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1226938
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We can only die in the future, I thought; right now we are always alive.
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Amy Hempel |
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05c9c32
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I meet a person, and in my mind I'm saying three minutes; I give you three minutes to show me the spark.
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Amy Hempel |
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6ded89e
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I think of the chimp, the one with the talking hands. In the course of the experiment, that chimp had a baby. Imagine how her trainers must have thrilled when the mother, without prompting, began to sign her newborn. Baby, drink milk. Baby, play ball. And when the baby died, the mother stood over the body, her wrinkled hands moving with animal grace, forming again and again the words: Baby, come hug, Baby come hug, fluent now in the lan..
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Amy Hempel |
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b797259
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Just once in my life--oh, when have I ever wanted anything just once in my life?
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Amy Hempel |
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116457a
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if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.
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Amy Hempel |
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2839e6c
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Dreams: the place most of us get what we need.
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Amy Hempel |
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d36e82c
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I get rational when I panic.
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Amy Hempel |
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b46df7a
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The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else. But the body moves toward health. The mind, too, in steps. One step at a time. Ask a mother who has just lost a child, How many children do you have? "Four," she will say, "--three," and years later, "Three," she will say, "--four."
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loss
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Amy Hempel |
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901749a
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I exaggerated even before I began to exaggerate, because it's true -- nothing is ever quite as bad as it could be.
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Amy Hempel |
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14c1688
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Then the children went to bed, or at least went upstairs, and the men joined the women for a cigarette on the porch, absently picking ticks engorged like grapes off the sleeping dogs. And when the men kissed the women good night, and their weekend whiskers scratched the women's cheeks, the women did not think shave, they thought .
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Amy Hempel |
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96f111f
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The other day I was playing Scrabble. I saw that I could close the space in D-E- -Y. I had an N and an F. Which do you think I chose? What was the word I made?
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Amy Hempel |
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10a3964
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I thought, my love is so good, why isn't it calling the same thing back.
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Amy Hempel |
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18f8fa4
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It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.
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Amy Hempel |
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2988b10
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I had my own bed. I slept in it alone, except for those times when we needed--not sex--but sex was how we got there.
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lovers
marriage
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Amy Hempel |
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ee3a5aa
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I would like to go for a ride with you, have you take me to stand before a river in the dark where hundreds of lightning bugs blink this code in sequence: right here, nowhere else! Right now, never again!
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Amy Hempel |
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6fa19b3
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I know that homes burn and that you should think what to save before they start to. Not because, in the heat of it, everything looks as valuable as everything else. But, because nothing looks worth the bother, not even your life.
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Amy Hempel |
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28524ba
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I often feel the effects of people only after they leave me.
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Amy Hempel |
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506acd4
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He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.
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Amy Hempel |
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7e80716
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He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.
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short-story
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Amy Hempel |
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b649016
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It was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave--and the liar said it really happened--was that once while drinking orange juice, he'd realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar 'realizations.' Is he kidding? I thought. Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn't enough. Once I had ..
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Amy Hempel |
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587efac
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I think you would like Warren. He drinks Courvoisier in a Coke can, and has a laugh like you'd find in a cartoon bubble.
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Amy Hempel |
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ddaf0c3
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Look at me. My concerns-are they spiritual, do you think, or carnal? Come on. We've read our Shakespeare.
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Amy Hempel |
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6760096
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The worst of it is over now, and I can't say that I am glad. Lose that sense of loss--you have gone and lost something else.
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Amy Hempel |
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73445bd
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I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and over again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.
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Amy Hempel |
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cfa5fc9
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In my head there's a broken balcony I fall off of when I speak.
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Amy Hempel |
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08c7cc7
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What I think," Chatty says, "is that if a man loves a woman more than a woman loves a man, then they're even."
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Amy Hempel |
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5ba6823
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When my mother died, my father's early widowhood gave him social cachet he would not have had if they had divorced. He was a bigger catch for the sorrow attached.
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Amy Hempel |
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7a33ba0
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Before I took to the road, a friend tried to get me to go to a department store with him. He said it was to improve the place where I lived. He said," I want to know you are reading beneath this lamp. " This fellow was dying. He knew it and I did not. I think he was tucking me in. He was making sure all of his friends had the right lamps, the comfiest pillows, the softest sheets. He was tucking us all in for the night."
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Amy Hempel |
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8fcda00
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I told him about the way they get to know you. Not the way people do, the way they flatter you by wanting to know every last thing about you, only it isn't a compliment, it is just efficient, a person getting more quickly to the end of you. Correction - dogs do want to know every last thing about you. They take in the smell of you, they know from the next room, asleep, when a mood settles over you. The difference is there's not an end to it..
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Amy Hempel |
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56bde42
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And I see that not touching for so long was a drive to the beach with the windows rolled up so the waves feel that much colder.
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love
beach
touching
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Amy Hempel |
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7cd1664
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She introduces me to a nurse as the Best Friend. The impersonal article is more intimate. It tells me that are intimate, the nurse and my friend. 'I was telling her we used to drink Canada Dry ginger ale and pretend were were in Canada' 'That's how dumb we were,' I say. 'You could be sisters,' the nurse says. So how come, I'll bet they are wondering, it took me so long to get to such a glorious place? But do they ask? They do not ask...
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Amy Hempel |
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ab8b19e
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A five-hour flight works out to three days and nights on land, by rail, from sea to shining sea. You can chalk off the hours on the back of the seat ahead. But seventy-some hours will not seem so long to you if you tell yourself first: This is where I am going to be for the rest of my natural life.
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travel
page-151
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Amy Hempel |
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c88c2a0
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And it was the first time that I believed the claim that you can help a person more by asking them the right question than by giving them the answer.
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Amy Hempel |
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f2145b8
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As soon as I knew that I would be all right, I was sure that I was dead and didn't know it. I moved through the days like a severed head that finishes a sentence. I waited for the moment that would snap me out of my seeming life.
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life
the-harvest
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Amy Hempel |
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eb87f70
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The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.
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Amy Hempel |
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8a3fa73
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I read about a famous mystery writer who worked for one week in a department store. One day she saw a woman come in and buy a doll. The mystery writer found out the woman's name, and took a bus to New Jersey to see where the woman lived. That was all. Years later, she referred to this woman as the love of her life. It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it.
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Amy Hempel |
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0cb021d
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What you forget, living here, is that just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater.
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Amy Hempel |
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9149807
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I sleep with a glass of water on the nightstand so I can see by its level if the coastal earth is trembling or if the shaking is still me.
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Amy Hempel |
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54ba88e
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I think it was that love that I loved. That kind of involvement was reassuring; I felt it would extend to me, as well. That it did not or that it did, but only as much and no more, was confusing at first.
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Amy Hempel |
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579f680
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All those years on the psychiatrist's couch and suddenly the couch is moving. Good God, she is on that couch when the big one hits. Maidy didn't tell you, but you know what her doctor said? She sprang from the couch and said, "My God, was that an earthquake?" The doctor said this: "Did it feel like an earthquake to you?"
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Amy Hempel |
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18cd355
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I like radio personalities, and I like to change lanes. And losing yourself on the freeway is like living at the beach--you're not aware of lapsed time, and suddenly you're there, where it was you were going.
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Amy Hempel |
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e725e66
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For example, the questions that say, "Would you prefer..." "Would you prefer (a) Answer questions about what you do, (b) Answer questions about what you know, (c) Answer questions about what you think? My answer is "Depends." But it's not one of the choices. I am having to think in terms of Always, Sometimes, Never."
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Amy Hempel |
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b786ab8
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A famous artist is approached by a student. "You don't remember me," the student says correctly, "but years ago you said something that changed my life. You said, 'Photography is death.' After that," says the student, "I threw out my camera. I began again. I want to thank you for changing my life." "Leave me alone," says the artist. "Photography is life."
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Amy Hempel |
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6fea2cb
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Women who are attacked phone a hotline for advice. "Don't report a rape," the women are told. "Call it indecent exposure. A guy who takes it out and doesn't do anything with it--cops figure that guys is sick."
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Amy Hempel |