WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.990 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.990 --> 00:00:07.680 align:middle line:84% So Jaime Saenz was a very interesting and mystical 00:00:07.680 --> 00:00:08.880 align:middle line:90% Bolivian poet-- 00:00:08.880 --> 00:00:12.450 align:middle line:84% Really the greatest poet of the 20th century in Bolivia. 00:00:12.450 --> 00:00:17.400 align:middle line:90% And did live outside of-- 00:00:17.400 --> 00:00:25.530 align:middle line:84% like Alfonso D'Aquino-- outside of the cultured city poets. 00:00:25.530 --> 00:00:29.130 align:middle line:84% Well, he was an alcoholic and that helped. 00:00:29.130 --> 00:00:34.710 align:middle line:84% But he hung out with Aymara in taverns a lot. 00:00:34.710 --> 00:00:38.190 align:middle line:84% And he was very much obsessed with death, 00:00:38.190 --> 00:00:42.510 align:middle line:84% and believed that it was possible, as the Aymara do, 00:00:42.510 --> 00:00:43.860 align:middle line:90% to cross the borders. 00:00:43.860 --> 00:00:47.010 align:middle line:84% That the membrane between the dead and the living 00:00:47.010 --> 00:00:50.730 align:middle line:90% was a permeable membrane. 00:00:50.730 --> 00:00:55.110 align:middle line:84% So much so that he had his friends promise 00:00:55.110 --> 00:00:58.710 align:middle line:84% that if he died, they would cut his carotid arteries 00:00:58.710 --> 00:01:03.120 align:middle line:84% because he was terrified of waking up in a coffin. 00:01:03.120 --> 00:01:08.170 align:middle line:84% Also, at one point, while he was living with his mother, 00:01:08.170 --> 00:01:13.300 align:middle line:84% he stole a human leg from the medical lab at the University. 00:01:13.300 --> 00:01:16.980 align:middle line:84% He brought it home and hid it under his bed, 00:01:16.980 --> 00:01:21.240 align:middle line:84% until his mom found it and made him return it. 00:01:21.240 --> 00:01:24.188 align:middle line:84% Kind of a dramatic evening I imagine. 00:01:24.188 --> 00:01:29.070 align:middle line:90% 00:01:29.070 --> 00:01:32.910 align:middle line:84% He's a beautiful, mystical poet, and he's often 00:01:32.910 --> 00:01:37.530 align:middle line:84% writing to a "you," that is the city of La Paz, which he almost 00:01:37.530 --> 00:01:38.880 align:middle line:90% never left. 00:01:38.880 --> 00:01:40.680 align:middle line:90% And the figure of the beloved-- 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:45.240 align:middle line:84% He was one of the first writers in Latin America 00:01:45.240 --> 00:01:49.900 align:middle line:84% to write with a protagonist that was openly homosexual. 00:01:49.900 --> 00:01:52.680 align:middle line:90% 00:01:52.680 --> 00:01:58.170 align:middle line:84% And so his "you" is both the city of La Paz and the beloved. 00:01:58.170 --> 00:02:02.025 align:middle line:84% And it's also death that was with him always. 00:02:02.025 --> 00:02:04.900 align:middle line:90% 00:02:04.900 --> 00:02:06.670 align:middle line:90% What is the night-- 00:02:06.670 --> 00:02:09.009 align:middle line:90% you ask now and forever. 00:02:09.009 --> 00:02:12.880 align:middle line:84% The night, a revelation still veiled. 00:02:12.880 --> 00:02:17.140 align:middle line:84% Perhaps a deathform, tenacious and flexed, 00:02:17.140 --> 00:02:19.900 align:middle line:84% perhaps a body lost to the night itself. 00:02:19.900 --> 00:02:24.040 align:middle line:84% Truly, a chasm, a space unimaginable. 00:02:24.040 --> 00:02:28.840 align:middle line:84% A subtle, lightless realm, not unlike the body dwelling 00:02:28.840 --> 00:02:34.390 align:middle line:84% in you, which hides, surely, many clues to the night. 00:02:34.390 --> 00:02:37.510 align:middle line:84% When I consider the night's mystery, 00:02:37.510 --> 00:02:42.370 align:middle line:84% I imagine the mystery of your body, which is only one 00:02:42.370 --> 00:02:45.250 align:middle line:90% of the forms of night's being. 00:02:45.250 --> 00:02:47.770 align:middle line:84% I know beyond doubt the body that 00:02:47.770 --> 00:02:52.660 align:middle line:84% inhabits you is nothing more than the darkness of your body. 00:02:52.660 --> 00:02:57.730 align:middle line:84% And this darkness is diffused under the night's sign. 00:02:57.730 --> 00:03:00.700 align:middle line:84% In the countless concavities of your body 00:03:00.700 --> 00:03:03.820 align:middle line:84% there are multiple kingdoms of darkness, 00:03:03.820 --> 00:03:07.630 align:middle line:84% and this is something worth reflection. 00:03:07.630 --> 00:03:11.980 align:middle line:84% This body, closed, secret, and forbidden. 00:03:11.980 --> 00:03:17.980 align:middle line:84% This body, other and fearsome, neither foretold nor foreseen. 00:03:17.980 --> 00:03:22.180 align:middle line:84% It is like a resplendent or like a shadow-- 00:03:22.180 --> 00:03:25.270 align:middle line:84% it only allows itself to be sensed from afar, 00:03:25.270 --> 00:03:29.110 align:middle line:84% from the indeterminate, charged with excessive loneliness which 00:03:29.110 --> 00:03:31.970 align:middle line:90% has nothing to do with you. 00:03:31.970 --> 00:03:34.990 align:middle line:84% And it allows itself to be sensed feelingly, 00:03:34.990 --> 00:03:38.050 align:middle line:84% through temperature, and through a sorrow that 00:03:38.050 --> 00:03:40.330 align:middle line:90% has nothing to do with you. 00:03:40.330 --> 00:03:43.210 align:middle line:84% If anything fills me with awe, it 00:03:43.210 --> 00:03:46.450 align:middle line:84% is the image that imagines me from afar. 00:03:46.450 --> 00:03:48.920 align:middle line:90% A breathing heard at my core. 00:03:48.920 --> 00:03:51.370 align:middle line:90% The body breathes at my core. 00:03:51.370 --> 00:03:55.900 align:middle line:84% Darkness rivets me-- the body's night rivets me. 00:03:55.900 --> 00:03:58.660 align:middle line:84% The body of the night and the death of the body 00:03:58.660 --> 00:04:00.040 align:middle line:90% rivet my mind. 00:04:00.040 --> 00:04:03.490 align:middle line:84% And I ask myself, what is your body? 00:04:03.490 --> 00:04:06.700 align:middle line:84% I don't know whether you've even asked yourself. 00:04:06.700 --> 00:04:09.880 align:middle line:84% It's a gambit, grave and adverse. 00:04:09.880 --> 00:04:12.760 align:middle line:84% One time I came close to my body, 00:04:12.760 --> 00:04:15.070 align:middle line:84% and realizing I had never seen it, 00:04:15.070 --> 00:04:19.000 align:middle line:84% even though I bore it with me, I asked it who it was. 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:22.310 align:middle line:84% And a voice, in the silence, said to me-- 00:04:22.310 --> 00:04:27.580 align:middle line:84% I am the body who inhabits you, and I am here in the darkness, 00:04:27.580 --> 00:04:32.371 align:middle line:84% and I suffer you, and I live you, and die you. 00:04:32.371 --> 00:04:35.060 align:middle line:90% But I am not your body. 00:04:35.060 --> 00:04:36.960 align:middle line:90% I am the night. 00:04:36.960 --> 00:04:38.000 align:middle line:90%