WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.330 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.330 --> 00:00:05.560 align:middle line:84% Well, again I will try to read something pleasanter than that. 00:00:05.560 --> 00:00:06.490 align:middle line:90% Is everybody cheerful? 00:00:06.490 --> 00:00:09.550 align:middle line:90% 00:00:09.550 --> 00:00:10.975 align:middle line:90% Light up a Lucky, relax. 00:00:10.975 --> 00:00:16.710 align:middle line:90% 00:00:16.710 --> 00:00:19.290 align:middle line:84% I'll read a poem about a moth, maybe that's light enough. 00:00:19.290 --> 00:00:22.800 align:middle line:90% 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:25.560 align:middle line:84% I used to live in a little old hand-made farmhouse out back 00:00:25.560 --> 00:00:29.740 align:middle line:90% of Rochester, New York. 00:00:29.740 --> 00:00:31.380 align:middle line:84% And when I moved in there, one of the-- 00:00:31.380 --> 00:00:33.810 align:middle line:84% I guess the hands that made it either 00:00:33.810 --> 00:00:39.420 align:middle line:84% had been long dead or not too skilled, I don't know. 00:00:39.420 --> 00:00:43.800 align:middle line:84% When we came to move in, one of the neighbors 00:00:43.800 --> 00:00:47.550 align:middle line:84% came around he said, "you're going to move in that house?" 00:00:47.550 --> 00:00:49.560 align:middle line:84% He says what, "come winter the windows skin 00:00:49.560 --> 00:00:51.990 align:middle line:90% the rug right off your floor." 00:00:51.990 --> 00:00:54.360 align:middle line:90% He'd been in the house. 00:00:54.360 --> 00:00:55.740 align:middle line:84% It didn't matter too much though. 00:00:55.740 --> 00:00:58.200 align:middle line:84% I was only an instructor then and we didn't own a rug. 00:00:58.200 --> 00:01:00.530 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLES] 00:01:00.530 --> 00:01:03.300 align:middle line:84% I can't find the poem, wait a minute. 00:01:03.300 --> 00:01:05.400 align:middle line:90% Where did it go? 00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:07.470 align:middle line:84% Nobody leave this room till I find that poem. 00:01:07.470 --> 00:01:11.987 align:middle line:90% 00:01:11.987 --> 00:01:13.820 align:middle line:84% What's the title of that unforgettable poem? 00:01:13.820 --> 00:01:15.494 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:15.494 --> 00:01:17.370 align:middle line:90% 00:01:17.370 --> 00:01:21.630 align:middle line:84% There it is, 15, I went right past it six times. 00:01:21.630 --> 00:01:22.623 align:middle line:90% Yeah, there it is. 00:01:22.623 --> 00:01:24.540 align:middle line:84% All right, and you know, so we moved in there. 00:01:24.540 --> 00:01:26.670 align:middle line:84% If you live in a house like that, 00:01:26.670 --> 00:01:28.503 align:middle line:90% you've got a shot at wisdom. 00:01:28.503 --> 00:01:31.170 align:middle line:84% I don't mean you'll probably get it, but you've got a shot at it 00:01:31.170 --> 00:01:34.080 align:middle line:84% and that's better than how things usually are. 00:01:34.080 --> 00:01:37.860 align:middle line:84% Of course, you know what Escola said about-- 00:01:37.860 --> 00:01:41.250 align:middle line:84% man grows wise against his will in a house like that, 00:01:41.250 --> 00:01:42.540 align:middle line:90% you sure don't get your will. 00:01:42.540 --> 00:01:44.550 align:middle line:84% I mean, everything that you want to keep in is going out, 00:01:44.550 --> 00:01:46.590 align:middle line:84% everything you want to keep out it's coming in. 00:01:46.590 --> 00:01:49.300 align:middle line:84% And you live with the universe passing through the living 00:01:49.300 --> 00:01:49.800 align:middle line:90% room. 00:01:49.800 --> 00:01:53.172 align:middle line:84% And you don't like it, but it may teach you something. 00:01:53.172 --> 00:01:55.380 align:middle line:84% Well, most of the things that teach you something you 00:01:55.380 --> 00:01:58.200 align:middle line:90% don't like. 00:01:58.200 --> 00:02:01.590 align:middle line:84% The kind of house that anybody has if they get their own way, 00:02:01.590 --> 00:02:04.410 align:middle line:84% is going to have walls that thick and double windows 00:02:04.410 --> 00:02:06.538 align:middle line:84% and carpets this deep and armchairs 00:02:06.538 --> 00:02:08.080 align:middle line:84% about twice the size of this lecture. 00:02:08.080 --> 00:02:10.350 align:middle line:84% And you start sinking and you're falling back 00:02:10.350 --> 00:02:12.223 align:middle line:84% into that armchair for five minutes, 00:02:12.223 --> 00:02:13.890 align:middle line:84% and when you hit the bottom, what you do 00:02:13.890 --> 00:02:16.843 align:middle line:84% is you hook up the IV tubes and turn on the television 00:02:16.843 --> 00:02:19.260 align:middle line:84% and then you never move again except to holler at the girl 00:02:19.260 --> 00:02:22.071 align:middle line:84% and see is she bringing the beer on time. 00:02:22.071 --> 00:02:24.750 align:middle line:84% Sort of a womb with a television set and-- 00:02:24.750 --> 00:02:27.480 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:27.480 --> 00:02:29.250 align:middle line:84% Which is great if you can get it, 00:02:29.250 --> 00:02:33.930 align:middle line:84% but instructors can't get it yet so they go on. 00:02:33.930 --> 00:02:37.620 align:middle line:84% Learning is at least still accessible to them. 00:02:37.620 --> 00:02:40.200 align:middle line:84% You've got the television and the newspapers 00:02:40.200 --> 00:02:42.660 align:middle line:84% to-- well, you've got all those walls to shut the world out 00:02:42.660 --> 00:02:45.240 align:middle line:84% and the newspaper and television to lie to you about it 00:02:45.240 --> 00:02:48.330 align:middle line:90% and it's marvelous. 00:02:48.330 --> 00:02:52.980 align:middle line:84% But well, in that kind of house, no. 00:02:52.980 --> 00:02:54.390 align:middle line:84% I had the feeling that moths were 00:02:54.390 --> 00:02:56.730 align:middle line:84% especially subject to the kind of behavior 00:02:56.730 --> 00:02:58.975 align:middle line:90% that I was worried about. 00:02:58.975 --> 00:03:00.600 align:middle line:84% Every one of them used to get himself-- 00:03:00.600 --> 00:03:01.975 align:middle line:84% I swear every moth in that county 00:03:01.975 --> 00:03:04.980 align:middle line:84% got outside my study window every night beating 00:03:04.980 --> 00:03:06.930 align:middle line:84% his little wings madly, his eyes gleaming 00:03:06.930 --> 00:03:09.480 align:middle line:84% with that insane desire to get in there, [LAUGHTER] 00:03:09.480 --> 00:03:12.900 align:middle line:90% and quite a lot of them made it. 00:03:12.900 --> 00:03:14.790 align:middle line:84% But the weird thing about them was 00:03:14.790 --> 00:03:19.380 align:middle line:84% that those moths that had made it were 10 times much more 00:03:19.380 --> 00:03:24.960 align:middle line:84% desperate to get back out for very much better reasons. 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:30.370 align:middle line:84% I decided I didn't know anyone quite so human as moths. 00:03:30.370 --> 00:03:32.070 align:middle line:90% It's called "Lying Awake." 00:03:32.070 --> 00:03:36.240 align:middle line:84% "This moth caught in the room tonight, squirmed up, 00:03:36.240 --> 00:03:40.320 align:middle line:84% sniper style between the rusty edges of the screen, 00:03:40.320 --> 00:03:43.310 align:middle line:84% then, long as the room stayed light, 00:03:43.310 --> 00:03:47.850 align:middle line:84% lay here, content in some corner hole. 00:03:47.850 --> 00:03:53.220 align:middle line:84% Now that we have settled into bed though, he can't sleep. 00:03:53.220 --> 00:03:56.910 align:middle line:84% Overhead, he hurls himself at the blank wall. 00:03:56.910 --> 00:03:59.640 align:middle line:84% Each night hordes of these flutterers 00:03:59.640 --> 00:04:02.730 align:middle line:84% haunt and climb my study window pane. 00:04:02.730 --> 00:04:08.310 align:middle line:84% Fired by reflection, their insane eyes gleam, 00:04:08.310 --> 00:04:11.980 align:middle line:90% they know what they want. 00:04:11.980 --> 00:04:14.790 align:middle line:84% How do the petulant things survive? 00:04:14.790 --> 00:04:18.600 align:middle line:84% Out in the fields I have a place, and proper work, 00:04:18.600 --> 00:04:20.550 align:middle line:90% furthering the race. 00:04:20.550 --> 00:04:22.860 align:middle line:84% Why this blind fanatical drive indoors? 00:04:22.860 --> 00:04:25.050 align:middle line:84% Why rush at every spark, cigar, headlamp 00:04:25.050 --> 00:04:28.620 align:middle line:84% railway warning to knock off your wings 00:04:28.620 --> 00:04:32.610 align:middle line:90% and starve by morning? 00:04:32.610 --> 00:04:36.720 align:middle line:84% And what could a moth fear in the dark 00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:41.160 align:middle line:84% compared to what you meet inside? 00:04:41.160 --> 00:04:44.310 align:middle line:84% Still he rams the fluorescent face of the clock, 00:04:44.310 --> 00:04:48.210 align:middle line:84% thinks that's another place of light and families 00:04:48.210 --> 00:04:50.490 align:middle line:90% where he'll hide. 00:04:50.490 --> 00:04:53.790 align:middle line:84% We'd ought to trap him in a jar, or come 00:04:53.790 --> 00:04:59.220 align:middle line:84% like the white coats with a net and turn him out toward living. 00:04:59.220 --> 00:05:05.720 align:middle line:84% Yet, we don't, we take things as they are."