Milk Fed Quotes

you want to keep the blood and the milk hidden as if the womb and breast never fed you

And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

I took her into bed with me and propped myself up with pillows against the headboard to let her nurse. As she nursed and the milk came, she began a little low contented sort of singing. I would feel milk and love flowing from me to her as once it had flowed to me. It emptied me. As the baby fed, I seemed slowly to grow empty of myself, as if in the presence of that long flow of love even grief could not stand.

Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drank the milk of Paradise.

You were going to the hardware store for milk again,” said Dr. Mahjoub.

For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.

My mother had never known me either, though it wasn't because I hadn't given her a chance. I'd given her a lot of chances. What was saddest was that she didn't seem to want to know me, not as I was on the inside. I wasn't even sure if she could grasp that I had an inside, that I was real. Sometimes it seemed impossible that she had ever given birth to me at all. Other times, it made perfect sense that I had lived inside her for so long. It explained why she could only see me as an extension of herself.

I felt that our kissing could sustain the ritual of women loving women for eons to come.

in their equation of thinness with goodness, my mother and Ana were so like-minded. My mother persuaded me to stay thin by insulting me. Ana did it by insulting everyone but me. This absence of rejection felt like an embrace.

What I wanted most was for this certified hot person to see a hotness in me, thereby verifying, once and for all, that I was hot. It wasn’t that civilians didn’t find me attractive. But for a licensed hot person to verify me? That was the real shit.

Did anyone genuinely like anything? So much art was bad. I preferred the work of dead people. At least the dead weren't on Twitter

Oh, my daughter,” I said. “You will forget that I am here. This is the way of human beings, to forget. But you found your way back to me once and so can find your way back again, because I am always here. The world will hurt you again and again. You will hurt yourself again and again. And when it does, and when you do, you will remember me again and again. You will drop to your knees. You will hold yourself. You will be your own daughter again.

You will hurt yourself again and again. And when it does, and when you do, you will remember me again and again. You will drop to your knees. You will hold yourself. You will be your own daughter again.

Look at the four-spaced year That imitates four seasons of our lives; First Spring, that delicate season, bright with flowers, Quickening, yet shy, and like a milk-fed child, Its way unsteady while the countryman Delights in promise of another year. Green meadows wake to bloom, frail shoots and grasses, And then Spring turns to Summer's hardiness, The boy to manhood. There's no time of year Of greater richness, warmth, and love of living, New strength untried. And after Summer, Autumn, First flushes gone, the temperate season here Midway between quick youth and growing age, And grey hair glinting when the head turns toward us, Then senile Winter, bald or with white hair, Terror in palsy as he walks alone.

They say the perfect is the enemy of the good, that if you strive for perfection you will overlook the good. But I did not agree. I didn't like the good. The good was just mediocre. I wanted to go beyond mediocre. I wanted to be exceptional. I did not want to be medium-size. I wanted to be perfect. And by perfect, I meant less.

But it was better to stay in bed and dream of her than to be together in a realm where we had to pretend that physically we were strangers to each other.

This was the thing about boundaries: they made sense in therapy, but when you tried to implement them in the real world, people had no idea what you were talking about. Or, deep down they knew exactly what you were talking about and immediately set to work reinforcing their case of denial.

There was a love that had always existed between women. It would continue to exist. We were propagating that love. It was radiating out of my apartment windows, through the city, across the canyons, over the hills, and into the night sky.

I smelled something roasting, some kind of meat, and immediately thought, Turn around Run. The intimacy of it, the smell of another family’s life, was terrifying.

She had long ago implanted herself in me at the cellular level, spread into my organs⁠—my brain, my heart⁠—until what was hers and what was mine were indistinguishable.

The moon climbed out of the ravine, blue, skinny, as if it had been fed on nothing but skimmed milk. It climbed out, and quickly slithered up and up along the finest thread-away from trouble, and on the very top it huddled, crouching on thin legs. ("The Protectress Of Sinners")

Around the time they were preparing Jose Arcadio for the seminary she had already made a detailed recapitulation of life in the house since the founding of Macondo and had completely changed the opinion that she had always had of its descendants. She realized that Colonel Aureliano Buendia had not lost his love for the family because he had been hardened by the war, as she had thought before, but that he had never loved anyone... Amaranta, however, whose hardness of heart frightened her, whose concentrated bitterness made her bitter, suddenly became clear to her in the final analysis as the most tender woman who had ever existed, and she understood with pitying clarity that the unjust tortures to which she had submitted Pietro Crespi had not been dictated by a desire for vengeance, as everyone had thought, nor had the slow martyrdom with which she had frustrated the life of Colonel Gerineldo Marquez been determined by the gall of her bitterness, as everyone had thought, but that both actions had been a mortal struggle between a measureless love and an invincible cowardice, and that the irrational fear that Amaranta had always had of her own tormented heart had triumphed in the end. It was during that time that Ursula began to speak Rebeca's name, bringing back the memory of her with an old love that was exalted by tardy repentance and a sudden admiration, coming to understand that only she, Rebeca , the one who had never fed of her milk but only of the earth of the land and the whiteness of the walls... Rebeca, the one with an impatient heart, the one with a fierce womb, was the only one who had the unbridled courage that Ursula had wanted for her line.

I could never tell if other people genuinely believed their own bullshit or not. I felt genuinely perplexed about it—especially at work lunches, but frequently in my nonlunch life too. At times like this, I longed to break the fourth wall, to whisper, Hey, just between us: Is this a performance or is it really what you believe?

So long as the child was fed on its mother's milk, everything seemed to it smooth and easy. But when it had to give up milk and take to vodka, - and this is the inevitable law of human development - the childish suckling dreams receded into the realm of the irretrievable past.

There was something nice about being forced to be done with everything by sunset, to be excused from life. It was like a teacher’s note from the ultimate authority.

I didn’t like myself enough to suck my own tits.

It seemed that as long as I wasn’t actually having sex with a person, I could get off to them. But once they embraced me it was over.

Expect nothing. The simplicity of that directive, its bare bones, self-contained power was intoxicating. Expect nothing. It was so clean, so potent. It was a phrase you'd associate with a person who didn't need anything from anyone; a closed system. An automaton. I wanted to be that person. I wanted to be that automaton.

This interplay between hope and reality was also a part of the mourning.

All that mattered was what I ate, when I ate, and how I ate it.

I’d entered therapy hoping to alleviate the suffering related to both my food issues and my mother, but without having to make any actual life changes in either area.

My mother persuaded me to stay thin by insulting me. Ana did it by insulting everyone but me. This absence of rejection felt like an embrace.

The details were fed to me like bread soaked in milk given to a Victorian invalid. A little at a time. Gentle, soft. Like that made a difference.

I imagined googling, How to make a golem fall in love with you. Maybe that’s all that prayer was anyway—a cosmic google. In that case, any iPhone could be a synagogue. I wished I could FaceTime with Rabbi Judah.

When confronted with a problem involving the use of the reasoning faculties, individuals of strong intellect keep their poise, and seek to reach a solution by obtaining facts bearing upon the question. Those of immature mentality, on the other hand, when similarly confronted, are overwhelmed. While the former may be qualified to solve the riddle of their own destiny, the latter must be led like a flock of sheep and taught in simple language. They depend almost entirely upon the ministrations of the shepherd. The Apostle Paul said that these little ones must be fed with milk, but that meat is the food of strong men. Thoughtlessness is almost synonymous with childishness, while thoughtfulness is symbolic of maturity. There are, however, but few mature minds in the world; and thus it was that the philosophic-religious doctrines of the pagans were divided to meet the needs of these two fundamental groups of human intellect--one philosophic, the other incapable of appreciating the deeper mysteries of life. To the discerning few were revealed the esoteric, or spiritual, teachings, while the unqualified many received only the literal, or exoteric, interpretations. In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While the ignorant multitudes brought their offerings to the altars of Priapus and Pan (deities representing the procreative energies), the wise recognized in these marble statues only symbolic concretions of great abstract truths. In all cities of the ancient

I thought about how I used to watch my mother sleep sometimes, how innocent she looked with her hands tucked under the pillow. In those moments, I saw her as a little girl, and I felt that nothing was her fault—just a chain of fears and feelings passed down from generation to generation. In those moments I thought, You can show her how to love you better by being loving to her. But it was easier to be loving when the person was asleep.

The heart gets wounded—so what? I thought. I’d seen all the plays. I should have been prepared. Love goes. But what I hadn’t known was how good the love would feel when it was there, like a hymn moving through me all the time.

WITCHES TAKE THEIR NAMES FROM PLACES, for places are what give them their strength. The place need not be beautiful, or habitable, or even green. Sand and salt, so much the better. Scrub pine, plumberry, and brambles, better still. From every bitter thing, after all, something hardy will surely grow. From every difficulty, the seed that’s sewn is that much stronger. Ruin is the milk all witches must drink; it’s the lesson they learn and the diet they’re fed upon.

She’d thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related. Love was closer to a need, no different from the need to eat, to breathe. When Wayne fell asleep, his hot cheek against her naked breast, his lips smelling sweetly of the milk from her own body, she felt as if she was the one who had been fed.

I step straight toward the female librarian. She looks soft, as if she's been raised in a box and purely milk-fed, like veal.

Maybe that’s all that prayer was anyway—a cosmic google. In that case, any iPhone could be a synagogue.

Life was a lot less bleak when you were staring straight down the barrel of a burrito.

In human societies possessing domestic animals, livestock fed more people in four distinct ways: by furnishing meat, milk, and fertilizer and by pulling plows.

At times I'd felt courageous on the journey, but it was borrowed courage. Now we were here, and neither of us had a plan. Was she going to abandon me, leave me stranded in my body? I'd be in exile with a stomach that demanded more of everything.

What did it mean to love something so much and also be wrong about it? What did it mean to love a version of something that might not really exist—not as you saw it? Did this negate the love? Was the love still real?

Johnny had killed four mountain-sheep and a caribou while we were gone, and not only had fed the dogs well, but from time to time had put aside choice portions expecting our return. But what was most grateful to us and most extraordinary in him, the boy had saved, untouched, the small ration of sugar and milk left for his consumption, knowing that ours was all destroyed; and we enjoyed coffee with these luxurious appurtenances as only they can who have been long deprived of them. There are not many boys of fifteen or sixteen of any race who would voluntarily have done the like.

It isn’t normal to live on milk and cream and cheese and ice cream and eggs and chocolate and wheat flour and alcohol. No! Man is a hunter. Most of the wheat flour should be fed to the animals. Let them go through the arduous labor of converting fodder into meat fat. And then eat the animal. That is the smart thing to do.

I decided that love is when you have food in your mouth that you know is not going to make you fat. Lust is when you have food in your mouth that is going to make you fat. Fear is the day after you had food in your mouth that is going to make you fat.

Better to adapt to the cold. Better to thrust the cold on oneself. Be prepared.

Expect nothing. The simplicity of that directive, its bare-bones, self-contained power was intoxicating. Expect nothing. It was so clean, so potent.

What about holding hands in a movie theater? Can girls hold hands in a movie theater?

I'd thought about getting a rug, but I couldn't commit. I felt that committing to a rug would mean I existed on the planet more than I actually wanted to exist.

It would be like cutting off my head because of a headache. But I was so tired of my head.

Something about self-soothing, offering up compassion for the young Rachel who lived inside of me. But I hated that young Rachel.

Stop fucking thinking for one second and try to have a good time, I said to myself. Never in my life have I had a good time, I replied.

I began dating him by default when one night, in his car, he put his hand on my thigh and I was too hungry and tired to deal with moving it.

I liked these echoes of the past, the way a food could rouse a memory from death.

Cait sensed my reticence and became clingy. The less I texted her, the more heart emojis and u ok?? messages she sent. It was like being asphyxiated by a part of my own self—the need for approval and validation I so despised. More of me? That was the last thing I wanted!

Let the bard from Smyrna catalogue Harma, the ledges and caves of Thaca, the milk-fed damsels of Achaia, pigeon-flocked Thisbe or the woods of Onchestus, I sing of Oak, Walnut, Chesnut, Maple and Elm Streets.

For meat, milk, and eggs labelled organic, animals must: 1) be raised on organic feed (without most synthetic pesticides/fertilizers) 2) be traced 3) not be fed antibiotics or growth hormones 4) have "access to the outdoors

I walk in Nature's way until I shall lie down and rest, breathing my last in this from which I draw my daily breath, and lying down on this from which my father drew his vital seed, my mother her blood, my nurse her milk; from which for so many years I am fed and watered day by day; which bears my footstep and my misusing it for so many purposes.

Sometimes I think about Cardan when I am lying there. I think about what it must have been like to grow up as an honoured member of the royal family, powerful and unloved. Fed on cat milk and neglect, To be arbitrarily beaten by the brother you most resembled and who most seemed to care for you. Imagine all those courtiers bowing to you, allowing you to hiss and slap at them. But no matter how many of them you humiliated or hurt, you would always know someone had found them worthy of love, when no one had ever found you worthy. ... I would be stupid to think I knew Cardan's heart from his story. But I wonder at it. I wonder what would have happened if I'd admitted he wasn't out of my system.

This is my Italy, she thought. The power and beauty of the antiquities, the detailed frescos, the imposing statuaries carved of milk white granite, Don Martinelli's hammered gold chalice, the glorious tones of the music, the Italy of Puccini and Verdi, Caruso and Toscanini, not the Italy of the shattered spirits in Hoboken and the drunken, desperate Anna Buffa. This was the Italy that fed her soul, where hope was restored and broken hearts were mended in the hands of great artists.

People in LA were always recommending things that were more about themselves than the recipient. They recommended obsessively⁠—films, Netflix series⁠—as though their association with a piece of media imbued them with sex appeal, intelligence, an irresistible whimsy. When I felt a recommendation coming on, I'd lie and say I'd already seen the thing: just so I didn't have to hear the plot explained. Did anyone genuinely like anything? So much art was bad. I preferred the work of dead people. At least the dead weren't on Twitter.

I thought about how I wanted to take a knife and cut myself out of me. I thought about how I'd been praying for a truck to just hit me. I thought about death and truth and how, in some languages, they were just one letter apart. I wanted to ask her if she knew that.

I was in a temper fit to blow the lid off a kettle of boiling water. And who wouldn't be? Since sunup, I'd been doing chores. I'd milked the cow, hauled two buckets of water from the well, fed the chickens, and then fought the hens for their eggs. Now I was down on my knees, sweat-soaked and bug-bitten, yanking weeds from the vegetable patch. My hands were caked with mud, and my nose was burned as red as a strawberry.

All of that caretaking,” I say. I lean back so I can look at her. I’m crying too. Crying and talking. “All of it’s in his bones. It’s the actual stuff of his body and brain. The placenta you made from scratch. Your milk from nursing him. All those pancakes and school-lunch sandwiches, all of that food and care.” She’s looking into my face, nodding, even though I am fully winging it now, panicking, words pouring out like I’m a hose on the weepy consolation setting. “Everything you’ve ever fed him,” I say. “His whole self is made completely out of your love.

As long as there are beginning-English students and a lake and I can see a mountain, I will be perfectly happy,” she said, reminding me of how my grandfather used to say he was a simple man with simple tastes: “All I need is a little milk from a goat that has been fed for a month on wild green pears.

The basement was already prepared for me. A sofa bed had been pulled out and made up with a soft pink-and-green blanket, old but comfortable. Everything was like that in this house: soft, old, and comfortable. It reminded me that for some people life was about the tactile, about relaxation, about feeling good. This could be the Schwebels’ rhetorical motto: Why wouldn’t you take three pillows? Why wouldn’t you use an extra blanket? Why wouldn’t you just be comfortable?

In the room beside, a chemistry table crowded with beakers and burners. Succulent plants, twisted and knobbled in their little pots, that she fed a mixture of vinegar and almond milk each morning from an eyedropper. ("It's an experiment," Holmes told me when I protested. "I'm trying to kill them. Nothing kills them.")

All those milk-fed, hog-fed, beef-fed early years. All those extra hormones we put in our livestock. We’ll be seeing toddlers with tits before long.

It seemed that as long as I wasn't actually having sex with a person, I could get off to them. But once they embraced me it was over.

My mother persuaded me to stay thin by insulting me. Ana did it by insulting everyone but me. The absence of rejection felt like an embrace.

I didn't need to be or do anything more than simply exist for them to love me. It was as though they loved my naked soul, some inner essence, with an unconditional love.

Ever seen Salmon Jelly?” he asked. “Danish youth movement film from the seventies. Watched it this weekend. Tragicomic exploration of pornography, melancholia, and nationalistic conformity.

I examined the shapes and shades of her face, studying her. Each feature was its own inhabitable world. Her hair was the color of cream soda, or papyrus scrolls streaked with night light. Her eyebrows were the color of lions, lazy ones, dozing in sunlight or eating butter at night with their paws by lantern. Her eyes: icebergs for shipwrecking. Lashes: smoke and platinum. Her skin was the Virgin Mary, also very baby. Her nose: adorable, breathing. Upper lip: pink peony. Lower lip: rose. The teeth were trickier, but her inner mouth was easy—Valentine hearts and hell.

Art thou that man,' she cries, 'who, erstwhile fed with the milk and reared upon the nourishment which is mine to give, had grown up to the full vigour of a manly spirit? And yet I had bestowed such armour on thee as would have proved an invincible defence, hadst thou not first cast it away. Dost thou know me? Why art thou silent? Is it shame or amazement that hath struck thee dumb? Would it were shame; but, as I see, a stupor hath seized upon thee.' Then, when she saw me not only answering nothing, but mute and utterly incapable of speech, she gently touched my breast with her hand, and said: 'There is no danger; these are the symptoms of lethargy, the usual sickness of deluded minds. For awhile he has forgotten himself; he will easily recover his memory, if only he first recognises me.

David watched Sol finish the can of beans. Sol always ate fast. He overate. Since he was eight. Sol leaned back in the wooden chair against the wall, under the window. Baby brother. Sol could have been anything he wanted to be. Nothing mathematical, nothing quantitative, of course, but anything else. A beautiful boy, a wonderful brother, they got along well. Then when Sol turned eight years old, age of a new beginning, their mother obsessed over him, ignoring David. Obsessed over Sol and his underwear. Over and over, a regeneration, a newness. Changed his clothes constantly, had him on her lap every minute possible. She put him in bed and tucked the covers in every night. She refused to let their father do it, so he always took care of David. But, of course, David needed no help and Sol always needed Ruth to take care of him. Sol was still being breast fed even when he finally went to kindergarten. Then Ruth slowly increased regular, solid food. But before bed, Sol had a nightcap, mother’s milk. Their special time. Their unique closeness took a turn from breastfeeding to something else. By the time Sol was in third grade, he was one of the fattest kids in class. Then the brothers became a real team. Now here he was. David and Sol still together, on a mission given by the Creator. It was perfect.

My therapist in Los Angeles, Dr. Rana Mahjoub, wore sensible clogs and said insight-adjacent things like “put on your oxygen mask before helping others,” but I didn’t entirely respect her because she accepted my insurance.

I had no idea how to be a mom, let alone my own mother. But what about daughterhood? Was it possible that I could be my own daughter? This seemed more doable. I wondered if the universe, in its roundness, somehow already contained my daughterness. Perhaps I'd been being held there, a daughter all along, until I woke up to it. If I could not be my own mother—or at least not the kind of mother worth having—then maybe I could be my own daughter.

The most direct path to Party was raising pigs. The company had several dozen of these and they occupied an unequaled place in the hearts of the soldiers; officers and men alike would hang around the pigsty, observing, commenting, and willing the animals to grow. If the pigs were doing well, the swine herds were the darlings of the company, and there were many contestants for this profession. Xiao-her became a full-time swineherd. It was hard, filthy work, not to mention the psychological pressure. Every night he and his colleagues took turns to get up in the small hours to give the pigs an extra feed. When a sow produced piglets they kept watch night after night in case she crushed them. Precious soybeans were carefully picked, washed, ground, strained, made into 'soybean milk," and lovingly fed to the mother to stimulate her milk. Life in the air force was very unlike what Xiao-her had imagined. Producing food took up more than a third of the entire time he was in the military. At the end of a year's arduous pig raising, Xiao-her was accepted into the Party. Like many others, he put his feet up and began to take it easy. After membership in the Party, everyone's ambition was to become an officer; whatever advantage the former brought, the latter doubled it. Getting to be an officer depended on being picked by one's superiors, so the key was never to displease them. One day Xiao-her was summoned to see one of the college's political commissars. Xiao-her was on tenterhooks, not knowing whether he was in for some unexpected good fortune or total disaster. The commissar, a plump man in his fifties with puffy eyes and a loud, commanding voice, looked exceedingly benign as he lit up a cigarette and asked Xiao-her about his family background, age, and state of health. He also asked whether he had a fiance to which Xiao-her replied that he did not. It struck Xiao-her as a good sign that the man was being so personal. The commissar went on to praise him: "You have studied Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought conscientiously. You have worked hard. The masses have a good impression of you. Of course, you must keep on being modest; modesty makes you progress," and so on. By the time the commissar stubbed out his cigarette, Xiao-her thought his promotion was in his pocket.

Without another word, we began to eat. I was hungry, but no appetite would excuse the way we set upon those dishes. We shoveled food into our mouths in a manner ill befitting our fine attire. Bears would have blushed to see us bent over our plates. The pheasant, still steaming from the oven, its dark flesh redolent with the mushroom musk of the forest floor, was gnawed quickly to the bone. It was a touch gamy - no milk-fed goose, this - but it was tender, and the piquant hominy balanced that wild taste as I had hoped it would. The eggs, laced pink at the edges and floating delicately in a carnal sauce, were gulped down in two bites. The yolks were cooked to that rare liminal degree, no longer liquid but not yet solid, like the formative moment of a sun-colored gem.

Rodents, on the other hand, are slaves to sweetness. They have been known to die of malnutrition rather than step away from a sugar-water drip. In an obesity study from the 1970s, rats fed an all-you-can-eat “supermarket” diet that included marshmallows, milk chocolate, and chocolate-chip cookies gained 269 percent more weight than rats fed standard laboratory fare. There are strains of mice that will, over the course of a day, consume their own bodyweight in diet soda, and you do not want the job of changing their bedding. Does

Rodents, on the other hand, are slaves to sweetness. They have been known to die of malnutrition rather than step away from a sugar-water drip. In an obesity study from the 1970s, rats fed an all-you-can-eat “supermarket” diet that included marshmallows, milk chocolate, and chocolate-chip cookies gained 269 percent more weight than rats fed standard laboratory fare. There are strains of mice that will, over the course of a day, consume their own bodyweight in diet soda, and you do not want the job of changing their bedding. Does that mean

The pollo alla Messinese, a sumptuous dish of chicken smothered in a tuna-flavored mayonnaise that I produced, would have fed three hundred guests at a wedding. Unfortunately there was to be no wedding. Following the chicken incident, Mama banned me from slaughtering any more animals, so I turned to the dairy instead. I made salty ricotta by boiling sheep's milk with salt and skimming the whey with a bunch of twigs in the old tradition, just as Nonna Fiore had taught me. The ricotta I too made in great quantities, storing it in barrels in the roof of the cowshed.

Those are the moments I’m proud of. The times I saw through them. The times I made them work to break me, even though I knew they would. The times I questioned the lies being fed to me, though everyone around me believed. I learned early that if everyone around you has their head bowed, their eyes shut tight—keep your eyes open and look around. I’m reflexively suspicious of anyone who stands on a soapbox. Tell me you have the answers and I’ll know you’re trying to sell me something. I’m as wary of certainty as I am of good vibes and positive thinking. They’re delusions that allow you to ignore reality and lay the blame at the feet of those suffering. They just didn’t follow the rules, or think positively enough. They brought it on themselves. I don’t have the answers. Maybe depression’s the natural reaction to a world full of cruelty and pain. But the thing I know about depression is if you want to survive it, you have to train yourself to hold on; when you can see no reason to keep going, you cannot imagine a future worth seeing, you keep moving anyway. That’s not delusion. That’s hope. It’s a muscle you exercise so it’s strong when you need it. You feed it with books and art and dogs who rest their head on your leg, and human connection with people who are genuinely interested and excited; you feed it with growing a tomato and baking sourdough and making a baby laugh and standing at the edge of oceans and feeling a horse’s whiskers on your palm and bear hugs and late-night talks over whiskey and a warm happy sigh on your neck and the unexpected perfect song on the radio, and mushroom trips with a friend who giggles at the way the trees aren’t acting right, and jumping in creeks, and lying in the grass under the stars, and driving with the windows down on a swirly two-lane road. You stock up like a fucking prepper buying tubs of chipped beef and powdered milk and ammo. You stock up so some part of you knows and remembers, even in the dark, all that’s worth saving in this world. It’s comforting to know what happens next. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that no one fucking knows. And it’s terrifying. I don’t dream of a home and a family, a career and financial stability. I dream of living. And my inner voice, defective though it may be, still tells me happiness and peace, belonging and love, all lie just around the next corner, the next city, the next country. Just keep moving and hope the next place will be better. It has to be. Just around the next bend, everything is beautiful. And it breaks my heart.

I could never tell how other people saw me. Most of the time I felt like I was riding around in a car with a fogged windshield that made it difficult to decipher the perceptions of others. They were all just kind of pantomiming outside, grunting, while I ran the wipers over and over. No matter how fast I wiped, I couldn't clear the fog.

It was as though they knew me well by now, despite knowing barely anything about me. It was as though you could know a person without knowing the details of their life. You could know their light, because you shared the same light, the way I’d known the prayers the night before without knowing I knew them. I had never imagined this kind of warmth could be so safe, abundant. I’d spent so much time cutting and carving away at myself, worshipping cold. I feared that light and warmth were a trick, a tease, false offerings that lured you into relaxing, and just when you made yourself vulnerable, they would be seized. Better to adapt to the cold. Better to thrust the cold on oneself. Be prepared. Yet with the Schwebels it was so easy. The light was sustained, plentiful. It wasn’t going anywhere. And so I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, maybe even overindulged compared to what a normal person would eat. I wasn’t sure exactly what that was yet, to eat normally. But I feasted on the food and the warmth, the cozy togetherness, and I realized that the food itself was only one part of what a person needed in order to be sustained.

People with the Moon in hard aspect to Mars, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune or Pluto may still harbour a deep fear that they will destroy or lose those they love. They may have—way in the back of their minds—the idea that if they love something they will destroy it. It could be that as children they felt angry towards the mother and then the next day she fell ill or had to go away for some reason, and the children are left thinking that they have caused that. Or sometimes this pattern is there for children who have been breast fed and then for some reason they lose the breast—the milk dries up or the mother becomes ill. These children may be left feeling that their greed exhausted the breast. Later in life, they still have a nebulous fear that those they love will die, or leave them, or be driven away.

I wondered whether there was a deadline for when a person had to finally stop blaming her mother for her own thoughts. I thought I'd hit that age, then hit it again. At nineteen, twenty, I decided: Okay, this is enough. You are a grown-up. Time to take responsibility for your own mind. At twenty-one, I am over it. At twenty-two, I understand why she did what she did. At twenty-three, I forgive. At twenty-four, this imposed silence.

I thought about how I used to watch my mother sleep sometimes, how innocent she looked with her hands tucked under the pillow. In these moments, I saw her as a little girl, and I felt that nothing was her fault—just a chain of fears and feelings passed down from generation to generation. In those moments I thought, You can show her how to love you better by being loving to her. But it was easier to be loving when the person was asleep.

Lilah did little more than sleep and eat and cry, which to me was the most fascinating thing in the entire universe. Why did she cry? When did she sleep? What made her eat a lot one day and little the next? Was she changing with time? I did what any obsessed person would do in such a case: I recorded data, plotted it, calculated statistical correlations. First I just wrote on scraps of paper and made charts on graph paper, but I very quickly became more sophisticated. I wrote computer software to make a beautifully colored plot showing times when Diane fed Lilah, in black; when I fed her, in blue (expressed mother's milk, if you must know); Lilah's fussy times, in angry red; her happy times, in green. I calculated patterns in sleeping times, eating times, length of sleep, amounts eaten. Then, I did what any obsessed person would do these days; I put it all on the Web.

A unified Iran is constituted not only politically but also affectively. Liberty and constitutional rule bring "Affection among us." The affective sentiment- that of bonding among differing brothers-produces political bonds of national unity and was associatively linked with other desires. Perhaps foremost was the desire to care for and defend the mother, in particular her bodily integrity. The same words were commonly used to discuss territory and the female body. Laura Mulvey calls these words keys "that could turn either way between the psychoanalytic and the social" (1980, 180). They are not "just words" that open up to either domain; they mediate between these domains, taking power of desire from one to the other. More appropriately, they should be considered cultural nodes of psyhosocial condensation. Tajavuz, literally meaning transgression, expresses both rape and the invasion of territory. Another effective expression, as already noted, was Khak-i pak-i vatan, the pure soil of the homeland. The word used for "pure," pak, is saturated with connotations of sexual purity. Linked to the idea of the purity of a female vatan was the metaphoric notion of the "skirt of chastity" (daman-i 'iffat) and its purity-whether it was stained or not. It was the duty of Iranian men to protect that skirt. The weak and sometimes dying figure of motherland pleaded t her dishonorable sons to arise and cut the hands of foreigners from her skirt. Expressing hope for the success of the new constitutional regime by recalling and wishing away the horrors of previous years, an article in Sur-o Israfil addressed Iran in the following terms: "O Iran! O our Mother! You who have given us milk from the blood of your veins for many long years, and who have fed us with the tissues of your own body! Will we ever live to see your unworthy children entrust your skirt of chastity to the hands of foreigners? Will our eyes ever see foreigners tear away the veil of your chastity?

When I tasted her brine, I was hit with a feeling of timelessness, as though this had all happened before, somewhere as far back as our ancestors in Russia or Lithuanian or Poland or Moldova. We were two shtetl Jewish women reincarnated, two women who had known each other and been lovers in a past life. I felt that all that had ever happened before was happening right now would happen forever. There was a love that had always existed between women. It would continue to exist. We were propagating that love. It was radiating out my apartment windows, through the city, across the canyons, over the hills, and into the night sky.

No, that was not right either. We were not in a house at all, but in the forest. We had snuck away with each other to an evergreen forest, two daughters of the shtetl, friends since childhood. We had snuck away in the dark of night so that we could have the whole forest floor to ourselves to make love. We had just fucked. We had fucked each other in our skirts. We had fucked each other in mutual desire and now we were lying on the forest floor curled up together, two girls in pine needles, under starlight. This was the definition of holy. Tell the village matchmaker not to bother with us. Here in the forest there was no potato smell, no porgroms. Only the scent of evergreens.

Cousin West,” Kathleen said a month later, fiercely pursuing him down the grand staircase, “stop running away. I want a word with you.” West didn’t slow his pace. “Not while you’re chasing me like Attila the Hun.” “Tell me why you did it.” She reached the bottom step at the same time he did and swung around to block his escape. “Kindly explain what deranged mode of thinking caused you to bring a pig into the house!” Cornered, he resorted to honesty. “I wasn’t thinking. I was at John Potter’s farm, and he was about to cull the piglet because it was undersized.” “A common practice, as I understand it,” she said curtly. “The creature looked at me,” West protested. “It seemed to be smiling.” “All pigs seem to be smiling. Their mouths are curved upwards.” “I couldn’t help it; I had to bring him home.” Kathleen shook her head disapprovingly as she looked at him. The twins had already bottle-fed the creature with a formula of cow’s milk whisked with raw egg, while Helen had lined a basket with soft cloth for it to sleep in. Now there was no getting rid of it. “What do you intend for us to do with the pig once it’s full-grown?” she demanded. West considered that. “Eat it?” She let out an exasperated huff. “The girls have already named it Hamlet. Would you have us eat a family pet, Mr. Ravenel?” “I would if it turned into bacon.” West smiled at her expression. “I’ll return the pig to the farmer when it’s weaned,” he offered.

All about them the golden girls, shopping for dainties in Lairville. Even in the midst of the wild-maned winter's chill, skipping about in sneakers and sweatsocks, cream-colored raincoats. A generation in the mold, the Great White Pattern Maker lying in his prosperous bed, grinning while the liquid cools. But he does not know my bellows. Someone there is who will huff and will puff. The sophmores in their new junior blazers, like Saturday's magazines out on Thursday. Freshly covered textbooks from the campus store, slide rules dangling in leather, sheathed broadswords, chinos scrubbed to the virgin fiber, starch pressed into straight-razor creases, Oxford shirts buttoned down under crewneck sweaters, blue eyes bobbing everywhere, stunned by the android synthesis of one-a-day vitamins, Tropicana orange juice, fresh country eggs, Kraft homogenized cheese, tetra-packs of fortified milk, Cheerios with sun-ripened bananas, corn-flake-breaded chicken, hot fudge sundaes, Dairy Queen root beer floats, cheeseburgers, hybrid creamed corn, riboflavin extract, brewer's yeast, crunchy peanut butter, tuna fish casseroles, pancakes and imitation maple syrup, chuck steaks, occasional Maine lobster, Social Tea biscuits, defatted wheat germ, Kellogg's Concentrate, chopped string beans, Wonderbread, Birds Eye frozen peas, shredded spinach, French-fried onion rings, escarole salads, lentil stews, sundry fowl innards, Pecan Sandies, Almond Joys, aureomycin, penicillin, antitetanus toxoid, smallpox vaccine, Alka-Seltzer, Empirin, Vicks VapoRub, Arrid with chlorophyll, Super Anahist nose spray, Dristan decongestant, billions of cubic feet of wholesome, reconditioned breathing air, and the more wholesome breeds of fraternal exercise available to Western man. Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same.

I thought about my father in 1959, brush-cut and clean-shaven, taking the elevator up to the editorial offices in the CBS building to meet my sad, solitary, lovely young mother. She was tall, she had a nice figure. She had pretty red hair. And she was a real lost soul. It was time for Dick to find a wife. It was time for Jerry to find his next victim. Woody needed a muse. Henry needed to be understood. Spade was on his sacred mission to find the mythical Her. And we, the pretty, bright girls coming up through prep schools and the Ivy League, loaded up with Sylvia Plath and the Romantic poets, were prepped to be the just deserts of genius. We were milk-fed and impressionable. Privileged and heedless. We were disposable and interchangeable. We were only supposed to last for one incandescent moment, like mayflies, then flutter off into oblivion so that the men might be free to work, to publish, and to pursue their next great passion.

He was forever wallowing in the mire, dirtying his nose, scrabbling his face, treading down the backs of his shoes, gaping at flies and chasing the butterflies (over whom his father held sway); he would pee in his shoes, shit over his shirt-tails, [wipe his nose on his sleeves,] dribble snot into his soup and go galumphing about. [He would drink out of his slippers, regularly scratch his belly on wicker-work baskets, cut his teeth on his clogs, get his broth all over his hands, drag his cup through his hair, hide under a wet sack, drink with his mouth full, eat girdle-cake but not bread, bite for a laugh and laugh while he bit, spew in his bowl, let off fat farts, piddle against the sun, leap into the river to avoid the rain, strike while the iron was cold, dream day-dreams, act the goody-goody, skin the renard, clack his teeth like a monkey saying its prayers, get back to his muttons, turn the sows into the meadow, beat the dog to teach the lion, put the cart before the horse, scratch himself where he ne’er did itch, worm secrets out from under your nose, let things slip, gobble the best bits first, shoe grasshoppers, tickle himself to make himself laugh, be a glutton in the kitchen, offer sheaves of straw to the gods, sing Magnificat at Mattins and think it right, eat cabbage and squitter puree, recognize flies in milk, pluck legs off flies, scrape paper clean but scruff up parchment, take to this heels, swig straight from the leathern bottle, reckon up his bill without Mine Host, beat about the bush but snare no birds, believe clouds to be saucepans and pigs’ bladders lanterns, get two grists from the same sack, act the goat to get fed some mash, mistake his fist for a mallet, catch cranes at the first go, link by link his armour make, always look a gift horse in the mouth, tell cock-and-bull stories, store a ripe apple between two green ones, shovel the spoil back into the ditch, save the moon from baying wolves, hope to pick up larks if the heavens fell in, make virtue out of necessity, cut his sops according to his loaf, make no difference twixt shaven and shorn, and skin the renard every day.]

But now be so kind as to tell me: what does a baby smell like when he smells the way you think he ought to smell? Well?’ ‘He smells good,’ said the wet nurse. ‘What do you mean, “good”?’ Terrier bellowed at her. ‘Lots of things smell good. A bouquet of lavender smells good. Stewed meat smells good. The gardens of Arabia smell good. But what does a baby smell like, is what I want to know?’ The wet nurse hesitated. She knew very well how babies smell, she knew precisely – after all she had fed, tended, cradled and kissed dozens of them … She could find them at night with her nose. Why, right at that moment she bore that baby smell clearly in her nose. But never until now had she described it in words. ‘Well?’ barked Terrier, clicking his fingernails impatiently. ‘Well it’s – ’ the wet nurse began, ‘it’s not all that easy to say, because … because they don’t smell the same all over, although they smell good all over, Father, you know what I mean? Their feet for instance, they smell like a smooth warm stone – or no, more like curds … or like butter, like fresh butter, that’s it exactly. They smell like fresh butter. And their bodies smell like … like a pancake that’s been soaked in milk. And their heads, up on top, at the back of the head, where the hair makes a cowlick, there, see where I mean, Father, there where you’ve got nothing left …’ And she tapped the bald spot on the head of the monk who, struck speechless for a moment by this flood of detailed inanity, had obediently bent his head down. ‘There, right there, is where they smell best of all. It smells like caramel, it smells so sweet, so wonderful, Father, you have no idea! Once you’ve smelled them there, you love them whether they’re your own or somebody else’s. And that’s how little children have to smell – and no other way. And if they don’t smell like that, it they don’t have any smell at all up there, even less than cold air does, like that little bastard there, then … you can explain it however you like, Father, but I’ – and she crossed her arms resolutely beneath her bosom and cast a look of disgust towards the basket at her feet as if it contained toads – ‘I, Jeanne Bussie, will not take that thing back!