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 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 Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "What! you were in trade then, were you?" "Yes, my father had left me a very profitable business, and a most trustworthy and excellent manager who for years had been the soul of the house. I was then twenty-two, and my part in the concern was to pocket the lion's share of the profits. Still, I must say I not only had never been lazy, but, moreover, was rather serious for a young man of my age, and, above all, in my circumstances. I had but one hobby—a most harmless one. I was fond of old majolica, old fans, and old lace, of which I have now a rather fine collection." "The finest one I ever saw." "Well, I went to the office as usual, but do what I could it was quite impossible for me to settle down to any kind of work. "Teleny's vision was mixing itself up with whatever I happened to be doing, muddling everything up. Moreover, my mother's words were ever present to my mind. Every woman was in love with him, and their love was necessary to him. I thereupon tried hard to banish him from my thoughts. 'Where there is a will there is a way,' said I to myself, 'so I shall soon get rid of this foolish, maudlin infatuation.'" "But you did not succeed, did you?" "No! the more I tried not to think of him, the more I did think. Have you in fact ever heard some snatches of a half-remembered tune ringing in your ears? Go where you will, listen to whatever you like, that tune is ever tantalizing you You can no more recollect the whole of it than you can get rid of it. If you go to bed it keeps you from falling asleep; you slumber and you hear it in your dreams; you wake, and it is the very first thing you hear. So it was with Teleny; he actually haunted me, his voice—so sweet and low—was ever repeating in those unknown accents: Oh! friend, my heart doth yearn for thee. "And now his lovely image never left my eyes, the touch of his soft hand was still on mine, I even felt his scented breath upon my lips; thus in that eager longing, every now and then I stretched my arms to seize and to strain him to my breast, and the hallucination was so strong in me that soon I fancied I could feel his body on my own. "A strong erection thereupon took place, which stiffened every nerve and almost made me mad; but though I suffered, still the pain I felt was sweet." "Excuse my interrupting you, but had you never been in love before you had met Teleny?" "Never." "Strange." "Why so?"

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

  Had you only been some poor girl —— ' "'Come, leave aside your morbid fancies, and tell me candidly if you would have loved me more than you do.' "He looked at me sadly, but could not bring himself to utter an untruth. Still, after awhile he added, sighing:— '"There is a love that is to last, When the hot days of youth are past." Tell me, Camille, is such love ours?' "'Why not? Can you not always be as fond of me as I am of you, or do I only care for you on account of the sensual pleasures you afford me? You know that my heart yearns for you when the senses are satiated and the desire is blunted.' "'Still, had it not been for me, you might have loved some woman whom you could have married —— ' "'And have found out, but too late, that I was born with other cravings. No, sooner or later I should have followed my destiny.' "'Now it might be quite different; satiated with my love, you might, perhaps, marry and forget me.' "'Never. But come, have you been confessing yourself? Are you going to turn Calvinist? or, like the "Dame aux Camellias," or Antinöus, do you think it necessary to sacrifice yourself on the altar of love for my sake?' "'Please, don't joke.' "'No, I'll tell you what we'll do. Let us leave France. Let us go to Spain, to Southern Italy—nay, let us leave Europe, and go to the East, where I must surely have lived during some former life, and which I have a hankering to see, just as if the land "Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine," had been the home of my youth; there, unknown to everyone, forgotten by the world.' "'Yes, but can I leave this town?' said he, musingly, more to himself than to me. "I knew that of late Teleny had been dunned a good deal, and that his life had often been rendered unpleasant by usurers. "Caring, therefore, but little what people might think of me—besides, who has not a good opinion of the man that pays?—I had called all his creditors together, and, unknown to him, I had settled all his debts. I was about to tell him so, and relieve him from the weight that was oppressing him, when Fate—blind, inexorable, crushing Fate—sealed my mouth. "There was again a loud ring at the door. Had that bell been rung a few seconds later, how different his life and mine would have been! But it was Kismet , as the Turks say.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Every day after work, he walked Daisy to a corner two blocks away from her apartment so he wouldn’t meet her boyfriend, David. There was a drugstore on the corner with colored perfume bottles nesting in fistfuls of crepe paper in the window. The druggist, a middle-aged man with a big stomach and a disappointed face, stood at the door and watched them say good-bye. It was a busy corner; traffic ran savagely in the street, and people stamped by, staring in different directions, clutching their packages, briefcases and huge, screaming radios, their faces concentrated but empty. Daisy was silent and frail as a cattail, her fuzzy black mitten in Joey’s hand, her eyes anxiously scanning the street for David. She would say goodbye to him several times, but he would pull her back by her lapel as she turned to cross the street. After the second time he stopped her, she would sigh and look down, then begin to go through her pockets for scraps of unwanted paper, which she tore into snowflake pieces and scattered like useless messages in the garbage-jammed metal wastebasket under the street lamp, as if, trapped on the corner, she might as well do something useful, like clean her pockets. That day, when he finally let her go, he stood for a moment and watched her pat across the street, through the awful march of people. He walked half a block to a candy store with an orange neon sign, and bought several white bags of jelly beans. Then he caught a cab and rode home like a sultan. He ignored Diane’s bitter stare as he walked through the living room and shut himself up in the bedroom with his jelly beans. He thought of rescuing Daisy. She would be walking across the street, with that airy, unaware look on her face. A car would roar around a garbage-choked corner, she would freeze in its path, her pale face helpless as a crouching rabbit. From out of nowhere he would leap, sweeping her aside with one arm, knocking them both to the sidewalk, to safety, her head cushioned on his arm. Or she would be accosted by a hostile teenager who would grab her coat and push her against a wall. Suddenly he would attack. The punk’s legs would fly crazily as Joey slammed him against a crumbling brick wall. “If you hurt her, I’ll…” He sighed happily and got another pill and a handful of jelly beans. — “My mother couldn’t understand me or do anything for me,” he said. “She thought she was doing the right thing.” “She sounds like a bitch,” said Daisy. “Oh, no. She did what she could, given the circumstances. She at least recognized that I far surpassed her in intelligence.” “Then why did she let her boyfriend beat you up?”

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  Compulsive voyeurism, like other paraphilias, is relatively rare. Yet it’s important to keep in mind that millions of men and women are regularly stimulated in nonobsessive ways by the very things that excited Carlos. Who hasn’t been titillated by catching a glimpse of someone undressing or overhearing a sexual discussion or encounter? Most of us are also familiar with the bittersweet thrill of feeling inferior to those who most strongly attract us. And men and women of all sexual orientations, especially males in their teens and twenties, can identify with Carlos’s sexual preoccupation and constant quest for visual stimulation. Carlos’s eroticism was problematic because his negative core beliefs required that he stay in an inferior position. Yet within the self-defeating framework of his CET, Carlos used virtually every known source of arousal, including all four cornerstones of eroticism. The chasm between Carlos and the men he worshipped unleashed a flood of yearning. At the same time, a furtive sense of naughtiness permeated every scene, highlighted by the ever-present risk of discovery and punishment. The entire drama was further energized by a push-pull dance of power. On one hand, Carlos was clearly submissive to the men whose very existence seemed to mock him. Yet following the lead of his masturbation fantasies, primordial images of aggression and conquest helped him turn the tables. If the attention and reciprocation he craved weren’t freely given he would steal them with stealth and cunning. He stalked the men he envied as prey, using them without their consent as pawns in his psychodrama. Finally, a forceful undercurrent of ambivalence toward everyone—himself as well as the men who simultaneously excited and demeaned him—added yet another dimension to an already explosive concoction. The entire scene was infused with plentiful and intense emotions. Some were positive, such as the genuine admiration and appreciation he felt toward the men who represented his ideals of masculinity. Negative emotions included resentment, hostility, fear, guilt, and shame. As Carlos explored his eroticism more deeply, he discovered that revenge was a particularly gratifying aphrodisiac. It was both frightening and exciting to be spotted by the men he stalked. Only if they knew what he was doing could they be made to squirm, as other men in the past had made him squirm. He savored the notion that they felt humiliated when Carlos used them as pawns in his sexual games. One thing Carlos’s eroticism did not allow was the reciprocation of love and affection. He was trapped in the same bind as everyone whose eroticism is built on a foundation of self-hate: anybody who might be attracted to him was, by definition, excluded from the ranks of the desirable. Only those who reinforced his self-contempt were worthy objects of desire.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Only Scientology can rescue humanity from its inevitable doom. The recruits were infused with a sense of mystery, purpose, and intrigue. Life inside Scientology was just so much more compelling than life outside. Preclears sometimes experience mystical states characterized by feelings of bliss or a sense of blending into the universe. They come to expect such phenomena, and they yearn for them if they don’t occur. “Exteriorization”—the sense that one has actually left his physical being behind—is a commonly reported occurrence for Scientologists. If one’s consciousness can actually uproot itself from the physical body and move about at will—what does that say about mortality? We must be something more than, something other than, a mere physical incarnation; we actually are thetans, to use Hubbard’s term, immortal spiritual beings that are incarnated in innumerable lifetimes. Hubbard said that exteriorization could be accomplished in about half the preclears by having the auditor simply command, “Be three feet back of your head.” Free of the limitations of his body, the thetan can roam the universe, circling stars, strolling on Mars, or even creating entirely new universes. Reality expands far beyond what the individual had originally perceived it to be. The ultimate goal of auditing is not just to liberate a person from destructive mental phenomena; it is to emancipate him from the laws of matter, energy, space, and time—or MEST, as Hubbard termed them. These are just artifacts of the thetan’s imagination, in any case. Bored thetans had created MEST universes where they could frolic and play games; eventually, they became so absorbed in their distractions they forgot their true immortal natures. They identified with the bodies that they were temporarily inhabiting, in a universe they had invented for their own amusement. The goal of Scientology is to recall to the thetan his immortality and help him relinquish his self-imposed limitations. Once, Haggis had what he thought was an out-of-body experience. He was lying on a couch, and then he found himself across the room, observing himself lying there. The experience of being out of his body wasn’t that grand, and later he wondered if he had simply been visualizing the scene. He didn’t have the certainty his colleagues reported when they talked about seeing objects behind them or in distant places and times. In 1976, at the Manor Hotel, Haggis went “Clear.” It is the base camp for those who hope to ascend to the upper peaks of Scientology. The concept comes from Dianetics. A person who becomes Clear is “adaptable to and able to change his environment,” Hubbard writes. “His ethical and moral standards are high, his ability to seek and experience pleasure is great. His personality is heightened and he is creative and constructive.”

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  I want to hold b a ck , but I get so distressed, I can't help lashing out'. Over against the d ed i ca ted fighter for a cause, the y feel themselves on the outside : 'I c an' t re a ll y th row myself into this great c ause/movement/religious life . I feel on the o u ts i de, u ntouched. I know it 's gre at, in a way, but I can' t feel moved by it. I f e el unworthy of it somehow'. Or alte rnativel y, someone migh t see in the same everyday life which so e n ri ch es t he householder onl y a na rrow and smug satisfaction at a pitiable co mfo rt, oblivious to the great issue s of life, or the suffering of the masses, or th e s wee p of history. In recent decades , we have seen the drama repeated th at th e ones who often react this way t urn out precisely to be the children whose growth the householder so cherish ed . This is j ust one example, a peculiarly poign ant one in our day, of how this aspiration to connection can motivate so m e of the most bitter conflicts in human life. It is in fact a fundamental drive, with an immense potential impac t in our lives. This craving for being in co n ta ct with or being rightly placed in relation t o the good can be more or less sa t isfied in our lives as we acquire more fame, or introduce more order in our lives, or become more firmly settled in our families. But the issue also arises for us not just as a matter of more or less but as a question of yes or no. And this is the form in which it most deeply affects and challenges us. The yes/no ques tion concerns not how near or far we are f ro m what we see as the good, but rather the direction o f our lives, towards or away from it, or the source o f our motivations in regard to it. We find this kind of question cl early posed in the religious tradition. The Puritan wondered whether he w as saved. The question was whether he was called or not.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  For a moral sense theorist like Hutcheson, our own moral feelings are an important source of understanding of the good, but they only serve in combination wi th ou r grasping our setting within a providential order. This allows us to see how o ur instinctive approval o f bene v ol ence serves to bring about our own and the universal good. Rousseau ' s notion of the voice of nature withi n seems to be saying something much stronger. True, the Savoyard cu r ate relies on the vision of providential order too. But the definition of conscience as an inner sentiment could be taken in a much stronger sense. Not just that I have, thanks be to God, sentiments which accord with what I see through other means to be the universal good, but that the inner voice of my true sentiments define what is the good: since the elan of nature in me is the good, it is this wh ich has to be consulted to discover it. Rousseau never took the radical step to this much more subjectivist position. He ran his inner voice in tandem with the traditional way of understanding and recognizing universal good. But he was the crucial hinge fi gure, because he provided the language, with an eloquence beyond compare, which could articulate this radical view. All that was needed was for the inner voice to cut loose from its yoke fellow and declare its full moral competence. A new ethic of nature arises with Romantic expressivism, which takes this step. Rousseau immensely enlarged the scope of the inner voice. We now can know from within us, from the impulses of our own being, what nature ma rks as s ignificant. And our ultimate happiness is to live in conformity with this voice, that is, to be entirely ourselves. "]'aspire au moment", says the S avoyard curate, "ou, delivre des entraves du corps, je serai moi sans contradiction, sans p artage, et n'aurait besoin que de moi pour etre heureux" ("I long for the time when, freed from the fetters of the body, I shall be myself, at one wi t h myse l f, no longer t or n in two, w h en I myself shall suffic e for my own happiness ''). 20 This is a rather startling statement in a declaratio n of religious faith; and highly significan t in a writer who stands i n o the r respects i n an A ugustinian tradition, and whose autobio graphy contain s s o many echoes of that of the Bishop of Hippo, beginning with the title.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Now, Confucius insisted, anybody could practice the rites, and even somebody of humble origins, such as Yan Hui, could become a junzi. Other Chinese philosophers of the Axial Age would propose a more realistic solution to the problems of China, but they were not always as ambitious as Confucius, who aimed at more than law and order. He wanted human dignity, nobility, and holiness, and knew that this could be achieved only by a daily struggle to achieve the virtue of shu. It was an audacious plan. Confucius was asking people to trust in the power of an enhanced humanity instead of coercion. Very few people really wanted to give up their egotism. But those who did try to put Confucius’s Way into practice found that it transformed their lives. Ren was difficult because it required the eradication of vanity, resentment, and the desire to dominate others. 32 And yet, paradoxically, ren was easy. “Is ren indeed so far away?” Confucius asked. “If we really wanted ren, we should find that it was at our very side.” 33 It came “after what is difficult is done”—after, that is, a person had mastered the education provided by the li. 34 It required perseverance, rather than superhuman strength, and was, perhaps, like learning to ride a bicycle: once you had acquired the skill, it became effortless. You had to keep at it, however. Either you constantly behaved toward other people—whoever they were—as though they had the same fundamental importance as yourself, or you did not. But if you did so, you achieved a moral power that was almost tangible. The pursuit of ren was a lifelong struggle; it would end only at death. 35 Confucius did not encourage his students to speculate about what lay at the end of the Way. Walking along this path was itself a transcendent and dynamic experience. Yan Hui, Confucius’s favorite disciple, expressed it beautifully when he said of 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. 36 Ren was not something you “got” but something you gave. Ren was an exacting yet exhilarating way of life.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  The continuous attempt at achieving a state of positively regulated life is a defining part of our existence—the first reality of our existence, as Spinoza would say when he described the relentless endeavor of each being to preserve itself. A blend of striving, endeavor, and tendency comes close to rendering the Latin conatus, as used by Spinoza in propositions 6, 7, and 8 of the Ethics, part 3. In Spinoza’s own words, “Each thing, as far as it can be its own power, strives to persevere in its being,” and “The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing.” Interpreted with the advantage of current hindsight, Spinoza says that the living organism is constructed so as to maintain the coherence of its structures and functions, for as long as possible, against the odds that threaten it. It is interesting to note that Spinoza reached these conclusions before Maupertuis advanced the principle of least action (Spinoza died almost half a century before). He would have welcomed the support.4 In spite of the transformations that the body undergoes as it develops, renews its constituent parts, and ages, the conatus insists on maintaining the same individual, respecting the original architectural plan, and thus allowing for the sort of animation that is associated with that plan. The animation can vary in scope, corresponding to life processes merely sufficient to survive or to achieve optimal life processes. The poet Paul Éluard wrote about the dur désir de durer, another way of describing the conatus but with the alliterative beauty of a memorable collection of French sounds. I can translate it, pallidly, as the “determined desire to endure.” And William Faulkner wrote of the human desire to “endure and prevail.” He, too, was referring, with remarkable intuition, to the projection of the conatus in the human mind.5 Life on the MoveThere are plenty of bacteria around us, on us, and inside us, today, but there are no examples left around of those very early bacteria of 3.8 billion years ago. What they were like, what early life was like exactly, needs to be pieced together from different strands of evidence. Between the beginnings and now, there are sparsely documented gaps. How life arose, precisely, is open to informed conjecture. At first blush, in the wake of the discovery of the structure of DNA, the elucidation of the role of RNA, and the breaking of the genetic code, it must have appeared that life had to come from the genetic material, but that idea was up against a major difficulty: the likelihood of such complex molecules assembling themselves spontaneously as the first step in the construction of life was low to nil.6

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  The pleasures that can be derived from an art piece are still related to their therapeutic origin but can soar into new intellectual regions where they are joined by complexities of ideas and meanings. Nor am I suggesting that all cultural responses are intelligent and well-organized accomplishments that necessarily produce an effective answer to the original plight. Other examples of emotive reaction and cultural response include, on the positive side of the ledger, yearning to alleviate the suffering of others and taking pleasure in discovering a means to do so; delighting in finding ways to improve the lives of others ranging from the offer of material goods to playful inventions that result in happiness; taking pleasure in the consideration of nature’s mysteries and attempting to solve them. This is how many cultural ideas, instruments, practices, and institutions were probably born, modestly and in small groups. Over time they became places of worship, books of wisdom, exemplary novels, institutions of learning, declarations of principle, and charters of nations. On the negative side, violence toward and from other human beings played an inordinate role. Its leading cause was the engagement of a neural apparatus of emotions whose development possibly came to a peak in great apes and whose shadow continues to loom over the human condition. Such violence came largely from males, and it did not have to be justified by hunger or group-related fights for territory. It could target females and the young as well as other adult males. Humans inherited the potential for these modes of behavior, which were highly adaptive for a long stretch of human history, and biological evolution has not succeeded in eradicating the potential for violence. 6 Cultural evolution, thanks to human creativity, has actually expanded the range of expressions of violence. The Florentine tradition of calico storico as well as rugby and football are good examples. Physical violence remains present in some competitive sports, as heirs to Roman gladiator spectacles, and is consistently rehearsed by varied forms of entertainment in movies, television, and the Internet. Physical violence is also abundantly present in the surgical strikes of modern warfare, terrorist and otherwise. As for nonphysical, psychological violence, it is present via unrestrained abuses of power well exemplified by the invasion of privacy made possible by modern technologies. One of the jobs of cultures has been to tame the beast that has been so often present and that remains alive as a reminder of our origins.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  To wh a t end doe wee by a divorce dismember a frame context ed with so mutuall, coherent an d brotherl y correspondency. Contrariwise, let us r epaire and renue the same by enterc h angeable offices. 15 Th e fight is in a sense to come to accept what w e are. And in this re g ard, as w e shall see, Mon taig ne inaugura tes one o f t h e recurrin g themes of modern c ult ur e . We se ek self -know le dge , but th is can no long er me an ju st imp er s onal lor e a b o ut hu man natur e, as it co uld for Pla to . Eac h of us has to disc over hi s or h er ow n form. We are not looking for th e universal nature ; we each look for o u r o wn bei ng . Montaign e th eref or e inaug urat es a new kind of re flection wh ich is intensely individual, a self-e x planation, the aim of which is to reach s el f -k no wledge by co ming t o see thr o ugh the screens of self-delusion which p a s sio n or spir itu al pr ide ha ve erected . It is en tirely a first-person stud y, r e c eiv ing litt l e h e l p fr o m t h e de l iver an ce s of t hir d-person obs erva tio n, an d n o ne fro m "scienc e". The c ontras t w ith D es carte s is s t riki n g , j u s t bec aus e Montaig n e i s at th e z82. • INWARDNESS point of origin of another kin d of mod e rn individualism, that of self. discovery , which differs from the Cart esian both in aim an d method. Its aim is to identify the individual in h is or her unrepeatable differe nc e , whe r e Cart esianism gives us a science of the subject in its gen eral essence; a nd i t proce eds by a critique of first-person self-interpretations, rather than by t he proofs of impersonal reasoning. What it ends up with is an understand ing o f m y o wn demands, aspirations, desires, in their originality, however m u c h th ese may lie athwan the expectations o f society and my imme dia t e inclinations.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  It’s such a shame he still has a touch of dishonesty in him. Peter added, “The Jews have been and always will be the chosen people!” I answered, “Just this once, I hope they’ll be chosen for something good!” But we went on chatting very pleasantly, about Father, about judging human character and all sorts of things, so many that I can’t even remember them all. I left at a quarter past five, because Bep had arrived. That evening he said something else I thought was nice. We were talking about the picture of a movie star I’d once given him, which has been hanging in his room for at least a year and a half. He liked it so much that I offered to give him a few more. “No,” he replied, “I’d rather keep the one I’ve got. I look at it every day, and the people in it have become my friends.” I now have a better understanding of why he always hugs Mouschi so tightly. He obviously needs affection too. I forgot to mention something else he was talking about. He said, “No, I’m not afraid, except when it comes to things about myself, but I’m working on that.” Peter has a huge inferiority complex. For example, he always thinks he’s so stupid and we’re so smart. When I help him with French, he thanks me a thousand times. One of these days I’m going to say, “Oh, cut it out! You’re much better at English and geography!” Anne Frank THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1944 Dear Kitty, I was upstairs this morning, since I promised Mrs. van D. I’d read her some of my stories. I began with “Eva’s Dream,” which she liked a lot, and then I read a few passages from “The Secret Annex,” which had her in stitches. Peter also listened for a while (just the last part) and asked if I’d come to his room sometime to read more. I decided I had to take a chance right then and there, so I got my notebook and let him read that bit where Cady and Hans talk about God. I can’t really tell what kind of impression it made on him. He said something I don’t quite remember, not about whether it was good, but about the idea behind it. I told him I just wanted him to see that I didn’t write only amusing things. He nodded, and I left the room. We’ll see if I hear anything more! Yours, Anne Frank FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1944 My dearest Kitty, Whenever I go upstairs, it’s always so I can see “him.” Now that I have something to look forward to, my life here has improved greatly. At least the object of my friendship is always here, and I don’t have to be afraid of rivals (except for Margot).

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Most of the time you just come across them by accident.” “Why wait? I’ll ask my parents. They know more than I do and they’ve had more experience.” We were already on the stairs, so nothing more was said. Yes, it really did happen. I’d never have talked to a girl about this in such a normal tone of voice. I’m also certain that this isn’t what Mother meant when she warned me about boys. All the same, I wasn’t exactly my usual self for the rest of the day. When I thought back to our talk, it struck me as odd. But I’ve learned at least one thing: there are young people, even those of the opposite sex, who can discuss these things naturally, without cracking jokes. Is Peter really going to ask his parents a lot of questions? Is he really the way he seemed yesterday? Oh, what do I know?!!! Yours, Anne FRIDAY, JANUARY 28, 1944 Dearest Kitty, In recent weeks I’ve developed a great liking for family trees and the genealogical tables of royal families. I’ve come to the conclusion that once you begin your search, you have to keep digging deeper and deeper into the past, which leads you to even more interesting discoveries. Although I’m extremely diligent when it comes to my schoolwork and can pretty much follow the BBC Home Service on the radio, I still spend many of my Sundays sorting out and looking over my movie-star collection, which has grown to a very respectable size. Mr. Kugler makes me happy every Monday by bringing me a copy of Cinema & Theater magazine. The less worldly members of our household often refer to this small indulgence as a waste of money, yet they never fail to be surprised at how accurately I can list the actors in any given movie, even after a year. Bep, who often goes to the movies with her boyfriend on her day off, tells me on Saturday the name of the show they’re going to see, and I then proceed to rattle off the names of the leading actors and actresses and the reviews. Moms recently remarked ; that I wouldn’t need to go to the movies later on, because ! I know all the plots, the names of the stars and the reviews by heart. Whenever I come sailing in with a new hairstyle, I I can read the disapproval on their faces, and I can be sure someone will ask which movie star I’m trying to imitate. My reply, that it’s my own invention, is greeted with ~ skepticism. As for the hairdo, it doesn’t hold its set for ~ more than half an hour. By that time I’m so sick and tired i of their remarks that I race to the bathroom and restore my hair to its normal mass of curls.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Well before 1967, Orthodox Jews had sacralized the secular state of Israel and made it a supreme value. A somewhat despised religious version of Zionism had always existed alongside the secular nationalism of most Israelis. 65 It became slightly more prominent during the 1950s, when a group of young Orthodox, including Moshe Levinger, Shlomo Aviner, Yaakov Ariel, and Eliezer Waldman, had fallen under the spell of the aging Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, who regarded the secular State of Israel as a “divine entity” and the Kingdom of God on earth. In exile it had been impossible to observe the commandments tied to the Land; now there was a yearning for wholeness. Instead of excluding the sacred from political life, Kookists, as the rabbi’s followers became known, intended it to pervade the whole of existence once again—“all the time and in every area.” Political engagement, therefore, had become an “ascent to the pinnacles of holiness.” The Kookists transformed the Land into an idol, an earthly object that had absolute status and required the unquestioning veneration and commitment that traditionally applied only to the transcendence we call God. “Zionism is a heavenly matter,” Kook insisted. “The State of Israel is a divine entity, our holy and exalted state.” 66 For Kook, every clod of Israel’s soil was holy; its institutions were divine; and the weapons of Israeli soldiers were as sacred as prayer shawls. But Israel, like any state, was far from ideal and guilty of both structural and martial violence. In the past, prophets had challenged the systemic injustice of the state, and priests had been critical even of its holy wars. For the Kookists, however, secular Israel was beyond criticism and essential to the world’s salvation. With the establishment of Israel, Messianic redemption had already begun: “Every Jew who comes to Eretz Yisrael, every tree that is planted in the soil of Israel, every soldier added to the army of Israel constitutes another spiritual stage; literally, another stage in the process of redemption.” 67 As we have seen, ancient Israel from the very first had looked askance at state violence; now the Kookists gave it supreme sanction. Once the nation-state becomes the highest value, however, as Lord Acton had predicted, there is no limit to what it can do—literally, anything goes. By elevating the state to the divine level, Kookists had also given sacred endorsement to nationalism’s shadow side: its intolerance of minorities. Unless Jews occupied the entire Land, Israel would remain tragically incomplete, so annexing Arab territory was a supreme religious duty.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  They expressed this yearning in terms of what is known as the perennial philosophy, so called because it was present, in some form, in most premodern cultures.11 Every single person, object, or experience was seen as a replica, a pale shadow, of a reality that was stronger and more enduring than anything in their ordinary experience but that they only glimpsed in visionary moments or in dreams. By ritually imitating what they understood to be the gestures and actions of their celestial alter egos—whether gods, ancestors, or culture heroes—premodern folk felt themselves to be caught up in their larger dimension of being. We humans are profoundly artificial and tend naturally toward archetypes and paradigms.12 We constantly strive to improve on nature or approximate to an ideal that transcends the day-to-day. Even our contemporary cult of celebrity can be understood as an expression of our reverence for and yearning to emulate models of “superhumanity.” Feeling ourselves connected to such extraordinary realities satisfies an essential craving. It touches us within, lifts us momentarily beyond ourselves, so that we seem to inhabit our humanity more fully than usual and feel in touch with the deeper currents of life. If we no longer find this experience in a church or temple, we seek it in art, a musical concert, sex, drugs—or warfare. What this last may have to do with these other moments of transport may not be so obvious, but it is one of the oldest triggers of ecstatic experience. To understand why, it will be helpful to consider the development of our neuroanatomy. Each of us has not one but three brains that coexist uneasily. In the deepest recess of our gray matter we have an “old brain” that we inherited from the reptiles that struggled out of the primal slime 500 million years ago. Intent on their own survival, with absolutely no altruistic impulses, these creatures were solely motivated by mechanisms urging them to feed, fight, flee (when necessary), and reproduce. Those best equipped to compete mercilessly for food, ward off any threat, dominate territory, and seek safety naturally passed along their genes, so these self-centered impulses could only intensify.13 But sometime after mammals appeared, they evolved what neuroscientists call the limbic system, perhaps about 120 million years ago.14 Formed over the core brain derived from the reptiles, the limbic system motivated all sorts of new behaviors, including the protection and nurture of young as well as the formation of alliances with other individuals that were invaluable in the struggle to survive. And so, for the first time, sentient beings possessed the capacity to cherish and care for creatures other than themselves.15

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  that, despite everything, I’ll keep going, that I’ll find my own way and choke back my tears. I only wish I could see some results or, just once, receive encouragement from someone who loves me. Don’t condemn me, but think of me as a person who sometimes reaches the bursting point! Yours, Anne MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9,1942 Dearest Kitty, Yesterday was Peter’s birthday, his sixteenth. I was upstairs by eight, and Peter and I looked at his presents. He received a game of Monopoly, a razor and a cigarette lighter. Not that he smokes so much, not at all; it just looks so distinguished. The biggest surprise came from Mr. van Daan, who reported at one that the English had landed in Tunis, Algiers, Casablanca and Oran. “This is the beginning of the end,” everyone was saying, but Churchill, the British Prime Minister, who must have heard the same thing being repeated in England, declared, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Do you see the difference? However, there’s reason for optimism. Stalingrad, the Russian city that has been under attack for three months, still hasn’t fallen into German hands. In the true spirit of the Annex, I should talk to you about food. (I should explain that they’re real gluttons up on the top floor.) Bread is delivered daily by a very nice baker, a friend of Mr. Kleiman’s. Of course, we don’t have as much as we did at home, but it’s enough. We also purchase ration books on the black market. The price keeps going up; it’s

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  The 800 million Hindus of India can hardly claim to be economically or socially oppressed, so Hindu nationalists feed on such images of persecution and insist that a strong Hindu identity can be restored only by decisive, violent action. Until the 1980s, the Palestinians had held aloof from the religious revival in the rest of the Middle East. Yasser Arafat’s PLO was a secular nationalist organization. Most Palestinians admired him, but the PLO’s secularism appealed mainly to the Westernized Palestinian elite, and observant Muslims played virtually no part in its terrorist actions. 70 When the PLO was supressed in the Gaza Strip in 1971, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin founded Mujama (“Congress”), an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, which focused on social welfare work. By 1987 Mujama had established clinics, drug rehabilitation centers, youth clubs, sporting facilities, and Quran classes throughout Gaza, supported not only by Muslim alms ( zakat ) but also by the Israeli government in an attempt to undermine the PLO. At this point Yassin had no interest in armed struggle. When the PLO accused him of being Israel’s puppet, he replied that, on the contrary, it was their secular ethos that was destroying Palestinian identity. Mujama was far more popular than Islamic Jihad (IJ), formed during the 1980s, which attempted to apply Qutb’s ideas to the Palestinian tragedy and regarded itself as the vanguard of a larger global struggle “against the forces of arrogance [ jahiliyyah ], the colonial enemy, all over the world.” 71 IJ engaged in terrorist attacks against the Israeli military but rarely quoted the Quran; its rhetoric was frankly secular. Ironically, the only thing that was religious about this organization was its name—and this may explain its lack of mass support. 72 The outbreak of the First Intifada (1987–93), led by young secularist Palestinians, changed everything. Impatient with the corruption and ineffectiveness of Fatah, the leading PLO party, they urged the entire population to rise up and refuse to submit to the Israeli occupation. Women and children threw stones at Israeli soldiers, and those shot by the IDF were hailed as martyrs. The intifada made a strong impression on the international community: Israel had long presented itself as plucky David fighting the Arab Goliath, but now the world watched heavily armored Israeli soldiers pursuing unarmed children. As a military man, Yitzhak Rabin realized that harassing women and children would ruin IDF morale, and when he became prime minister in 1992, he was prepared to negotiate with Arafat.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  But purusha and prakrti were not enemies. “Nature,” depicted as female, was in love with purusha. Her job was to extricate each person’s purusha from her embrace, even if this required humans to turn against what, in their ignorance, they regarded as their true selves. 82 Nature yearned to liberate us, to free the purusha from the toils of illusion and suffering that characterize human life. Indeed, the whole of nature—did we but know it—existed in order to serve the eternal self ( purusha ) of each one of us. “From brahman down to the blade of grass, the whole of creation is for the benefit of the purusha, until supreme knowledge is attained.” 83 How did purusha fall into the toils of nature? Was there some kind of original sin? Samkhya does not answer these questions. Its metaphysical scheme was not intended to offer a literal, scientific, or historical account of reality. In India, truth was measured not by its objective but by its therapeutic value. The followers of Samkhya were supposed to meditate upon this description of nature’s relationship with the purusha in order to discover what a human being had to do to find his way back to his true self. The ideas of Samkhya were almost certainly born in the circles of renouncers who were not satisfied by the spirituality of the Upanishads. Instead of losing themselves in the impersonal brahman, they wanted to retain their individuality. It was quite clear to them that life was unsatisfactory. Something had gone wrong, but it was pointless to speculate on how this unhappy state of affairs had come to pass. In their meditations they had glimpsed some kind of inner light, which indicated to them that they had another, more absolute self, if only they could separate it from the mess of illusion and desire that impeded their spiritual growth. The word samkhya may have once referred to the “dissociation” of the self from the “natural” realm of mind and matter. The renouncer had already withdrawn from society; now he had to take the next step, and find the true center of his being: the true spirit, his real self, his immortal purusha. Samkhya attempted an analysis of reality that was simply designed to help the renouncer to achieve this liberation. In his forest retreat he could meditate upon it in order to understand the different components of his human nature. Only by becoming acquainted with the complexities of the human predicament could he hope to transcend it.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Grandpa died, most of the money was lost, and after the Great War and inflation there was nothing left at all. Up until the war there were still quite a few rich relatives. So Father was extremely well-bred, and he had to laugh yesterday because for the first time in his fifty-five years, he scraped out the frying pan at the table. Mother’s family wasn’t as wealthy, but still fairly well-off, and we’ve listened openmouthed to stories of private balls, dinners and engagement parties with 250 guests. We’re far from rich now, but I’ve pinned all my hopes on after the war. I can assure you, I’m not so set on a bourgeois life as Mother and Margot. I’d like to spend a year in Paris and London learning the languages and studying art history. Compare that with Margot, who wants to nurse newborns in Palestine. I still have visions of gorgeous dresses and fascinating people. As I’ve told you many times before, I want to see the world and do all kinds of exciting things, and a little money won’t hurt! This morning Miep told us about her cousin’s engagement party, which she went to on Saturday. The cousin’s parents are rich, and the groom’s are even richer. Miep made our mouths water telling us about the food that was served: vegetable soup with meatballs, cheese, rolls with sliced meat, hors d’oeuvres made with eggs and roast beef, rolls with cheese, genoise, wine and cigarettes, and you could eat as much as you wanted. Miep drank ten schnapps and smoked three cigarettes -- could this be our temperance advocate? If Miep drank all those, I wonder how many her spouse managed to toss down? Everyone at the party was a little tipsy, of course. There were also two officers from the Homicide Squad, who took photographs of the wedding couple. You can see we’re never far from Miep’s thoughts, since she promptly noted their names and addresses in case anything should happen and we needed contacts with good Dutch people. Our mouths were watering so much. We, who’d had nothing but two spoonfuls of hot cereal for breakfast and were absolutely famished; we, who get nothing but half-cooked spinach (for the vitamins!) and rotten pota- toes day after day; we, who fill our empty stomachs with nothing but boiled lettuce, raw lettuce,