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2381c5e
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Yoli, she said, I'm just saying that apologies aren't the bedrock of civilized society. All right! I said. I agree. But what is the bedrock of civilized society? Libraries, said Elf.
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Miriam Toews |
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57c95eb
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My dad had said don't look, but I'd already seen him. Pickled eggs are the Devil's snack.
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Miriam Toews |
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17b7f1b
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I think Ray might have wanted a son. One night when I was seven or eight I announced to my family that I wanted to play hockey with the boys on Friday nights and Ray became just a little too eager. Okay he shouted. All right We have to get you a stick We have to get tape I'll be waiting in the car
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Miriam Toews |
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dbf8318
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Wealthier Mennonites even though they're not technically supposed to be wealthy do their drinking in North Dakota or Hawaii. They are sort of like rock bands on tour in that the rules of this town don't apply to them when they're on the road. An embarrassing situation for wealthy Mennonites is to meet other wealthy Mennonites at the swim-up bar at the Honolulu Holiday Inn.
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Miriam Toews |
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36c27cb
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When I opened up the bottle of wine, Thebes said whoa, you yanked that cork out of there like you were saving it from drowning. She got out her markers and drew a screaming face on the cork.
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wine
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Miriam Toews |
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3e3e4e7
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He is the same chap who informed me that there are unusually high numbers of Mennonites who suffer from depression but nobody knows why. I said, Well, thank you for that! As cheerfully as if I was accepting a plate of homemade Christmas cookies from one of my students.
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mennonites
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Miriam Toews |
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4b6d9da
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She says isn't it funny how every second, every minute, every day, month, year, is accounted for, capable of being named - when time, or life, is so unwieldy, so intangible and slippery? This makes her feel compassion towards the people who invented the concept of "telling time." How hopeful, she says. How beautifully futile. How perfectly human."
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time
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Miriam Toews |
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98cba71
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Stuff was happening. Even in Half-a-Life. Little things, but it all added up to something big. To our lives. It was happening all along. These were our lives. This was it. My mom was hanging onto the lives, the recorded lives, of these women. We might escape, but what if we didn't? What if we lived in Half-a-Life all our lives, poor, lonely, proud, happy? If we did, we did. These were our lives. If we couldn't escape them, we'd have to live..
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Miriam Toews |
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0cbd942
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I followed her out the door and watched her walk down the road towards home, hers, and the bright yard light, and her own bed, and our parents, and I stood there for a long time because I didn't know where else to go.
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miriam-toews
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Miriam Toews |
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2d8657a
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That's me! Elf had said. I reminded her that she had her sight, she could see, she'd always been able to see but she told me she'd never adjusted to the light, she'd just never developed a tolerance for the world, her inoculation hadn't taken. Reality was a rusty leg trap.
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Miriam Toews |
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82186c8
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I sat on my Dad's bed and flipped through the page after empty page. No stamps. No exotic locales. No travel-worn smudges or creases. Just the ID information and my mother's black and white photo which if it where used in a psychology textbook on the meaning of facial expressions would be labelled: Obscenely, heartbreakingly hopeful
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Miriam Toews |
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b487e6a
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She says isn't it funny how every second, every minute, every day, month, year, is accounted for, capable of being named--when time, or life, is so unwieldy, so intangible and slippery?
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Miriam Toews |
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9f1dca4
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Everytime I looked at it I was reminded that I was, at that very moment, not bleeding from my face. And those are powerful words of hope, really. - Nomi
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Miriam Toews |
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1bca6d4
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The director said he's got a haunted soul and a natural sweetness.
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Miriam Toews |
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875cb55
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I don't know now why I let her believe otherwise, but someday, perhaps, it will be clear.
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Miriam Toews |
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e28bc31
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We are not members, . . . we are commodities. . . . When our men have used us up so that we look sixty when we're thirty and our wombs have literally dropped out of our bodies onto our spotless kitchen floors, finished, they turn to our daughters.
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feminism
women
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Miriam Toews |
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6ebfc58
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Between 2005-2009, more than 300 girls and women of Molotschna were made unconscious and attacked in their own beds. On average, an attack occurred every three or four days. Finally, Leisl Neustandter forced herself to stay awake night after night until she caught a young man prying open her bedroom window, holding a jug of belladonna spray in one hand. Leisl and her adult daughter wrestled the man to the ground and tied him up with baler t..
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Miriam Toews |
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dea1230
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Never explain, never retract, never apologize. Just get the thing done and let them howl.
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Miriam Toews |
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8a34170
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She told me that the brain is built to forget things as we continue to live, that memories are meant to fade and disintegrate, that skin, so protective in the beginning because it has to be to protect our organs, sags eventually - because the organs aren't so hot anymore either - and sharp edges become blunt, that the pain of letting go of grief is just as painful or even more painful then the grief itself. It means goodbye, it means going ..
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Miriam Toews |
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b988b31
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The sun is setting, Ona reminds us, and our light is fading. We should light the kerosene lamp. But what of your question? asks Greta. Should we consider asking the men to leave? None of us have ever asked the men for anything, Agatha states. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand o..
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Miriam Toews |
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cefe861
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All we women have are our dreams - so of course we are dreamers.
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women
inspirational
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Miriam Toews |
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07a2ba4
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We are wasting time, pleads Greta, by passing this burden, this sack of stones, from one to the next, by pushing our pain away. We mustn't do this. We mustn't play Hot Potato with our pain. Let's absorb it ourselves, each of us, she says. Let's inhale it, let's digest it, let's process it into fuel.
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pain
feminism
power
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Miriam Toews |
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50b3293
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Shoo the sparrow away and get on with supper. This is the first part of my new life strategy.
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Miriam Toews |
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234d55c
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Surely, she says, encouraging others to lie on our behalves must be a worse sin than lying ourselves.
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Miriam Toews |
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f476d3d
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The city was spread out in the soft darkness, calm after the big thunder and hail storm, still moist and warm like a woman very satisfied in love.
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Miriam Toews |
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aa70470
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Perhaps we need to know more specifically what we are fighting to achieve (not only what we are fighting to destroy), and what actions would be required for such an achievement, even after the fight has been won, if it is won.
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miriam toews |
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877bf7d
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He says it's a condition of our relationship that I don't smoke, she says. We laugh. We are tired. Too tired to confront conditions.
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Miriam Toews |
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d893451
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Bob Marley says it too but he says every little thing gonna be all right and that strikes me as an appropriate qualifier even if all he was doing was getting enough syllables to match the music.
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Miriam Toews |
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19c1c97
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She went sideways through the doorway and her stomach grazed the man's penis. Then she stopped in the middle, right there between the man and the woman, she didn't hurry through at all, she was savouring it. She looked up at the naked man's face, into his eyes, he was expressionless, and she smiled at him and nodded. She was greeting him, politely. Then she somehow turned around in that tight space to face the woman and she looked into her ..
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Miriam Toews |
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5dba244
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I feel safe in the car, alone and protected. I can see people milling about in the parking lot but they can't see me. Well, they can but they think I'm insane so they look away which is the same as being invisible.
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Miriam Toews |
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4735021
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During that time, The Mouth came by to pray with us, and my dad began to spend his evenings sitting in the yellow lawn chair and staring at the highway, or down in the basement with his isotope material, finding comfort in the stability that's created from decay.
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loss
life
love
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Miriam Toews |
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746bfff
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My mother and I were on a plane. Before we left I talked with Elf. She didn't talk at all. I told her things would be okay, truly, that I needed her, that I understood her, that I loved her, that I'd miss her, that I'd be back for her, that being together in Toronto for a while would be amazing, that Nora was really looking forward to it too, that I understood that just because she didn't want to live didn't mean that she necessarily wanted..
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grief
sadness
sisters
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Miriam Toews |
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8f0cf2e
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You've finally written it? That's great! She asked me if I'd read to her from it and I said no. Just a paragraph? No. A sentence? No. Half a sentence! One word? No. A letter? I said okay, that I would read the first letter of the novel. She smiled and closed her eyes and sort of burrowed into her bed like she was preparing herself for a delicious treat. I asked her if she was ready and she nodded, still smiling, eyes closed. I stood and cle..
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writing
sharing
sisters
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Miriam Toews |
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541205b
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Will carried Zoe on his back and zoomed around on the sidewalk and she laughed and bounced up and down and lost one of her flip-flops so we had to go back and retrace our steps in the dark which I suppose is the meaning of life.
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Miriam Toews |
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7a29ca1
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Elf explained to me that she was exactly like this guy she'd read about in the paper, a guy who was blind from birth and then at the age of 40-something he had a corneal operation and could suddenly see, and although he was told that life would be amazing for him then, after the operation it was awful. The world depressed him, its flaws, its duplicity, its rot and grime and sadness, everything hideous now made manifest, everything drab and ..
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Miriam Toews |
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bdce917
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and I finally understand what she needs to hear and that she's talking about not just me but Elf too and I tell her that my sorrow was not created by her, that my childhood was a joyful thing, an island in the sun, that her mothering is impeccable, that she is not to blame.
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Miriam Toews |
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650811a
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someday you'll be gone, you'll be dust, and then even less than dust. Nothing. There's no other place to be. This world is good enough for you because it has to be. Go ahead and love it.
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Miriam Toews |
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d55c4d6
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I think she was smiling the same kind of real smile that Tash had smiled just before she left. It's a scary smile. It's a smile that means there is nothing left to lose. That you are free,
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Miriam Toews |
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ae92cd8
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I want her face to feel at home on an ancient coin, he said. I want her eyes to harm me.
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Miriam Toews |
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8c411b2
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No, no, said the librarian, forgiven for being alive, for being in the world. For the arrogance and the futility of remaining alive, the ridiculousness of it, the stench of it, the unreasonableness of it.
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Miriam Toews |
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1d952d3
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He got up to put on a record, vinyl was his thing now. He liked the step-by-stepness of it, the process. He held the record the way people hold records, not with his fingers but with his palms. He blew on it. The music was a soft whisper, one acoustic guitar, no voices. When he came back to the table he asked me to look at his eyes. They're seeping, he said. Like I have an infection or something. Pink eye? I asked. I don't know, he said. Th..
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Miriam Toews |
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abf053c
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you still have to eat.
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Miriam Toews |
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cb660aa
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She lived in her head and that's why it glowed.
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Miriam Toews |
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e432bde
|
It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun Breathless with adoration; the broad sun Is sinking down in its tranquility; The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea: Listen! the mighty Being is awake, And doth with his eternal motion make A sound like thunder--everlastingly. Dear Child! dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched..
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Miriam Toews |