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For Nicole, who gave me the world
Perhaps fantasy is what you fill up maps with rather than saying that they too contain the unknown.
REBECCA SOLNIT, A FIELD GUIDE TO GETTING LOST
The face of God you could hardly look at. But that day it drizzled, so I could look all I wanted. I saw the homelier side. The cracked whitewash and swallows nesting in the busted end of eaves. I saw the boards sawed the size of broken windowpanes and the fruit trees, stripped. Only the tough wild rhubarb flourished. Goldenrod rubbed up their walls. It was a poor convent. I didn’t see that then, but I know that now. Compared to others it was humble, ragtag, out in the middle of no place. It was the end of the world to some. Where the maps stopped.
LOUISE ERDRICH, LOVE MEDICINE
Contents
Bomb Shelters of the Oligarchs