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21 " You are responsible for what happened to you, but you are not to blame for it. You are trying to do the best you could with the hand you were dealt. You didn’t pick the cards. "
― Thomm Quackenbush , Holidays with Bigfoot
22 " Airports don’t belong to the places where they are… They are like embassies. "
23 " That was part of the true point of Woodstock. It could have happened anywhere at any time. If the squares didn't abide the vibes, hundreds of thousands of the unwashed masses could flood in to devastate your town. "
24 " How I could ever establish a relationship with her father, though? His world was logical and mine was a morass of adolescent feelings. On television, we would grab a beer, replace a fan belt, and I would earn his begrudging respect. He might tell me to treat his daughter right while hitting the head of the wrench against his palm. In this world, I stood a better chance of connecting with the fan belt. "
25 " The winding turns around capes, the unclouded sky, the flower mottled hills existed only as an aspect of waiting. Towns, civilization, meant the possibility of stopping for a meal, for the night even. Deep forest preserves through which a dirt road cut, gorgeous vistas that made one in awe of nature, only meant we were not yet near our destination. "
26 " Whether ghosts exist, it was silly to go to an expensive, infamously haunted inn if you didn't at least want to pretend. There was no need to be the sort of person who goes to a horror movie and points out it is all fake. We know. It's a movie. We suspended our disbelief when the lights dimmed. You are not made erudite by waving at the projectionist. "
27 " The hauntings died down, as it were, since exhumed bones were taken off display and interred elsewhere. A lack of archaeological ghoulishness will do that. "
28 " Las Vegas may have residents and not merely tourists, but it does not want to welcome you. You are swallowed. Maybe it will hack up your hair and bones later, but the oddsmakers are not on your side. "
29 " Lovers are not meant to be trusted, as our bodies are lying to our brains via rushes of hormones. Once these are more settled, our brains return the favor, assuring the body it is comfortable and wouldn't rather sow wilder seeds and plow more fields. "
30 " We were teenage ghost hunters, Ouija enthusiasts, and would have shouted after any Bigfoot who dared to show itself. Better to die becoming another spooky story for cable shows than miss learning an occult truth. "
31 " If I were planning to propagate my pods, I would do it in a quiet, beautiful town. No Pleiadean worth their cesium would start their nefarious plans near a skyscraper. "
32 " It is no surprise this is the reputed to be the greatest city in the world. It is a blob of brick and neon connected by the arterial subway, equal parts fear and wonder. It breathes, more robotic than organic, but alive. "
33 " The city has a way of tricking people into honesty, or honest sounding lies. It is the noise, the crowds, squeezing things from deep inside you that you assumed would be hidden beneath the honk of a cab. You breathe in the vapor rising from manholes and the unceasing petrichor and cough out something as foolish as “I love you” to someone you don’t yet. "
34 " At the first of the explosions, I was no longer seeing the fireworks, but as a superimposition of every time that I had sat on concrete and plastic and sand and wood and gazed at the sky the day before vacation ended. I lost this experience in how comingled it was with the past and with vague accounting of when next I would see fireworks. "
35 " The residents of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo had no questions the okapi was real. The colonizers assumed stories of them were the gibber of savages, as colonizers are wont to do. "
36 " In a small community, alien takeovers, portals to Hell, and demonic murder cults can better establish a foothold. "
37 " Cities pour forth a virus. Humans are infected and told to build cages that no one should want to live in. Or cities are a pyramid scheme: everyone is supposed to be there, I am an everybody, so I will move there and bring two others, who will bring two more. "
38 " Campgrounds are never comfortable. They are merely less awful than other options. In normal circumstances, if told that the nearest available toilet was half a mile away, up a dirt path frequented by animals in gastric distress, one would lock the doors and speed to civilization. When a tent or camper is involved, one is jubilant. At least this site had flush toilets! "
39 " If Woodstock happened today, you would be invited on social media. Websites would livestream it. Rolling Stone would not cover it. You would read “The 5 Craziest Parts of Woodstock (Number 4 Will SHOCK You).” Instead of lighters, we would hold up cell phones, so we could record the moment instead of inhabiting it. "
40 " The tension of knowing what I couldn’t give—to anyone, but her in specific—made my skin tighten against the thorns of my bones. Not that I didn’t love her, because it was hard to do otherwise, but that I didn’t know how to love without reservation. "