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48149f1
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A day doesn't go by when I don't look at them, she said. I can't have them up on the kitchen refrigerator or in a frame in the bedroom--I just can't do it, I just can't run into them casually when I'm supposed to be doing something else--but I also can't last a day without seeing them. Visiting with them when I am alone in the house.
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remembrance
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Chris Bohjalian |
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1408568
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But she insists the family hadn't a choice. Not true. We always have choices. Isn't that what Dante teaches us? I really have become quite the Dante scholar: "There is no greater sorrow than to recall our time of joy in wretchedness."
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Chris Bohjalian |
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8f69704
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It's a terrible era when idiots are allowed to govern the blind,
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Chris Bohjalian |
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1b0ddf1
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I kind of understood at a young age that I didn't play well with most other kids in the sandbox.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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8fe0dd5
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She would hear the verbal balancing act: urgency mixed like gin amid the tonic of consideration.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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a3dc57d
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You can repair anything but dead. You can't fix that. So you bury the dead an move on.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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c07b98c
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Nothing -- and I mean nothing, Carly Banks -- is crazy if you're in love.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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3639817
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words are just words. Some are better than others, but only because they are better at explaining what you mean.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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3717513
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And so Cristina submerged her ears beneath the water and the world grew a little quieter; her hair fanned out atop the plane and she ran her fingers through it and was reminded of a goddess in a Renaissance painting. Her mind wandered far from the villa and the ruins and her unshakable sense that her world was about to change.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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c3c6e0c
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Welcomes seclusion. Not precisely antisocial, but reclusive.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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a1737cc
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She knew the truth of men and women and booze: it rarely ended well for either gender, but it was the women who wound up raped.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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7f0bbe0
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Serafina may think I'm a crazy person, but I'm not. She has her scars, too--and not only the ones I saw when she turned her head and her hair fell aside. We are both living out our lives in a Purgatorio. The difference? I arrived from the Paradiso, once young and married and so in love. But Serafina, she who was born alone in a fever dream of fire? She whose very skin is a tapestry of loss? Serafina, of course, arrived from the Inferno.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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cbf9656
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I'm not sure I can think of anything sadder than a homeless person with a homeless dog.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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adeeef8
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The plain unvarnished reality that we cannot escape who we are and most of the time we die as we lived.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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17a10ad
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She knew that most men desired her because she was attractive and she was smart, but also because she was a drunk and she was easy. This one? She hoped for his sake he wasn't as different as he seemed, because she always disappointed those men quickly or broke their hearts over time.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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9c88236
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The message, if you think about it this way, is all about taking chances because fate or destiny or God will protect you. Take a risk, have a little faith. It's all about life, not death.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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acda510
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we were too young- and the ground too muddy- for our small part of the earth to move.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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786fe30
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we have on earth exactly the amount of time that has been allotted to us, no more and no less. We really have precious little control.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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f98a32d
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If they veered left, it would feel to them as if they were sinking into the earth: the path would narrow as the ground around them rose up to their hips, then shoulders, then heads. The walls would turn from sod to stone, and it would seem as if they were walking inside a crag in a cliff. The sky would be reduced to a thin swath of blue, broken in parts by the branches of the trees that grew above them along the sides of this ancient channe..
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Chris Bohjalian |
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d784702
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As a species, we're either very resilient or super callous. I don't know which.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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7cf81b1
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sometimes you just have to bury the dead and move on.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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a8cb8ef
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In America, Walt Disney opened an amusement park. And in Florence, someone was savaging the remnants of a Tuscan nobleman's family.
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tuscan
walt-disney
florence
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Chris Bohjalian |
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7aa94d1
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Now, the separation between depression and suicide is more crevasse than chasm.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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2993a53
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We always have choices. Isn't that what Dante teaches us?
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Chris Bohjalian |
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eda97fc
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That might just mean that I had nothing better to do
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Chris Bohjalian |
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c146c06
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She cringed when she saw she needed a bikini wax - and cringed that she even got them in the first place. It wasn't the pain. It was the whole idea she was raising her daughter in a world where pubic hair was a problem.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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286eeb0
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Every man's memory is his private literature.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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d0559f0
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A moment later, all of the men at the party, stupefied by the way the hooker had gone banshee,
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Chris Bohjalian |
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4678d07
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But history does matter. There is a line connecting the Armenians and the Jews and the Cambodians and the Serbs and the Rwandans.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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0e82c4f
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quid pro quo,
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Chris Bohjalian |
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0b7e6ba
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Supposedly, whatever we do that's selfish goes with us to the grave; whatever we do that's selfless lives on.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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edb9f5b
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this was why men fell in love with strippers and escorts: it wasn't the licentiousness, the dissembling, their craven willingness to do whatever you wanted. It was the way they would, out of the blue, surprise you with the psychic ability to know what you needed.
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men
strippers
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Chris Bohjalian |
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0d6b02d
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up now
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Chris Bohjalian |
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6d1fa74
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Remember that person you wanted to be? There's still time." She wanted to believe that; she wanted to believe it almost desperately. She wanted to be different from what she was--to be anything but what she was. But every day that grew less and less likely. Life, it seemed to her in the back of the cab, was nothing but a narrowing of opportunities. It was a funnel."
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Chris Bohjalian |
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f147062
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Too often we presume that the unexpected strangers in our lives bode ill,or we are skeptical of their designs.We think we know more. And while I am well aware that there is indeed all manner of malevolence in the ether,there is benevolence there,too
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Chris Bohjalian |
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c2caf7e
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She had read articles over the years about a man's supposed biological craving for young women: it was all about primeval procreation, in theory, the need to plant seed in fertile soil. Maybe. ... She thought of a line from Nabokov: "Because you took advantage of my disadvantage." Lolita. In this case, however, Kristin felt that she was at the disadvantage - not the young thing. The truth was, she feared, all men were Humbert Humbert. Maybe..
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Chris Bohjalian |
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954fe3e
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read Carlo Levi?
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Chris Bohjalian |
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c9f5d4e
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Becoming a flight attendant was at once rebellion and escape
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Chris Bohjalian |
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3e8a1c1
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My presence scared them. I reminded them of the one thing in the world we want most to forget.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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3e4488d
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But for most of the world- for most of Vermont- the Cape Abenaki meltdown is just another bit of old news. Tsunamis. School shootings. Syria. We watch it, we read about it, and then we move on. As a species, we're either very resilient or super callous. I don't know which.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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694990a
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I love it when the snowflakes are flying like butterflies.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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81919b7
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She talks and talks because whenever she is silent she finds herself looking at him and her breath grows a little short.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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aef2619
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Did you know that a lot of Emily Dickinson's poems can be sung to the theme from Gilligan's Island? Not kidding, this is totally legit.
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Chris Bohjalian |
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cd79767
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When the sun is strong and the air is warm, however, we shout greetings to one another down the lengths of long driveways and from the windows of our cars as we pass; we hold our heads high as we walk, staring up into the sky with our eyes shut and our faces widened by smiles. We breathe in deeply the summery air, but this sort of inhalation doesn't result in a sigh; it's a precursor to a purr, or the moans one might make during a backrub. ..
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Chris Bohjalian |