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6e70887
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There will be peaks of great joy from which to crow and vales of tears out of which to climb. When and why they will happen, no one can say, but they will happen. To all of us. We will all go back and forth from one to the other countless times during a lifetime. This is not some call to bipartisanship between inimical sides. The Happy and the Sad are the same population.
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David Rakoff |
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a966756
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Susan adored her and worshiped her style, / Loved her pronouncements of "perfect" and "vile," / Loved the sheer whim, the madcap willy-nillyness / And how deeply seriously Nonnie took her own silliness"
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David Rakoff |
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0c2d575
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We have become an army of multiply chemically sensitive, high-maintenance princesses trying to make our way through a world full of irksome peas.
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David Rakoff |
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f931c9a
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My exuberance isn't entirely food related. I have been so relieved to find that the city in and of itself is not enough to unlock the sadness or fear of my younger self. To the contrary, I have been unable to wipe the smile from my face since I arrived, giddy with a sense of survival. It's not even clear to me that that old misery is still even housed in my body anymore. I had been avoiding a monster behind a door for thirteen years, only t..
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David Rakoff |
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0f8123e
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Details can change or go missing entirely, particularly in moments of physical peril. A kind of amnesia goes hand in hand with sickness, and a good thing, too.
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David Rakoff |
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1bdc29f
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What remains of your past if you didn't allow yourself to feel it when it happened? If you don't have your experiences in the moment, if you gloss over them with jokes or zoom past them, you end up with curiously dispassionate memories. Procedural and depopulated. It's as if a neutron bomb went off and all you're left with are hospital corridors, where you're scanning the walls for familiar photographs.
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David Rakoff |
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441d4f6
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With no small remorse, she thought, "He and his mess Better not come near this fabulous dress"."
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David Rakoff |
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622745b
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The collective delusion here is overwhelming narcissism posing as altruism.
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David Rakoff |
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f2231e2
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Rather than making you never want to eat chicken again, it simply makes you angry. It makes you hold a grudge. You'll eat chicken again, by God, and you'll chew really, really hard.
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david rakoff |
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aa9eb5b
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Lying flat against the tile of the kitchen floor listening to someone else have sex is essentially my early twenties in a nutshell.
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sex
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David Rakoff |
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8113041
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The man beside me, apropos of nothing, raises his hand and says that there is 'a story' that man started society because he was 'cast out of a garden because of a sin.' He doesn't attribute this anecdote, leaving it a blind item from a source we might not know. He seems nice enough but potentially dangerous.
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David Rakoff |
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37be3c6
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L]ike most people, I like to think of myself as being spontaneous, ready for anything, fun. This is the evening's second hard-won insight: I am neither spontaneous nor ready for anything. I suspect that others would probably regard this news as about as momentous and surprising as when I decided to come out (which was about as momentous and surprising as if I had bravely announced to everyone that I had dark hair and opposable thumbs). I am..
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David Rakoff |
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2a89486
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Here's the second joke: Two psychiatrists meet on the street and say hello. "How are you?" asks one. "Eh, not so good," says the other. "I had a stupid misunderstanding, a slip of the tongue. I was visiting my mother out at the old folks' home. We were having lunch and I asked her to pass me the salt, but instead I said, 'You fucking bitch you ruined my life."
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psychoanalysis
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David Rakoff |
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90d2737
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But thanks to my rapidly dividing cells, I no longer have that feeling--although I remember it very well--that if I just buckled down to the great work at hand, lived more authentically, stopped procrastinating, cut out sugar, then my best self was just there right around the corner. Yeah, no. I'm done with all that. I
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David Rakoff |
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c5d22c7
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I like everything," I replied, feeling misrepresented and only half amused right back. "I don't hate the world. I'm scared of it. There's a difference."
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David Rakoff |
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d9ea5b9
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one day Satan himself visits, along with his great-grandmother--who is, not surprisingly, a total fucking bitch.
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satan
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David Rakoff |
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39a4f20
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Why not be a communist, she thinks, if it means that kind of belonging?
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David Rakoff |
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9e785ec
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When medicine is socialized, when you have true universal health care, when everyone's treatment is the same regardless of socioeconomic station, those strong-arming attitudes of entitlement just aren't part of the vocabulary. This atrium, this lovely space in a hospital with a world-class reputation, is actually the equivalent of a state hospital. That American sense that someone somewhere else is getting what you're not, and the attendant..
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David Rakoff |
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4f7e150
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This being a stranger was like being dead, And brought to mind how, in a book he had read That most folks misunderstood one common state: The flip side of love is indifference, not hate.
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David Rakoff |
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c3f51d5
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In the right situation, highly formalized, high-suction ass-kissing not only comes all too naturally to me, it makes me breathless with a feeling of penitential power.
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David Rakoff |
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6c8d85b
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It has been a good while since 12:00 a.m. held much attraction for me beyond being a perfectly lovely time to be ensconced in the comfort of my own home, sitting in my underpants, contentedly worrying about something.
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David Rakoff |
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351dabd
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One day reach idealization; after all, it's the journey, not the destination.
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David Rakoff |
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1a4d10c
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Taking both of Kay's hands with no rancor, no bile, Helen looks in her eyes and breaks into a smile. "You're right", Helen says, "I should call it a day." Helen smiles one more time, and them adds, "Fuck off, Kay."
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David Rakoff |
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ff267bc
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Maybe there is some solace to be derived in that: bacchanal or funeral, after enough time, the detritus looks the same.
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David Rakoff |
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25d5dd3
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Creativity demands an ability to be with oneself at one's least attractive, that sometimes it's just easier not to do anything. Writing--I can really only speak to writing here--always, only starts out as shit" an infant on monstrous aspect; bawling, ugly, terrible, and it stays terrible for a long, long time (sometimes forever). Unlike cooking, for example, where largely edible, if raw, ingredients are assembled, cut, heated, and otherwi..
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David Rakoff |
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25885a1
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Is there some lesson on how to be friends? I think what it means is that central to living A life that is good is a life that's forgiving. We're creatures of contact, regardless of whether to kiss or to wound, we still must come together.
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David Rakoff |
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7021554
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There are even more galvanizing aspects to the Canadian psyche than mere reticence. There is the collective fear, at least when I was growing up, of becoming too big for our britches. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels (my countryman), it's the kind of place where they award Miss Canada to the runner-up, because the prettiest already gets to be the prettiest. Rather than demanding liberty or, failing that, death, we are a country forever giving u..
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David Rakoff |
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40163cb
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To paraphrase Lorne Michaels (my countryman), it's the kind of place where they award Miss Canada to the runner-up, because the prettiest already gets to be prettiest.
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David Rakoff |
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d66dacd
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It has been a good while since 12:00am held much attraction for me beyond being a perfectly lovely time to be ensconced in the comfort of my own home, sitting in my underpants, contentedly worrying about something.
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David Rakoff |
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527a4cd
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My room is cheerfully located between the sixth-floor elevators. The springs of my bed wheeze. The elevator dings. The ice machine right outside my door rumbles forth its icy bounty, a steady tattoo that beats "Stay up! Stay up!" I am in a canvas that Edward Hopper never felt bummed out enough to paint."
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David Rakoff |
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4fe548f
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He'd paid all his taxes, so that left ... you guessed it.
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David Rakoff |
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5ebc348
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if psychoanalysis was late-19th-century secular Judaism's way of constructing spiritual meaning in a post-religious world and retail is the late 20th century's way of constructing meaning in a postreligious world, what does it mean that I'm impersonating the father of psychoanalysis in a store window to commemorate a religious holiday?
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freud
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David Rakoff |
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abfb7ba
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can we pause for a moment to talk about that term, Innovention? A neologism that, in an effort to turbo-charge meaning, takes two perfectly eloquent and unassailable words and by combining them renders both suspect. It is a word developed by a committee, one that can only be spoken unironically if one is being paid to do so, like menus in chain restaurants that list "Snacketizers" and "Appeteasers." Can't you just taste the process-mapping?..
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humor
innovention
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David Rakoff |
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0b55075
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Artists are artists whether they produce or not. None of it requires much more than hanging out.
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David Rakoff |
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64ae9f3
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It bears repeating a third time: Not being funny doesn't make you a bad person. Not having a sense of humour does.
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David Rakoff |
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a1a5cc6
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A half roll of Life Savers fused to the pockets, And in yet another, a lone unwrapped mint Had bundled itself in a stole of gray lint.
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David Rakoff |
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d9f05c1
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The logic underlying the truism that one should always travel on a plane with a book is also precisely why bed-and-breakfast culture is to be avoided if at all possible. Namely, you might have to talk to someone.
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travel
humor
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David Rakoff |