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And I'll just read
a couple more if--

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I always get the
feeling-- at some point--

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that you were standing between--

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that I'm standing between you
and the rest of your lives.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Well, my wife and I had planned
to go to Europe for a vacation

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one summer, and we had to
scrub the plans because

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of a sickness.

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I was sick, I was a crybaby.

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And so, we spent
the summer at home.

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And I wrote a poem
trying to console myself

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and which attempts to praise
that the pleasures of--

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the more domestic pleasures.

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And it's "Consolation."

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"How agreeable it is not to
be touring Italy this summer--

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[LAUGHTER]

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--wandering her cities and
ascending her torrid hilltowns.

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How much better to cruise
these local, familiar streets,

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fully grasping the
meaning of every road sign

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and billboard and
all the sudden hand

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gestures of my compatriots.

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[LAUGHTER]

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There are no abbeys here,
no crumbling frescoes,

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or famous domes,
and there is no need

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to memorize a
succession of kings,

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or tour the dripping
corners of a dungeon.

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No need to stand
around a sarcophagus,

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see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba,

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or view the bones of
a saint under glass.

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How much better to command the
simple precinct of home than

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be dwarfed by pillar,
arch, and basilica.

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Why hide my head in
phrasebooks and wrinkled maps?

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Why feed scenery into a
hungry, one-eyed camera

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eager to eat the world
one monument at a time?

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Instead of slouching in a cafe,
ignorant of the word for ice,

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I will head down
to the coffee shop

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and to the waitress
known as Dot.

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I will slide into the
flow of the morning paper,

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all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely,

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eggs over easy on the way.

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And after breakfast,
I will not have

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to find someone willing
to photograph me

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with my arm around the owner.

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I will not puzzle over the
bill or record in a journal

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what I had to eat, and how
the sun came in the window.

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It is enough to climb
back into the car,

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as if it were the great car of
English itself, and sounding

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my loud, vernacular
horn, speed off down

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a road that will never lead
to Rome, not even Bologna."

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[LAUGHTER]

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[APPLAUSE]

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