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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 1h

He switches channels and gets Dolly Parton singing, by coincidence, “House of the Rising Sun.”

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 15h

Mr. O’Donoghue moved that the Worth girl be run over by a snowmobile.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 19h

Thus I found myself in a strange country. This Paraguay is not the Paraguay that exists on our maps.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

The Emperor sleeps in a different palace each night, to defeat assassins;

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

When one has spoken a lot one has already used up all of the ideas one has. You must change the people you are speaking to so that you appear, to yourself, to be still alive.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

“But why does it have to be that way?” Henry Mackie repeated, which is the technique of the question, which used in this way is unanswerable.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Each great day is itself, with its own war machines, rattles, and green lords.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I’m not afraid of crime, there’s got to be crime, it’s the manner or mode that— I mean if they could just take it out of your bank account, by punching a few buttons or something . . .

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

the three worms inspiring disease, old age and death have yet to find him;

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Everyone has a song in him or her. Writing songs is a basic human trait. I am not saying that it is easy; like everything else worthwhile in this world it requires concentration and hard work.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

My mother is eighty- one, said Vandermaster. I went to my mother and said, Mother, I want to be in love. And she replied? She said, me too.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I am viewed as a mutation of some sort but essentially a peer.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

look out of the window and see how dark the sky, how bold the wind, how whipped the trees,

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

The Achievements of Capitalism: (a) The curtain wall (b) Artificial rain (c) Rockefeller Center (d) Casals (e) Mystification

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Now we have had a flood of original ideas in all media, works of singular beauty as well as significant milestones in the history of inflation, but at that moment there was only this balloon, concrete particular, hanging there.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Inside the abandoned houses subway trains rushed in both directions and genuine nameless animals ate each other with ghastly fervor—

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

“Your position, while heretical, has its points,” he states, “but on the other hand we cannot allow the integrity of our operation to be placed in question, willy- nilly, by people with funny ideas.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

A free press, madam, is not afraid of the devil himself.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Infuckingcredible, said Julie. Unfuckingbelievable, said Emma.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

I got a pretty good shove. A not- bad bust in the mouth. I can trip. I can fall on ’em. I can gouge. I have a good sense of where the ears are. I know thumbs and kneecaps.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

REBECCA LIZARD was trying to change her ugly, reptilian, thoroughly unacceptable last name.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

“No matter,” Azalea says. “You are still a damn dawg, even if you have ‘unveiled existence.’”

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

It smelled, and I or we thought it remarkable at the time, like the twentieth century. Which was after all our century, none other.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The subject, which had been announced by you at breakfast and posted on the notice board, was Smallness in the Human Male.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

The holdings of the Tolstoy Museum consist principally of some thirty thousand pictures of Count Leo Tolstoy.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Q: And what else? A: Well, adultery. I would say that’s how I spend most of my free time. In adultery.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

But to be honest, he did not want to be a better man. All he wanted to do was drink and listen to music.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

—It’s greens in a pot.—It’s confetti in the swimming pool.—It’s U- joints in the vichyssoise.—It’s staggers under the moon.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Satanic operations should not be conducted without first consulting the Bibliothèque Nationale.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

“Of course I couldn’t care less. But frankly, I feel a certain want of seriousness.”

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

—Bosomed nymphs, nymphs with a stripe of hair . . .—Polka nymphs, red- eyed nymphs, drudge nymphs, bombous nymphs . . .—Nymphs in warmup suits, Mohawks, clown nymphs . . .—The splendid language of their hair . . .

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Yes, the dog is dead, I admit it. I’m sorry. I admit also that putting eight- foot- square paintings of him in every room of the house has not consoled you.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

I have observed that in situations involving birth, bereavement or parting forever there is usually some quantity of weeping.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The committee, which has named itself the Special Provisional Unnecessary Rat Team (SPURT), has acquired armbands and white steel helmets and is discussing a secret grip by which its members will identify themselves to each other.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

And while I was thinking about this, counting my options, I noticed that he was a policeman, had in fact a dark- blue uniform, black shoes, a badge and a gun, a policeman’s hat, and I noticed also that my testicles were aching,

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Having assigned myself a task that is beyond my abilities, why do I then do that which is most certain to preclude my completing the task? To ensure failure? To excuse failure? Ordinary fear of failure?

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

until the red slag of the nooisphere descends to cover everything with the salty finality of love.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

England is far away, and France is but a rumor.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I don’t think there ought to be cannabis in this meringue anyhow.”

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The kind of dog the baby wants, my wife says, is a Cairn terrier. This kind of dog, my wife says, is a Presbyterian like herself and the baby.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I Was Put In Jail in Selby County Alabama For Five Years For Stealing A Dollar and A Half Which I Did Not Do. While I Was In Jail My Brother Was Killed & My Mother Ran Away When I Was Little. In Jail I Began Preaching & I Preach to People Wherever I Can Bearing the Witness of Eschatological Love.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Thus I found myself in a strange country. This Paraguay is not the Paraguay that exists on our maps.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I have been thinking of emerald dust. Emerald dust with soda, emerald dust with tomato juice, emerald dust with a dash of bitters, emerald dust with Ovaltine.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The rubbery smell of Akron, sister city of Lahore, Pakistan, lay like the flameout of all our hopes over the plateau that evening.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

He has special skills. What are they? He knows how to diddle certain systems.

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The Teachings of Don B @donaldbarthelme.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

“A playwright,” he says, “is a man who has decided that the purpose of human life is to describe human life. Don’t you find that odd?”

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