WEBVTT

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Here's one with a title
that needs explaining.

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One of my favorite words is
the word, "Preternatural."

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I found it in a few books.

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Dr. Johnson used it in Rasselas,
and Emily Brontë used it a few

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times.

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It's when you want to--

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it's when what you're talking
about is of the spirit world,

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but it's not of a
supernatural nature.

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In other words, where it's--
deals often with coincidences

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between man and nature.

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And, of course,
that's-- as you know,

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that's what Indians
are all about.

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The trouble we have
understanding them

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is that, while they laugh
at their superstitions,

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when they talk about
them, at the same time

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they hold them completely.

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They say they don't,
but that's not the fact.

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And every now and
then, you're reminded

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that there's another world,
which consists of plants.

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You know, all those
experiments that plants

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grow better to quiet music
than the raucous music, stuff,

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anyway.

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"The Preternatural".

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Hat Mountain smashed
under the pickaxe,

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quartz veins bleed in the sun.

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The grave robbers have
found their pyramid.

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I take their rusted
hammer in hand,

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hold it against the shadow
of a 50 foot cactus,

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blot out the crimson
vulva at the top.

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Always the newborn eye
blinks and cannot see.

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One seed in a thousand
will germinate.

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The pillar of wooden
ribs wrenches,

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weak of its weight, one
slat cracking after another.

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My bones flinch at the
tendons, my vertebrae

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well to the spine of
the stationary life.

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The plant falling
to its own shadow,

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with the memory of two
centuries of survival.

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