He would close his eyes

“Belacqua made a long arm and switched off the lamp. It threw shadows. He would close his eyes, he would bilk the dawn in that way. What were the eyes, anyway? The posterns of the mind. They were safer closed.”

—Samuel Beckett, from Yellow, the penultimate story in More pricks than kicks, 1970.

a gleam and shimmering

“I see at the confines of this restless gloom a gleam and shimmering as of bones.”

—Samuel Beckett, from The Beckett Trilogy: Malone, Malloy dies, The Unnamable, 1979.

all stirring

“the eyes stare into the space before them, namely the fulness of the great deep with its unchanging calm. . . . But at long intervals they close. . . . Perhaps it is then he sees the heaven of the old dream, the heaven of the sea and of the earth too, and the spasms of the waves from shore to shore all stirring to their tiniest stir. . . .”

—Samuel Beckett, from The Beckett Trilogy: Malone, Malloy dies, The Unnamable, 1979.

Light of a kind

“One night as he sat at his table head on hands he saw himself rise and go. One night or day. For when his own light went out he was not left in the dark. Light of a kind came then from the one window.”

—Samuel Beckett, As the story was told: uncollected and later prose, edited by John Calder, 1990.

$135 million

those colors that we call red, orange, yellow, and maroon

“in the Philippines there is a group of people called the Hanunoo. They divide all colors into just four—mabiru, malagiti, marara, and malatuy. Marara, for example, includes those colors that we call red, orange, yellow, and maroon. If you show a Hanunoo man a red shirt and a yellow shirt he will tell you that they are both marara. If you press him he might add that the first is “more marara” or the second “weak marara,” but they will both remain as marara.”

—E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists, 1972.

a handful of palm nuts

“Divination is [a] technique commonly used by therapists, especially in Africa, to impress their patients. Nigerian babalawos, for instance, do not take a history from their patients. Rather a patient whispers his problem to a handful of palm nuts; the babalawo then casts the nuts and from their position makes a diagnosis.

Other methods of divination include throwing “bones” (wooden blocks with markings), feeling the patient’s pulse, constant gazing at water, star-gazing, watching the flickering of an oil lamp, listening to the wind, and watching the trembling of the hands. It should be emphasized that these procedures, frequently ridiculed in Western descriptions . . . are methods used by the therapist to increase his reputation and, thus, increase the patient’s faith and expectations. Often the therapist is in possession of accessory information that allows him to make an accurate dianosis.”

—E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists, 1972.

the evil eye

“Mal ojo, the evil eye, is commonly used [by Mexican-Americans] to explain psychiatric symptoms. It is caused when a person with “strong vision” admiringly or enviously looks at another. . . . Its causation is usually assumed to be inadvertent and the person is not held consciously responsible; implicit, however, is responsibility for unconscious desires. . . .

Clinically mal ojo occurs more often in the younger age groups. Headaches, crying, irritability, and restlessness are common symptoms. . . . Traditional treatments include prayers and “sweeping” or “cleansing” the patient with a raw egg. Another approach to treatment is to try and locate the person who inadvertently caused it (usually within the preceding 24 hours); if this person simply touches the afflicted the illness will be cured.”

—E. Fuller Torrey, The Mind Game: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists, 1972.

eye management

“Simply, eye management in our society boils down to two facts. One, we do not stare at another human being. Two, staring is reserved for a non-person. We stare at art, at sculpture, at scenery. We go to the zoo and stare at the animals, the lions, the monkeys, the gorillas. We stare at them for as long as we please, as intimately as we please, but we do not stare at humans if we want to accord them human treatment. . . .

With unfamiliar human beings, when we acknowledge their humanness, we must avoid staring at them, and yet we must also avoid ignoring them. To make them into people rather than objects, we use a deliberate and polite inattention. We look at them long enough to make it quite clear that we see them, and then we immediately look away. We are saying, in body language, ‘I know you are there,’ and a moment later we add, ‘But I would not dream of intruding on your privacy.’. . .

If we wish to put a person down we may do so by staring longer than is acceptably polite. Instead of dropping our gazes when we lock glances, we continue to stare. The person who disapproves of interracial marriage or dating will stare rudely at the interracial couple. If he dislikes long hair, short dresses or beards he may show it with a longer-than-acceptable stare.”

—Julius Fast, Body Language, 1970.

“looking out of the corner of one’s eye”

“The late Spanish philosopher Jos’ Ortega y Gasset . . . felt that the eye, with its lids and sockets, its iris and pupil, was equivalent to a ‘whole theatre with its stage and actors.’

The eye muscles, Ortega said, are marvelously subtle and because of this every glance is minutely differentiated from every other glance. There are so many different looks that it is nearly impossible to name them, but he cited, ‘the look that lasts but an instant and the insistent look; the look that slips over the surface of the thing looked at and the look that grips it like a hook; the direct look and the oblique look whose extreme form has its own name, ‘looking out of the corner of one’s eye.’’”

—Julius Fast, Body Language, 1970.