original indoctrination. So I assumed a difficult identity: that of the atheist who longs to believe—but can’t. Preordained doubt always left me yearning for a God who couldn’t exist. The Conflict was born, the Search began. The previous year, at age four, I had begun ballet classes. This simple, once-a-week affair developed over the course of the next two decades into a ten-year professional career in one of the world’s best dance companies. My mother’s original intention, however, was simply to give me a physical workout to encourage my nonexistent appetite, and to keep me out of team sports that used balls: as a child, I had an outright terror of balls of any size heading in my direction. Ballet had no balls, and thus my fears were allayed. I concentrated instead on cute outfits, red ballet slippers, and highly controlled movements. It was in the world of ballet that my investigation of God found its greatest laboratory. Quite simply, all the best dancers believed in God—each and every one. I conducted several private surveys over the years, and continued my God-watch right through my professional career, where the evidence was the strongest. In ballet school, around 60 to 70 percent of the young ladies believed in God; among those who had crossed the hurdle and become one of the chosen few for the company, the percentage rose to about 95 percent. I deduced that the key to these dancers’ superiority lay in their ability to believe. They retained faith when things went badly. When I had a bad class, I was bad, which then led to more bad classes. When they had a bad class, they believed it was a “lesson,” “God’s will,” a blip on the screen, and proceeded to have a good class next time and therefore improve in a steady and predictable manner. Being an atheist, I had no one to blame; self-doubt blossomed in proportion to my bad classes.

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Besides, if I didn’t write it all down, no one would ever believe it—least of all me. I didn’t believe it two hours after he left my bed. So I wrote it all down to make it last longer. To make it real. Words seemed the only way to mark the spot, to preserve my transitory experience of eternity. This is a testamentary document. Do not miss the message, distracted by the profanity of the act. I am, you see, a woman who has been in search of surrender my whole life—to find something, someone, to whom I could subsume my ego, my will, my miserable mortality. I tried various religions and various men. I even tried a religious man. And then he found me, the agnostic who demanded my submission. “Bend over,” he’d say, gently, firmly. I can hear it now—echoing in the bowels of my being. Ass-fucking is the great anti-romantic gesture—unless of course, like me, your idea of romance begins on your knees with your face in a pillow. Poetry, flowers, and promises till-death-do-us-part have no place in the backland. Ass-entry involves the hard edge of truth, not the soft folds of sentimentality inherent in romantic love. But butt-fucking is more intimate than pussy-fucking. You risk showing your shit, as metaphor and reality. You let a man into your bowels—your deepest space, the space that all of your life you are taught to ignore, hide, keep quiet about—and consciousness is born. Who needs diamonds, pearls, and furs? Those who’ve never been where I have been. The promised land, the Kingdom. If you can let a man ass-fuck you—and only the truly sensitive lover should have that privilege—you will learn to trust not only him but yourself, totally out of control. And beyond control lies God. Humiliation is my greatest devil, but when the eye of my terror is entered, I experience my fear as unfounded. It is through this physical surrender, this forbidden pathway, that I have found my self, my voice, my spirit, my courage—and the cackle of the crone. This is no feminist treatise about equality. This is the truth about the beauty of submission. The power in submission. To me, you see, I have happened upon the great cosmic joke, God’s supreme irony. Enter the exit. Paradise waits. BEFORE THE SEARCH Finding Paradise began decades ago with my search for God. I’ve been looking for Him since I was five, when my family moved to the Bible Belt. Everyone there seemed to know God personally except me. I asked my father. He was right about everything. “No, there is no God,” he explained. “That is for people who need it. We don’t.” But I did. Everyone at school was God-fearing and churchgoing. Could they all be wrong, and their parents, too?

• From The Surrender: An Erotic Memoir (2004)

  Finding Paradise began decades ago with my search for God. I’ve been looking for Him since I was five, when my family moved to the Bible Belt. Everyone there seemed to know God personally except me. I asked my father. He was right about everything. “No, there is no God,” he explained. “That is for people who need it. We don’t.” But I did. Everyone at school was God-fearing and churchgoing. Could they all be wrong, and their parents, too? I was certified at birth an atheist. The deed was done. I figured that I could break the big news to all my classmates that God didn’t exist, or I could investigate God on my own, just in case they were right about Him. Now I think that one can come to believe in two ways. Either you are indoctrinated by your family and that belief stays with you for life, despite rebellion or evidence to the contrary; or you have an actual experience of God that is powerful enough to contradict your original indoctrination. So I assumed a difficult identity: that of the atheist who longs to believe—but can’t. Preordained doubt always left me yearning for a God who couldn’t exist. The Conflict was born, the Search began. The previous year, at age four, I had begun ballet classes. This simple, once-a-week affair developed over the course of the next two decades into a ten-year professional career in one of the world’s best dance companies. My mother’s original intention, however, was simply to give me a physical workout to encourage my nonexistent appetite, and to keep me out of team sports that used balls: as a child, I had an outright terror of balls of any size heading in my direction. Ballet had no balls, and thus my fears were allayed. I concentrated instead on cute outfits, red ballet slippers, and highly controlled movements. It was in the world of ballet that my investigation of God found its greatest laboratory. Quite simply, all the best dancers believed in God—each and every one. I conducted several private surveys over the years, and continued my God-watch right through my professional career, where the evidence was the strongest. In ballet school, around 60 to 70 percent of the young ladies believed in God; among those who had crossed the hurdle and become one of the chosen few for the company, the percentage rose to about 95 percent. I deduced that the key to these dancers’ superiority lay in their ability to believe. They retained faith when things went badly. When I had a bad class, I was bad, which then led to more bad classes. When they had a bad class, they believed it was a “lesson,” “God’s will,” a blip on the screen, and proceeded to have a good class next time and therefore improve in a steady and predictable manner. Being an atheist, I had no one to blame; self-doubt blossomed in proportion to my bad classes.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  “MADELEINE used to work for a big department store. She came from the poorest ragpicker’s family in all Paris. Both her father and mother lived by picking garbage cans and selling the bits of tin, leather and paper they found. Madeleine was placed in the sumptuous bedroom furniture department, under the supervision of a suave, waxed, starched floorwalker. She had never slept on a bed, only on a pile of rags and newspapers in a shack. When people were not looking she felt the satin bedspreads, the mattresses, the feather pillows, as if they were ermine or chinchilla. She had a natural Parisian gift for appearing charmingly dressed on the money other women spent on stockings alone. She was attractive, with humorous eyes, curly black hair and well-rounded curves. She developed two passions, one to steal a few drops of perfume or cologne from the perfume department, another to wait until the store was closing so she could lie down on one of the softest beds and pretend she was to sleep there. She preferred the canopied ones. She felt more secure lying under curtains. The floorwalker was usually in such a hurry to leave that she was left alone for a few minutes to indulge in this fantasy. She thought that while lying in such a bed her feminine charms were a million times enhanced, and she wished certain elegant men she had seen on the Champs Élysées could see her there and realize how well she would look in a beautiful bedroom. “Her fantasy became more complex. She arranged to have a mirrored dressing table placed in front of the bed so she could admire herself lying down. Then one day when she had accomplished every step of the ceremony, she saw that the floorwalker had been watching her with amazement. As she was about to leap off the bed he stopped her. “‘Madame,’ he said (she had always been called Mademoiselle), ‘I am delighted to make your acquaintance. I hope you are pleased with the bed I made for you, according to your orders. Do you find it soft enough? Do you think Monsieur le Comte will like it?’ “‘Monsieur le Comte is fortunately away for a week, and I will be able to enjoy my bed with someone else,’ she answered. Then she sat up and offered her hand to the man. ‘Now kiss it as you would kiss a lady’s hand in a salon.’ Smiling, he did this with suave elegance. Then they heard a sound and they both vanished in different directions.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Labor Day.” The whole summer. The whole goddamned summer! The music swelled. You’re a teaser, you turn ’em on, Leave them burning and then you’re gone ... “I’ve never even seen the ocean.” She could not believe how stupid she sounded, as if she had no control over the words that were coming out of her mouth. “But how is it possible in this day and age that you’ve never seen the ocean?” Caitlin asked. She was genuinely interested, genuinely surprised that a person could have lived almost twelve years without ever having seen it. All Vix could do was shrug and then smile. She wondered if Caitlin heard the music, too, if music followed her wherever she went. From then on whenever Vix heard “Dancing Queen” she was back in sixth grade on a sunny afternoon in June. The afternoon some fairy godmother waved her magic wand over Vix’s head and changed her life forever. At home, Vix asked her mother, “How is it possible, in this day and age, that I’ve never seen the ocean?” Her mother, who was bathing her youngest brother, Nathan, looked at her as if she were nuts. Nathan had muscular dystrophy. His body was small and misshapen. They had a contraption that allowed him to sit in the bathtub but he couldn’t be left alone. He was seven, sassy and smart, a lot brighter than her other brother Lewis, who was nine, or her sister, Lanie, who was ten. “What kind of question is that?” her mother said. “We live in New Mexico. Hundreds of miles from one ocean and thousands from the other.” “I know, but so do plenty of other people and they’ve been to the ocean.” She knew damn well why they’d never been to either coast. Still, she sat on the closed toilet seat, arms folded defiantly across her chest, as she watched Nathan sailing his boats around in the tub, stirring up waves with his arms. “This is my ocean,” he said. His speech was garbled, making it difficult for some people to understand him, but not Vix. “Besides, you’ve been to Tulsa,” her mother said, as if that had

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Inhala, y solo me mira. Su cuerpo está rígido. Observo su camiseta negra y su bronceado, como si hubiera tenido un verano completo trabajando afuera, y mi corazón da un vuelco al ver esos penetrantes y cálidos ojos avellana y sus grandes manos que me levantaron y cargaron media docena de veces. Se ve más alto, pero por supuesto sé que no ha crecido. Danni salta de su banco. —Yo solo... iré a ver a mi abuela —dice y silenciosamente camina por mi lado, a su departamento. Pike está entre la puerta y el escritorio, con sus manos hechos puños a un costado y pareciendo que va a moverse al frente pero no lo hace. Camino al escritorio y bajo el papel. —¿Qué? —pregunto. Pero de nuevo, él sigue ahí como si estuviera en un trance. La parte de atrás de mi cuello comienza a sudar, y me estoy poniendo nerviosa. ¿Por qué está parado ahí, mirándome? —¿Qué quieres? —presiono en tono cortante. Abre su boca, pero luego la cierra y traga. —Pike, Jesús... —El día que te fuiste —suelta, y me detengo. Espero, escuchando mientras una mirada de temor cruza sus ojos. —La casa estaba tan vacía —continúa—. Como un silencio que nunca antes había estado ahí. No podía escuchar tus pasos arriba o tu secadora o anticipar tu entrada a la habitación. Ya no estabas. Todo se había... —baja la mirada—, ido. Tengo un nudo en mi garganta y siento las lágrimas amenazantes, pero tenso mi mandíbula, rehusándome a dejarlas ir. —Pero todavía podía sentirte —susurra—. Todavía estabas en todas partes. El contenedor de galletas en el refrigerador, el protector de salpicaduras que elegiste, la manera en que colocaste mis fotografías en el lugar incorrecto después que sacudiste mi librero. —Sonríe—. Pero no podía reorganizarlas, porque tú fuiste la última en tocarlas, y quería todo de la forma en que lo dejaste. Mi barbilla tiembla, y cruzo los brazos sobre mi pecho para esconder mis puños. Se detiene y luego continúa.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Her hair hung down her back in one glossy braid. Some of Phoebe’s friends were there, too, including her boyfriend of the moment, a guy with long, silvery hair, a concha belt, and hand-tooled leather boots. Vix had never been to a party like that, in a house like that, with grownups like that. She’d brought Caitlin a blank book for her birthday, covered in blue denim, with a silver chain as a page marker. She only hoped it was worthy of Caitlin’s thoughts and feelings. She dreamed about touching her hair, her sun-kissed skin. She wrote her parents a letter, making a case for letting her go, not the least being Caitlin’s promise that it wouldn’t cost them a penny. But Tawny didn’t buy it. She claimed Caitlin came from an unstable family. “Just one look at that mother …” “But we won’t be with her mother,” Vix countered, “we’ll be with her father and he’s very stable.” “How do you know?” “Everybody knows. He’s going to call you. You can ask him yourself.” In the end, it was her father who convinced Tawny to let her go. Her father, a man who looked surprised when he opened their front door to find he had four noisy children inside. A man of so few words he could spend a whole weekend without speaking, but if he did, his voice dropped way low on the last part of every sentence and someone was always asking, What? What’d you say, Dad? But he was never unkind. She imagined jumping into his arms, hugging him as hard as she could to show how thankful she was, but that would have embarrassed both of them so she said, “Thanks, Dad.” And he mumbled something, something she didn’t get, while he rested his hand on top of her head. Until then the highlight of her childhood had been the weekend her father installed a molded laminate shower in the half-bath in her parents’ room. When it was hooked up and working Vix, Lewis, and Lanie all begged to be first to try it out. Her father looked right at her and said, “We’ll do it in age order. Vix gets to go first.” How proud she was that day! How grateful to her father for recognizing her as having a special place in the family. First daughter. Eldest child. A yellow shower with its own glass door. She’d wanted to stand under the warm water forever. Only later did she realize how crowded their house was, with small, high, north-facing windows, making it dark and cold year-round, even in relentlessly sunny Santa Fe. She knew next to nothing about her parents’ early lives. Whenever Vix asked her mother a personal question Tawny answered, “We don’t wash our linen in public.” “I’m not public,” Vix argued. “I’m family. I’m your daughter.” “You know enough,” Tawny told her. “You know what’s important.

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  The Basque hurried to his room. He found that she had given him a small black corset with lace edges, and this carried the imprint of her body. The lace was worn from all the times she had pulled at it. The Basque was stirred again. This time he took his clothes off and slipped the corset on himself. He pulled at the lacing as he had seen his mother do. He felt compressed and it hurt him, but he delighted in the pain. He imagined the governess was holding him and tightening her arms around him to the point of suffocating him. As he loosened the lace he imagined himself freeing her body so he could see her naked. Again he grew feverish, and all kinds of images haunted him—the governess’s waist, her hips, her thighs. At night he concealed all her clothes in his bed with him, and fell asleep on them, burying his sex in them as if it were into her body. He dreamed of her. The tip of his penis was constantly wet. In the morning there were rings under his eyes. She gave him a pair of her stockings. Then she gave him a pair of her black patent leather boots. He placed the boots on his bed. He lay naked now among all her belongings, struggling to create her presence, yearning for her. The shoes looked so alive. They made it appear that she had entered the room and was walking on his bed. He stood them up between his legs to look at them. It seemed as if she were going to walk on his body with her dainty pointed feet, crush him. The thought aroused him. He began to tremble. He drew the boots nearer to his body. Then he brought one near enough to touch the tip of his penis. It aroused him so violently he had an ejaculation all over the shiny leather. But this had become a form of torture. He began to write the governess letters, begging her to come to his room at night. She read them with pleasure, right in his presence, her dark eyes glittering, but she would not risk her position. Then one day she was called home by the illness of her father. The boy never saw her again. He was left with a devouring hunger for her, and her clothes haunted him. One day he made a package of all the clothing and went to a house of prostitution. He found a woman who was physically similar to the governess. He made her dress in the governess’s clothes. He watched her lace up the corset, which lifted up her breasts and set off her buttocks; watched her button the brassiere and slip on the panties. Then he asked her to put on the stockings and the boots.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  ¿Me gusta hablar contigo? ¿Qué he dicho que fuera tan fascinante? Resoplo, sacudiendo mi cabeza mientras pelo las patatas para la cena. Tal vez es una falta de opciones. ¿Ha vivido solo durante tanto tiempo que cualquier conversación parece interesante? No tenemos absolutamente nada en común. Pero, la verdad es... me encantó escucharlo. ¿Por qué deseo tanto gustarle? Y también, ¿por qué la fiesta era el último lugar donde quería estar anoche cuando me di cuenta que él no estaría allí? Levanto mi mirada y lo veo en el patio trasero a través de la ventana frente a mí. Trabaja recortando el árbol junto a la valla que separa su patio del de Cramer, sosteniendo un largo aparato de mano que se extiende hacia arriba hasta las ramas altas. Mencioné que no está llegando suficiente sol al jardín, así que se ocupó de resolver el problema. Sin siquiera habérselo pedido. Me encanta el jardín más de lo que se lo admito. Es como mi propio espacio pequeño y todavía estará ahí después que me vaya. Es reconfortante. Las semillas están plantadas y los aspersores riegan la tierra durante unos minutos todas las mañanas y todas las noches puntualmente. Ha comenzado a gustarme escucharlos encenderse a primera hora, cuando todavía está oscuro y soy la única persona despierta y en la cocina con mi café. Todo está comenzando a sentirse familiar y cálido aquí. Como un hogar. Corto la piel de la patata, con dureza y fuerza. Típico. Siempre me apego a las cosas que no son para siempre. La idea de mi madre regresando cuando era pequeña, Nick, Jay, mi apartamento y el deseo de hacer un hogar para mí... Me sorprendo de cuán absolutamente patética sigo siendo. Clavo el cuchillo en la tabla de cortar y saco de la bolsa unas cuantas patatas más. Y para empeorar las cosas, no he podido dejar de pensar sobre anoche en todo el día y la fiesta es lo último de ello. El pastel de cumpleaños, las cintas, bromear con él... La forma en que recordó que tenía que soplar una vela y pedir un deseo. Un revoloteo alcanza mi corazón y sonrío, luego frunzo el ceño, confundida y no queriendo esos sentimientos.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘Perform this miracle for me, lord of the Sun. Ask your sister to travel in step with you, at your speed, for the next two years. Remain in opposition, one to another. Then there will be a full moon every night, and the spring tides will not abate one inch. But if glorious Lucina does not wish me to win my love in this way, then will you plead with her to take those dark rocks down with her to the realm of Pluto? Let them be buried leagues beneath the earth. Otherwise I will never gain my lady. I will journey in bare feet to your temple in Delphi, great lord. See the tears upon my cheeks. Take pity on my pain, sir.’ And, with those words, he fell into a swoon. He did not recover for a long time. It was his brother who looked after him. When he heard of his distress, he took him up and brought him to his bed. So there will I leave poor grieving Aurelius to his painful thoughts. I do not know whether he will live or die. In the meantime Arveragus, full of honour, has returned home! He came back with all the other knights, but there was none more renowned for chivalry. You are happy again, Dorigen, to have your loving husband safely in your arms! This noble knight, this famous man of arms, still loves you above all else. He is not a suspicious husband, either. He would not even have considered the possibility of a rival. The thought never crossed his mind. He just wanted to dance and joust and make good cheer. So I will leave them together in married bliss. It is time to return to sick Aurelius. Oh dear. For two entire years he lay in woe and torment. He never left his bed. He could not have taken one step. He received comfort from no one except his brother, who was a scholar and very sympathetic to his plight. Of course Aurelius told no one else about it. He was silent and discreet. He kept the secret hidden deeply in his breast, just as Pamphilus once concealed his love for Galatea. His breast looked whole and healthy; but the arrow, unseen, had pierced his heart. Any surgeon will tell you that a wound healed only on the surface can be deadly. You must get at the arrow beneath. So his brother, the clerk, wept bitterly beside his bed.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  Even after Ed found a new job as the night manager at La Fonda, the old hotel on the Plaza, Tawny kept hers. “It’s hard enough to make do on both our salaries,” she’d say. The Countess wore suede jodhpurs, blue nail polish, and exotic jewelry. She had five dogs. Nobody knew her exact age. Tawny had to take her to AA meetings. Sometimes, when the Countess fell off the wagon, Tawny would get really mean at home. Vix lay in bed in the room she shared with Lanie, dreaming of the summer to come. She envisioned palm trees swaying in the breeze. She could almost feel the long, sultry nights, hear the beat of reggae music. Fantasy Island or, at the very least, Gilligan’s. She had to pinch herself to make sure it was real, that she was really going away with Caitlin Somers, that she hadn’t invented the whole thing. Lanie didn’t like the idea. “It’s so unfair!” she cried. “You get to do everything.” Lanie was probably wondering why Caitlin Somers, the biggest deal in the whole school, had invited her to spend the summer. She was wondering the same thing herself. She tried to console Lanie. “Look at it this way ... you can have our room all to yourself for the whole summer. You can have friends stay overnight and everything.” “Can I have your Barbies?” “Have? No way.” “Use?” “Use ... okay ... if you promise you’ll keep them exactly the way they belong. And Barbie’s Dream House is off limits.” “No fair ... that’s the best.” “Then no deal.” Lanie pouted. She and Vix shared Tawny’s dark eyes and high cheekbones, a gift from some Cherokee ancestor. But Lanie was the best looking of all of them, with Ed’s auburn hair and fair skin. “Okay ... I won’t touch Barbie’s Dream House.” Vix was almost asleep when Lanie whispered, “If you go away you’ll miss your birthday.” “No, I won’t. I’ll just be in a different place.”

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

  Odds are you cruise through much of your day wrapped up in a cocoon of self-absorption, tightly woven with all of your wishes, plans, and goals of the moment. You consider what you’ll wear, eat, and do, and where you’ll go. You prioritize things on your to-do list. You puzzle over what you’ll say in an upcoming encounter that you suspect may be difficult. You, after all, are the lead character in the play that is your own day and life. Others play bit parts. They are not particularly consequential to the overall arch of your plotline, and by consequence they often undergo little character development in the script that your mind follows. You sometimes even treat them as though they were mere props, inanimate objects that populate the setting, yet bear no real importance to you or your day. Why wouldn’t it be this way? The play is all about you. You see where the illustration is going. Each person is, after all, the star of his or her own play and day. If you dropped the script of your own day and picked up the script of another person’s day, this other person would suddenly undergo considerable character development. You’d come to appreciate his or her own wishes, plans, and goals. You’d understand that this person isn’t merely a bit part or prop, but rather fully human, like you. Just like you, this person is full of yearnings and strivings, hopes and insecurities. This is true of every person. It’s equally true of all those with whom you cross paths, as well as all those you’ll never meet, not even once. LKM opens the doors of perception to break you out of your cocoon of self-absorption and restore others to their full humanity. It challenges your natural tendency to treat others like props or thinly developed characters who play only bit parts in your own self-centered play. By widening your awareness, LKM opens your eyes, mind, and heart to seeing others more fully, with warmth, kindness, and tender wishes for their well-being. The practice expands your outlook in ways that help you create the safety and connection between you and another that can seed positivity resonance. Like other meditation practices, LKM involves quiet contemplation in a seated posture, often with eyes closed and an initial focus on the breath and the heart region. You might start by setting an alarm to chime softly after ten or so minutes, so that you can experiment without concern for the time.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “What?” he asked. “Bad dream,” she said, burrowing into his chest. “It’s okay,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “I’m here ... I won’t let anything bad happen to you.” She never allowed herself to spend the night in his cabin. She forced herself to climb out of bed, night after night, throw on her clothes, and drive home along Old County Road, the road where Lamb’s parents were killed. The phone rang late one night at the house, rousing all of them. Lamb or Abby must have picked up and Vix fell back asleep until Lamb knocked on her door and called, “Vix ... if you’re awake, it’s Caitlin. She wants to talk to you.” She picked up the bedside phone, the one they’d installed for Caitlin the summer before. “Hello?” “Vix ... I’m in Arles ... you know, the place where Van Gogh cut off his ear? And it’s so fantastic ... the colors of the sky, the fields, the village. You’ve got to come ... just for a week. And don’t tell me you can’t. If you want to, you can. That’s all there is to it!” “It’s the middle of the night,” Vix said, still half asleep. “I know. That’s what made me think of you. I don’t want you to miss this. Joanne will give you a week off. You know she will.” She paused, then added, “And so will Bru ... if he really loves you.” She wished Caitlin would stop tempting her, would just quit telling her everything she was missing. She’d get there someday. On her own. “I just hoped ...” Caitlin said, barely audible, “because I’m not coming back in September ...” “What do you mean, you’re not coming back?” “I’m taking a year off before Wellesley, to travel and study abroad.” “When did you decide?” “Just now,” she said. “But it’s always been a possibility.” Caitlin began to send postcards, a series of them, each one from a different place, a few cryptic words printed on the back. I am the most ...

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  “If that was true, I’d be Hercules by now,” Lori said. Days later, when the blisters burst, the clear liquid inside ran down to her feet. For weeks, the fronts of her legs were open sores, so sensitive that she had trouble sleeping under blankets. But by then the temperature had fallen again, and if she kicked off the blankets, she froze. • • • One day that winter, I went to a classmate’s house to work on a school project. Carrie Mae Blankenship’s father was an administrator at the McDowell County hospital, and her family lived in a solid brick house on McDowell Street. The living room was decorated in shades of orange and brown, and the plaid pattern of the curtains matched the couch upholstery. On the wall was a framed photo of Carrie Mae’s older sister in her high school graduation gown. It was lit with its own tiny lamp, just like in a museum. There was also a small plastic box on the wall near the living room door. A row of tiny numbers ran along the top, under a lever. Carrie Mae’s father saw me studying the box while she was out of the room. “It’s a thermostat,” he told me. “You move the lever to make the house warmer or cooler.” I thought he was pulling my leg, but he moved the lever, and I heard a muffled roar kick on in the basement. “That’s the furnace,” he said. He led me over to a vent in the floor and had me hold my hand above it and feel the warm air wafting upward. I didn’t want to say anything to show how impressed I was, but for many nights afterward, I dreamed that we had a thermostat at 93 Little Hobart Street. I dreamed that all we had to do to fill our house with that warm, clean furnace heat was to move a lever.

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

  It was during this sidewalk conversation, which stretched into what must have been half an hour, that Jeremy told me he had a letter to pass on to me from some of his own former students. Having heard just a little bit about those students, and his experiences as their teacher, I knew I needed to hear more. I asked if I might interview him for this book and he agreed. His and his students’ stories, as it happens, provide a clear and poignant illustration of why and how positivity resonance matters, and how you can tap into it, even in the most difficult of group circumstances. After graduation, Jeremy had taken a coveted position at Teach For America, the nonprofit modeled after the Peace Corps that enlists thousands of future leaders, just out of college, to bring low-income communities fresh teachers for two or more years. Jeremy had been drawn to Teach For America because he yearned to make real differences for social change. A few years earlier, as a volunteer classroom assistant in the struggling city schools in neighboring Durham county, he’d become keenly aware of the irony of sitting in “ivory tower” classrooms in his own elite university, discussing in abstract terms how, generation after generation, social inequalities get replicated through entrenched inequities in education and wealth, when just down the road sat a middle school student who struggled to read “Go dog go.” Getting to know one of these kids in particular, and noting the poignant gap between his aspirations (for example, “to design video games”) and his academic ability, Jeremy discovered up close and personal that “the problem had a face.” As he put it, “Someone somewhere did something to him that prevented him from learning or didn’t give him the opportunity and that’s a problem that no one should have to deal with.” Teach For America (TFA) offered Jeremy the chance to roll up his sleeves and help to close the achievement gap by working directly with struggling kids in low-income classrooms. After a few months in TFA’s teaching training, and a short stretch into his first placement in a poor rural county in North Carolina, his assistant principal took note of his extraordinary patience and high expectations for even the lowest-performing kids in the high school. She offered him his own math class. He’d take charge of about a dozen chronically failing “special ed” kids, some with IQs in the fifties or with behavioral problems so severe that if “you look [at them] the wrong way, you could have a desk flipped.” He was excited to take on this challenge. His idealism ran high. He admits that at first he thought he would simply “waltz in” and fix the problem of social inequality, one classroom at a time.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  It was October, and we had been in school for just over a month, but Mom said we had no time to tell our teachers we were withdrawing or to get any of our school records. When we enrolled in West Virginia, she’d vouch for our scholastic achievement, and once our new teachers heard us read, they’d realize we were all gifted. Dad was still refusing to come with us. When we left, he said, he was going to head out into the desert on his own, to become a prospector. I asked Mom if we were going to sell the house on North Third Street or rent it out. “Neither,” she said. “It’s my house.” She explained that it was nice to own something for a change, and she saw no point in selling it just because we were moving. She didn’t want to rent it, either, since she was opposed to anyone else living in her house. We’d leave it as it was. To prevent burglars and vandals from breaking in, we’d hang laundry on the clothesline and put dirty dishes in the sink. That way, Mom pointed out, potential intruders would think the house was occupied and would be fooled into believing that the people who lived there might come home any second. The following morning, we packed up the car while Dad sat in the living room sulking. We tied Mom’s art supplies to the roof and filled the trunk with pots and pans and blankets. Mom had bought each of us a warm coat at a thrift store so we’d have something to wear in West Virginia, where it got so cold in the winter that it snowed. Mom said we could each take only one thing, like the time we left Battle Mountain. I wanted to bring my bike, but Mom said it was too big, so I brought my geode. I ran into the backyard and said goodbye to the orange trees, and then I ran out front to get in the Oldsmobile. I had to crawl over Brian and sit in the middle because he and Lori had already staked out the window seats. Maureen was in the front seat with Mom, who had started the engine and was practicing her gear shifts. Dad was still in the house, so I leaned over Brian and shouted at the top of my voice. Dad appeared in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest. “Dad, please come, we need you!” I hollered. Lori and Brian and Mom and Maureen all chimed in. “We need you!” we shouted. “You’re the head of the family! You’re the dad! Come on!” Dad stood there looking at us for a minute. Then he flicked the cigarette he was smoking into the yard, closed the front door, loped over to the car, and told Mom to move aside—he was driving.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The French historian and philosopher Pierre Hadot has shown that unlike modern philosophy, which tends to be purely notional, Athenian rationalism derived its insights from practical exercises and a disciplined lifestyle. 31 The conceptual writings of philosophers like Plato or Aristotle were either teaching aids or merely served as a preliminary guide for those looking for a new way of living. Unlike the phusikoi, Socrates was primarily interested in goodness, which, like Confucius, he refused to define. Instead of analyzing the concept of virtue, he wanted to live a virtuous life. When asked for a definition of justice, for example, Socrates replied: “Instead of speaking it, I make it understood in my acts.” 32 It was only when a person chose to behave justly that he could form any idea of a wholly just existence. For Socrates and those who came after him, a philosopher was essentially a “lover of wisdom.” He yearned for wisdom precisely because he realized that he lacked it. As Paul Friedlander has explained, there was “a tension between ignorance—that is, the impossibility ultimately to put into words ‘what justice is’—and the direct experience of the unknown, the existence of the just man, whom justice raises to the level of the divine.” 33 As far as we can tell from Plato’s dialogues, Socrates seems to have been reaching toward a transcendent notion of absolute virtue that could never be adequately conceived or expressed but could be intuited by such spiritual disciplines as meditation. Socrates was famous for his formidable powers of concentration. “Every now and then he just goes off,” a friend remarked, “and stands motionless, wherever he happens to be.” 34 Alcibiades, the famous Athenian politician, recalled that during a military campaign, Socrates had started thinking about a problem, could not resolve it, and to the astonishment of his fellow soldiers “stood there, glued to the spot,” all day and all night, leaving his station only at dawn, “when the sun came out and he made his prayers to the new day.” 35 Plato’s dialogues were a model for the type of meditation that Socrates and his followers practiced; it was nothing like yoga but took the form of a conversation with oneself—conducted either in solitude or together with others—that pushed thought to the very limit. But this type of internal dialogue was possible only if the self that you were conversing with was authentic. Socrates’ mission was to awaken genuine self-knowledge in the people who came to talk to him. He had invented what is known as dialectic, a rigorous discipline designed to expose false beliefs and elicit truth.

• From The Case for God (2009)

  The practice of the Golden Rule “all day and every day” would bring human beings into the state that Confucius called ren, a word that would later be described as “benevolence” but that Confucius himself refused to define because it could be understood only by somebody who had acquired it. He preferred to remain silent about what lay at the end of the religious journey. The practice of ren was an end in itself; it was itself the transcendence you sought. Yan Hui expressed this beautifully when he spoke of the endless struggle to achieve ren “with a deep sigh.” The more I strain my gaze towards it, the higher it soars. The deeper I bore down into it, the harder it becomes. I see it in front, but suddenly it is behind. Step by step, the Master skilfully lures one on. He has broadened me with culture, restrained me with ritual. Even if I wanted to stop, I could not. Just when I feel that I have exhausted every resource, something seems to rise up, standing over me sharp and clear. Yet though I long to pursue it, I can find no way of getting to it at all.74 Living a compassionate, empathetic life took Yan Hui beyond himself, giving him momentary glimpses of a sacred reality that was not unlike the “God” worshipped by monotheists. It was both immanent and transcendent: it welled up from within but was also experienced as an external presence “standing over me sharp and clear.” Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doctrines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching remained opaque and incredible. The ultimate reality was not a Supreme Being—an idea that was quite alien to the religious sensibility of antiquity; it was an all-encompassing, wholly transcendent reality that lay beyond neat doctrinal formulations. So religious discourse should not attempt to impart clear information about the divine but should lead to an appreciation of the limits of language and understanding. The ultimate was not alien to human beings but inseparable from our humanity. It could not be accessed by rational, discursive thought but required a carefully cultivated state of mind and the abnegation of selflessness. But how would this apply to the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which present themselves as religions of the word rather than religions of silence? In the eighth century BCE, the people of Israel were about to attempt something unusual in the ancient world. They would try to make Yahweh, the “holy one of Israel,” the only symbol of ultimate transcendence.