WEBVTT

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So yeah, along those lines,
I was thinking, yeah,

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this is almost a poem for
Mitt Romney or something.

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You know, did we miss
the debate tonight?

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We did.

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We missed the Republican debate.

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I think it happened already.

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Yeah, a favela is
a Portuguese word

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for a slum, a Brazilian slum.

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This is called "Achievement".

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I was just thinking
how much of the culture

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is built around this
idea, and how little

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we understand about it.

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"Achievement"

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"As much as we wish, we can
help ourselves to coming home,

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and to a pepper-heavy Bloody
Mary and a back pillow

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and long flyways flown by
dry-clean shirts and dresses,

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pressed silk synthetics run
up by favela girls, born again

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in a factory cave, strewn with
secondhand sewing machines.

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So that afterwards, maybe,
as we arrive again as always,

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inside the smell of
filtered sky and clouds,

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crisscrossed by Jet fuel,
while the dripping green light

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resonates off the edges
of a red gum's leaves.

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Perhaps we could even
call it the family

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tree, as we float
there above it,

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looking down through the
branches at the test prep kids,

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applying their sisterly mascara
in the Saab convertible.

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Committed as we are to
achievement, no doubt,

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and having come home once more
for a little while longer,

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we will be able to go on
helping ourselves then,

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to the Frenched rack of lamb,
or an uninhibited pit bull,

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encrypted laptop, or pen knife.

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An accidental and systemic
form of self inventing, life

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and the container ships
will go on mutating

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across sea lanes,
carrying cartons of bath

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towels, hardwoods, and pixels.

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And at some point,
each of us will

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know exactly how
it was that we came

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to be among people who
are convinced, absolutely

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convinced, that they
know the score."

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