WEBVTT

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That idea of the possible now
leads me to a personal poem.

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Today is-- if you grew up in the
culture I grew up in-- is Día

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de los Santos.

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Tomorrow, technically,
Día de los Muertos.

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It's a confusing time.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Día de los Santos today
and Día de las Criaturas,

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the day of children
who died young,

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who could not take
care of themselves,

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that very wonderful
tender word, "creatures."

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When we hear it, "Day of the
Dead," it's become everything

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it's become.

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But perhaps a
better way to say it

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is not the "Day of the Dead,"
but the "Day of our Dead,"

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and perhaps even more,
the "Day of my Dead."

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And then it's not so
funny, and things change,

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and we think about it
a little differently.

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I'm teaching a course right
now in magical realism,

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which so many people think
of as, well, it's all ghosts.

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It's that kind of stuff.

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It's not about ghosts.

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It's about what I was
just talking about--

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the possible.

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Maybe there's ghosts.

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I don't know.

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I encountered ghosts
when I was quite young,

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and this is where I found them.

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This poem is called
"When There Were Ghosts."

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It might be important to know
I was born in Nogales, Arizona,

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and so that's what the
early reference is here.

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"On the Mexico side,
in the 1950s and '60s,

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there were movie
houses everywhere.

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And for the longest
time, people could

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smoke as they pleased in
the comfort of the theaters.

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The smoke rose, and the movie
told itself on the screen

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and in the air, both.

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The projection caught a
little in the wavering mist

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of the cigarettes.

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In this way, every
story was two stories,

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and every character
lived near its ghost.

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Looking up, we knew what would
happen next before it did,

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as if the movie were dreaming
itself, and we were part of it,

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part of the plot itself,
and not just the audience.

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And in that dream, the
actors' faces bent a little,

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hard to make out
exactly in the smoke,

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so that María Félix and Pedro
Armendáriz looked a little like

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my aunt, and one of my uncles.

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And so they were, and so
were we all in the movies,

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which is how I remember it.

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Popcorn in hand, smoke in
the air, gum on the floor.

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Those Saturday
nights, we ourselves

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were the story, and the
stuff, and the stars.

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We ourselves were alive in
the dance of the dream."

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