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See, e.g., Hildegarde, Fatima, Blake, McLuhan The ditto sheet recopied each year was your teacher’s piece of wisdom. And it passed into e-mail bromides, borne long ago from broadsides And the tales of palpitatin’ wives. And all these lessons have a piece of practicality and a piece of magic: “Stop acting deliberately and start acting tragic,” or “Stop acting tragic and start acting deliberately,” they confide. No, no, they don’t go back to the Pleistocene. This is about the mind. Is it about the spirit? There is kitsch spirituality as well as kitsch thinking, Bozolein. “If you want to look thinner, you need to carry a big purse,” she told me, casually. “I was reading that.” And I told her,“The abused stays with the abuser because she doesn’t know better.That’s what I read.” And in another time:“You can tell a witch by her demeanor,” they all said. And there was an account of the hanging in the popular press, in the urban legend. And here it is again. Here is that story again. Here is that received wisdom. And many have received visions: Visions of the afterlife, the future, the past: Castles and mansions, spirits— Their words hang on them like talons, starting to grasp. 26 ...

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