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4d6fe24
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I later discovered that in order to be a good athlete one must care intensely what is happening with a ball, even if one doesn't have possession of it. This was ultimately my failure: my inability to work up a passion for the location of balls.
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sports
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Haven Kimmel |
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4ed2407
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That cat doesn't have a lick of sense,' I said, sighing. Well, honey, he's not right in the head,' Dad said, flipping his cigarette into the front yard. I glared at him. 'And just what do you mean by that?' Dad counted on his fingers. 'He's cross-eyed; he jumps out of trees after birds and then doesn't land on his feet; he sleeps with his head smashed up against the wall, and the tip of his tail is crooked.' Oh yeah? Well, how about this: h..
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Haven Kimmel |
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c56d045
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Possibility, infinity, beauty -- none of those words were right. [...] What he really wanted to say was: have you felt this? this phantom life streaking like a phosphorescent hound at the edges of your ruin?
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Haven Kimmel |
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b739b27
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What kind of good deeds? Like Girl Scouts? Because I got kicked out of Brownies and they won't give me another chance to keep my clothes on at camp.
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Haven Kimmel |
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2836d2a
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But I think that what you'll discover more and more as you get older is that most people aren't thinking about you at all.
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Haven Kimmel |
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64d04b8
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she waited until she and my grandfather Anthel were just home from their honeymoon, and then sat him down and told him this: "Honey, I know you like to take a drink, and that's all right, but be forewarned that I ain't your maid and I ain't your punching bag, and if you ever raise your hand to me you'd best kill me. Because otherwise I'll wait until you're asleep; sew you into the bed; and beat you to death with a frying pan." Until he died..
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Haven Kimmel |
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a9e49b9
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They did a lot of cleaning in their house, which I considered to be a sign of immoral parenting. The job of parents, as I saw it, was to watch television and step into a child's life only when absolutely necessary, like in the event of a tornado or a potential kidnapping.
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Haven Kimmel |
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f1c69d3
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I respect every way in which you are a troublemaker, now get up and do what your mother says.
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Haven Kimmel |
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cd9210e
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he said almost nothing, and ground his teeth against his desire to tell them the truth: God is helpless. We are at the mercy of our own radical freedom, and all God can do is take into God's self the grief, the violence, the sublime acts of kindness, the good sex. God comes to us from the future, and has only one godlike gift: the lure. We are lured toward truth, beauty, and goodness...the lure is pulling at our hearts like some lucid joy i..
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Haven Kimmel |
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16a0b68
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Decoupage hit Mooreland pretty hard...
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Haven Kimmel |
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f4b5d9a
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My hair looks like it had been purchased at a rummage sale after all the real hair was gone.
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Haven Kimmel |
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935cfbc
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My mother was good at reading books, making cinnamon biscuits, and coloring in a coloring book. Also she was a good eater of popcorn and knitter of sweaters with my initials right in them. She could sit really still. She knew how to believe in God and sing really loudly. When she sneezed our whole house rocked. My father was a great smoker and driver of vehicles..He could hold a full coffee cup while driving and never spill a drop, even goi..
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Haven Kimmel |
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aa50239
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Contrary to popular opinion, my dad was not a lazy man. He was not lazy at all, for instance, when it came to Going Places In His Truck. He was also very industrious about Preparing To Go Camping. And if something really interested him, he would work on it all day.
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Haven Kimmel |
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76928b4
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I sensed weeping and salvation in the air, two of my least favorite things.
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Haven Kimmel |
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9e4ac61
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women live the lie from birth on, and then one day they realize that it's too late for them, they're too old to write a book or solve a difficult problem in math, they'll never learn to sing or play the piano, they showed such promise early on. so they run to the priest, their voices take on a hysterical edge, like the one mine has right now, and the priest tells them they have lived righteously and their reward will be in heaven, and he co..
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Haven Kimmel |
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7fab864
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But you can't ever live in the place you dream about, the town you long for. ...the moment you become conscious of your desire, and then fulfill it, it evaporates.
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Haven Kimmel |
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1b3ec71
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I figure heaven will be a scratch-and-sniff sort of place, and one of my first requests will be the Driftwood in its prime, while it was filled with our life. And later I will ask for the smell of my dad's truck, which was a combination of basic truck (nearly universal), plus his cologne (Old Spice), unfiltered Lucky Strikes, and when I was very lucky, leaded gasoline. If I could have gotten my nose close enough I would have inhaled leaded ..
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Haven Kimmel |
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5546800
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The distance between Mooreland in 1965 and a city like San Francisco in 1965 is roughly equivalent to the distance starlight must travel before we look up casually from a cornfield and see it.
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Haven Kimmel |
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833eec0
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You could buy individual boxes of detergent and fabric softener, even bleach, and there was nothing that made me grind my teeth with pleasure more than a real thing shrunken down small. The first time my dad showed me a toothache kit from a box of equipment from the Korean War and I saw the tiny cotton balls (the size of very small ball bearings), I nearly swooned. "Let me hold one of those," I said, almost mad at him. He gave it to me with..
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Haven Kimmel |
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c06c4ed
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I once heard her tell a friend that she was, in fact, a 120-pound woman, but she kept herself wrapped in fat in order to prevent bruising.
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Haven Kimmel |
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71b31e1
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every beautiful and strange event made more poignant for having been photographed.
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Haven Kimmel |
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0dd9a45
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I couldn't for the life of me figure out how long a person had to live, or how good she had to be, to get her hands on some treasure.
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Haven Kimmel |
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b6343b5
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My favorite was Love Is...Never Having to Say You're Sorry. This was,the good Lord knew, a dream of mine. But every time I refused to apologize for something, Love seemed to just fly out the window.
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Haven Kimmel |
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f2088f6
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She had taken her vows and then they had taken her, and the forces amassed against her were greater than love, greater than obligation. They were elemental, heavy as a dead planet.
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Haven Kimmel |
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c207216
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He did know: he knew her right away, and he felt known by her, and that was where the trouble really began...She could have been exotic or worldly or a Valkyrie and it would have meant nothing to him. But that Alice saw him--that was a feeling Amos had never experienced before, and it felt like a revelation and also like a virus.
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Haven Kimmel |
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c9936e9
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Honey, I know you like to take a drink, and that's all right, but be forewarned that I ain't your maid and I ain't your punching-bag, and if you ever raise your hand to me you'd best kill me. Because otherwise I'll wait till you're asleep; sew you into the bed; and beat you to death with a frying pan.
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haven-kimmel
zippy
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Haven Kimmel |
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8b5d741
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He sang like an angel, he was faithful to God and he waited honorably for the wife he believed God chose for him. He made two daughters who shone like mirrors in the direct sun; he blazed his path with a scythe and his broad shoulders, and he was who he chose to be, which is the hardest and bravest thing a man can do. He looked at us, his parents, his sisters, his whole crooked family, and he flexed his jaw muscles, packed up his truck, and..
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Haven Kimmel |
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a02cf15
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The pigs were pushing their noses through the slats in the truck bed, which made Langston so unaccountably sad she thought she would have to sit down on the sidewalk. How is it possible, she thought, that a person can drive a thinking, feeling, animal to slaughter and not become less than an animal himself? And what were the pigs searching for, after all, but air and freedom?
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Haven Kimmel |
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0b907b3
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The book was so clean and white, and the letters were so perfectly black and defenseless; it would have been like tearing the ears off a kitten.
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Haven Kimmel |
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0647421
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I could no longer look at him. I wished, in fact, for blindness.
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Haven Kimmel |
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e2cddb6
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It was an Indian summer afternoon in Indiana, a rare gift. We walked home slowly. I thought Mom might be wrong about me having all I needed, but just at that moment, I had no need to complain.
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Haven Kimmel |
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3cbe33a
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laura had hoped, she'd written in her journal, that whatever befell her daughters, they would not be damaged at the level of instinct, that exact phrase.
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Haven Kimmel |
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d98b0dc
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Since we were only going to the best place on the Earth, where every single minute of every day was different and filled with promise, what the heck difference did it make what we were gonna do
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Haven Kimmel |
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f3ff341
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in the 1970s people still referred to my mother as a Communist because she had a subscription to The Atlantic Monthly,
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Haven Kimmel |
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d728c66
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He's no John Walton.
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Haven Kimmel |
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4b1183d
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Well, I'm here to tell you: I've seen women passionately devoted to men who couldn't pile bricks, and whole families of slack-jawed nose pickers held together by "love," not to mention all those people who curl up at night with dogs that have gunk running out of their eyes, dogs who earlier peed where they were about to walk and spent ten minutes licking their own wormy butts."
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Haven Kimmel |
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e7733e9
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I got kicked out of Brownies and they won't give me another chance to keep my clothes on at camp. Also
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Haven Kimmel |
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27e244a
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I was born an outcast in an ancient and subtle way; I was conceived out of some grief or darkness and would be made to pay a price for it.
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Haven Kimmel |
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0277173
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all men of a certain age tell this story, and they give themselves away by always using the same fruit. I have yet to meet the father who will look his child in the eye and say, "I was happy just to get some seedless grapes." But"
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Haven Kimmel |
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913eb0a
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never would. In short, he was what it meant to be a father and a man in 1971. Up against his power I could see none of his failings.
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Haven Kimmel |
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8b481c2
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But I loved him, loved him, a little girl is helpless against her love for a brother. I climbed on him, harassed him, begged him to carry me, take me with him wherever he was going. From a distance he seemed both cold and receding, a man whose most familiar feature was his back as he walked away as fast as he could.
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Haven Kimmel |
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b468c8d
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Honey, I know you like to take a drink, and that's all right, but be forewarned that I ain't your maid and I ain't your punching-bag, and if you ever raise your hand to me you'd best kill me. Because otherwise I'll wait till you're asleep; sew you into the bed; and beat you to death with a frying pan." Until"
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Haven Kimmel |
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3770af3
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There is a kind of wildness that grows up among people who have gathered in the dark, and we all felt a little giddy.
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Haven Kimmel |
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2014fd7
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I'm never reading poetry again unless it's by James Whitcomb Riley!" And I went storming out of the house to try and shake off the injury done to me with words."
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Haven Kimmel |