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133 Just Shut Up Sometimes I just want to tell myself , “Why don’t you just shut up?” I’ll hear myself at dinner or lunch or at a party dealing out all my ideas about how people waste their lives and pursue the wrong goals and what they should really be doing and how they should really be living, and I’m witty and it all sounds so new and fresh and startling to the people I’m talking to, and they say things like, “Do other people think the way you do?” And I sound like some sort of mechanical doll. I’ve heard myself say these things so many times. And I suddenly flashed on a symbolic scene. It is in the countryside, and over a slow rise come a cavalcade of cars, all on the detour of life. And there I am on the corner. They can go straight ahead, or they can take the turn that I am standing there indicating. And I suddenly drop my arm and let them proceed. And I think, Go ahead. Go straight ahead to fat legs and bald spots. To arguing with children who don’t like you, and, truth be told, you don’t like them very much. What’s to like? Just go straight ahead to paltry decor in the suburbs or jammed into high rises. Go straight ahead to bad art, bad fashion, bad bodies. Darlings, be my guests. Step into the trap, believe all the hooey, because finally, you’re not smart enough or brave enough to ever find out who you are, and then put a life together that will ever let you feel fulfilled. Yesterday, I got up to go to the bathroom just as the sun was rising, and I thought of the routine of the sun forever coming up, the world eternally turning, the boring inevitability of it all. Why don’t other people get bored with it? What’s so bad about dying? Imagine the horror of listening to Mozart forever. ...

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