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9 Dropping Off to Sleep My quarrel with my life understands me through and through. It requires me to argue tonight with my absent friends, colleagues, parents, enemies, talking heads, students all going on and on like players in a stage rehearsal till there is no one left in my entire life I haven’t told off, till the end of consciousness, which is unacceptable. All the billions upon billions of untold indignities. That half the world starves, the other half frets or gloats. That even death and chaos have a right to be as they are. Then ego recalls some withering remark or other; then there’s a thin unblown half-moon up in tossed trees telling me I haven’t even begun to experience distance. For I have one more insult to make, a perfect comeback to win over every jerk in my life and bring us all peace— which I keep losing like the leaves must lose their trees. ...

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