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68fd604
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They glared at her the way any intelligent persons ought to glare when what they need is a smoke, a bite, a cup of coffee, a piece of ass, or a good fast-paced story, and all they're getting is philosophy.
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Tom Robbins |
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f6a65e0
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Solace? That's why God made fermented beverages and the blues.
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Tom Robbins |
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f9afe97
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Conservatives understand Halloween, liberals only understand Christmas. If you want to control a population, don't give it social services, give it a scary adversary.
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Tom Robbins |
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9b23620
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Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.
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Tom Robbins |
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267198e
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People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. (Bernard Mickey Wrangle, p 99)
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Tom Robbins |
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5c4bfbd
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There are essential and inessential insanities. The later are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.
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Tom Robbins |
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77392ec
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He was becoming unstuck, he was sure of that - his bones were no longer wrapped in flesh but in clouds of dust, in hummingbirds, dragonflies, and luminous moths - but so perfect was his equilibrium that he felt no fear. He was vast, he was many, he was dynamic, he was eternal.
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life
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Tom Robbins |
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db9ad20
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Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air--moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh--felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orlean..
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decatur
dixie-beer
magnolias
honeysuckle
louisiana
smell
french-quarter
new-orleans
scent
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Tom Robbins |
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aad2756
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People of ze wurl, relax!
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Tom Robbins |
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d228935
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Don't confuse symmetry with balance.
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symmetry
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Tom Robbins |
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2724ccd
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Human beings were invented by water as a device for transporting itself from one place to another.
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Tom Robbins |
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5c67f26
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There is a comfort in conformity, a security in control, that is appealing. There is a thrill in domination, and we are all secretly attracted to violence.
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violence
war
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Tom Robbins |
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3a0031e
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The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crayfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie, and red beans with rice, it means elegant pompano au papillote, funky file z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po..
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crayfish
gumbo
jambalaya
pecan-pie
po-boys
red-beans-with-rice
new-orleans
food
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Tom Robbins |
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d176ce4
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Dip a slice of bread in batter. That's September: yellow, gold, soft and sticky. Fry the bread. Now you have October: chewier, drier, streaked with browns. The day in question fell somewhere in the middle of the french toast process.
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Tom Robbins |
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4323888
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I've sucked way too much cement for this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees.
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Tom Robbins |
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d2bf3d1
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It was autumn, the springtime of death. Rain spattered the rotting leaves, and a wild wind wailed. Death was singing in the shower. Death was happy to be alive. The fetus bailed out without a parachute. It landed in the sideline Astroturf, so upsetting the cheerleaders that for the remained of the afternoon their rahs were more like squeaks.
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Tom Robbins |
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6e1c779
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If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire. Instead of hiding our heads in a prayer cloth and building walls against temptation, why not get better at fulfilling desire? Salvation is for the feeble, that's what I think. I don't want salvation, I want life, all of life, the miserable as well as the superb. If the gods would tax ecstasy, then I shall pay; however,..
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suffering
prayer
religion
repression
salvation
desire
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Tom Robbins |
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d8c7aa5
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There is lovemaking that is bad for a person, just as there is eating that is bad. That boysenberry cream pie from the Thrift-E Mart may appear inviting, may, in fact, cause all nine hundred taste buds to carol from the tongue, but in the end, the sugars, the additives, the empty calories clog arteries, disrupt cells, generate fat, and rot teeth. Even potentially nourishing foods can be improperly prepared. There are wrong combinations and ..
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sex
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Tom Robbins |
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6380a03
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We modern human beings are looking at life, trying to make some sense of it; observing a 'reality' that often seems to be unfolding in a foreign tongue--only we've all been issued the wrong librettos. For a text, we're given the Bible. Or the Talmud or the Koran. We're given Time magazine, and Reader's Digest, daily papers, and the six o'clock news; we're given schoolbooks, sitcoms, and revisionist histories; we're given psychological couns..
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reality
religion
life
truth
meaning-of-life
fact
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Tom Robbins |
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a362e7a
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The trouble with you is that the only way you can communicate is through art. You've never learned to communicate your feelings to a man. You don't even want to communicate in a relationship. You think that if you open up to love, you'll lose your independence or your self-expression or creativity or whatever you call all that passionate, wonderful stuff that makes you feel alive inside.
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relationships
love
creativity
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Tom Robbins |
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0bcd119
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Cries for help are frequently inaudible.
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inaudible
help
desperation
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Tom Robbins |
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54bd25b
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Of the Seven Dwarfs, the only one who shaved was Dopey. That should tell us something about the wisdom of shaving.
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men
shaving
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Tom Robbins |
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f6810cb
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Minds were made for blowing.
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Tom Robbins |
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3f88f14
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Reality whistles a different tune underwater.
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Tom Robbins |
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a234fed
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February is pitiless, and it is boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's Day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.
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Tom Robbins |
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ed85e70
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It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.
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Tom Robbins |
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0a255ac
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The Divine was expansive, but religion was reductive. Religion attempted to reduce the Divine to a knowable quantity with which mortals might efficiently deal, to pigeonhole it once and for all so that we never had to reevaluate it. With hammers of cant and spikes of dogma, we crucified and crucified again, trying to nail to our stationary altars the migratory light of the world.
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Tom Robbins |
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a06bbca
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Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy, Just because you're cynical Doesn't mean you're cool. You may tell the greatest lies And wear a brilliant digsuise But you can't escape the eyes of the one who sees right through you. In the end what will prevail Is your passion not your tale. For love is the Holy Grail, Even in Cognito. So better listen to me, sister, and pay close attention, mister: It's very good to play th..
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Tom Robbins |
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028529e
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what bothers me today is the lack of, well, i guess you'd call it authentic experience. so much is a sham. so much is artificial, synthetic, watered-down, and standardized...we're standardizing people, their goals, their ideas. the sham is everywhere.
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Tom Robbins |
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6b9caf3
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Silence is a mirror. So faithful, and yet so unexpected, is the relection it can throw back at men that they will go to almost any length to avoid seeing themselves in it, and if ever its duplicating surface is temporarily wiped clean of modern life's ubiquitous hubbub, they will hasten to fog it over with such desperate personal noise devices as polite conversation, hummin, whistling, imaginary dialogue, schizophrenic babble, or, should it..
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Tom Robbins |
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88210e0
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Love is dope, not chicken soup.
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Tom Robbins |
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2a57c93
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Disorder is inherent in stability. Civilized man doesn't understand stability. He's confused it with rigidity. Our political and economic and social leaders drool about stability constantly. It's their favorite word, next to 'power.' 'Gotta stabilize the political situation in Southeast Asia, gotta stabilize oil production and consumption, gotta stabilize student opposition to the government' and so forth. Stabilization to them means order..
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rigidity
stability
totalitarianism
order
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Tom Robbins |
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40ef603
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Madame Lily Devalier always asked "Where are you?" in a way that insinuated that there were only two places on earth one could be: New Orleans and somewhere ridiculous."
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new-orleans
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Tom Robbins |
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550656f
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If New Orleans is not fully in the mainstream of culture, neither is it fully in the mainstream of time. Lacking a well-defined present, it lives somewhere between its past and its future, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat. Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm. Somewhere between Preservation Hall and the Superdome, between voodoo and cybernetics, New Orleans listens eagerly to the seductive promise..
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present
time
history
future
past
mainstream
new-orleans
conformity
timelessness
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Tom Robbins |
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af24734
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What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples' decisions for them? Liberty, the very opposite of ownership and control, cannot, then, result from political action, either at the polls or the barricades, but rather evolves out of attitude. If it results from anything, it may be levity. If civilization is ever going to be anything but a grandiose pratfall, anything more than a can of deodorize..
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Tom Robbins |
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a2f6e86
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Well,' said Can o' Beans, a bit hesitantly,' imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.' Huh?' Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, ou..
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word-choice
slang
language
mental-illness
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Tom Robbins |
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f6e159b
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Faith is believing in something you know isn't true.
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faith
religion
truth
believe
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Tom Robbins |
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67a253e
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Are you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It's no coincidence we call them 'deadlines.
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rushing
goals
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Tom Robbins |
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30c0f22
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If every time we choose a turd, society, at a great expense, simply allows us to redeem it for a pepperoni, then not only will we never learn to make smart choices, we will also surrender the freedom to choose, because a choice without consequences is no choice at all.
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responsibility
freedom
choice
society
redemption
consequences
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Tom Robbins |
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47e303f
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Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though, artists make intentionally ugly art that's only supposed to reflect society rather than inspire it. So I guess we're all loony together now, loony rats in the shithouse of commercialism.
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artists
sanity
craziness
society
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Tom Robbins |
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efc5394
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Be your own flying saucer! Rescue yourself!
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Tom Robbins |
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d1ee542
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Brilliantly, ecstatically, irrepressibly. This is the way to burn
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Tom Robbins |
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3561e7a
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Time passed. Art came off the walls and became rituals. Ritual became religion. Religion spawned science. Science led to big business. And big business, if it continues on its present, mindless trajectory, could land those lucky enough to survive its ultimate legacy back into caves again.
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Tom Robbins |
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ff7ac61
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And then the rains came. They came down from the hills and up from the sound. And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the raven. Ancie..
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Tom Robbins |