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 Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  "The Caliph Omar burnt the Alexandrian Library, saying: 'All books which contain what is not in the Koran are dangerous. All which contain what is in it are useless!' Probably no one ever had an intenser belief in anything than Omar had in this. Yet it is impossible to imagine it preceded by an argument. His belief in Mahomet, in the Koran, and in the sufficiency of the Koran, probably came to him in spontaneous rushes of emotion; there may have been little vestiges of argument donating here and there, but they did not justify the strength of the emotion, stillness did they create it, and they hardly even excused it. ... Probably, when the subject is thoroughly examined, conviction will be found to be one of the intensest of human emotions, and one most closely connected with the bodily state,... accompanied or preceded by the sensation that Scott makes his seer describe as the prelude of a prophecy: At length the fatal answer came, In characters of living flame— Not spoke in words, nor blazed in scroll, But borne and branded on my soul.' A hot hash seems to burn across the brain. Men in these intense states of mind have altered all history, changed for better or worse the creed of myriads, and desolated or redeemed provinces or ages. Nor is this intensity a sign of truth, for it is precisely strongest in those points in which men differ most from each other. John Knox felt it in his anti-Catholicism; Ignatius Loyola in his anti-Protestantism; and both, I suppose, felt it as much as it is possible to feel it."[326] The reason of the belief is undoubtedly the bodily commotion which the exciting idea sets up. 'Nothing which I can feel like that can be false.' All our religious and supernatural beliefs are of this order. The surest warrant for immortality is the yearning of our bowels for our dear ones; for God, the sinking sense it gives us to imagine no such Providence or help. So of our political or pecuniary hopes and fears, and things and persons dreaded and desired "A grocer has a full creed as to foreign policy, young lady a complete theory of the sacraments, as to which neither has any doubt. ... A girl in a country parsonage will be sure that Paris never can be taken, or that Bismarck is a wretch"—all because they have either conceived these things at some moment with passion, or associated them with other things which they have conceived with passion.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream. Feelings of Tendency. So much for the transitive states. But there are other unnamed states or qualities of states that are just as important and just as cognitive as they, and just as much unrecognized by the traditional sensationalist and intellectualist philosophies of mind. The first fails to find them at all, the second finds their cognitive function , but denies that anything in the way of feeling has a share in bringing it about. Examples will make clear what these inarticulate psychoses, due to waxing and waning excitements of the brain, are like.[230] Suppose three successive persons say to us: 'Wait!' 'Hark!' 'Look!' Our consciousness is thrown into three quite different attitudes of expectancy, although no definite object is before it in any one of the three cases. Leaving out different actual bodily attitudes, and leaving out the reverberating images of the three words, which are of course diverse, probably no one will deny the existence of a residual conscious affection, a sense of the direction from which an impression is about to come, although no positive impression is yet there. Meanwhile we have no names for the psychoses in question but the names hark, look, and wait. Suppose we try to recall a forgotten name. The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness, and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term. If wrong names are proposed to us, this singularly definite gap acts immediately so as to negate them. They do not fit into its mould. And the gap of one word does not feel like the gap of another, all empty of content as both might seem necessarily to be when described as gaps. When I vainly try to recall the name of Spalding, my consciousness is far removed from what it is when I vainly try to recall the name of Bowles. Here some ingenious persons will say: "How can the two consciousnesses be different when the terms which might make them different are not there? All that is there, so long as the effort to recall is vain, is the bare effort itself. How should that differ in the two cases? You are making it seem to differ by prematurely filling it out with the different names, although these, by the hypothesis, have not yet come. Stick to the two efforts as they are, without naming them after facts not yet existent, and you'll be quite unable to designate any point in which they differ," Designate, truly enough. We can only designate the difference by borrowing the names of objects not yet in the mind. Which is to say

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  I felt high all the time.” When we asked if the sex he had with Monica was better than it had been with Helen, Phil paused for a long moment. “Actually,” he admitted, “now that I think about it, sex with Helen was much better—the best I’ve ever had, really—at the beginning, you know, those first few years. I mean, with Helen it was never just sex. We both knew we wanted to spend our lives together, so there was a depth and, and, well, a love and spiritual connection I’ve never had with anyone else…. Even though Helen says she hates me now, I honestly believe we’ll always have that connection—even if she won’t admit it.” So what happened? “Over the years … you know how it is … the passion faded and our relationship changed. We became friends … best friends, but still … siblings, almost. It’s not her fault. I know this is all my fault, but what can I do?” His eyes tearing up, he said, “It felt like a life-or-death situation. I wanted to feel alive again. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but that’s how it felt.” Phil is at a prime age for the so-called midlife crisis that seems to hit many men around this stage of their lives. Explanations are easy to come by, ranging from economics (he finally has enough money and status to be attractive to the sort of sexy young women who had ignored him previously) to existential dread (he’s coming to terms with his own mortality by lashing out symbolically against his own impending aging and death) to the wife’s life cycle (she’s nearing menopause, so he’s biologically driven toward the fertility of younger women). Each of these may have some measure of truth, but none answers the most pressing question: Why do men have such overwhelming hunger for variety in their sexual partners—not just at midlife, but always? If the ghost of Calvin Coolidge weren’t haunting him, a man would simply buy a DVD or two of his favorite porn actress and watch it over and over the rest of his life. Knowing how the movie ends is hardly going to ruin the experience for him. No, what makes heterosexual men seek a constant stream of different women doing the same old things is the Coolidge effect. If you’ve never been to a porn gateway website, you’ll be astounded by the variety and specificity of the offerings there: everything from “unshaved Japanese lesbians” to “tattooed redheads” to “overweight older gals.” It’s a simple, unavoidable truth almost everyone knows to be true but few dare to discuss: variety and change are the necessary spice of the sex life of the human male.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  For his sake it was that she now lavished more care on her dress than before. She caught herself in reveries on what might have been, if she had not been married and he had been free. She blushed with emotion when he came into the room, she could not repress a smile of rapture when he said anything amiable to her. For several days now Countess Lidia Ivanovna had been in a state of intense excitement. She had learned that Anna and Vronsky were in Petersburg. Alexey Alexandrovitch must be saved from seeing her, he must be saved even from the torturing knowledge that that awful woman was in the same town with him, and that he might meet her any minute. Lidia Ivanovna made inquiries through her friends as to what those infamous people, as she called Anna and Vronsky, intended doing, and she endeavoured so to guide every movement of her friend during those days that he could not come across them. The young adjutant, an acquaintance of Vronsky, through whom she obtained her information, and who hoped through Countess Lidia Ivanovna to obtain a concession, told her that they had finished their business and were going away next day. Lidia Ivanovna had already begun to calm down, when the next morning a note was brought her, the handwriting of which she recognised with horror. It was the handwriting of Anna Karenin. The envelope was of paper as thick as bark; on the oblong yellow paper there was a huge monogram, and the letter smelt of agreeable scent. 'Who brought it?' 'A commissionaire from the hotel.' It was some time before Countess Lidia Ivanovna could sit down to read the letter. Her excitement brought on an attack of asthma, to which she was subject. When she had recovered her composure, she read the following letter in French: — 'M ADAME L A C OMTESSE ,—The Christian feelings with which your heart is filled give me the, I feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you. I am miserable at being separated from my son. I entreat permission to see him once before my departure. Forgive me for recalling myself to your memory. I apply to you and not to Alexey Alexandrovitch, simply because I do not wish to cause that generous man to suffer in remembering me. Knowing your friendship for him, I know you will understand me. Could you send Seryozha to me, or should I come to the house at some fixed hour, or will you let me know when and where I could see him away from home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing the magnanimity of him with whom it rests. You cannot conceive the craving I have to see him, and so cannot conceive the gratitude your help will arouse in me.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  His teachers complained that he would not learn, while his soul was brimming over with thirst for knowledge. And he learned from Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassily Lukitch, but not from his teachers. The spring his father and teachers reckoned upon to turn their mill-wheels had long dried up at the source, but its waters did their work in another channel. His father punished Seryozha by not letting him go to see Nadinka, Lidia Ivanovna's niece; but this punishment turned out happily for Seryozha. Vassily Lukitch was in a good humour, and showed him how to make windmills. The whole evening passed over this work and in dreaming how to make a windmill on which he could turn himself— clutching at the sails or tying himself on and whirling round. Of his mother Seryozha did not think all the evening, but when he had gone to bed, he suddenly remembered her, and prayed in his own words that his mother tomorrow for his birthday might leave off hiding herself and come to him. 'Vassily Lukitch, do you know what I prayed for tonight extra besides the regular things?' 'That you might learn your lessons better?' 'No.' 'Toys?' 'No. You'll never guess. A splendid thing; but it's a secret! When it comes to pass I'll tell you. Can't you guess?' 'No, I can't guess. You tell me,' said Vassily Lukitch with a smile, which was rare with him. 'Come, lie down, I'm putting out the candle.' 'Without the candle I can see better what I see and what I prayed for. There! I was almost telling the secret!' said Seryozha, laughing gaily. When the candle was taken away, Seryozha heard and felt his mother. She stood over him, and with loving eyes caressed him. But then came windmills, a knife, everything began to be mixed up, and he fell asleep. XXVIII O N arriving in Petersburg, Vronsky and Anna stayed at one of the best hotels; Vronsky apart in a lower storey, Anna above with her child, its nurse, and her maid, in a large suite of four rooms. On the day of his arrival Vronsky went to his brother's. There he found his mother, who had come from Moscow on business.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'And can it be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk of flirtation. I know it's not he that I love; but still I am happy with him, and he's so jolly. Only, why did he say that? . . .' she mused. Catching sight of Kitty going away, and her mother meeting her at the steps, Levin, flushed from his rapid exercise, stood still and pondered a minute. He took off his skates, and overtook the mother and daughter at the entrance of the gardens. 'Delighted to see you,' said Princess Shtcherbatsky. 'On Thursdays we are at home, as always.' 'Today, then?' 'We shall be pleased to see you,' the princess said stiffly. This stiffness hurt Kitty, and she could not resist the desire to smooth over her mother's coldness. She turned her head, and with a smile said— 'Good-bye till this evening.' At that moment Stepan Arkadyevitch, his hat cocked on one side, with beaming face and eyes, strode into the garden like a conquering hero. But as he approached his mother-in-law, he responded in a mournful and crestfallen tone to her inquiries about Dolly's health. After a little subdued and dejected conversation with his mother-in-law, he threw out his chest again, and put his arm in Levin's. 'Well, shall we set off?' he asked. 'I've been thinking about you all this time, and I'm very, very glad you've come,' he said, looking him in the face with a significant air. 'Yes, come along,' answered Levin in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly the sound of that voice saying 'Good-bye till this evening,' and seeing the smile with which it was said. 'To the England or the Hermitage?' 'I don't mind which.' 'All right, then, the England,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, selecting that restaurant because he owed more there than at the Hermitage, and consequently considered it mean to avoid it. 'Have you got a sledge? That's first-rate, for I sent my carriage home.' The friends hardly spoke all the way. Levin was wondering what that change in Kitty's expression had meant, and alternately assuring himself that there was hope, and falling into despair, seeing clearly that his hopes were insane, and yet all the while he felt himself quite another man, utterly unlike what he had been before her smile and those words, 'Good-bye till this evening.' Stepan Arkadyevitch was absorbed during the drive in composing the menu of the dinner. 'You like turbot, don't you?' he said to Levin as they were arriving. 'Eh?' responded Levin. 'Turbot? Yes, I'm awfully fond of turbot.' X W HEN Levin went into the restaurant with Oblonsky, he could not help noticing a certain peculiarity of expression, as it were a restrained radiance, about the face and whole figure of Stepan Arkadyevitch. Oblonsky took off his overcoat, and with his hat over one ear walked into the dining-room, giving directions to the Tatar waiters, who were clustered about him in evening coats, bearing napkins.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Bending her curly black head, she pressed her forehead against a cool watering-pot that stood on the parapet, and both her lovely hands, with the rings he knew so well, clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure, her head, her neck, her hands, struck Vronsky every time as something new and unexpected. He stood still, gazing at her in ecstasy. But, directly he would have made a step to come nearer to her, she was aware of his presence, pushed away the watering-pot, and turned her flushed face towards him. 'What's the matter? You are ill?' he said to her in French, going up to her. He would have run to her, but remembering that there might be spectators, he looked round towards the balcony door, and reddened a little, as he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid and be on his guard. 'No; I'm quite well,' she said, getting up and pressing his outstretched hand tightly. 'I did not expect… thee.' 'Mercy! what cold hands!' he said. 'You startled me,' she said. 'I'm alone, and expecting Seryozha; he's out for a walk; they'll come in from this side.' But, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering. 'Forgive me for coming, but I couldn't pass the day without seeing you,' he went on, speaking French, as he always did to avoid using the stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them, and the dangerously intimate singular. 'Forgive you? I'm so glad!' 'But you're ill or worried,' he went on, not letting go her hands and bending over her. 'What were you thinking of?' 'Always of the same thing,' she said, with a smile. She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked what she was thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the same thing, of her happiness and her unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came upon her, of this: why was it, she wondered, that to others, to Betsy (she knew of her secret connection with Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was such torture? Today this thought gained special poignancy from certain other considerations. She asked him about the races. He answered her questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying to calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the details of his preparations for the races. Tell him or not tell him?' she thought, looking into his quiet, affectionate eyes. 'He is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he won't understand as he ought, he won't understand all the gravity of this fact to us.' 'But you haven't told me what you were thinking of when I came in,' he said, interrupting his narrative; 'please, tell me!'

• From The Pisces (2018)

  Had Claire somehow helped me find a new direction, a new legitimacy to my thesis? At least I was admitting that my own idea had been bullshit—that you couldn’t read something as intentional if it had never been intentional, even through a perverted academic lens. Yet one crux of my thesis remained: there should be no attempt made to fill in the gaps with biography or bullshit narrative. So what to do with them then—the discomfort of not knowing? How to savor what was there without guessing at what wasn’t? I was drunk but the question seemed good. The writing seemed good. Around midnight, somehow, I found myself back out again on the rocks. It was chilly and I didn’t bring a sweater. I looked around, and then, feeling embarrassed, I stopped. It was obvious Theo wasn’t there, but I kept imagining that he was—or that he was deeper in the waves, farther out, watching me looking for him, laughing. I pretended to myself that I had come out to the rocks simply because I had wanted to be near the ocean. But I was disappointed. I turned to go home. “Lucy,” said a voice. It was Theo. Had he been hiding behind a rock? This kid was confusing. When I felt him watching me from far away, maybe was he watching me from much closer? He sort of bobbed a few feet away. “You’re back,” I said cheerfully, but casual. I did not ask where he had been. “I’m back,” he said. “How have the dates been treating you?” “Disgusting,” I said. “Ah, too bad.” “Each its own little death.” “Funny,” he said. “You’re like a little death.” “What?” I asked. “You are. You’re…gloomy yet charming. I like it.” “Well, no one has said that before.” “You’re gently death-ish. You know about death, you’re aware of it, and most people aren’t anymore. But you’re not a killer. You’re a soft darkness.” A soft darkness. “Yeah, I’m aware of death,” I said. I was thinking about the doughnut incident. “In high school I wore black lipstick and black nail polish.” “That’s not what I mean,” he said. “It’s not manufactured. You have it in you.” “What about you? What’s your story?” I asked. “Oh God, I hate my story,” said Theo. “I bet you have a great story.” “What do you want to know, exactly?” he asked. He was treading water a little faster now. I caught a glint of his wet suit under the waves. “Where do you live?” I asked. “Around here,” he said. “So cryptic,” I said. “Are you aware of death?” Asking that, I felt kind of creepy in a good way. He had a lot of power in not revealing too much of himself.

• 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.