WEBVTT

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This is also a matter
of a little more

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imaginative and merit and--

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I'll just give you that.

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It's so nice to see
everybody I know.

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Hi.

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Let's break out of this.

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"The Shaping Ground."

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"Outside the snow
is falling, falling.

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She is reading a fat
novel by the fire.

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And he is staring blankly
into the flames like a man who

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hasn't found his feelings yet.

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No unreachable
itch yet, no desire

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stirring in his pajama bottoms.

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In her abundant novel about
British country gentry life,

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foxes and hares, incest and
frivolity, the deepest winter

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of the 19th century, and so on.

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The sexual event happens
not spontaneously,

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but sideways, with cunning,
ambitious steps from mansion

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to mansion across the
countryside in snow.

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In his wisdom, he knows that
desire is sometimes as far away

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as Wednesday is from Saturday,
as far away as Beijing

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from Istanbul by train,
northwards on the old trade

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route through
Siberia where cold is

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so cold you barely mention it.

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You're only passing through.

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The snow is falling like
infinite particulars

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before they hit the
blurring ground.

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"What would it take," she
wondered, "to get him going?"

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Some small act of generosity,
she takes his empty teacup

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down the corridor to the sink,
washes it, rinses it, dries it,

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puts it in the cabinet.

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He makes a reasonable mistake in
idle conversation, some memory

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about their honeymoon in 1968.

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And he apologizes.

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And she said, that's
OK, and doesn't go on

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to say everyone makes mistakes.

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Suddenly, he looks up
from the blazing fire

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and says something he's
never said before, never even

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thought before.

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"Honey," he says, "have you ever
taken Jesus into your heart?"

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And she turns down the
corner of the page right

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at the point where the shamed,
repentant, forgiven, brother

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and sister decide to go
at it again to repeat

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their error endlessly,
to sire generations

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of mindless blonde
children, and the words

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are starting to
burn up on the page.

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Right then, the
wife, this prisoner

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of the common groove
and the common room,

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this female anima
of all the moods

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of many years of
marriage, she says,

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like the hungry drunk to
the Salvation Army chaplain,

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like the soldier crushed in
honest defeat to his enemy,

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she says to her husband like
an unhorsed rider to the horse,

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like the wise thinking
of a common scam,

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like the present tense
to the past tense,

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like the anthem to the
flagpole, the explosion

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to the ammunition, "Yes.

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I will take Jesus into
my heart, in my heart

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there's room for everyone."

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And they both laugh,
knowing that the distance

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between the parlor
and the bedroom

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is the distance between
tragedy and comedy.

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Between the words of the
spell and the magic event,

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miles and miles of household
corridors in which all lives

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are lived knowing that this
will be the arduous trek

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between habit and passion.

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Snow is falling, falling
on the shape in ground."

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