WEBVTT

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Oh, OK.

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So I read a poem today
with the high schoolers

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that I had never read that I
wrote on the plane over here,

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and I was hoping to try it
again in a different quality

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of discerning ears.

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That sound cute?

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Great.

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Love this call and
response we are having.

00:00:19.680 --> 00:00:22.350 align:middle line:90%
But I got to find it first.

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OK, excellent.

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Does anyone freak
out in bookstores?

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Yeah.

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Yes.

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OK.

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Yeah, that's what this is about.

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All right.

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This is called "Having Nervous
Breakdowns in Bookstores."

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OK.

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"Not the same quality of shit
I lose in shopping malls--

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rolling eyes back at
targeted advertisements,

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vision blurred out
around the edges--

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nor the same quality
of shit I lose

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in museums, where the pomp
of the animal of the art

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makes my organs contract
as I attempt to lick

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all the paintings back to life.

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No, this is something else
entirely and something

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entirely else, predictable
as a moon landing.

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I've witnessed numerous people
dragged screaming out of stores

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by petrified and untrained
booksellers, one man last week

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trailing his pants
behind him after upending

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an entire popular
non-fiction display.

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I, too, have been asked to leave
by nervous underpaid employees.

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My sincerest apologies.

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Pacing in basements, carrying
on entire conversations

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with common bibles,
what is it that does it?

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To be alive around
all these living ideas

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written by the dead
into dead trees, stacked

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in their hand-me-down
jackets, forgotten,

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collecting dust
like grandchildren;

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to be faced both with what
will no longer be read

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and how you, too, will be
replaced after you're dead.

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So many times, I wanted to
die, I went to the bookstore

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instead.

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In the midst of
some red obsession

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or depressed as a book laid
out flat on its back staring up

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into unconcerned
eyes, still I drag

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me there to walk the
aisles like a bride,

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to talk to all my dead husbands,
visit their abandoned friends,

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put them back."

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Cool.

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Oh, thank you.