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Robert Fagan 
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The ad said there were countless exotic exhibits in the museum, including dioramas, panoramas, and virtual realities. So I made the long and tedious journey with great expectations--even with hopes of finally resolving some of my doubts about humanity. But I was completely disillusioned. The museum was merely an attic with a few index cards pasted on hideously stained walls. The ancient attendant, sitting behind a sagging desk engrossed in a Superman comic, did not even look up when I expressed my dissatisfaction. But having come so far, I did copy down the contents of some of the cards.
o
The beginning of time fell upon the entrance of the night preceding the 23rd day of October in the year before Our Lord of four thousand and four.
--Bishop Ussher
l
An Important Anthropological Discovery After an arduous descent through caves and a scientific sifting through bones, an expedition led by Richard Leakey excavated deeper and found our earliest ancestral remains, five partial proconsul skeletons. Two of them were adults who probably weighed 20 to 25 pounds and were about 18 inches high.
n
Man is a featherless biped.
--Aristotle
The shrubs moved closer. The giant birds ruffled and started up and ran in circles. They stopped to listen to the whistle of a hen in the shrubs. They moved closer. Above the shrubs, feathers waved. The birds moved even closer. He let the feathers fall and reached down for the spear he had been dragging between his toes. This animal he could eat. It was not his own flesh, but the flesh of his cousin. He was kangaroo, not emu.
g
The use of God in the singular is racist.
--Toto Demos
b
If it rained any more there would be no reason even to walk into the field. There would be no harvest. There would be no field. And the world must be given back to Noah. Yet there was a solution. One could climb the bell tower and down into the chapel. There would be no priest--he was always in town drinking or whoring. But in the chapel was the Lady of Mercy. One could kiss her painted wooden toes. She would answer any prayer. The rain would stop. Or he would steal her. He could sell her to the heathen across the border.
c
The entrances to villages and longhouses are particularly vulnerable to supernatural attack. Shamans place ferocious reptilian carved figures to guard them. Beads of all types are also valued. In former times, single examples of the most sought-after varieties could be exchanged for a human slave. Most valued of all are the enemy skulls displayed in the longhouse gallery. In sufficient quantities, they ensure the fertility of the fields.
k
Down rivers bearing wine.
Heart-breaking women
trapped in my palm.
Wake. Ten years lost,
a drifter in the brothels.
--Tu Mu
When Bridget left service, it was only because her belly was big. She had been a very good maid. When Bridget left Jocko, it was only because her skin was covered with scars and red splotches. She had been a very good whore. When Bridget left the poorhouse, it was only because her body was thin as a matchstick. She had been very good and quiet and she didn´t cost much wood.
N
When the soldiers raped him, he said to himself, "Some day I will have many women." When he was buggered by the great poet, he said to himself, "Some day I will have many poems." When he left Europe, he said to himself, "Some day I will have a lot of money." When he took three wives from three different tribes, he said to himself, "Some day I will know enough languages." When he tried to return to the East, with his swollen stump and paralyzed arm, he said, "Lord! Will I ever find a stone to put my head on?" When he died in Marseilles and the news reached Paris, they said, "We hear his body smelled awful."
T
At the UN today Mrs. Kirkpatrick said, "Their economy is weak, and we can help them with some training for their police."
m
Miguel didn´t know where to put them. Finally, instead of putting one in each hole, he put four or five in, depending on their size. It helped that they were new and still unrigid, and battered or broken. They could be squeezed small like babies before birth. But he was worried that he would get in trouble for bad bookkeeping. When he asked for names, the sergeant punched him. When he asked for occupations, the lieutenant said: troublemakers, possible terrorists, faggot intellectuals, unwomenly women, godless commies, and punk kids. So he had no names. But he tried at least to mark the multiple graves with small stones. Otherwise, when there was so little room, what excuse could he give prospective customers? These newcomers--packed in tight, their bodies embracing, one bunch almost touching the next--were forming an underground community, and taking the land away from respectable people.
o
To the left and right of this card, along the walls here and elsewhere, is a labyrinth pattern that attempts to contain all the lacerations of the human condition. Please affix your thumb print anywhere. It will be added to the pattern.
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