When they were very little, in the dry season their mother sometimes took them to see the night. She told them to look hard at that sky, as blue as in full day, that lighting of the earth as far as the eye could see. And to listen hard to the sounds in the night, the people calling, laughing, singing, and the howling of dogs haunted by death; and you had to listen to them, too, all those calls that spoke of the hell of solitude, as well as the beauty of the songs that spoke of that solitude. Children really ought to be told the things people usually hid from them–work, wars, parting, injustice, solitude, death. Yes, the hellish but inescapable side of life, children needed to be told that, too–it was like looking at the sky, the beauty of the world’s nights. The mother’s children had often asked her to explain what she meant by that. The mother had always answered her children by saying she didn’t know, that no one knew. And that you had to know that, too. Know above all else: that you knew nothing. That even when mothers told their children they knew everything, they didn’t.


If the old man outside of the Celadon Gym can learn to respect women, so can you.
![langblrwhy:
“[Just because white people couldn’t do it, doesn’t mean it was aliens]
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