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Why does everybody think I'm so wild? I'm not wild. I happen to stumble onto wildness. It gets in my path.
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Cookie Mueller (Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller)
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Change is seen as something evil only by those who have lost their youth or sense of humor.
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Cookie Mueller (Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller)
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All we really need is bread, water, love, and work that we enjoy and are good at, and an undying faith in and love of ourselves, our freedom and our dignity. All that stuff is practically free, so how come it's so hard to get
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)
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Change is seen as something evil only by those who have lost their youth or sense of humor.β That was Cookie Mueller on the East Village, 1985. The
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Sari Botton (Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York)
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There was no moon. The sky was like black cotton batting that enveloped us in a way that felt like walking through clear water in a pool painted black. Very clear and cloudless was the night sky, so it was thick with stars. We even saw clusters of the dust from exploded supernovas deep in space, thousands of light years away.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)
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Each friend I've lost was an extraordinary person, not just to me, but to hundreds of people who knew their work and their fight. These were the kind of people who lifted the quality of all our lives, their war was against ignorance, the bankruptcy of beauty, and the truancy of culture. They were people who hated and scorned pettiness, intolerance, bigotry, mediocrity, ugliness, and spiritual myopia; the blindness that makes life hollow and insipid was unacceptable. They tried to make us see. All of these friends were connected to the arts. Time and history have proven that the sensitive souls among us have always been more vulnerable.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories)
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Don't you know that heavy drinking is slow death?" Herb said to him.
"Yeah, But who's in a hurry?
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)
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People who've never traveled on the ocean have no idea how scary it is to be on a little boat out there with no land in sight, waves towering over you while you do into the valley of a swell with nothing to see except water... water and sky, no other boas anywhere, no semblance of any kinds of firm reality at all. The main thing one shouldn't do is imagine things. One shouldn't think about the boat tipping over, just falling over and rolling under. Things like that happen all of a sudden. A gigantic three story high wave could whollop the boat broadside. Splash! Whoops! You're gone! No hint of a boat in about three minutes! If you don't get sucked under with it, then where are you?
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Cookie Mueller
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Suddenly the effects of the Jack Daniels were wearing thin and the black reality of a speed crash was barreling in on. Mink began scribbling a note on a Tampax paper, "HELP!! WE ARE BEING ABDUCTED BY ASSHOLES!! CALL THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY!!
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)
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You certainly can be allergic to milk, and probably have been all your life. Descendants of people from countries who herded dairy animals and lived on a dairy diet are usually tolerant to milk. Their intestines contain the enzyme lactase that breaks down milk sugar or lactose. Now those whose ancestors never used milk are usually intolerant.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories)
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We went into an instant art panic. It was getting dangerously late to be in the house, the roof was about to fall.
"THIS ARTIST IS MORE FAMOUS!" Howard yanked a painting go the wall.
"BUT THIS ONE'S WORTH MORE!" I grabbed another. We hadn't much time.
"NO TAKE THIS ONE! IT'S OLDER!" Howard pulled one down.
"BUT LOOK AT THESE BRUSHSTROKES."
"NO! THIS ONE."
"GIMME THEM ALL. I'LL CARRY THEM ALL!"
I realised it was completely ridiculous to be standing there fighting over art while the house was beginning to crumble in flames.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)
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I was high enough, and Haight Street was too crowded for me. So I went back to Page Street and walked to the Catholic Church where I could be alone. [...]
Since I wasn't raised Catholic, the confessional booths had always fascinated me. [...] The priest's box looked the best. It had a velvet armchair and gold and purple raiments hung over the backrest. On LSD it looked so comforting... a great spot to sit for a while, so holy. I went in and closed the door. I was tripping my brains out so even if I had been a Catholic I wouldn't have thought this was a weird thing to do at the time.
A minute later the door opened. I thought at first it must be the priest, but no, it was some jerk. [...]
"Let me eat you," he whispered. "Please let me eat you."
Woah, was this guy a pervert! This was disgusting. Who could think about sex on LSD in a confessional booth? I was feeling like a flaccid fungus, totally unsexy. [...]
I said something like, "No, my son, but you're forgiven. Go now in peace." I made the sign of the cross.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)
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Aren't you supposed to do some scene where you get fucked by a chicken?" Divine asked me.
"Fucked by a real chicken?" Mink asked me. "How?" asked Bonnie.
"In the script it says Crackers cuts off the head of a chicken and he fucks me with the stump," I said.
"Oh that sounds easy," Divine said.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)
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I had two lovers and I wasn't ashamed.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)
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Suddenly the effects of the Jack Daniels were wearing thin and the black reality of a speed crash was barreling in on. Mink began scribbling a note in a Tampax paper, "HELP!! WE ARE BEING ABDUCTED BY ASSHOLES!! CALL THE POLICE IMMEDIATELY!!
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)
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The skin of his face was so taut over protruding bones that I feared for his head, the same sympathetic fear one has for the safety of an egg.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories)
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Why don't we give ourselves some tattoos? Right now.β She was all excited, βI have all the stuff to do it.β βI guess it's time to have a tattoo,β I nodded. It was inevitable.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories)
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Fortunately I am not the first person to tell you that you will never die. You simply lose your body. You will be the same except you won't have to worry about rent or mortgages or fashionable clothes.
You will be released from sexual obsessions.
You will not have drug addictions.
You will not need alcohol.
You will not have to worry about cellulite or cigarettes or cancer or AIDS or venereal disease.
You will be free.
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Cookie Mueller (Ask Dr. Mueller: The Writings of Cookie Mueller)
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Swamp. There was no moon. The sky was like black cotton batting that enveloped us in a way that felt like walking through clear water in a pool painted black.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories (Canons))
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We brought it home and decorated it with Marnieβs pearl collection and my earring collection. Divine made huge red roses out of the red satin bedspread. Later George got some little white lights. I donβt know where he came up with those. It was the best-looking Christmas tree anybody had ever seen.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories (Canons))
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Why does everybody think Iβm so wild? Iβm not wild. I happen to stumble onto wildness. It gets in my path.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories (Canons))
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If the ultimate goal in life is to be happy, then you have to admit that one-celled creatures have it all over us. Little germs are probably always happy. They are superior, they donβt sing the blues.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories (Canons))
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The clouds looked like rats, all the birds were flying low, and the cows she saw werenβt standing but lying on the grass.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water In a Pool Painted Black: Collected Stories (Canons))
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Aren't you supposed to do some scene where you get fucked by a chicken?" Divine asked me.
"Fucked by a real chicken?" Mink asked me. "How?" asked Bonnie.
"In the script it says Crackers cuts off the head of a chicken and he fucks me with a stump," I said.
"Oh that sounds easy," Divine said.
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Cookie Mueller (Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black)