Nurse with Condemned Man

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Our time here is but small.

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Happy Birthday to the Wild Woman of Borneo, who attains her majority today and spends it yet a free woman.

As gift I have only my enduring love and affection, offered freely.

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The gift I receive and treasure on these days is the memory of her birth, which day is blurred in parts and in parts burned in as by fire. My wife and I are intimate creatures, drawn to our small world, and that day was one in which our small world contained the whole of creation, made for and by us and like any worthy thing did nearly destroy us in its coming.

And has not yet completed its destruction.

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I settled in my mind early on that love was what mattered to me and would be the flag I carry into battle, the land on which I spend my blood and sinew, and it is my pride that I have done so as a man.

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In all the ways that matter, I am innocent of all knowledge or wisdom. But I am contented to take the bit in my teeth and go on. There is work, there is love, and there is leisure. We are each of us being led to the slaughter and will not be spared. Nor one of them we love. Nor blade of grass nor spark of light.

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I raise my glass to you. To my child on her eighteenth birthday, to the woman who brought her forth, the our parents and their parents, and to you and yours and our numberless progeny and ancestry.

May you be calm.

May you be at peace.

May you be happy.

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