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89f86c9
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The three of us had formed a group based on something erroneous, some basic misunderstanding that hadn't yet come to light, and so we kept on in one another's company, going to bars and having conversations.
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Denis Johnson |
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a0ee87f
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His eyeballs look like he bought them in a joke shop.
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Denis Johnson |
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f7f579b
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It made me in all matters a fundamentalist. I didn't go to 'take it in.' I went to be convicted.
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Denis Johnson |
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00d67e6
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things whose perishing had been arrested by their power to make her love them.
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human
love
perish
remembrance
remember
memory
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Denis Johnson |
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a511c69
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And sometimes a dust storm would stand off in the desert, towering so high it was like another city -- a terrifying new era approaching, blurring our dreams.
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Denis Johnson |
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e0b7741
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Now we had a stupid silence, the kind that always descends on people who are half in the bag.
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Denis Johnson |
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f05bd63
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He saw no sign of their Bible, either. If the Lord had failed to protect even the book of his own Word, this proved to Grainier that here had come a fire stronger than God.
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Denis Johnson |
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aa534ff
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He didn't know what country he was in, but he was at home in the universe.
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Denis Johnson |
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4415b71
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We in Purgatory sing fondly of Hell.
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Denis Johnson |
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708df45
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I know everything." Heinz sputtered and fumed somewhat like an automobile himself, and said, "I'm God!" Grainier thought about how to answer. Here seemed a conversation that could go no farther."
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Denis Johnson |
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12aaa38
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He was so entranced, he was so charmed, so captivated-rolled out flat, dreamed into, shone upon-that when she said his name, English started to live.
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Denis Johnson |
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5cbda36
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They'd been here twenty seconds, and already nothing was happening.
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going-out
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Denis Johnson |
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5332022
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There was nothing of his I wanted in particular. I wanted it all.
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Denis Johnson |
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8a6e1fe
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Think of being curled up and floating in a darkness. Even if you could think, even if you had an imagination, would you ever imagine its opposite, this miraculous world the Asian Taoists call the "Ten Thousand Things"? And if the darkness just got darker? And then you were dead? What would you care? How would you even know the difference?"
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Denis Johnson |
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efba599
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Not all the people living at Beverly Home were old and helpless. Some were young but paralyzed. Some weren't past middle age but were already demented. Others were fine, except that they couldn't be allowed out on the street with their impossible deformities. They made God look like a senseless maniac. One man had a congenital bone ailment that had turned him into a seven-foot-tall monster. His name was Robert. Each day Robert dressed himse..
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Denis Johnson |
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27485b5
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I pushed through the door into Kelly's. Inside they sat with their fat hands around their beers while the jukebox sang softly to itself. You'd think they'd found out how, by sitting still and holding their necks just so, to look down into lost worlds.
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Denis Johnson |
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7045b10
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It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.
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Denis Johnson |
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0ff1e35
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Employment in the Small Bookstore" Twelve Poems, 1975 The dust is almost motionless in this narrowness, this stillness, yet how unlike a coffin it is, sometimes letting a live one in, sometimes out and the air, though paused, impends not a thing, the silence isn't sinister, and in fact not much goes on at the Ariel Book Shop today, no one weeps in the back room full of books, old books, no one is tearing the books to shreds, in fact I am me..
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Denis Johnson |
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f877dea
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This moment, this very experience of it, seemed only the thinnest gauze. She sat in the audience thinking - someone here has cancer, someone has a broken heart, someone's soul is lost, someone feels naked and foreign, thinks they once knew the way but can't remember the way, feels stripped of armor and alone, there are people in this audience with broken bones, others whose bones will break sooner or later, people who've ruined their health..
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Denis Johnson |
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c0711b0
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What a pair of lungs!
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Denis Johnson |
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b26e75c
|
Howling, are you?" the Indian said. "There it is for you, then. That's what happens, that's what they say: There's not a wolf alive that can't tame a man."
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Denis Johnson |
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d03e4b4
|
Now the colonel seemed to grieve for his President again, because he said, "This world spits out a beautiful man like he was poison."
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Denis Johnson |
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656e7a3
|
Writing. It's easy work. The equipment isn't expensive, and you can pursue this occupation anywhere. You make your own hours, mess around the house in your pajamas, listening to jazz recordings and sipping coffee while another day makes its escape. You don't have to be high-functioning or even, for the most part, functioning at all. If I could drink liquor without being drunk all the time, I'd certainly drink enough to be drunk half the tim..
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Denis Johnson |
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c28c601
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There were stories that the tunnels went for miles. There were monsters down there, blind reptiles and insects that had never seen the light, there were hospitals and brothels, and horrible things, piles of the offal from VC atrocities, dead babies, assassinated priests.
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Denis Johnson |
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91cb739
|
You can't burgulate a forgotten, empty house," he said, horrified at my stupidity."
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Denis Johnson |
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eee1367
|
The soybean crop was dead again, and the failed, whilted cornstalks were laid out on the ground like rows of underthings. Most of the farmers didn't even plant anymore. All the false visions had been erased. It felt like the moment before the Savior comes. And the Savior did come, but we had to wait a long time.
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Denis Johnson |
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9e2035a
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I have one ship and they call me a pirate. You have a fleet and they call you an Emperor. I can't remember who said it.
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Denis Johnson |
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f1e2e06
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Animals had returned to what was left of the forest...clusters of orange butterflies exploded off the blackish purple piles of bear sign and winked and fluttered magically like leaves without trees. More bears than people traveled the muddy road, leaving tracks straight up and down the middle of it...
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bears
butterflies
forest
trees
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Denis Johnson |
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1614d27
|
What can be said about those fields? There were blackbirds circling above their own shadows, and beneath them the cows stood around smelling one another's butts.
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Denis Johnson |
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c04f1df
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I felt the stirring even of parts of me that had been dead since childhood, that sense of the child as a sort of antenna stuck in the middle of an infinite expanse of possibilities.
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Denis Johnson |
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11374df
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The women were blank, shining areas with photographs of sad girls floating in them.
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Denis Johnson |
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f688b7f
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I'm sure we were all feeling blessed on this ferryboat among the humps of very green--in the sunlight almost coolly burning, like phosphorus--islands, and the water of inlets winking in the sincere light of day, under a sky as blue and brainless as the love of God, despite the smell, the slight, dreamy suffocation, of some kind of petroleum-based compound used to seal the deck's seams.
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Denis Johnson |
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2376727
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Are you hearing unusual sounds or voices?" the doctor asked.
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Denis Johnson |
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257efda
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Some people we glimpse as chasms, briefly but deeply, even to the death of us. Others are shallow places you never seem to get across.
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Denis Johnson |
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ec65b9a
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It was raining. Gigantic ferns leaned over us. The forest drifted down a hill. I could hear a creek rushing down among the rocks. And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.
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Denis Johnson |
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c29df9a
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She knew: shit, we might as well have been drinking a dog's tears. Nothing mattered except that we were alive.
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Denis Johnson |
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7fb750c
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But I was in a little better physical shape every day, I was getting my looks back, and my spirits were rising, and this was all in all a happy time for me. All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I have never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.
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improving
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Denis Johnson |
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6c20fb5
|
You know there is a cycle of imagining and desire, desire and death, death and birth, birth and imagining. And we have been tempted into its mouth. And it has swallowed us.
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Denis Johnson |
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9d6e325
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Sooner or later the mind grasps at a thought and follows it into the labyrinth, one thought branching into another. Then the labyrinth caves in on itself and you find yourself outside. You were never inside--it was a dream.
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Denis Johnson |
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aa77d1b
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It was all right to be who he was, but others would probably think it was terrible. A couple of times in the past he'd reached this absolute zero of the truth, and without fear or bitterness he realized now that somewhere inside it there was a move he could make to change his life, to become another person, but he'd never be able to guess what it was.
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self
revelation
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Denis Johnson |
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3ff0ab6
|
Completely confused as to who the real criminals were in this case, the jury had voted to wash their hands of everybody and they let him off. That had been the meaning of the conversation I'd had with him that afternoon, but I hadn't understood what was happening at all. There were many moments in the Vine like that one--where you might think today was yesterday, and yesterday was tomorrow, and so on. Because we all believed we were tragic,..
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Denis Johnson |
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223a8ad
|
Now he slept soundly through the nights, and often he dreamed of trains, and often of one particular train: He was on it; he could smell the coal smoke; a world went by. And then he was standing in that world as the sound of the train died away. A frail familiarity in these scenes hinted to him that they came from his childhood. Sometimes he woke to hear the sound of the Spokane International fading up the valley and realized he'd been hear..
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dreams
trains
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Denis Johnson |
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058f4c9
|
Harold's Bow and Food Bowl bowl bowl bowl Food food food food The miracle of the heavenly restaurant I mouth this great dark sad evening Suddenly they come for me in a limousine How could I have believed I was vanquished I never lay slain I am the victor this parade is for me Now they have led me to the doors of God Long ago and forever I was in this place on the other side of eating where I am full and the empty
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grief
poetry
unleashed
|
Denis Johnson |
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2520da4
|
Well, it's very much for each person to experience alone," he said, and whatever truth he meant to get at, his eyes were the visible scars of it."
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Denis Johnson |