WEBVTT

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"Shoulder Season."

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"My week had been quiet.

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It was March, not
cool, but not hot,

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and everything getting
ready to bloom.

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Saguaros, green and
erect, stretching up

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from the dun-colored desert.

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No other houses in sight.

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His nearest neighbor,
a mile down the road.

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The first day, I had
seen a rattlesnake.

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I called the dogs
back just in time.

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It took me a few
minutes to stop shaking.

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The night before this, my
ex-boyfriend had emailed me.

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Not Javier, not
Michael, but the person

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for whom I had once lain awake
all night, unable to sleep,

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and eventually walked
myself to the hospital,

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saying that I thought
I was losing my mind.

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I'd waited in a cold room in
a robe crying for an hour.

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No one came.

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Eventually, they let me leave.

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He had dreamed about me, he
wrote, and he missed me still.

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In two months, he
was getting married.

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That last part he
didn't tell me--

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that I knew from
looking him up online.

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His fiancee had registered
for plain white towels.

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The first time he
kissed me, I was 21.

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He looked so vulnerable,
so given over to happiness.

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So, I don't know how else
to say this, so mortal.

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Who needed that?

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Not me.

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I deleted the email.

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Then I deleted the deleted copy.

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Then I spent an hour
trying to get it back.

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On Sunday afternoon, I
stood on the roof deck.

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The deck overlooked a
wild, beautiful stretch

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of the Sonoran desert.

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Coming from the Northeast,
the landscape awed me still--

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purple mountains and vast
sky and undulating waves

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of light, dry earth.

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Beside me, my advisor
stood, drinking a beer.

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An hour earlier, he had
arrived home from the airport.

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He'd been staying in
Berlin for the past week

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with his new love,
a German physicist

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named Johannes whom
he'd met in Amsterdam

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while I looked after his dogs.

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I hadn't planned to tell him
about my decision, not yet,

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but we've been talking
about love, new love,

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and, though it was a
radical thing to say

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and an even more
radical thing to do,

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the truth had emerged
from my mouth.

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I was done.

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I was quitting the program.

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Now we were looking at
each other surprised.

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"But why?" he asked me.

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"A job offer," he said.

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"You've accepted an offer."

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"No."

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"Then what?"

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Before I could
answer, he said, "You

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won't have to move
somewhere you'll

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hate, somewhere without men.

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Not if you don't want
to be an academic,

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and you don't need to be."

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"It's not that."

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"It's Javier."

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"No."

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"You're two years away.

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Maybe one."

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A jet flew by, marking the
sky with a faint white lines

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my neighbor Miles called
weeping chemical trails.

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He'd studied classics
at Harvard in the '70s.

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Now he was in his 60s.

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He was tall and rangy, athletic.

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Though he was
HIV-positive, he'd been

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able to manage the illness.

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His gentleness and
intelligence were evident

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when he spoke, though he
also had some strange ideas.

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He lived behind my house
in a little studio,

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taking care of small
repairs for the woman who

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owned the buildings.

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In his spare time, he kept
up his Latin and Greek.

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"Don't do it," my advisor said.

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"Don't give this
up for nothing."

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I was writing back
then, had just started,

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and I was trying
to write myself out

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of a rage I didn't
want or understand.

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"I won't," I said.

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He looked relieved, but
that wasn't what I meant.

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The day before I begun to
write, I went by Sylvie's place.

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"It is too hot to live," Sylvie
said in greeting, her hair wet

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from a cool afternoon shower.

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I envied her nonchalance
and her legs,

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which were long and golden brown
and tapered to elegant ankles

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with little divots on either
side of the long bone.

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The heat was making
everyone insane,

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people were not supposed
to live in the desert,

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Sylvie continued, she
was leaving the desert,

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she was moving to San
Diego, that was it,

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she was moving to the
beach, it was final.

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But then she emerged
from the bathroom

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wearing a faded
green bikini and we

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set up lawn chairs
in her sandy yard

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and drank cheap white
wine with ice cubes

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and invited the sun to bake our
brains into a fine casserole.

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We were neighbors, more or less.

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She lived four blocks
away in a casita

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behind a large wooden
fence with a metal gate

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she would prop open
for me on Sunday nights

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when I came over to join
her to watch bad programming

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on her small TV set.

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People in our
neighborhood liked fences,

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or, to say it another
way, they didn't

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like meth addicts breaking in.

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Three times that year Sylvie's
car windows had been smashed,

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and it was only April.

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Now it was the shoulder
season of the day--

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late afternoon, a pause.

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We sat in the sun,
Sylvie yawned--

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I scratched my leg.

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What I wanted most was
for us to go on this way--

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all potential, no action.

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I liked this state.

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Longing was, I felt,
preferable to disappointment.

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"What if your soul mate
and your best friend

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and the love of
your life turn out

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to be three different
people?" she asked me?

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"it's a stupid question," she
said, "but this guy asked me,

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and now I can't stop
thinking about it."

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"I'd be pleased if
I met one of them."

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"What if one turns out to be a
really bad person," she said,

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"like a murderer, or
one of those people

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who insists on correcting
other people's pronunciation?"

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"It's said, epitome," I said.

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Nothing was turning
out as we had imagined,

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and maybe it was a
strength of the desert sun,

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but we felt like
we were squinting

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toward a future that glowed
white without possessing

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any discernible shape.

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Waking and looking
out the window,

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I sometimes could not recall
whether it was January or July.

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This dislocation felt
pleasantly cottonlike.

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Like waking from anesthesia
and drifting back to a sweet,

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drugged sleep.

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"I hope one's a dog," I said.

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When my intentions became
clear, my advisor said,

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"I should have known."

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"Why?"

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I asked.

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"You didn't come to Boston."

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"It wasn't because I was
thinking about quitting,"

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I said, but then I thought
about it more and maybe it was.

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It was that year,
in his absence,

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that I had seen how work might
become a sort of obliteration,

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how I might dedicate myself
to answering questions that

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grew smaller and smaller until I
myself could not remember why I

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was asking them, could
not, some days, engage

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with them as anything
other than ritual.

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And while I saw the points,
of course, I saw the point,

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I could not help
but think of a story

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I'd read in college in which
it was said of a person.

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"What stood out about him
was that his life got put

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past him."

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And then I went to
Sylvie's, and then I began--

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and now, 11 months later,
here we were on his roof deck,

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saying goodbye.

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What made me decide?

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To be honest, I don't know.

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It was like waking up from
that sweet, drugged sleep

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and feeling panic that it
had all been real after all.

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No one had told me.

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I had just been
supposed to know.

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It didn't go well at first,
and that was a relief.

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I'm not going to
do this, I thought.

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But then I didn't stop.

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It was a bit like
falling in love.

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Much harder, but
as helpless making.

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Your face-- the
thing I loved best.

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The thing I watched doors for.

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A salt-rim moon, a
dry, rustling wind.

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One of the most shocking
things, I would come to find,

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was how easily my
life dropped away.

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At home, I went to bed alone.

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According to his
new love, my advisor

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had told me that
afternoon, Germans

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don't interrupt each other
the way Americans do.

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In German, the verb
comes at the end,

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so Germans have to
hear each other out

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to discover what
the action will be.

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"Do you believe in him ?"

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I asked.

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"Not really," he said.

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"But I don't interrupt
him any more either."

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When I had broken up with
Javier, my advisor had told me,

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"Don't worry.

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Life keeps giving you chances."

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"Chances to what?"

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I'd asked.

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"Chances to love
things," he'd said.

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"Chances to become someone new."

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I knew that didn't
happen, of course,

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only romantics thought so.

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Still, I wanted a chance
to love something.

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I wanted a chance to
become someone new."

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[APPLAUSE]

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