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" It was not metabolically
possible for me to live; I looked at people replete
with constructed circumstance I couldn't believe in,
their parallel acceptance of an, at best, flickery
narrative. Ill, as they said, or melancholic
I, a kind of stressed dove, ever mournful of being born here . . .
took myself
out of our world, wanting no more . . .
words like hopeful, lonely: what could they be to me?
Now, I feel nothing—what I always wished when I was alive . . .
Why should we have had feelings, anything so clamorous or
hurting? "
― Alice Notley , Certain Magical Acts