So I'm going to finish with just some poems that relate to--
actually it was inspired by thinking about coming here.
So after I started talking to Greg
about the possibilities of learning about his work,
and just thinking about time, and carbon dating, and all
these different things, it merged
with a longstanding curiosity about the feathered dinosaur.
I'm still a little murky on how this all fits together.
But there's archaeopteryx and there's micro raptor.
And I think they're different, but so far I'm
in a very blurry way calling the whole project Archaeopteryx
but I'm going to have to reckon with that.
[CHUCKLE]
But anyway it just mostly really has
captured some broad concerns that I am often inquiring into.
Most of it deals with awkwardness
of some sort, something teetering, or transitional,
or something that's a blurry category.
Because the feathered dinosaur is considered
a transitional being.
I don't know what the term is.
In the sense that it has features of the dinosaurs
and features of birds.
So it has these on the way, as we all are.
So under that rubric fits a lot of awkwardness.
I was watching a NOVA special about it,
and it was showing these projected theories.
Did it start flying because it was running really fast
and it held that its arms and it took off?
Or was it soaring and then caught the sense of falling
and flying, the relationship?
And when I saw that I was like, "That
sounds like so much that is always going on in my life."
And so I just started to think of poems
that in some way address that teetering awkwardness.
So I'm going to finish with a couple of those poems.
And the first one comes from a story a friend told me,
it's called "Slope".
Amber took the hill so slowly the couch never
felt the incline, though the slope was considerable.
And though the gray sofa was found by no ropes,
only its own second hand weight and the sheer traction
of its plush upholstery against the roof of Amber's Honda
kept the sofa always in one place relative to the car
on it.
Though the vehicle itself as has been noted was moving.
So slowly was the vehicle moving however,
than in the mind of the couch it always
felt itself to be situated on a flat surface.
The spaces between each increment of the tires
rotation forward, created in the mind of the couch
a plain earth surface.
Letting the couch be content to move with the car,
but never in front of the car or behind the car.
It never moved faster than the car,
because it never had the chance momentum
would have given it to overtake the car or the drag
to lag behind.
It always stayed moving exactly at the same speed as the car.
With Amber driving it, who knew with her foot
to maintain a pressure on the accelerator
so even as to keep the car and the sofa
in the exact relative relationship to space and time
at all times on the ride home, the ride home with no rope.
[LAUGHTER]
That was down hill in San Francisco, that she did that.
[LAUGHTER]
It's pretty incredible.