1336 6 3
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On the phone I asked my mother how she was doing.
“I’m getting old,” she said. “Going slow. But getting there. I’m ninety-four!”
My mother was always 94, when she was really 93. I remember she was 93 right after she turned 92. And 92
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1336 4 4
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It was that special ache between heart and stomach that made me stop things. That ache that cannot be caused by the mere knowledge that you have steered your life into a completely wrong direction. To feel this pain, you also need to have no clue why and how it…
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1336 8 4
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He thought of it as magic, but magic that he understood, the way a magician knows about the hidden compartments in his hat and trunks.
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1336 5 3
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Somebody left CNN on all night long
until the news cycle flipped, crashed
and burned
in its own ruins
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1336 5 4
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hangs inverted and
begins a swirling motion,
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1336 2 1
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“What the fuck!” Duke muttered, amazed at what he was seeing in the darkened store. A thin curtain of smoke was rising from under the baseboard like an inverted waterfall. It stretched the entire length of the left wall. Holy shit, the joint's on fire! I…
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1336 14 8
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The old lady is losing her memory. She forgets people's names yet so familiar to her. A little sheepish, she takes her basket and walks to the village. Just like when her legs were young, suntanned, shapely and attractive. Along the footpath, by the shop windows, over the…
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1336 0 0
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He was lit up faintly.Standing in a room of golden proportions (which is not saying a lot), he was one stood man (which is). The only lamp, a seemingly old neon, hanging short from its chains, shone darkly above none. None but a five-feeted glass plane, upon which glossy…
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1336 1 1
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I survived as a brave thought,
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1336 0 0
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“You sure?” He nods. “Maybe it was pneuomonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.” Flash of a smile, sobbing laughter, like an abandoned seal.
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1335 0 0
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destinies bring me to a damned desert
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1335 0 0
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Most women simply don’t want damaged goods. That’s a fact I’ve been brought face to face with throughout my life. It's something you can continue crushing your brains against, like an impossibly high hurdle. At first you take the damage without unde
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1335 5 3
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He slathered the glue on my scalp and talked non-stop about Harlem. Electrodes or nodes, I never asked which, would measure something inside my head. I doubt they actually did though, measure anything. I've had the pleasure of having wires glued to my skull before and have…
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1335 8 6
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1335 5 4
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Suddenly, the room was filled with a screaming vortex directed at a pinpoint in the corner. Timmy's bureau was gone and everything loose in the room was flying towards the spot it had occupied. Timmy stood up in horror. He tried to seal this rent by tossi
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1335 1 1
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It was in his teeth. A blackness, a subscription to an outsideness, a painful contraction of burnt out trees scattered there among sand drifts and tidal debris. His face, lightly weathered and troubled, a tightness built into eyes of thought and separation. His arms, strong…
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1335 8 3
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She waited on the hot, broken pavement, arm outstretched, her thumb a ticket to a distant, refracted horizon. Waves of heat danced like undulating snakes under the spell of a charmer. She pictured herself passing through them, abandoning the green of home for the…
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1335 6 3
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While most spread their time in other occupation, I traveled through books and grew my imagination. I knew endless bliss. I was a book eater. I would just devour books that I loved and slug through those I didn't, just to make myself eat the truths and li
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1335 2 1
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Everyone is tromping around in work boots like an army of happy gardeners. The park is smiling from all this attention, from the sound of kids who think work is play. It's not even sunny but we don't mind. I know you don't. Grey days are just as good. They've…
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1335 1 2
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I slept and it was pleasant. Then there was the kiss, and it was hot. Later you turned away, and all was November chill. Now there are touches, caresses and shouts, Marvelous nights flavored with favors bestowed, and blackened days,…
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1335 1 0
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The English phrase "Nice to see you" translates into "My gall bladder is really warm today" in Berik, a language of New Guinea.
What Language Is, John McWhorter
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1335 15 8
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I believe I will become a bear, snuggle up in a deep cave, coil myself inside my fur, close my eyes on hurting images, turn a deaf ear to the uproar of the world. Bolt my door to the deceiving voices outside. Sleep. Forget. Wait, as we wait for spring, for the violet and…
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1335 11 8
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Since dawn doesn't understand my words, I will give them to the donkey, finely cut for him, let them ferment some time and add a few sprigs of lucerne. The donkey grazes in the meadow down the road and always welcomes me with a grin that displays his mauve gums and his…
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1335 4 0
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Jillian speeds across the stone wall, the hem of her dress flaps violently behind her. Sometimes she stands with her back fully erect letting perpetual motion guide her down a bend with her sun blonde locks brightening the dreary sky, or she lurches her
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1335 6 5
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Posit butterflies/
as evidence of heavenly design.
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1335 3 1
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The Campus Socialists
Paul and Mary Jo lived in an apartment at the top of a long, dark flight of stairs that were so high, I remember as if it were yesterday thinking, the night she pushed him down the stairs, he would surely be dead by the time h
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1335 9 4
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Fear I’ll be stuck here without a ladder
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1335 0 0
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You seemed to have that leisure to walk about sweetly when I was with you, honey-singing the reward for the intensity of emotion you lunged about in. Nothing seemed like it was going to hurt or harm anyone, even while I was going nuts between the legs.
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1335 4 3
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It starts on the Fallopian Speedway:
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1335 7 1
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The sound of a siren approaches his home. His wife asks him why he's so nervous. It's nothing, he says, but he rises from the couch and peers into the night from behind the curtains. The siren approaches relentlessly. The road twists and turns and the sound fades but always…
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