WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.290 align:middle line:90% 00:00:05.290 --> 00:00:09.490 align:middle line:84% This poem is called Unto Ourselves. 00:00:09.490 --> 00:00:12.720 align:middle line:90% 00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:15.225 align:middle line:84% And it's the last poem I'll read. 00:00:15.225 --> 00:00:18.920 align:middle line:90% 00:00:18.920 --> 00:00:22.310 align:middle line:90% Unto Ourselves. 00:00:22.310 --> 00:00:26.000 align:middle line:84% Even when we realized we'd stopped, 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:30.410 align:middle line:84% in every essential way stopped moving forward, when we came 00:00:30.410 --> 00:00:34.760 align:middle line:84% to see, we were descending, even more tightly bound 00:00:34.760 --> 00:00:39.170 align:middle line:84% to the vortex as images rushed by in front of us 00:00:39.170 --> 00:00:43.130 align:middle line:84% and a blue whale rotted on the sand in Bolinas, 00:00:43.130 --> 00:00:46.880 align:middle line:84% it stink drifting southward where dozens 00:00:46.880 --> 00:00:51.590 align:middle line:84% of barnacled 40 foot grays, dead from starvation, 00:00:51.590 --> 00:00:56.570 align:middle line:84% began to hulk against the shore, the white-tufted foreheads 00:00:56.570 --> 00:01:01.250 align:middle line:84% of waves smashing against those nulls of oily decomposing 00:01:01.250 --> 00:01:06.200 align:middle line:84% flesh, it was everywhere we looked if we cared to look. 00:01:06.200 --> 00:01:11.210 align:middle line:84% Out over the bit-sized squares of cheese and Saintsbury wine 00:01:11.210 --> 00:01:15.590 align:middle line:84% into the hum taking place under a covered moon, 00:01:15.590 --> 00:01:20.510 align:middle line:84% or cared to listen to clumped wild-rye shushing the dunes 00:01:20.510 --> 00:01:25.620 align:middle line:84% while pulverized rock shrieked along fault lines in decibels 00:01:25.620 --> 00:01:28.910 align:middle line:84% so muted only the soles of our feet, 00:01:28.910 --> 00:01:33.020 align:middle line:84% conducting the ground's sound up into our tali, 00:01:33.020 --> 00:01:37.900 align:middle line:84% could register what was happening right there where 00:01:37.900 --> 00:01:42.970 align:middle line:84% our lives had been cut off from themselves and become something 00:01:42.970 --> 00:01:48.010 align:middle line:84% else drained of substance, steeped in the privilege 00:01:48.010 --> 00:01:52.480 align:middle line:84% against which we protested with those we called our friends-- 00:01:52.480 --> 00:01:55.870 align:middle line:84% the ones who lately seemed to contract backward 00:01:55.870 --> 00:02:00.250 align:middle line:84% from our greetings, giving us to suspect that they too 00:02:00.250 --> 00:02:06.280 align:middle line:84% sensed something askew, the skip at the center of ourselves 00:02:06.280 --> 00:02:10.840 align:middle line:84% or just an inkling of abyssal unhappiness was it? 00:02:10.840 --> 00:02:14.020 align:middle line:84% Concentrated into the early evenings 00:02:14.020 --> 00:02:17.980 align:middle line:84% like one of those spectral white fallow deer introduced 00:02:17.980 --> 00:02:22.850 align:middle line:84% to the headlands that began to outcompete native species 00:02:22.850 --> 00:02:26.260 align:middle line:84% and so, before they were slaughtered every one by 00:02:26.260 --> 00:02:28.870 align:middle line:84% hired hunters, inciting arguments 00:02:28.870 --> 00:02:33.880 align:middle line:84% about what was native if all systems are given to change. 00:02:33.880 --> 00:02:36.340 align:middle line:90% Maybe our ear twitches. 00:02:36.340 --> 00:02:38.950 align:middle line:90% Maybe the deer's ear twitches. 00:02:38.950 --> 00:02:41.260 align:middle line:84% But we still can't quite make out 00:02:41.260 --> 00:02:45.340 align:middle line:84% in the dimness, what we're looking at, can we? 00:02:45.340 --> 00:02:48.400 align:middle line:84% Nor is there interim from the tumult 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:53.080 align:middle line:84% of incoming, the masticating chores, pind-pings begging 00:02:53.080 --> 00:02:56.830 align:middle line:84% immediate response, the sheer overabundance 00:02:56.830 --> 00:03:01.390 align:middle line:84% of the present shame which plugs up each minute 00:03:01.390 --> 00:03:05.740 align:middle line:84% and stands in now for whatever it meant to live oneself 00:03:05.740 --> 00:03:10.450 align:middle line:84% before every gesture became a performance for an audience we 00:03:10.450 --> 00:03:14.800 align:middle line:84% imagine never to be finished with looking at us. 00:03:14.800 --> 00:03:18.670 align:middle line:84% And as for the budding-out of being we'd called passion? 00:03:18.670 --> 00:03:21.820 align:middle line:84% Or the sensual moments phrased into our gait 00:03:21.820 --> 00:03:24.610 align:middle line:84% when we were coming to feel something, when 00:03:24.610 --> 00:03:27.940 align:middle line:84% our shadows merged not as romance, 00:03:27.940 --> 00:03:31.630 align:middle line:84% but the real consequence of our mutuality 00:03:31.630 --> 00:03:35.230 align:middle line:84% with shadows of conifers along the steep ravine, 00:03:35.230 --> 00:03:40.660 align:middle line:84% and completely naked and without relief the world past us 00:03:40.660 --> 00:03:45.430 align:middle line:84% into the inhuman where rosette lichen surged across rocks 00:03:45.430 --> 00:03:47.470 align:middle line:84% lacking nothing that might be needed 00:03:47.470 --> 00:03:51.270 align:middle line:90% to answer for our existence? 00:03:51.270 --> 00:03:55.950 align:middle line:84% By now, some of us, outmaneuvered by the economy 00:03:55.950 --> 00:03:59.520 align:middle line:84% were lying around Dolores Park like fallen fruit 00:03:59.520 --> 00:04:01.350 align:middle line:90% waiting to rot. 00:04:01.350 --> 00:04:04.110 align:middle line:84% Others found themselves receptive 00:04:04.110 --> 00:04:08.610 align:middle line:84% to a trivial, self-justifying kindness. 00:04:08.610 --> 00:04:11.280 align:middle line:84% What with coral belching up its algae, 00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:14.700 align:middle line:84% the constellations receding, the awakened tundra, 00:04:14.700 --> 00:04:18.839 align:middle line:84% how could we bear, we wondered to each, other even the weight 00:04:18.839 --> 00:04:22.640 align:middle line:90% of our own sorry initiatives? 00:04:22.640 --> 00:04:28.970 align:middle line:84% Life, someone countered, is pure gratuitous magnitude. 00:04:28.970 --> 00:04:33.660 align:middle line:84% Just look, the light is there, grace itself. 00:04:33.660 --> 00:04:36.130 align:middle line:90% But it was already noon. 00:04:36.130 --> 00:04:39.360 align:middle line:84% And as we looked, the colors of the hills 00:04:39.360 --> 00:04:42.780 align:middle line:84% began to blanch, and all around us, 00:04:42.780 --> 00:04:47.910 align:middle line:84% in the field of the visible, we sensed, without speaking, 00:04:47.910 --> 00:04:49.770 align:middle line:90% duration's ebb. 00:04:49.770 --> 00:04:52.320 align:middle line:90% 00:04:52.320 --> 00:04:53.640 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:04:53.640 --> 00:04:57.590 align:middle line:90% [CLAPPING] 00:04:57.590 --> 00:05:12.000 align:middle line:90%