WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.960 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:00:00.960 --> 00:00:02.009 align:middle line:90% Happiness first, right? 00:00:02.009 --> 00:00:03.870 align:middle line:90% [LAUGH] 00:00:03.870 --> 00:00:04.370 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:00:04.370 --> 00:00:05.730 align:middle line:90% You want to stop there? 00:00:05.730 --> 00:00:06.230 align:middle line:90% That's fine. 00:00:06.230 --> 00:00:08.189 align:middle line:90% That's fine. 00:00:08.189 --> 00:00:09.960 align:middle line:90% And that's one of those-- 00:00:09.960 --> 00:00:12.270 align:middle line:84% writing a memoir is one of those activities where 00:00:12.270 --> 00:00:13.860 align:middle line:90% you're testing your own memory. 00:00:13.860 --> 00:00:17.880 align:middle line:84% I guess I think that's partly the whole-- 00:00:17.880 --> 00:00:20.350 align:middle line:84% not the whole purpose of it but you 00:00:20.350 --> 00:00:22.350 align:middle line:84% are seeing how much you remember or how much you 00:00:22.350 --> 00:00:26.190 align:middle line:84% remember correctly, and what you don't remember at all. 00:00:26.190 --> 00:00:29.670 align:middle line:84% And the detail about the clothes and the shredded-- the 00:00:29.670 --> 00:00:31.410 align:middle line:84% shredded up clothes in the plastic bag, 00:00:31.410 --> 00:00:33.360 align:middle line:84% I didn't for years and years and years. 00:00:33.360 --> 00:00:37.120 align:middle line:84% Until one time, for whatever reason, 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:40.920 align:middle line:84% we were sitting around talking and it came up. 00:00:40.920 --> 00:00:43.032 align:middle line:84% And my mom said that and I had no idea, 00:00:43.032 --> 00:00:45.240 align:middle line:84% and it was just-- it seemed the most horrible thing I 00:00:45.240 --> 00:00:46.360 align:middle line:90% could imagine. 00:00:46.360 --> 00:00:48.540 align:middle line:84% And she said, I still have those clothes somewhere. 00:00:48.540 --> 00:00:49.510 align:middle line:90% It's probably in your closet. 00:00:49.510 --> 00:00:50.230 align:middle line:90% Do you want them? 00:00:50.230 --> 00:00:52.000 align:middle line:90% And I was like, no. 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:52.500 align:middle line:90% No. 00:00:52.500 --> 00:00:54.100 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:54.100 --> 00:00:56.010 align:middle line:90% No, I don't. 00:00:56.010 --> 00:00:57.780 align:middle line:84% But they're somewhere in my closet 00:00:57.780 --> 00:01:04.560 align:middle line:84% somewhere right now, sort of spookily sealed and timeless, 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:06.990 align:middle line:84% their own kind of memoir, I guess. 00:01:06.990 --> 00:01:11.540 align:middle line:84% So if we're still doing OK on time, I'll read some poems. 00:01:11.540 --> 00:01:12.040 align:middle line:90% Let's see. 00:01:12.040 --> 00:01:15.420 align:middle line:84% Let me see that one, the book with Godzilla. 00:01:15.420 --> 00:01:17.280 align:middle line:90% My second book has a-- 00:01:17.280 --> 00:01:20.130 align:middle line:84% I never knew-- the press was running behind 00:01:20.130 --> 00:01:22.830 align:middle line:84% on their publication schedule, and I never 00:01:22.830 --> 00:01:25.550 align:middle line:84% knew what the cover was going to look like until I got the book. 00:01:25.550 --> 00:01:26.925 align:middle line:84% And when they showed it to me, it 00:01:26.925 --> 00:01:29.250 align:middle line:90% had a picture of a toy Godzilla. 00:01:29.250 --> 00:01:31.770 align:middle line:90% And I sort of-- what's the word? 00:01:31.770 --> 00:01:33.630 align:middle line:90% Squee? 00:01:33.630 --> 00:01:35.330 align:middle line:90% I sort of squee to myself. 00:01:35.330 --> 00:01:36.970 align:middle line:90% I was like, that is awesome. 00:01:36.970 --> 00:01:38.243 align:middle line:90% I loved it. 00:01:38.243 --> 00:01:39.660 align:middle line:84% And so I knew right there and then 00:01:39.660 --> 00:01:41.430 align:middle line:84% like all of my future publishers would 00:01:41.430 --> 00:01:47.160 align:middle line:84% be hard pressed to ever make a cover that I like as much. 00:01:47.160 --> 00:01:49.590 align:middle line:84% And so far, I've had nice covers but they've never 00:01:49.590 --> 00:01:51.000 align:middle line:90% been Godzilla. 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:53.850 align:middle line:84% So I was extremely happy about that. 00:01:53.850 --> 00:01:56.310 align:middle line:90% Let me find a poem here to read. 00:01:56.310 --> 00:01:58.140 align:middle line:90% Page one, please. 00:01:58.140 --> 00:01:59.040 align:middle line:90% That's easy. 00:01:59.040 --> 00:01:59.610 align:middle line:90% That's easy. 00:01:59.610 --> 00:02:05.280 align:middle line:90% 00:02:05.280 --> 00:02:08.505 align:middle line:90% And this is called, "Nothing." 00:02:08.505 --> 00:02:11.670 align:middle line:84% "Between Buck Owens and Vivaldi, what's 00:02:11.670 --> 00:02:14.280 align:middle line:90% left to listen to but the stars? 00:02:14.280 --> 00:02:18.240 align:middle line:84% So I do, dialing the radio down to indeterminate static. 00:02:18.240 --> 00:02:21.150 align:middle line:84% What I always thought was absence, an aria 00:02:21.150 --> 00:02:23.610 align:middle line:90% of sizzling nothingness. 00:02:23.610 --> 00:02:26.610 align:middle line:84% Instead it's the Milky Way irradiating arrhythmia 00:02:26.610 --> 00:02:28.200 align:middle line:90% all the way back. 00:02:28.200 --> 00:02:31.440 align:middle line:84% "It's gossip of the vacuum, that nothing 00:02:31.440 --> 00:02:34.320 align:middle line:84% has never been truly nothing is why I believe even still 00:02:34.320 --> 00:02:36.240 align:middle line:90% in love. 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:40.080 align:middle line:84% Beside two rivers, I have lived nearly all my life, and these 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:45.015 align:middle line:84% beneath one sky muttering its endless alphabet of sine waves. 00:02:45.015 --> 00:02:48.780 align:middle line:84% "Jupiter with its flock of moons and the stone 00:02:48.780 --> 00:02:51.660 align:middle line:84% from which we hope to squeeze one drop of water, 00:02:51.660 --> 00:02:55.380 align:middle line:84% red Mars pulsing in the blank field of night. 00:02:55.380 --> 00:02:57.480 align:middle line:84% I've wanted to leave Earth behind, 00:02:57.480 --> 00:03:01.050 align:middle line:84% gravity's orphan at last, but not Earth with its two 00:03:01.050 --> 00:03:03.690 align:middle line:84% good seasons and two bad, and not 00:03:03.690 --> 00:03:07.550 align:middle line:84% its angel-winged clams luminous in the mud bed of a river. 00:03:07.550 --> 00:03:09.720 align:middle line:84% so different-- so distant from me. 00:03:09.720 --> 00:03:11.820 align:middle line:84% "I can't remember where that water 00:03:11.820 --> 00:03:15.105 align:middle line:84% is except that I've dreamed it, except that 00:03:15.105 --> 00:03:16.920 align:middle line:90% in it I sank all the way down." 00:03:16.920 --> 00:03:21.840 align:middle line:90% 00:03:21.840 --> 00:03:26.520 align:middle line:84% I'm not too proud to mention that the bit 00:03:26.520 --> 00:03:30.300 align:middle line:84% about the angel-winged clams comes from a Matthew 00:03:30.300 --> 00:03:31.567 align:middle line:90% McConaughey movie. 00:03:31.567 --> 00:03:33.030 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:33.030 --> 00:03:34.038 align:middle line:90% Seriously. 00:03:34.038 --> 00:03:37.043 align:middle line:90% 00:03:37.043 --> 00:03:37.960 align:middle line:90% He was talking about-- 00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:38.850 align:middle line:84% I don't even remember what the movie was, 00:03:38.850 --> 00:03:41.010 align:middle line:84% but he was trying to pick up this girl in a market. 00:03:41.010 --> 00:03:43.907 align:middle line:84% And he picks up this clamshell, and he's 00:03:43.907 --> 00:03:45.990 align:middle line:84% sort of like-- he is sort of giving a dissertation 00:03:45.990 --> 00:03:47.910 align:middle line:90% about the history of the shell. 00:03:47.910 --> 00:03:51.570 align:middle line:84% And he's talking about how it was like these clams glowed 00:03:51.570 --> 00:03:52.710 align:middle line:90% in the water. 00:03:52.710 --> 00:03:54.990 align:middle line:84% And so you could swim down to the bottom of the river 00:03:54.990 --> 00:03:56.850 align:middle line:84% and these clamshells would be glowing, 00:03:56.850 --> 00:03:58.773 align:middle line:84% and that's how divers found them. 00:03:58.773 --> 00:04:01.440 align:middle line:84% And I was like, even though this is a Matthew McConaughey movie, 00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:03.430 align:middle line:90% that's the stuff of poetry. 00:04:03.430 --> 00:04:05.430 align:middle line:84% And so I walked around with it for a year or two 00:04:05.430 --> 00:04:07.500 align:middle line:90% before I used it. 00:04:07.500 --> 00:04:08.000 align:middle line:90%