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Imperfections

 “It’s surprising just how chilling it can be to see a small area of fresh grass and trees.”“Knowing that there were dozens of tents pitched there a week ago?”“Yes. All those people, swept away in that...

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I'm Here To Tell You

 “I’m here to tell you…” his voice echoed from the amplifiers, distorted by the walls of the buildings on the plaza and the gathered bodies and by the weird electronics they used on this timeline,...

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A Letter From Kathe

 The other day, I received a call from the Reynolds Law Firm, which has handled our legal business in various matters over the years, telling me that they had a letter which they needed to either...

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Duckies

 It was a running gag in the household for some time, the portentous voiceover from a satire of those "mysteries of pseudoscience" TV shows: "Ducks. What are they? Where do they come from? Why are they...

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Unborn

 “It’s strange. For the most part, she had a very good memory, but she remembered quite vividly something which couldn’t possibly have happened: going out on the playing field of her high school with...

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What Songs Travel Toward Us

 I sat on the roof with my guitar, plucking at it. I wondered what the people passing by thought of me: was I a lazy bum, idling away my evening? Was I a hard-working man unwinding after a long shift...

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Where Memories Are Kept

 I wish I had a place in my brain were memories were kept, secure and reliably stored, as in a digital recording.Instead, I have a strange, unreliable holographic mechanism in which what is recorded...

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I Hear You

 “I hear you”, I replied. It seemed like an inadequate response, but on the other hand, it was the truth, and the easiest of all my complicated reactions to express, one that I could send quickly...

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Breathing

 At the end of the play, the executioner walks onstage and pulls off his mask. It’s Everyman again. He holds his hands to his chest and says, “I’m breathing. It’s good to breathe. If you want to keep...

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She Requires You To Be Beautiful

 “Nature has certain characteristics which are consistent at all scales, from the microscopic to the cosmic. She displays a clear preference for symmetry over asymmetry, for elegance over complexity,...

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It Is All One Thing

 “It is all one thing.”I couldn’t tell who had said it. Literally, it could have been me. The way we were all huddled together, our bodies touching, breathing one another’s air, smelling one another’s...

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The Blessing of Olfactory Hallucination

 As the group gathered itself by way of a shared meditation, the person guiding it invited us to hold our own hands and picture us holding one another's hands. I closed my eyes and imagined us as a...

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