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 Liars' Club: A Memoir (1995)

  Walking across the main street after one such meal, I watched the streetlight bob in the wind blowing down off the peaks. What a godforsaken country, I thought. Mother leaned on Lecia and Hector on me to cross. The sole driver whose headlights slid off my face must have taken Hector, lurching across the road like Frankenstein, for my daddy, which made me want to tap on his windshield and explain things. Back at the hotel, they passed out, and Lecia nagged me to brush my teeth. “You don’t want those scummy green teeth like Ray back at the stable,” she said. And I said no ma’am, I didn’t. In the mirror, I saw the wooden button from Hector’s peacoat had pressed a half-moon dimple into one cheek where he’d been leaning on me. I’d always wanted cheek dimples, like Shirley Temple. Lecia spent some time trying to fix a matching one on the other cheek. First, she pinched with her thumbnail till I squealed. Then she pressed the toothpaste lid in the flesh while I counted to a hundred. But we never got the marks lined up right. Mother rented a colonial house turned out in chintz and claw-footed mahogany. It belonged to the town’s last bank president (who’d gone to jail, if I remember right, for embezzlement). Lecia and I had never been in a two-story house before. We walked through it whispering, craning up at the high ceilings, the long drapes tied back with silk tassels. We curtsied to each other before sitting stiff-backed on the very edge of the rose love seat to pour fake tea. The house had scope. The dining table was long and dusty enough for us to write our names on, with room left over. I pointed out that the twelve matching chairs were like for the Last Supper, minus Jesus. They were deep as dentist chairs, with padded bottoms in royal blue satin. Comedy masks grinned down from the carved corner moldings. In the living room, a baby grand piano sat under a chandelier whose glass teardrops had gone a dull amber. French doors led from there to a small parlor, where Hector and Mother set up their bed, so we’d be less likely to pad in. Upstairs, Lecia and I had our own bedrooms for the first time. Mine had a tall cherry highboy with drawers deep as culverts so even the clothes Mother ordered from Denver seemed paltry once I’d wadded them up in there. Lying next to it at night, I always expected one of the drawers to slide open and some midget corpse to sit up. So I got in the habit of crawling in with Lecia. She stayed asleep even if I was bold enough to weave my fingers in with hers. The first day of school, we walked till we reached a stretch of black graffiti on the sidewalk. Somebody named Ken blew dead bears, it said.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  “Everywhere. I want to walk on the Great Wall of China. I want to walk to the top of pyramids in Egypt. I want to swim in every ocean. I want to climb Mount Everest. I want to go on an African safari. I want to ride a dogsled in Antarctica. I want all of it. Every single piece of everything.” Her eyes got this strange faraway look, like she’d been hypnotized. I laughed. “Don’t laugh at me,” she said. “I’m not laughing at you,” I said. “I’m laughing at your eyes.” “That’s the whole problem,” she said. “Nobody takes me seriously.” “Well, come on, it’s kind of hard to take you seriously when you’re talking about the Great Wall of China and Egypt and stuff. Those are just big goofy dreams. They’re not real.” “They’re real to me,” she said. “Why don’t you quit talking in dreams and tell me what you really want to do with your life,” I said. “Make it simple.” “I want to go to Stanford and study architecture.” “Wow, that’s cool,” I said. “But why architecture?” “Because I want to build something beautiful. Because I want to be remembered.” And I couldn’t make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren’t supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren’t supposed to dream big, either. We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly: [image "An illustration of an Australian tufted Arnelope bird in flight, with a description noting its tail feathers’ suitability for long-distance flying at high altitudes." file=image_rsrc4SN.jpg] “You know,” I said. “I think it’s way cool that you want to travel the world. But you won’t even make it halfway if you don’t eat enough.” She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too. Mostly I loved to look at her. I guess that’s what boys do, right? And men. We look at girls and women. We stare at them. And this is what I saw when I stared at Penelope: [image "A sketch of a person wearing a hat with ear flaps. The text reads, ‘Penelope in her dad’s old hat.’" file=image_rsrc4SP.jpg] Was it wrong to stare so much? Was it romantic at all? I don’t know. But I couldn’t help myself. Maybe I don’t know anything about romance, but I know a little bit about beauty. And, man, Penelope was crazy beautiful. Can you blame me for staring at her all day long? Rowdy Gives Me Advice About Love [image file=image_rsrc4RJ.jpg] Have you ever watched a beautiful woman play volleyball? Yesterday, during a game, Penelope was serving the ball and I watched her like she was a work of art.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  “Perhaps, after all, there isn’t anything so very unique or strange in all your passions, for who doesn’t love beautiful furs? And everyone knows and feels how closely sexual love and cruelty are related.” “But in my case all these elements are raised to their highest degree,” I replied. “In other words, reason has little power over you, and you are by nature, soft, sensual, yielding.” “Were the martyrs also soft and sensual by nature?” “The martyrs?” “On the contrary, they were supersensual men, who found enjoyment in suffering. They sought out the most frightful tortures, even death itself, as others seek joy, and as they were, so am I—supersensual.” “Have a care that in being such, you do not become a martyr to love, the martyr of a woman.” We are sitting on Wanda’s little balcony in the mellow fragrant summer night. A twofold roof is above us, first the green ceiling of climbing-plants, and then the vault of heaven sown with innumerable stars. The low wailing love-call of a cat rises from the park. I am sitting on footstool at the feet of my divinity, and am telling her of my childhood. “And even then all these strange tendencies were distinctly marked in you?” asked Wanda. “Of course, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have them. Even in my cradle, so mother has told me, I was supersensual. I scorned the healthy breast of my nurse, and had to be brought up on goats’ milk. As a little boy I was mysteriously shy before women, which really was only an expression of an inordinate interest in them. I was oppressed by the gray arches and half-darknesses of the church, and actually afraid of the glittering altars and images of the saints. Secretly, however, I sneaked as to a secret joy to a plaster-Venus which stood in my father’s little library. I kneeled down before her, and to her I said the prayers I had been taught—the Paternoster, the Ave Maria, and the Credo. “Once at night I left my bed to visit her. The sickle of the moon was my light and showed me the goddess in a pale-blue cold light. I prostrated myself before her and kissed her cold feet, as I had seen our peasants do when they kissed the feet of the dead Savior. “An irresistible yearning seized me. “I got up and embraced the beautiful cold body and kissed the cold lips. A deep shudder fell upon me and I fled, and later in a dream, it seemed to me, as if the goddess stood beside my bed, threatening me with up-raised arm.

• From Sexual Politics (1970)

  Jokanaan, who sounds more like Doc Hines (the sex fanatic and evangelical puritan in Faulkner’s Light in August) than anything one might encounter in the New Testament, answers this with the repelled horror of an Orthodox Jew tempted by the “stranger woman”: Back! Daughter of Babylon! By woman came evil into the world. Speak not to me. I will not listen to thee. I listen but to the voice of the Lord God,198 He is also supposed to represent the asceticism of the early Christian era, the fascinated denunciatory antisexuality of the Dissenter mentality, while serving as a mouthpiece for appalled respectability when confronted with the nudity of Beardsley’s bare-breasted dancer. For all her exhibitionism and imperious clitoral command, Salomé is not exclusively or even fundamentally female; she is Oscar Wilde too. The play is a drama of homosexual guilt and rejection followed by a double revenge. Salomé repays the prophet’s rebuttal by demanding his head, and then, in Wilde’s uneasy vision of retribution, Salomé is slain by Herod’s guards. The brazen sexuality Salomé represents, is, in the play’s last moment, punished with terrible force as the despicable tyrant Herod turns on the stairs, beholds Salomé in an ecstasy kissing the dismembered head of Jokanaan, and calls out the climactic last line: “Kill that woman!”199 Despite the stunning virtuosity of this ultimate volte face, it appears to have something arbitrary about it unless we comprehend the play’s disguised and therefore elusive homosexual imagery. It is Herod’s command that slays Salomé, but Herod is a corrupt authority in a corrupt state. Were Wilde to suffer such condemnation, he might assuage his own guilt, but he would, like Salomé, still emerge as the heroine of the play. Yet the order was issued before and came from the mouth of the desirable prophet: The Voice of Jokanaan: Let the captains of the host pierce her with their swords, let them crush her beneath their shields.200 In vain will Salomé appeal to the bloody head she is now free to kiss: Well, thou hast seen thy God, Jokanaan, but me, me, thou didst never see. If thou hadst seen me thou hadst loved me. I saw thee, and I loved thee. Oh, how I loved thee! I love thee yet, Jokanaan, I love only thee…I am athirst for thy beauty; I am hungry for thy body; and neither wine nor apples can appease my desire. What shall I do now, Jokanaan? Neither the floods nor the great waters can quench my passion. I was a princess, and thou didst scorn me. I was a virgin, and thou didst take my virginity from me. I was chaste, and thou didst fill my veins with fire…. Ah! Ah! wherefore didst thou not look at me? If thou hadst looked at me thou hadst loved me. Well I know that thou wouldst have loved me, and the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.201

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  Think about it. Adam and Eve wanted to smooch. Hamlet wanted to avenge his father. Harriet Tubman wanted freedom. Luke Skywalker wanted to find his father. But I’m getting carried away with all the hating and the wanting. I want you to like me, maybe even to love me. Heck, we all want to be liked and loved. But you can’t jump around like a stray dog and tell people that you want to be liked and loved. And past the age of ten, you certainly can’t ask to be liked or loved. That’s just desperate. But, hey, wait a minute, I am desperate. So what can I do to make you love me? Should I pull a rabbit out of a hat? Read poems to you? Juggle chainsaws? Draw cartoons? [image "A person with glasses is juggling a rabbit, a book titled ‘Poems About Pine Trees,’ and a chainsaw. Speech bubbles say ‘LOVE ME!’ multiple times." file=image_rsrc4TS.jpg] I drew a cartoon just for you. Does it make you happy? Or sad? Or just plain confused? Well, let me make something clear. I am happy and sad and confused all at the same time. I always feel clumsy. No, I always feel awkward. “Awkward” is a better word. “Awkward” is the perfect word for what I feel like. And I always feel like I’m going to bump into something and break my collarbone or my heart. But there I go again, talking about my life like it’s a soap opera. And I hate soap operas. So I must confess that my life on the rez is not so horrible. It’s actually pretty decent. If I had to guess, I’d say my life is about 52 percent good and 48 percent bad, and that’s a dang good score in a world where approximately 90 percent of the people are 90 percent sad. So I should probably stop whining. After all, I am loved and I do love. And I’ll prove it, too. These are the eight things that I love with all my heart and soul: my grandmother my mother and father (the parental units count as one) my big sister math (especially geometry) my best friend drawing cartoons any sport involving a ball the beautiful girl named X Jess Walter Interviews Sherman AlexieNote: This interview has been abridged. The full interview is available in the audiobook edition. Sherman Alexie: Hello, everybody, this is Sherman Alexie. I’m sitting in the studio with Jess Walter, and we’re going to have a discussion about the tenth anniversary edition of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I’m laughing because I just did an event in Oregon and the Oregon State librarian couldn’t remember the title and called it The Partially Part-Time True Story of a Full-Time Worker or something.…[Laughs] I get into trouble with my long titles.

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  alienating—more commonly the first, because of intrinsic qualities of the religious enterprise as such, but in important instances the second. In all its manifestations, religion constitutes an immense projection of human meanings into the empty vastness of the universe—a projection, to be sure, which comes back as an alien reality to haunt its producers. Needless to say, it is impossible within the frame of reference of scientific theorizing to make any affirmations, positive or negative, about the ultimate ontological status of this alleged reality. Within this frame of reference, the religious projections can be dealt with only as such, as products of human activity and human consciousness, and rigorous brackets have to be placed around the question as to whether these projections may not also be something else than that (or, more accurately, refer to something else than the human world in which they empirically originate). In other words, every inquiry into religious matters that limits itself to the empirically available must necessarily be based on a “methodological atheism” (36). But even within this inevitable methodological restraint one further point should be made once more: The religious enterprise of human history profoundly reveals the pressing urgency and intensity of man’s quest for meaning. The gigantic projections of religious consciousness, whatever else they may be, constitute the historically most important effort of man to make reality humanly meaningful, at any price. Our discussion of religious masochism has indicated one price that has been paid for this. The great paradox of religious alienation is that the very process of dehumanizing the socio-cultural world has its roots in the fundamental wish that reality as a whole might have a meaningful place for man. One may thus say that alienation, too, has been a price paid by the religious consciousness in its quest for a humanly meaningful universe. 121 II Historical Elements 122

• From The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (1967)

  cosmization, that is, by being brought back into the cosmic order outside of which there is nothing but chaos (22). One point that should be strongly emphasized is that this sort of universe is one of great security for the individual. Put negatively, it is a universe furnishing highly effective barriers against anomy. This does not mean at all that nothing terrible could happen to the individual or that he is guaranteed perennial happiness. It does mean that whatever happens, however terrible, makes sense to him by being related to the ultimate meaning of things. Only if this point is grasped can one understand the persistent attractiveness of the various versions of this worldview to the Israelites, even long after their own religious development had decisively broken with it. Thus, for instance, it would be very misleading to think that the persistent attraction of sacred prostitution (against which the spokesmen of Yahweh thundered for centuries) was a matter of mundane lust. After all, we may assume that there were plenty of non-sacred prostitutes around (to which, it seems, Yahweh’s objections were minimal). The attraction rather lay in an altogether religious desire, namely in the nostalgia for the continuity between man and the cosmos that was sacramentally mediated by sacred sexuality. It is profoundly significant that the traditions later incorporated in the canon of the Old Testament interpreted the origins of Israel as a double exodus—the patriarchs’ exodus from Mesopotamia and the great exodus from Egypt under Moses. This prototypical Israelite exodus was not just a geographical or political movement. Rather, it constituted a break with an entire universe. At the heart of the religion of ancient Israel lies the vehement repudiation of both the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian versions of cosmic order, a repudiation that was, of course, extended to the pre-Israelite indigenous culture of Syria-Palestine. The “fleshpots of 134

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  " quoth she, with quite a French volubility, rising and getting as red as a peony. Then she turned her back upon me, but only to face the wandering old maid, who appeared at the other end of the avenue, and who greeted her with a prolonged 'Oh!' that sounded like the blast of a fog-trumpet." "And —— " "And the only love I ever had for a woman thus came to an end." VENUS IN FURS “But the Almighty Lord hath struck him, and hath delivered him into the hands of a woman.” —The Vulgate, Judith, xvi. 7. My company was charming. Opposite me by the massive Renaissance fireplace sat Venus; she was not a casual woman of the half-world, who under this pseudonym wages war against the enemy sex, like Mademoiselle Cleopatra, but the real, true goddess of love. She sat in an armchair and had kindled a crackling fire, whose reflection ran in red flames over her pale face with its white eyes, and from time to time over her feet when she sought to warm them. Her head was wonderful in spite of the dead stony eyes; it was all I could see of her. She had wrapped her marble-like body in a huge fur, and rolled herself up trembling like a cat. “I don’t understand it,” I exclaimed, “It isn’t really cold any longer. For two weeks past we have had perfect spring weather. You must be nervous.” “Much obliged for your spring,” she replied with a low stony voice, and immediately afterwards sneezed divinely, twice in succession. “I really can’t stand it here much longer, and I am beginning to understand—” “What, dear lady?” “I am beginning to believe the unbelievable and to understand the un-understandable.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor. And now you’re probably thinking, “Hey, buddy, if you’re so aware of your problems, if you’re so freaking smart , then why don’t you do something about them? Huh, buddy, huh? And, by the way, I think moose are pretty cool.” Well, I once read that human beings are hardwired like computers. Sure, you can shove gigabytes of software into a computer, but that doesn’t really change the hardware. The essence of the computer will never change. And I don’t think human beings change, no matter how many gigabytes of happy thoughts and happier pills you shove down our throats. What it comes down to is this: You don’t have many choices when you’re poor, and choiceless people are unhappy people. I think it is completely impossible to be poor and happy. Oh, I know that a gazillion different politicians and philosophers have said, “Money doesn’t solve all of your problems.” But they’re lying . It’s been scientifically proven that money will solve most of your problems and give you a fighting chance at the rest of them. Have you ever noticed that the only people who say that money isn’t everything are the people who already have plenty of money? And, okay, I know that sounds hateful, like I’m some communist rebel trying to stick it to THE MAN, but I don’t even know who THE MAN is. Though I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that THE MAN lives in a nice house with an intelligent wife and talented children and they all have enough food to eat , so I think I’d rather be and eat like THE MAN than hate THE MAN. Trust me, I’d rather love and be loved. I am not a hateful person. I’m just a poor Indian kid who wants to have a better life. A great life. An amazing life. And I know you’re probably thinking, “How can a dirt-poor reservation kid live an amazing life?” Well, to tell the truth, I don’t have a clue where to begin. But I want the amazing; I want it so bad, so maybe the wanting is the beginning. Maybe wanting is the beginning of every story. Think about it. Adam and Eve wanted to smooch. Hamlet wanted to avenge his father. Harriet Tubman wanted freedom. Luke Skywalker wanted to find his father. But I’m getting carried away with all the hating and the wanting. I want you to like me, maybe even to love me. Heck, we all want to be liked and loved. But you can’t jump around like a stray dog and tell people that you want to be liked and loved. And past the age of ten, you certainly can’t ask to be liked or loved. That’s just desperate. But, hey, wait a minute, I am desperate . So what can I do to make you love me? Should I pull a rabbit out of a hat? Read poems to you?

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I shook my head. “Why are you here?” My voice was raspy—too much screaming. My white streak dangled in front of my eye, I tucked it and looked at the flames. “Because you are.” I didn’t know what he meant. Did he feel responsible for me because he found me? I lay back down and curled up. He sat on the floor in front of the couch where I was lying, facing the fire. I closed my eyes and slept. When I woke he was gone. I sat up and stared around the room. Light was creeping in through the kitchen window, which meant I’d slept straight through the night. I had no reference for what time he carried me inside. I wrapped the blanket around my shoulders and walked barefoot to the kitchen. Had he taken off my shoes after he carried me inside? I didn’t remember. I might not have been wearing shoes. There was fresh coffee in the pot and a clean mug sitting next to it. I picked up the mug and underneath he had left another card. Clever. He’d written something along the bottom. Call me if you need anything. Eat something. I crumpled the card in my fist and tossed it in the sink. “I won’t,” I said out loud. I turned on the faucet and let the water smear the words. I took a shower. Got dressed. Started another fire. Stared at the fire. I added a log. I stared at the fire. Around four o’clock I wandered into my office and sat behind my desk. My office was the most sterile room in the house. Most authors filled their writing space with warmth and color, pictures that inspire, chairs that allow them to think. My office consisted of a black lacquered desk in the center of an all white room: white walls, white ceiling, white tile. I needed emptiness to think, a clear white canvas to paint on. The black desk grounded me. Otherwise I’d just float around in all the white. Things distracted me. Or maybe they complicated me. I didn’t like to live with color. I wasn’t always like that. I learned to survive better. I opened my MacBook and stared at the cursor. One hour, ten minutes, a day … I’m not sure how much time passed. The doorbell rang, jarring me. When did I come in here? I felt stiff as I stood up. A long time. I walked down the stairs and stopped in front of the door. Every one of my movements was robotic and forced. I could see Doctor Asterholder’s car through the peephole; charcoal sitting atop my wet, brick driveway. I opened the door and he blinked at me like this was normal—him being on my doorstep.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  And, okay, I know that sounds hateful, like I’m some communist rebel trying to stick it to THE MAN, but I don’t even know who THE MAN is. Though I’ve got the sneaking suspicion that THE MAN lives in a nice house with an intelligent wife and talented children and they all have enough food to eat, so I think I’d rather be and eat like THE MAN than hate THE MAN. Trust me, I’d rather love and be loved. I am not a hateful person. I’m just a poor Indian kid who wants to have a better life. A great life. An amazing life. And I know you’re probably thinking, “How can a dirt-poor reservation kid live an amazing life?” Well, to tell the truth, I don’t have a clue where to begin. But I want the amazing; I want it so bad, so maybe the wanting is the beginning. Maybe wanting is the beginning of every story. Think about it. Adam and Eve wanted to smooch. Hamlet wanted to avenge his father. Harriet Tubman wanted freedom. Luke Skywalker wanted to find his father. But I’m getting carried away with all the hating and the wanting. I want you to like me, maybe even to love me. Heck, we all want to be liked and loved. But you can’t jump around like a stray dog and tell people that you want to be liked and loved. And past the age of ten, you certainly can’t ask to be liked or loved. That’s just desperate. But, hey, wait a minute, I am desperate. So what can I do to make you love me? Should I pull a rabbit out of a hat? Read poems to you? Juggle chainsaws? Draw cartoons? I drew a cartoon just for you. Does it make you happy? Or sad? Or just plain confused? Well, let me make something clear. I am happy and sad and confused all at the same time. I always feel clumsy. No, I always feel awkward. “Awkward” is a better word. “Awkward” is the perfect word for what I feel like. And I always feel like I’m going to bump into something and break my collarbone or my heart. But there I go again, talking about my life like it’s a soap opera. And I hate soap operas. So I must confess that my life on the rez is not so horrible. It’s actually pretty decent. If I had to guess, I’d say my life is about 52 percent good and 48 percent bad, and that’s a dang good score in a world where approximately 90 percent of the people are 90 percent sad. So I should probably stop whining. After all, I am loved and I do love.

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

  Friends wished him to settle in Athens as a teacher of eloquence, but he left there in his thirtieth year, and returned through Constantinople, where he took with him his brother Caesarius, a distinguished physician,1971 to his native city and his parents’ house. At this time his baptism took place. With his whole soul he now threw himself into a strict ascetic life. He renounced innocent enjoyments, even to music, because they flatter the senses. "His food was bread and salt, his drink water, his bed the bare ground, his garment of coarse, rough cloth. Labor filled the day; praying, singing, and holy contemplation, a great part of the night. His earlier life, which was anything but loose, only not so very strict, seemed to him reprehensible; his former laughing now cost him many tears. Silence and quiet meditation were law and pleasure to him."1972 Nothing but love to his parents restrained him from entire seclusion, and induced him, contrary to talent and inclination, to assist his father in the management of his household and his property. But he soon followed his powerful bent toward the contemplative life of solitude, and spent a short time with Basil in a quiet district of Pontus in prayer, spiritual contemplations, and manual labors. "Who will transport me," he afterwards wrote to his friend concerning this visit,1973 "back to those former days, in which I revelled with thee in privations? For voluntary poverty is after all far more honorable than enforced enjoyment. Who will give me back those songs and vigils? who, those risings to God in prayer, that unearthly, incorporeal life, that fellowship and that spiritual harmony of brothers raised by thee to a God-like life? who, the ardent searching of the Holy Scriptures, and the light which, under the guidance of the Spirit, we found therein?" Then he mentions the lesser enjoyments of the beauties of surrounding nature.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Behind him, a relief of Kama and his consort Rati, she of the sword and the sigh and the bright-colored parrot, entangled in the naked bodies of their supplicants, the goddess astride her lover, her legs locked together at the small of his broad back. Let me stay here forever. Let it go on forever. I don’t want to feel anything else. I don’t ever want to feel anything else. Indi stuffed her hand into her mouth and screamed as her whole body spasmed, red fire clawing up through the foundation of her stomach to coil around her spine and stiffen her nipples to painful hardness, and as she slumped against the headboard, breath coming in ragged gasps, and her spit-slick hand fell from her mouth to stroke the tiered fall of her belly, she felt Beth smile against her. When they’d taken the watch together, Fran had thought he had something he wanted to tell her. It had been his idea, after all. She’d hoped at first, pathetically, that he might want to take her back, even if only for sex, but by their third hour sitting in not-uncomfortable silence on the windswept walk of the land wall, she realized that it was something else. I’m not going to cry about it , she told herself. I want everyone to love me. Sometimes they don’t. And I fucked up so bad with you, Robbie. I’m sorry. They sat huddled under a musty wool blanket, passing a thermos of hot soup back and forth as they watched the dark, swaying body of the forest bend and groan with the wind. The few hundred yards of rocky ground between wall and woods was featureless in the velvet night, but Fran knew Zia and Rachel had spent half the week burying landmines looted from the armory in Manchester. An owl hooted somewhere, a mournful sound, and then, just as Fran began to doze, Robbie started to talk. “I was staying with my friend Midge when things started to get really bad,” he said. He was silent for a while, and when he spoke again his voice trembled, thick with tears. “She was helping me. I’d had top surgery. My grandfather died the year before, I’d just broken up with my girlfriend, and I hadn’t spoken to my mother in a long time, so I didn’t have anyone else. “We got out of town after a few months. Everything was falling apart. You remember what it was like. I went into a CVS and I got all the estradiol and spiro I could find, and we went north into the woods. Midge’s dad had a cabin up there and the driveway was about a half a mile long so it wasn’t like anyone was going to trip over us by accident.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  It seemed impatient as it blinked at me, waiting for me to find the words. The only words I could hear were the words of the song that Isaac Asterholder left on my windshield. They invaded my white thinking space until I slammed shut my computer and marched back downstairs to the drawer. I dug out the cardboard sleeve from where I’d shoved it underneath the catalogs and bills, and dropped it into the trash. I needed something to distract myself. When I looked around, the first thing I saw was the fridge. I made a sandwich with the bread and the cold cuts Isaac kept stocked in my vegetable bin, and ate it sitting cross-legged on my kitchen counter. For all of his save the earth with hybrids and recycling bullshit, he was a soda fanatic. There were five variations of carbonated, stomach-eating, sugar-infested soda in my fridge. I grabbed the red can and popped the tab. I drank the whole thing watching the snow fall. Then I dug the CD from the trash. I listened to it ten times … twenty? I lost count. When Isaac walked through the door sometime after eight, I was draped in a blanket in front of the fire, my arms wrapped around my legs. My bare feet were tapping to the music. He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at me. I wouldn’t look at him, so I kept to the fire, focused. He moved to the kitchen. I heard him cleaning up my sandwich mess. After a while he came in with two mugs and handed me one. Coffee. “You ate today.” He sat down on the floor and leaned his back against the sofa. He could have sat on the couch, but he sat on the floor with me. With me. I shrugged. “Yeah.” He kept staring at me and I squirmed, pressed down by his silver eyes. Then, what he said hit me. I hadn’t fed myself since it happened. I would have starved if not for Isaac. That sandwich was the first time I’d taken action to live. The significance felt both dark and light. We sat in silence drinking our coffee, listening to the words he left me. “Who is it?” I asked softly. Humbly. “Who is singing?” “Her name is Florence Welch.” “And the name of the song?” I sneaked a glance at his face. He was nodding slightly, like he approved of me asking. “ Landscape .” I had a thousand words, but I held them tightly in my throat. I wasn’t good at saying. I was good at writing. I played with the corner of my blanket. Just ask him how he knew. I squeezed my eyes shut. It was so hard.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  The nurses were very attentive even when they were sticking needles into my flesh. Oh, sorry honey, you have small veins. This will only sting for a second. They told me to close my eyes as if I were a child. This one didn’t have any problems with finding the right vein in my arm. I wondered if Isaac admonished them to take good care of me. It seemed like something he would do. The hospital room was white. Thank God for that. I could think in peace without the colors breaking through. Isaac came in to examine me. I was trying to be strong when he sat on the edge of my bed and stared down at me with soft eyes. “Why did you stop playing music?” My voice cracked on the last word. I needed something to distract myself. A truth from Isaac. He considered my question for a minute, then he said, “There are two things that I love.” I stopped breathing. I thought he was going to tell me about a woman. Someone he’d loved and that he’d given up music for. Instead he surprised me. “Music and medicine.” I settled down in the bed with my head against the pillows to listen to him. “Music makes me destructive—to myself and everyone around me. Medicine saves people. So I chose medicine.” So matter-of-fact. So simple. I wondered what it would be like to give up writing. To choose something else over what I craved. “Music saves people too,” I said. I don’t know this personally, but I was a writer and it was my job to know how other people thought. And I’d heard them say it. “Not me,” he said. “It makes me destructive.” “But you still listen to it.” I thought of his songs. The ones he’d left me, and the ones he played in his car. “Yes. But I don’t create it anymore. Or get lost in it.” I couldn’t keep it out of my eyes, the desire to know more. Isaac caught it. “How does a person get lost in music?” He grinned and looked at the lines running from my veins into the IV a few feet away. “What drugs do they have you on?” he teased. I stayed quiet, afraid that if I responded to his joke he wouldn’t tell me the answer. “You let it live in you. The beat, the lyrics, the harmonies … the lifestyle,” he added. “There is only room for one of you, eventually.” I was quiet for a bit. Processing. “Do you miss it?” He smiled. “I still have it. It’s just not my focus.” “What did you play?” He took my hand, turned it over until the inside of my wrist was facing up. Then with his pointer and middle finger began tapping a beat on my pulse. I let him for at least a minute. Then I said, “A drummer.”

• From Going Clear (2013)

  He said Cruise was apoplectic. He directed Haggis to write the star a letter of apology—this minute. Haggis dutifully wrote out a note on the paper handed to him, but Wilhere said it wasn’t sufficient. Haggis wrote a more contrite note. Wilhere said he would pass it along. But Haggis never got a response from Cruise. 4 Haggis came away from that meeting with a new appreciation of the significance of Tom Cruise to Scientology. He had heard that Cruise had often been enlisted to try to recruit famous people. They included James Packer, the richest man in Australia; David Beckham, the British soccer star, and his wife, Victoria, the former Spice Girl; and Cruise’s good friends, the actors Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, who later funded a school that used Hubbard educational techniques. But there was no one else like Spielberg. Had Cruise been successful in his efforts, it would have been a transformative moment in the history of the church, especially in its relation to Hollywood. It would have given reality to the mythology of Scientology’s influence in the entertainment industry. Who could guess how many recruits would flood into the church because of Spielberg’s imprimatur? Or how much money would pour into Scientology’s coffers by moguls and agents and aspiring movie stars seeking to gain favor? The ambition behind such a play on the part of the church was breathtaking. And Haggis had stepped into the middle of it with an innocent jest. Cruise turned his attention to the other Scientologists in the industry. Many had gone quiet following the scandals in the church or had never openly admitted their affiliation with the church. Cruise called a meeting of other Scientology celebrities and urged them to become more outspoken about their religion. The popular singer Beck, who had grown up in the church, subsequently began speaking openly about his faith. Erika Christensen, a rising young actress who was also a second- generation Scientologist, called Cruise her spiritual mentor. Inspired by a new sense of activism, a group of Scientology actors turned against Milton Katselas, the gray eminence of the Beverly Hills Playhouse. No one had been more instrumental in forging the bond between Scientology and Hollywood. Katselas had been a longtime friend of Hubbard’s and still kept a photograph of him on his desk. The two men were similar in many ways, but especially in their transformative effect on those who studied under them. Humorous, compassionate, and charismatic, but also vain and demanding, Katselas was not above bullying his students to make a point; however, many of them felt that he had taken them to a higher level of artistry than they had ever thought they could achieve. When Katselas addressed an acting student, it wasn’t just about technique; his lessons were full of savvy observations about life and behavior. One of those students, Allen Barton, was a classical pianist as well as a promising actor.

• From Tropic of Cancer (1934)

  Every time I pass the concierge’s window and catch the full icy impact of her glance I have an insane desire to throttle all the birds in creation. At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love—just enough to feed the birds. Still I can’t get it out of my mind what a discrepancy there is between ideas and living. A permanent dislocation, though we try to cover the two with a bright awning. And it won’t go. Ideas have to be wedded to action; if there is no sex, no vitality in them, there is no action. Ideas cannot exist alone in the vacuum of the mind. Ideas are related to living: liver ideas, kidney ideas, interstitial ideas, etc. If it were only for the sake of an idea Copernicus would have smashed the existent macrocosm and Columbus would have foundered in the Sargasso Sea. The aesthetics of the idea breeds flowerpots and flowerpots you put on the window sill. But if there be no rain or sun of what use putting flowerpots outside the window? Fillmore is full of ideas about gold. The “mythos” of gold, he calls it. I like “mythos” and I like the idea of gold, but I am not obsessed by the subject and I don’t see why we should make flowerpots, even of gold. He tells me that the French are hoarding their gold away in water-tight compartments deep below the surface of the earth; he tells me that there is a little locomotive which runs around in these subterranean vaults and corridors. I like the idea enormously. A profound, uninterrupted silence in which the gold softly snoozes at a temperature of 17 ¼ degrees Centigrade. He says an army working 46 days and 37 hours would not be sufficient to count all the gold that is sunk beneath the Bank of France, and that there is a reserve supply of false teeth, bracelets, wedding rings, etc. Enough food also to last for eighty days and a lake on top of the gold pile to resist the shock of high explosives. Gold, he says, tends to become more and more invisible, a myth, and no more defalcations. Excellent! I am wondering what will happen to the world when we go off the gold standard in ideas, dress, morals, etc. The gold standard of love! Up to the present, my idea in collaborating with myself has been to get off the gold standard of literature. My idea briefly has been to present a resurrection of the emotions, to depict the conduct of a human being in the stratosphere of ideas, that is, in the grip of delirium. To paint a pre-Socratic being, a creature part goat, part Titan. In short, to erect a world on the basis of the omphalos , not on an abstract idea nailed to a cross.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  Even as I come across pages of Knotted and hand them to Isaac, it is the nameless book that catches my attention. Each page has a line that pulls at my eyes. I read them, re-read them. No one I know writes this way, yet it is so familiar. I feel a lust for this author’s words. A jealousy at being able to string such rich sentences together. The first line keeps coming back to me with each subsequent line I read. The punishment for her peace was upon him, and he gave her rest. I don’t notice when Isaac disappears from the room to make us food. I smell it when he comes back and hands me a bowl of soup. I set it aside, intent on finishing my work, but he picks it up and places it back in my hands. “Eat it,” he instructs me. I don’t realize how hungry I am until I reluctantly place the spoon in my mouth, sucking the salty brown broth. I set the spoon aside and drink from the bowl, my eyes still scanning the piles set neatly around me. My leg is aching, as is my back, but I don’t want to stop. If I ask Isaac to help me move he will guess at my discomfort and force me to rest. I rub the small of my back when he’s not looking, and press on. “I know what you’re doing,” he says, as he leans over his pile of pages. I look up in surprise. “What?” “When you think I’m not looking, I am.” I flush, and my hand automatically reaches for my aching muscles. I pull back at the last minute and curl my hand into a fist instead. Isaac snickers and shakes his head, turning back to his work. I’m glad he doesn’t press the issue. I pick up another page. It’s my own. The story I wrote for Nick. Instead of putting it on its pile, I read it. True and trite. It was my call to him. The first line of the book went like this: Every time you want to remember what love feels like, you look for me. That line grabbed every woman who had ever offered their throbbing little heart to a man. Because we all have someone who reminds us of what love stings like. That unreliquished love that slips between our fingers like sand. The second line of the book confused them a little. It’s why their eyes kept following my trail of words. I was dropping breadcrumbs for the disaster that was to come. Stay the fuck away from me.

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

  A transition from the myth of Baldur to the gospel of Christ cannot have been very difficult to the Scandinavian imagination; and, indeed, it is apparent that the first ideas which the Scandinavian heathens formed of the "White Christ" were influenced by their ideas of Baldur. It is a question, however, not yet settled, whether certain parts of the Scandinavian mythology, as, for instance, the above myths of Ragnarokr and Baldur, are not a reflex of Christian ideas; and it is quite probable that when the Scandinavians in the ninth century began to look at Christ under the image of Baldur, they had long before unconsciously remodeled their idea of Baldur after the image of Christ. Another point, of considerable importance to the Christian missionary, was that, in Scandinavian heathendom, he had no priesthood to encounter. Scandinavian paganism never became an institution. There were temples, or at least altars, at Leire, near Roeskilde, in Denmark; at Sigtuna, near Upsall, in Sweden, and at Moere, near Drontheim, in Norway; and huge sacrifices of ninety-nine horses, ninety-nine cocks, and ninety-nine slaves were offered up there every Juul-time. But every man was his own priest. At the time when Christianity first appeared in Scandinavia, the old religion was evidently losing its hold on the individuals and for the very reason, that it had never succeeded in laying hold on the nation. People continued to swear by the gods, and drink in their honor; but they ceased to pray to them. They continued to sacrifice before taking the field or after the victory, and to make the sign of the cross, meaning Thor’s hammer, over a child when it was named; but there was really nothing in their life, national or individual, public or private, which demanded religious consecration. As, on the one side, characters developed which actually went beyond the established religion, longing for something higher and deeper, it was, on the other side, still more frequent to meet with characters which passed by the established religion with utter indifference, believing in nothing but their own strength.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I had got a letter from her that very afternoon; in it she said that, instead of returning in a day or two, as she had intended doing, she might, perhaps, go off to Italy for a short time. She was suffering from a slight attack of bronchitis, and she dreaded the fogs and dampness of our town. "Poor mother! I now thought that, since my intimacy with Teleny, there had been a slight estrangement between us; not that I loved her less, but because Teleny engrossed all my mental and bodily faculties. Still, just now that he was away, I almost felt mother-sick, and I decided to write a long and affectionate letter to her as soon as I got home. "Meanwhile I walked on at hap-hazard. After wandering about for an hour, I found myself unexpectedly before Teleny's house. I had wended my steps thitherwards, without knowing where I went. I looked up at Teleny's windows with longing eyes. How I loved that house. I could have kissed the very stones on which he had stepped. "The night was dark but clear, the street—a very quiet one—was not of the best lighted, and for some reason or other the nearest gas-lamp had gone out. "As I kept staring up at the windows, it seemed as if I saw a faint light glimmering through the crevices of the shut-np blinds. 'Of course,' thought I, 'it is only my imagination.' "I strained my eyes. 'No, surely, I am not mistaken,' said I, audibly to myself, 'surely there is a light.' "'Had Teleny come back?' "Perhaps he had been seized with the same state of dejection which had come over me when we parted. The anguish visible on my ghastly face must have paralyzed him, and in the state in which he was he could not play, so he had come back. Perhaps, also, the concert had been postponed. "Perhaps it was thieves? "But if Teleny —— ? "No, the very idea was absurd. How could I suspect the man I loved of infidelity. I shrank from such a supposition as from something heinous—from a kind of moral pollution. No, it must be anything else but that. The key of the door downstairs was in my hand, I was already in the house. "I crept stealthily upstairs, in the dark, thinking of the first night I had accompanied my friend there, thinking how we had stopped to kiss and hug each other at every step. "But now, without my friend, the darkness was weighing upon me, overpowering, crushing me. I was at last on the landing of the entresol where my friend lived; the whole house was perfectly quiet. "Before putting in the key, I looked through the hole. Had Teleny, or his servant, left the gas lighted in the antechamber and in one of the rooms?