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A whole center
section of this book

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has a lot to do with
the disintegration

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and the aftermath of
a very long marriage.

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And my editor likes to call
them "sort of love poems."

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And I'll read one of these.

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I've read a lot of William
James over the years.

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And so I think a lot about the
dynamics of the imagination,

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how the imagination is
something lived into

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and how the imagination
sort of lives back into us.

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And how we can be
in an experience,

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imagine returning
to that experience,

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and, even more, can imagine
returning to that experience

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and forgetting what it
was originally like.

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And therefore feeling
a sense of loss,

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even though we've
got something back.

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So this is it.

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This is called "Some Voice."

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This thing takes
place in Venice.

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And in Venice, a piazza
is called a campo.

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And this is this little campo.

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And there's a voice.

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Somebody's practicing.

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Somebody's singing.

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Somebody's vocalizing.

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Also, my favorite site in
Venice are the gondola yards.

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Gondolas require a
great deal of work.

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They have to be scraped
down and re-pitched

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every six to eight weeks.

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It's high intensive labor.

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But they're beautiful
when they're upended.

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The sun strikes them.

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It's quite a beautiful thing.

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The title of this
is, "Some Voice."

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"Past the silky gondola hulls,
arcaded in the boatyard,

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we walked that afternoon to
our favorite grubby campo,

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empty, except for cats and
one plain tree, with bench.

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We loved it so much.

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We walked just to
be there, imagining

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some time we'd spend the night.

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The little hotel,
it's frank lantern,

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its dim sign dimmer by day,
we'd remember just like that.

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The tree's patchy shades
work down your arm

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as it pointed up, over there.

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Locating the voice, it's open
window, the soprano scales,

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tipped down to us.

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All life is hidden life.

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Don't believe
everything you hear.

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To us, or not to us, her
voice fell into that year,

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then ten more.

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Routine practice
doesn't call to anyone.

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It simply falls through
footbridges, black holes,

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and plain tree.

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When we went back, the
singing wasn't there for us.

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We take what's given
and work with that.

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The rest is grace."

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