His correspondents and, later, his biographers were in an uncomfortable bind: he spoke to them, as to everyone, in "parables and in hints and in indirections," as he put it, "whether from diffidence or some other instinct".
It would be nice to say I feel no kinship with Forrest, or with the uncomfortable bind he walks into every week, or with the emotional ambiguity of what, precisely, it means to take a seat each day on that vast panel online or off holding up one's singular cardboard square with a numeral scrawled on it.
His correspondents and, later, his biographers were in an uncomfortable bind: he spoke to them, as to everyone, in "parables and in hints and in indirections," as he put it, "whether from diffidence or some other instinct". Lawrance Thompson's three-volume official biography of Frost is thus one of the strangest books ever written.
But if such attacks started happening more frequently, as they obviously very well could, then last Friday's precedent would put public officials across the country in an extremely uncomfortable bind: Repeatedly reproducing the lockdown might seem like a non-starter, yet not matching what Boston did would open you up to all kinds of scapegoating if, say, an on-the-loose bomber struck again.
It would be nice to say I feel no kinship with Forrest, or with the uncomfortable bind he walks into every week, or with the emotional ambiguity of what, precisely, it means to take a seat each day on that vast panel — online or off — holding up one's singular cardboard square with a numeral scrawled on it.
But if they can't, you've put them in an uncomfortable bind.
By forcing her family to see her as she sees herself, Maura also acts as a mirror, reflecting back the "queerness" in everyone around her: Sarah, who jumps into bed with an ex-girlfriend; Ali, who abuses her body, in ways both playful and hostile, using drugs and sex; and Josh, whose boyishness hints at something more uncomfortable, bound up in the secrets his family has agreed to bury.
Today the economically vibrant N.F.L. finds itself in an increasingly uncomfortable moral bind, uneasily embracing its brutal past — represented by stars like Deacon Jones — while sanitizing the game with new rules that give the veneer of safety.
But it shares with the author's previous books one technique in particular: Erskine puts her characters into intensely uncomfortable circumstances, ones bound to create oppositional relationships.
Sooner or later, the party's attitude toward policy — we listen only to people who tell us what we want to hear, and attack the bearers of uncomfortable news — was bound to infect political strategy, too.
Uncomfortable moments are bound to happen in any relationship, but if it's becoming consistent, it could be a sign that you two simply aren't compatible.
