WEBVTT

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Growing up in the West makes you
very aware of the car culture

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that we have here, you know.

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Tucson's one giant parking lot.

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I'm living in Chicago now.

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And I don't own a
car, and I love it.

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I take the train.

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I take a cab, take
the bus, don't

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have to worry about parking,
or insurance, or anything

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that comes along with that.

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But before I lived in
Chicago, I lived here,

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and so cars were a major
part of our culture

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in just moving around.

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It's very American of us.

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"Deliverance and Dr. Porsche."

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"Reverse engineered
from the divine,

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the perfected shut
of a Porsche's door,

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molding, mechanism, metal--

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the sound is gratification.

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The seat cradles your ass
like an end to suffering.

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The click of ignition, near
silent rumble of an engine,

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made to run like
God's own wristwatch,

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feet work through the footfalls
of pedals in the rumba of rpm,

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every law of physics induced--

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inertia, speed, time,
distance on command--

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all of the pleasure,
none of the math.

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Stomach, delirious, mind,
drunk on the butterscotch

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of leather and coolant--

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You're pushed back in the seat.

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It feels as if you might
die, or be born, or come.

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The night you whispered to
the girl with a bourbon eyes,

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and then you die and
are born and come.

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This is made-in-Germany zen,
a euphoria that fuses you,

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and you bless Dr.
Porsche's sweet bald head.

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That is what Tom was
trying to tell you,

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but you couldn't translate.

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The day he arrived at
the door with the 911

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he'd borrowed slash stolen
from the doctor's house he sat

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that summer, but you were
too practical or scared,

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and the afternoon
newspaper waited in a pile

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to be delivered.

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Tom pleaded with a giddy smile.

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You just kept folding
and wrapping papers

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in red rubber bands.

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And this should be a
metaphor now, but it isn't.

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And the poem fails
you the way you

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failed to live a little that
afternoon with your friend.

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The headlines were nothing
but tragedy anyway--

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tragedy that could
have waited at least

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for a spin around the block.

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This is about getting
sideways again

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in the back seat, the clammy
rush of adrenaline that

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accompanies out of control.

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Deliverance is trust-- the
conservation of momentum,

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control in the swerve, learning
how to turn out on the inch

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of rubber and asphalt that
grip, the thrill of a leather

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steering wheel regained, and
none of this can save you from

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the eyes-shut-tight-stop-sign
roulette that makes your chest

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feel a little hairier.

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Deliverance is letting go of
the newspaper at the doorstop

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moment, a perfect arc,
without calculus or a graph,

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the whisper across our lips--

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perfection, what we
say when we mean holy."

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