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T H E O V E R W H E L M I N G S A D N E S S O F T H E E A R T H She’s writing a book entitled The Overwhelming Sadness of the Earth. She’s interviewed thousands of people about the burdens they’ve had to bear. People who crawled out from beneath the rubble. Survivors of the Nazis. Old Indians who lost it all. Sometimes she gets so depressed she weeps all morning. Her sadness echoes down the hallway for her neighbors to hear. The one-armed man opens his door. The woman whose daughter was taken by the sea. They pause at her threshold to listen. Then let themselves in. One fixes a cup of tea on the stove. The other opens the windows and turns some music on. When they swing back her bedroom door she raises her head from the pillows and sees them standing there. The man with a cup in his only hand. The middle-aged woman with the long white hair. 12 ...

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