WEBVTT

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So the second thing I'm
going to read this evening

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is an excerpt from an as yet
unfinished and untitled work.

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I think that's all I'm going
to say about it because I don't

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really know what it is yet.

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"White squares and white
squares and white squares:

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A landscape of silence.

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The way glass breaks
into tines, triangles,

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the way it is aqua green
and blue all at once.

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How it reflects light
or drinks it in.

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There were persimmons on
the tree, velvety orange

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like tongues.

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The dog is a slump in the shade.

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Coffee sits unwanted
on the window ledge.

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This is summer, this fluttering.

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Willow branches are here,
red, cranberry reeds calling.

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And the snails and what is dark.

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There is always a looking.

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Each night, the candle and
circles on the ceiling.

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The dark stone and
the translucent one.

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There is always an
aching, always that lack.

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Each day we lose what
is most important.

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And the leaves still
falling from the tree.

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I watched a woman caught up
in a remolina, that twist

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torrent of wind and dust,
on the street yesterday.

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No one could help her.

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She was in its maw.

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It twisted and
twisted around her.

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And she swayed and
tried to cover her face.

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What is true is that what
we have is each other.

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No one got out of their cars.

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No one tried to help.

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The body at its edge
happens only alone.

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Though connection with
each other is what we need,

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sometimes it has to be
pushed on us forcefully,

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as when Robin Williams
says "I love you"

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over and over and over until
Matt Damon finally breaks down.

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If there is a silence at
the center of everything.

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If there is no way
to ever go back.

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In the sun the
world becomes white.

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Bleached desert, no play
of shadow and light.

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In Argentina we
walked and walked

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and here too we walk and walk.

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Terra finisterre. If what were to
matter were a sort of light

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or shatter, a
distillation of color,

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the reflection of 1,000
shards of light off the ocean

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at the world's end.

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And what blue offers,
eyes upturned to ours.

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If our walking and
walking will somehow

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carry us into something.

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The tower bells chime
in the distance.

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We are this turning,
flickering, licking inconstance.

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Who.

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How.

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[? Bhikkhus ?], the Buddha began.

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Everything is burning.

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We are the way the sun bleaches
everything in the afternoon,

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the way even flowers droop,
then regain their stance.

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We are quiet children.

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We are left behind.

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Shooting, sparking
spitting flame,

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and then the ash that remains.

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We are the snapdragons
outside the door,

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the way the ants swarm into
each spot you've just stepped.

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The afternoon monsoon.

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The bells of Loretto Chapel
in the heavy, warm afternoon.

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The weight of the air
yesterday felt like ocean

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here in the middle
of all this land.

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We are the Lorca poem
in the afternoon.

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The Spanish Civil War,
the woman curled over,

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moaning, her breasts cut
off, the broken snow falling,

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the woman white upon the tree.

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Gaudi is still the only
person buried in the crypt

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of his Sagrada Familia.

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Many of his three dimensional
models for the church's design

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were burned during
the Spanish Civil War,

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of which Lorca writes: "A
night of reclining torsos

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and of stars with broken muzzles
waits for crevices of dawn

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into which it may tumble."

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City of Musk and sorrow
with your cinnamon towers.

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When Marina Abramović
stopped for her 2010 exhibit,

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The Artist is Present, she
was in a chair in a red dress.

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Between each audience member
who came to sit across from her,

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she dropped her eyes to her
lap, perhaps closed them.

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Once someone had taken
the seat across from her,

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she raised her gaze.

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On one of these days, Ulay comes
and sits in the chair across

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from her.

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He is restless, nervous perhaps.

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Hasn't seen her in years.

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Stretches out first one
leg and then the other.

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He looks at her.

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When she raises her face, a
wave of shock flits across it.

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She holds his gaze.

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He closes his eyes, shakes his
head as though in disbelief.

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Opens them again.

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Tears streamed down her face.

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She leans forward, stretches
her arms far across the table.

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He does the same.

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Their hands meet in the middle.

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Only for a moment.

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She sits back again.

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He stands.

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She wipes the water
from her cheeks.

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Her hands stay over her
face for a long time.

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Finally she sits up
straighter, drops her hands,

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raises her face to meet the
gaze of the next person.

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How do we shift from
choosing to asking?

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The question blossoms along
the lines of the bone and then

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spreads, droops, like a
spent bloom vines, expands,

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climbs up your throat.

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And after all, the sagebrush
in the dense sun outside

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the window and the tree,
which keeps trying to grow.

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Scarlet and thirsting,
scarlet and thirsting.

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Doesn't this describe every
moment of us, every atom of us,

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small light smoldering
through all the cracks?

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We are in that stillness, which
is also a kind of gathering.

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In Cage on Cage, John Cage
speaks of his belief that

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for our survival, we will
need to become a we instead

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of billions and billions of I's.

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He's speaking in the
shadow of the Cold War.

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Today we stand beneath
a different shadow,

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but still in the shade.

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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom
the Catholic church prohibited

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from publishing his writings
while he was still alive,

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also believed in this
singularity, this unity,

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that our knowledge
wrapped the earth,

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almost an enervated
layer of skin.

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In the film last night,
an entire flock of birds,

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thousands of small black birds,
swirling and turning back

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on themselves, swelling and
curving like a crescent of ink

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dropped into water, expanding
and curling in on themselves,

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taking up the whole sky.

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A we instead of
1,000 separately.

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Voices like a throat
full of joy and deep.

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Thanks.

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It's been such a pleasure.

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[APPLAUSE]

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