WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.015 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.015 --> 00:00:02.640 align:middle line:84% The poem I'd like to read now is called 00:00:02.640 --> 00:00:06.223 align:middle line:84% "Spending the New Year with the Man from Receiving at Sears. 00:00:06.223 --> 00:00:11.160 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:11.160 --> 00:00:15.990 align:middle line:84% New downed earth muse, moving away 00:00:15.990 --> 00:00:19.230 align:middle line:84% from the King of Spain and George Washington, 00:00:19.230 --> 00:00:21.240 align:middle line:84% whom I still hold dear in my heart. 00:00:21.240 --> 00:00:28.800 align:middle line:90% 00:00:28.800 --> 00:00:32.490 align:middle line:84% We have dismissed like a doorbell being 00:00:32.490 --> 00:00:34.710 align:middle line:84% rung by someone who has forgotten his key 00:00:34.710 --> 00:00:38.160 align:middle line:90% to the building my childhood. 00:00:38.160 --> 00:00:42.030 align:middle line:84% My mother, a bookkeeper who secretly loved women 00:00:42.030 --> 00:00:44.580 align:middle line:90% from her well of loneliness. 00:00:44.580 --> 00:00:47.100 align:middle line:84% My father, the sea captain figure 00:00:47.100 --> 00:00:51.060 align:middle line:84% whose bedroom never contained Lafcadio Hearn's glimpses 00:00:51.060 --> 00:00:56.670 align:middle line:84% of unfamiliar Japan water spotted from the Yangtze River. 00:00:56.670 --> 00:00:59.100 align:middle line:84% My sister who married a lineman with the phone 00:00:59.100 --> 00:01:02.760 align:middle line:84% company, a man who hang glides like a giant eagle 00:01:02.760 --> 00:01:04.330 align:middle line:90% over the Pacific. 00:01:04.330 --> 00:01:06.960 align:middle line:84% And I who probably should have died 00:01:06.960 --> 00:01:10.710 align:middle line:84% in a teenage accident, first childbirth, when 00:01:10.710 --> 00:01:13.260 align:middle line:84% a drunk and doctor cut me nearly in two 00:01:13.260 --> 00:01:16.080 align:middle line:90% and I bled for three weeks. 00:01:16.080 --> 00:01:18.600 align:middle line:84% But instead here I am like everyone else, 00:01:18.600 --> 00:01:23.880 align:middle line:84% scarred, clinging to the rubber raft at my 40th birthday, 00:01:23.880 --> 00:01:27.030 align:middle line:84% thinking of my son who is 21 and whom 00:01:27.030 --> 00:01:30.420 align:middle line:90% I have not seen for 21 years. 00:01:30.420 --> 00:01:34.320 align:middle line:84% I have mourned and mourned the loss of Rocha's mustache, 00:01:34.320 --> 00:01:38.520 align:middle line:84% not that he lost it, but that he left me wearing it. 00:01:38.520 --> 00:01:43.140 align:middle line:84% I never to see it like my son again. 00:01:43.140 --> 00:01:46.470 align:middle line:84% It is hard to imagine women not wearing black shawls down 00:01:46.470 --> 00:01:49.110 align:middle line:84% to their ankles, standing on cliffs 00:01:49.110 --> 00:01:51.870 align:middle line:84% over the desert or the ocean wailing, 00:01:51.870 --> 00:01:55.020 align:middle line:84% singing for their men lost at sea, gone to war, 00:01:55.020 --> 00:02:01.470 align:middle line:84% or simply away having walked out of those black shawled lives. 00:02:01.470 --> 00:02:04.500 align:middle line:84% Yet women are the ones who wear bright colors, 00:02:04.500 --> 00:02:06.840 align:middle line:84% paint their faces into masks, and wear 00:02:06.840 --> 00:02:11.310 align:middle line:84% diamonds and sapphires, even if they do not own them. 00:02:11.310 --> 00:02:13.890 align:middle line:84% And today hide the shoals in a cookie jar 00:02:13.890 --> 00:02:18.390 align:middle line:84% the shape of a penguin on a kitchen counter. 00:02:18.390 --> 00:02:26.160 align:middle line:84% Scene, though dismissed, not quite dismissed. 00:02:26.160 --> 00:02:30.000 align:middle line:84% I remember my mother, and sister, 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:34.480 align:middle line:84% and I sitting on the sagging couch in our house 00:02:34.480 --> 00:02:36.570 align:middle line:90% in the orange grove. 00:02:36.570 --> 00:02:39.840 align:middle line:84% The couch or the spring sticking out on which I gouged my knee 00:02:39.840 --> 00:02:43.500 align:middle line:84% and began the bleeding, which was never to stop. 00:02:43.500 --> 00:02:47.130 align:middle line:84% The new Sears Roebuck catalog had come. 00:02:47.130 --> 00:02:49.500 align:middle line:90% I hated the clothes from Sears. 00:02:49.500 --> 00:02:53.490 align:middle line:84% But my mother loved the act of reading the book with us, 00:02:53.490 --> 00:02:58.320 align:middle line:84% looking and asking us which things we would like to wear. 00:02:58.320 --> 00:03:03.540 align:middle line:84% I learned that if it was in a book, you could possess it. 00:03:03.540 --> 00:03:06.210 align:middle line:84% Those beautiful colors tumbling before my eyes 00:03:06.210 --> 00:03:09.810 align:middle line:84% in the department store, you could not have. 00:03:09.810 --> 00:03:13.050 align:middle line:84% And when the packages arrived from Sears, flat and often 00:03:13.050 --> 00:03:15.840 align:middle line:84% torn, the clothing in them was drab. 00:03:15.840 --> 00:03:19.410 align:middle line:84% The clothes squashed into flat, wrinkled shapes. 00:03:19.410 --> 00:03:21.600 align:middle line:84% And nothing which came from the catalog 00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:23.430 align:middle line:90% looked like its picture. 00:03:23.430 --> 00:03:25.500 align:middle line:84% That picture which itself never looked 00:03:25.500 --> 00:03:27.330 align:middle line:84% as good as the yellows, and greens, 00:03:27.330 --> 00:03:30.600 align:middle line:84% and burgundies on the racks and shelves of Whittier 00:03:30.600 --> 00:03:33.930 align:middle line:84% California's tiny department stores. 00:03:33.930 --> 00:03:35.760 align:middle line:90% Those you could not have. 00:03:35.760 --> 00:03:43.710 align:middle line:84% You could have Sears E Gingham dress in sizes 2, 4, 6 and 6X, 00:03:43.710 --> 00:03:46.770 align:middle line:90% colors blue or red. 00:03:46.770 --> 00:03:49.800 align:middle line:84% Every year I wrote a letter to Santa Claus. 00:03:49.800 --> 00:03:52.830 align:middle line:84% Dear Santa, please do not make me 00:03:52.830 --> 00:03:54.600 align:middle line:84% wear any more clothes from Sears. 00:03:54.600 --> 00:03:56.580 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:56.580 --> 00:04:00.030 align:middle line:84% I know it is the most expensive, but could you 00:04:00.030 --> 00:04:02.790 align:middle line:84% bring me a dress and a sweater from Myers department 00:04:02.790 --> 00:04:06.570 align:middle line:90% store in Whittier, California? 00:04:06.570 --> 00:04:08.520 align:middle line:90% I met you in Spain. 00:04:08.520 --> 00:04:13.260 align:middle line:84% You were tall and I thought self-assured. 00:04:13.260 --> 00:04:15.810 align:middle line:84% Years later, a letter comes from you. 00:04:15.810 --> 00:04:17.670 align:middle line:90% Are you still tall? 00:04:17.670 --> 00:04:19.500 align:middle line:90% You must be self-assured. 00:04:19.500 --> 00:04:24.060 align:middle line:84% There are no typing mistakes in your letter. 00:04:24.060 --> 00:04:28.140 align:middle line:90% A dissertation on smallness. 00:04:28.140 --> 00:04:30.210 align:middle line:84% For some incredible reason, smallness 00:04:30.210 --> 00:04:32.740 align:middle line:90% is a kind of virtue in women. 00:04:32.740 --> 00:04:36.630 align:middle line:84% So I grew up rather smug about my small body, 5 foot 00:04:36.630 --> 00:04:41.250 align:middle line:84% 2", 24 inch waist, size 5 and 1/2 shoe. 00:04:41.250 --> 00:04:44.100 align:middle line:84% Yet there was also something wrong. 00:04:44.100 --> 00:04:48.060 align:middle line:84% I knew it, but couldn't quite figure it out. 00:04:48.060 --> 00:04:51.150 align:middle line:84% Like my mother loving the Sears catalog so much, 00:04:51.150 --> 00:04:55.110 align:middle line:84% when I could plainly see it contained ugly things. 00:04:55.110 --> 00:04:59.670 align:middle line:84% Around the people I most admired I felt large and clumsy. 00:04:59.670 --> 00:05:01.770 align:middle line:90% Now I understand that a little. 00:05:01.770 --> 00:05:05.580 align:middle line:84% I loved them because they were smart, or strong, or very good 00:05:05.580 --> 00:05:06.420 align:middle line:90% at something. 00:05:06.420 --> 00:05:08.760 align:middle line:90% They made me want to grow. 00:05:08.760 --> 00:05:12.180 align:middle line:84% But growing, growing that was something 00:05:12.180 --> 00:05:14.670 align:middle line:90% which made you bigger. 00:05:14.670 --> 00:05:19.950 align:middle line:84% And I had learned to think good equals small. 00:05:19.950 --> 00:05:22.350 align:middle line:84% I was appalled at 21 when I found that I 00:05:22.350 --> 00:05:24.090 align:middle line:90% had grown an inch taller. 00:05:24.090 --> 00:05:26.160 align:middle line:90% I was 5 foot 3". 00:05:26.160 --> 00:05:27.880 align:middle line:84% And a few years ago at my I physical 00:05:27.880 --> 00:05:31.390 align:middle line:84% I found that now I am almost 5 foot 4". 00:05:31.390 --> 00:05:34.270 align:middle line:84% I found it amusing the people always thought from pictures 00:05:34.270 --> 00:05:37.000 align:middle line:84% or seeing me on platforms that I was tall. 00:05:37.000 --> 00:05:40.090 align:middle line:84% And upon being introduced to me, they would of course exclaim, 00:05:40.090 --> 00:05:43.330 align:middle line:84% but you're so little, I thought you would be tall. 00:05:43.330 --> 00:05:47.710 align:middle line:84% I knew the guilty secret that I was almost 5 foot 4". 00:05:47.710 --> 00:05:51.130 align:middle line:84% But Smugly would say, no, I'm exactly 5' 00:05:51.130 --> 00:05:55.030 align:middle line:84% 3" just the height of the average American woman, 00:05:55.030 --> 00:06:00.400 align:middle line:84% taking such comfort in the smallness, the goodness. 00:06:00.400 --> 00:06:03.550 align:middle line:90% By 30, I wore a size 6 shoe. 00:06:03.550 --> 00:06:06.520 align:middle line:90% At 35, a 6 and 1/2. 00:06:06.520 --> 00:06:09.910 align:middle line:84% Today when I bought a pair of moccasins, I had to get a 7. 00:06:09.910 --> 00:06:12.760 align:middle line:84% And when I looked down at my feet, I am horrified, 00:06:12.760 --> 00:06:15.850 align:middle line:84% they look big and ugly, and most of all 00:06:15.850 --> 00:06:20.110 align:middle line:84% they do not look like my feet, my little feet. 00:06:20.110 --> 00:06:22.000 align:middle line:84% I am telling myself all of these things 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:24.850 align:middle line:84% in order to try to understand why I thought small was 00:06:24.850 --> 00:06:28.150 align:middle line:90% beautiful, womanly, desirable. 00:06:28.150 --> 00:06:31.840 align:middle line:84% In retrospect, I see only a small, smug person, 00:06:31.840 --> 00:06:34.330 align:middle line:84% hating the flat, ugly packages arriving 00:06:34.330 --> 00:06:37.840 align:middle line:84% from Sears, one who has failed at being a woman, 00:06:37.840 --> 00:06:41.260 align:middle line:84% rejecting motherhood, failing wifehood, and never succeeding 00:06:41.260 --> 00:06:43.970 align:middle line:90% as femme fatale. 00:06:43.970 --> 00:06:45.910 align:middle line:84% Some women were discussing clothes and weight 00:06:45.910 --> 00:06:48.220 align:middle line:90% in my living room last year. 00:06:48.220 --> 00:06:51.490 align:middle line:84% One witty woman said, the size of dress you wear 00:06:51.490 --> 00:06:52.900 align:middle line:90% depends on your wealth. 00:06:52.900 --> 00:06:56.950 align:middle line:84% If you buy a $100 dress, you may take only a size 7, 00:06:56.950 --> 00:07:01.210 align:middle line:84% but if you buy a $15 dress, you may require a 12. 00:07:01.210 --> 00:07:04.810 align:middle line:84% The rich like to think of themselves as small. 00:07:04.810 --> 00:07:07.390 align:middle line:84% And the famous bon mot of our times, 00:07:07.390 --> 00:07:11.560 align:middle line:84% you can never be too thin or too rich. 00:07:11.560 --> 00:07:13.960 align:middle line:84% But my eyes see things diminished. 00:07:13.960 --> 00:07:17.350 align:middle line:84% I bought two Pendleton shirts from friends at Christmas 00:07:17.350 --> 00:07:19.960 align:middle line:84% last year and both men were insulted because the shirts 00:07:19.960 --> 00:07:22.630 align:middle line:90% were several sizes too small. 00:07:22.630 --> 00:07:25.240 align:middle line:84% I guess everything tiny looks good to me. 00:07:25.240 --> 00:07:31.570 align:middle line:84% I want things to be beautiful, and beautiful is no, was once, 00:07:31.570 --> 00:07:35.980 align:middle line:90% has always been small. 00:07:35.980 --> 00:07:38.990 align:middle line:84% In Spain, his silence was beautiful. 00:07:38.990 --> 00:07:44.470 align:middle line:84% I felt beautiful, small in his big silence. 00:07:44.470 --> 00:07:47.830 align:middle line:84% Looking for the King of Spain while reading Lorca, Stevens, 00:07:47.830 --> 00:07:52.300 align:middle line:84% and Yates and dreaming of Rocha's mustache. 00:07:52.300 --> 00:07:55.570 align:middle line:84% Your silence is heavy like cigarette smoke, 00:07:55.570 --> 00:08:00.910 align:middle line:84% and the smoke blows over into the new year. 00:08:00.910 --> 00:08:02.545 align:middle line:90% Carrying rocks for my garden. 00:08:02.545 --> 00:08:05.110 align:middle line:90% 00:08:05.110 --> 00:08:08.470 align:middle line:84% I am sitting heavy and tired from my own heaviness. 00:08:08.470 --> 00:08:12.100 align:middle line:84% I dismiss these things, but carry them with me. 00:08:12.100 --> 00:08:15.400 align:middle line:84% We are on a boat which is docked on Lake Michigan. 00:08:15.400 --> 00:08:17.560 align:middle line:84% I am no longer small, but I have tried 00:08:17.560 --> 00:08:20.050 align:middle line:84% to make myself as small as possible. 00:08:20.050 --> 00:08:23.320 align:middle line:84% And thus, I am always cramped and hunched into my life, 00:08:23.320 --> 00:08:27.310 align:middle line:84% and feel tired and swollen from small places. 00:08:27.310 --> 00:08:30.190 align:middle line:84% The New Year's out there, large and empty. 00:08:30.190 --> 00:08:32.530 align:middle line:84% And I want to be big and walk around 00:08:32.530 --> 00:08:35.500 align:middle line:84% in a space as big as Madison Square Garden. 00:08:35.500 --> 00:08:38.710 align:middle line:90% No, as big as the Sahara desert. 00:08:38.710 --> 00:08:41.890 align:middle line:84% No, as much room as exists between the stars 00:08:41.890 --> 00:08:43.900 align:middle line:90% in the Milky Way. 00:08:43.900 --> 00:08:49.000 align:middle line:84% But I am sitting tired and slumped in a small boat. 00:08:49.000 --> 00:08:52.450 align:middle line:84% You are not the King of Spain, but his crippled brother. 00:08:52.450 --> 00:08:55.660 align:middle line:84% You are tall, but not as tall as he. 00:08:55.660 --> 00:08:57.310 align:middle line:90% Your feet are bigger, though. 00:08:57.310 --> 00:09:00.010 align:middle line:84% And while my own large feet appall me, 00:09:00.010 --> 00:09:03.040 align:middle line:90% I actually love your big feet. 00:09:03.040 --> 00:09:07.660 align:middle line:84% I once put my then size 6 foot into Robert Kelly's size 13 00:09:07.660 --> 00:09:08.770 align:middle line:90% shoe. 00:09:08.770 --> 00:09:12.820 align:middle line:90% He said, that is obscene, Diane. 00:09:12.820 --> 00:09:16.690 align:middle line:84% Yet he has always known the value of largeness. 00:09:16.690 --> 00:09:18.430 align:middle line:90% I have known it for men. 00:09:18.430 --> 00:09:21.670 align:middle line:84% I want my men to be bigger, smarter, stronger, richer, 00:09:21.670 --> 00:09:24.370 align:middle line:84% and more powerful than any other men in the world. 00:09:24.370 --> 00:09:26.440 align:middle line:84% I want them so big they can carry me out 00:09:26.440 --> 00:09:29.290 align:middle line:84% of a burning house, so big they can hold me 00:09:29.290 --> 00:09:31.030 align:middle line:90% against bad weather. 00:09:31.030 --> 00:09:36.490 align:middle line:84% But I wanted to be small, small, to be protected, 00:09:36.490 --> 00:09:40.240 align:middle line:84% to be small enough to be protected. 00:09:40.240 --> 00:09:42.550 align:middle line:84% I wanted to be small to their bigness. 00:09:42.550 --> 00:09:46.630 align:middle line:84% I needed to be small because men are small, too. 00:09:46.630 --> 00:09:50.500 align:middle line:84% And I needed to be smaller to be protected. 00:09:50.500 --> 00:09:57.040 align:middle line:84% But my eyes, which bought those shirts diminish things. 00:09:57.040 --> 00:09:59.500 align:middle line:84% A ray of light hitting a certain optic nerve 00:09:59.500 --> 00:10:01.240 align:middle line:84% can change the relative dimension 00:10:01.240 --> 00:10:04.900 align:middle line:84% of objects being observed through that phenomena. 00:10:04.900 --> 00:10:08.800 align:middle line:84% You walking in the rain along the beach 00:10:08.800 --> 00:10:13.570 align:middle line:84% of Lake Michigan gathering 25 pounds of rocks for my plants, 00:10:13.570 --> 00:10:16.510 align:middle line:84% carrying them to me in a broken box. 00:10:16.510 --> 00:10:22.240 align:middle line:84% You, the kind, crippled brother of the King of Spain. 00:10:22.240 --> 00:10:26.350 align:middle line:84% A friend saying to me, another woman without a man, 00:10:26.350 --> 00:10:27.560 align:middle line:90% where did you get him? 00:10:27.560 --> 00:10:29.240 align:middle line:90% He's so cute. 00:10:29.240 --> 00:10:33.410 align:middle line:84% Do grown women still talk like this? 00:10:33.410 --> 00:10:35.930 align:middle line:90% Yes, we do. 00:10:35.930 --> 00:10:38.075 align:middle line:84% I got him from the Sears and Roebuck catalog. 00:10:38.075 --> 00:10:40.980 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:10:40.980 --> 00:10:44.490 align:middle line:84% She goes home to read her Sears catalog. 00:10:44.490 --> 00:10:49.140 align:middle line:84% One of my students found her man in the Eddie Bauer catalog. 00:10:49.140 --> 00:10:51.720 align:middle line:84% A far better selection, I should think. 00:10:51.720 --> 00:10:53.700 align:middle line:90% But history is with me. 00:10:53.700 --> 00:10:55.860 align:middle line:90% You came from Sears. 00:10:55.860 --> 00:10:59.370 align:middle line:84% Memories of my sad, dismissed childhood, 00:10:59.370 --> 00:11:02.430 align:middle line:84% reading the Sears catalog with my mother. 00:11:02.430 --> 00:11:07.440 align:middle line:84% On my bed there is a down comforter from Eddie Bowers. 00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:10.710 align:middle line:84% Yes, it is hard to imagine women not wearing black shawls down 00:11:10.710 --> 00:11:12.060 align:middle line:90% to their ankles. 00:11:12.060 --> 00:11:15.180 align:middle line:84% I recently noticed, however, that the Sears catalog did not 00:11:15.180 --> 00:11:17.370 align:middle line:90% contain a single shawl. 00:11:17.370 --> 00:11:21.270 align:middle line:84% So now I am thinking of the bigger bed, the King size, 00:11:21.270 --> 00:11:24.420 align:middle line:84% may I have one bed King of Spain size, please? 00:11:24.420 --> 00:11:27.510 align:middle line:84% In the big, new year on which I will put my Eddie Bauer King 00:11:27.510 --> 00:11:32.580 align:middle line:84% size down comforter and we will sleep under it together. 00:11:32.580 --> 00:11:35.460 align:middle line:84% You have quit your job in receiving at Sears. 00:11:35.460 --> 00:11:39.360 align:middle line:84% And now we will each give and receive big things, 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:42.420 align:middle line:84% as I want to be able to give my son whom I have never 00:11:42.420 --> 00:11:44.730 align:middle line:90% seen a big spirit. 00:11:44.730 --> 00:11:48.130 align:middle line:84% I want my big feet to look beautiful to me. 00:11:48.130 --> 00:11:51.990 align:middle line:84% I want to stand up to my full 5 foot 4". 00:11:51.990 --> 00:11:53.850 align:middle line:84% I guess there was something that was always 00:11:53.850 --> 00:11:55.890 align:middle line:84% too big and a little embarrassing 00:11:55.890 --> 00:12:01.110 align:middle line:84% in me bursting out of its seams, constantly needing new shoes. 00:12:01.110 --> 00:12:04.800 align:middle line:84% I want to claim it now and pass it on to my son 00:12:04.800 --> 00:12:07.590 align:middle line:84% and to my daughter and to share it with the man 00:12:07.590 --> 00:12:10.620 align:middle line:84% from receiving at Sears the crippled brother 00:12:10.620 --> 00:12:17.640 align:middle line:84% of the King of Spain, the man who still loves me the most. 00:12:17.640 --> 00:12:20.990 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:12:20.990 --> 00:12:26.000 align:middle line:90%