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N A N C E VA N W I N C K E L Somewhere: How Can We Leave It Now? To keep ourselves from going anywhere else, we tie ourselves to something—and look out across our landscape of beautiful debts that goes on, far into the purple stretches of space. Old contradictions of chaparral and mesquite line the long highways. That belt of bets we made against ourselves: to tough it out, to fill our cellars with boxes and bottles. The halter of habit, walking our little dogs of love on their leather leashes. The Indians say the road separates spirit from spirit, deceives the meadowlarks into devouring foxglove along the median strip. Yet we admire the manacles of our big plans, our tall words that go pale then drift off into white graves. The many handcuffs of busy signals among the airwaves. The noose of November, a stove stuffed with a bird, cars full of guests at the door. 136 ❚ The 1980s At the edge of it all the sea rocks forward and back and whispers in its too-human voice, that it could reach even us, sometime, somehow, here in the middle of nowhere. The 1980s ❚ 137 ...

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