WEBVTT

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This is the last one I'll read.

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"Tango 28.

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Homo Ludens."

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That maybe needs a
bit of explanation.

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Homo Ludens is a
Latin phrase meaning

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"man playing" or "the
human being as a player."

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It's also the name of a
book that used to be very

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well-known--

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I don't know if it is anymore--
by a Dutch historian named

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Huizinga, which is
a history of war--

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sorry, of games, and gaming,
and particularly the idea of war

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as a game.

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And this tango takes
place in Athens.

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"Homo Ludens."

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"Omens are, for example,
hearing someone say victory

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as they pass you in the
street or to be staring

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at the little sulfur
lamps in the grass

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all around the edge of the hotel
garden just as they come on.

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They come on at dusk.

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What was he thinking
to bring her here?

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Athens, Hotel Eremia.

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He knew very well, thinking
detente and reconciliation,

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let's start again.

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Thinking oysters
and glace fruits.

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It needs a light touch.

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Narrow keys not very deep.

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Hotel gardens at dusk are a
place where the laws governing

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matter get cold inside
out like the black keys

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and the white keys
on Mozart's piano.

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It cheered him to
remember Mozart,

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borrowing money every night
and smiling his tilted smile.

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Necessity is not real after all.

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The husband swallows his ouzo
and waits for its slow hot snow

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inside him.

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Mozart, so his wife
had told him at lunch,

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scored his horn concerto in
four different colors of ink.

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A man at play.

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A husband whose wife
knows just enough history

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to keep him going.

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Good cheer is rampant
in the husband

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now, infinite evening ahead.

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Its shoals appear to him and
he navigates them one by one,

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slipping the dark blue
Kiel ropes this way

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and that on a bosom of
inconceivable silver.

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Ah, here she is.

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The husband can be seen to rise
as his wife crosses the garden.

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Why so sad?

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No, I'm not sad.

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Why in your eyes?

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What are you drinking?

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Ouzo.

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Can you get me a tea?

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Of course.

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He goes out.

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She waits.

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Waiting, thoughts come,
go, flow, this flowing.

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Why sadness, this flowing?

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The world to its end,
why in your eyes?

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This is a line of verse.

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Where has it stepped from?

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She searches herself, waiting.

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Waiting is searching.

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And the odd thing is waiting,
searching the wife suddenly

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knows a fact about her husband.

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This fact, for which
she had not searched,

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jerks itself into the light
like a child from a closet.

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She knows why he is
taking so long at the bar.

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Over and over in later years
when she told this story,

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she marveled at her
husband's ability

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to place the world within
brackets, a brackets-worth

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of mirage, all he ever needed.

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A man who, after three
years of separation,

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would take his wife to
Athens for adoration,

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for peace, and then
telephone New York

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every night from the bar and
speak to a woman who thought he

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was over on 4th
Street working late.

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And upstairs that
night, which proved

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to be a very long night, as
he was dragging his wounded

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honor about the hotel room
like a damaged queen of moths

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because she mentioned
Houyhnms and he objected

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to being written off
as an object of satire.

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They moved several times through
a cycle of remarks like this.

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What is it?

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What future is there?

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I thought you said we
never went exactly?

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Day, year name anything, who
I was, who I am, who did you?

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Did you or did you not?

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Do you or do you not?

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This excuse, that excuse.

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Pleasure, pain, truth.

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What truth is that?

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All those kilometers.

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Faith, letters.

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You're right, never!

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Oh, all right.

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Once.

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Remarks, which like the chain of
Parmenides well rounded truth,

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you can follow in
a circle and always

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end up where you began for it
is all one to me where I start.

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I arrive there again soon
enough, as Parmenides says.

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So the wife was thinking
about Parmenides

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with part of her mind while
throwing ever and ever

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a liar at her husband.

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And he was holding yes and no
together with one hand while

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parrying the words of his
wife when they stopped.

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Silence came.

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They stood aligned.

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He had the door
with his back to it,

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she had the bed
with her back to it.

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In that posture which experts
of conflict resolution tell us,

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ensures impasse.

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And they looked at
one another and there

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was nothing more to say.

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Kissing her.

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I love you.

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Joys and leaves of earlier
times flowed through the husband

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and disappeared.

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Presence and absence twisted
out of sight of one another

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inside the wife.

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They stood.

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Sounds reach them.

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A truck, a snore, shrubs
ticking on a tin wall.

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His nose begins to bleed.

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Then blood runs down over his
upper lip, lower lip, chin,

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to his throat.

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Appears on the
whiteness of his shirt,

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dyes the mother of
pearl button for good,

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blacker than a mulberry.

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Don't think his heart had burst.

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He was no Tristan,
although he would

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love to point out that
in the common version,

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Tristan is not false, it
is the sail that kills.

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Yet neither of them
had a handkerchief

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and that is how she
ends up staining

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her robe with his blood,
his head in her lap,

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and his virtue coursing through
her as if they were one flesh.

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Husband and wife may
erase a boundary,

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creating a white page.

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But now the blood seems to be
the only thing in the room.

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If only one's whole life could
consist in certain moments.

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There is no possibility of
coming back from such a moment

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to simple hatred, to black ink.

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If a husband throws the dice
of his beauty one last time,

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who is to blame?

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Rich proposition, drastic
economy, hours, bets, pronouns,

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no one.

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No one is to blame.

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Change the question.

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We are mortal balanced on a day.

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Now and then, does it
not make sense to say,

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save what you can?

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And wasn't it you who
told me civilization

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is impossible in the
absence of a spirit of play?

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Anyway, what would
you have done?

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Torn the phone off the wall?

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Smothered him with a pillow?

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Emptied his wallet and run?

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But you overlook an important
cultural function of games:

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to test the will of the gods.

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Huizinga reminds us that war
itself is a form of divination.

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Husband and wife did not
therefore engage in murder

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but continued their
tour of the Peloponnese,

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spending eight more weary
days in temples and buses

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and vine-covered tavernas.

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Eight days which had
the internal texture

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of the Greek word petradavki,
ancient pevtros, broken,

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crushed stone,
road stone gravel,

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but which served a purpose
within the mode of justice that

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was their marriage.

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Waiting for the future and
for the gods, husband and wife

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rested as players may rest
against the rules of the game,

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if it is a game, if they
know the rules and it was

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and they did."

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Thank you.

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[APPLAUSE]

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