WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.440 align:middle line:90% --a poem call "Memory." 00:00:01.440 --> 00:00:03.990 align:middle line:84% Somewhere, this is, in some ways, 00:00:03.990 --> 00:00:07.020 align:middle line:84% a memory of Allen Ginsberg [INAUDIBLE]. 00:00:07.020 --> 00:00:10.470 align:middle line:84% But I can't quite quickly recall. 00:00:10.470 --> 00:00:14.820 align:middle line:84% One of his, toward the end of his life, books, 00:00:14.820 --> 00:00:20.850 align:middle line:84% he has a dream in which his mother tells him 00:00:20.850 --> 00:00:24.330 align:middle line:90% that she's met God. 00:00:24.330 --> 00:00:28.890 align:middle line:84% And God turns out to be an old and somewhat derelict 00:00:28.890 --> 00:00:33.390 align:middle line:84% person, a man who lives across the river in the Palisades. 00:00:33.390 --> 00:00:34.650 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:34.650 --> 00:00:38.940 align:middle line:84% And he lives in a rather humble manner. 00:00:38.940 --> 00:00:41.180 align:middle line:84% And she talks to him and asks him 00:00:41.180 --> 00:00:45.240 align:middle line:84% how come he's let the world into such a state. 00:00:45.240 --> 00:00:49.510 align:middle line:84% And he says, well, he's done his best he but just can't keep it 00:00:49.510 --> 00:00:50.470 align:middle line:90% together. 00:00:50.470 --> 00:00:53.410 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:00:53.410 --> 00:00:55.380 align:middle line:90% 00:00:55.380 --> 00:00:58.275 align:middle line:84% It was wonderful, I was reading Nietzsche no less, or something 00:00:58.275 --> 00:00:59.150 align:middle line:90% to do with Nietzsche. 00:00:59.150 --> 00:01:03.250 align:middle line:84% It came up as a wonderful quote of Nietzsche's of Stendhal, 00:01:03.250 --> 00:01:06.602 align:middle line:90% a terrific French writer. 00:01:06.602 --> 00:01:08.630 align:middle line:84% And he's really saying, he really wishes-- 00:01:08.630 --> 00:01:11.990 align:middle line:84% one of the minds he really delights in is Stendhal's. 00:01:11.990 --> 00:01:16.190 align:middle line:84% And he says, in fact, he almost wishes that he hadn't really 00:01:16.190 --> 00:01:20.480 align:middle line:84% existed, because he preempts all of Nietzsche's sort 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:23.330 align:middle line:84% of punchlines about religion, et cetera. 00:01:23.330 --> 00:01:28.700 align:middle line:84% And the great one he quotes as instances of Stendhal's, 00:01:28.700 --> 00:01:34.010 align:middle line:84% a vigorous atheist, saying, the only excuse God has 00:01:34.010 --> 00:01:35.838 align:middle line:90% is that he doesn't exist. 00:01:35.838 --> 00:01:38.228 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:38.228 --> 00:01:40.620 align:middle line:90% 00:01:40.620 --> 00:01:42.140 align:middle line:90% Which is pretty quick. 00:01:42.140 --> 00:01:44.660 align:middle line:90% 00:01:44.660 --> 00:01:49.220 align:middle line:84% That's the only thing he can say in defense is he doesn't exist. 00:01:49.220 --> 00:01:51.676 align:middle line:90% Otherwise, he's in trouble. 00:01:51.676 --> 00:01:53.450 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:53.450 --> 00:01:54.590 align:middle line:90% "Memory." 00:01:54.590 --> 00:01:57.110 align:middle line:84% Somewhere, Allen Ginsberg is recalling 00:01:57.110 --> 00:02:00.010 align:middle line:90% his mother's dream about God. 00:02:00.010 --> 00:02:05.180 align:middle line:84% An old man, she says, living across the river in Palisades, 00:02:05.180 --> 00:02:10.910 align:middle line:84% obscure, battered, in a shack with hardly any provisions. 00:02:10.910 --> 00:02:14.030 align:middle line:84% Straight off she asks him, "How could you 00:02:14.030 --> 00:02:16.850 align:middle line:84% let the world get into such a mess?" 00:02:16.850 --> 00:02:21.770 align:middle line:84% And he can answer only, I did the best I could. 00:02:21.770 --> 00:02:24.920 align:middle line:84% She tells Allen he looks neglected 00:02:24.920 --> 00:02:28.610 align:middle line:84% and there are yellow pee stains on his underpants. 00:02:28.610 --> 00:02:33.200 align:middle line:84% "Hard to hear God could not do any better than any of us-- 00:02:33.200 --> 00:02:38.570 align:middle line:84% just another old man sitting on some bench or some chair. 00:02:38.570 --> 00:02:41.240 align:middle line:84% I remember it was a urologist told me 00:02:41.240 --> 00:02:44.840 align:middle line:84% how to strip the remaining pee from my penis 00:02:44.840 --> 00:02:47.240 align:middle line:84% by using my fingers' pressure, just 00:02:47.240 --> 00:02:50.330 align:middle line:84% back off the balls, the prostate, then 00:02:50.330 --> 00:02:53.390 align:middle line:84% bringing it forward so that the last drops of it 00:02:53.390 --> 00:02:57.740 align:middle line:84% would go into the toilet, not onto my clothes. 00:02:57.740 --> 00:03:01.610 align:middle line:84% Still it's of necessity an imperfect solution. 00:03:01.610 --> 00:03:05.480 align:middle line:84% How stand at the public urinal, seeming to play with oneself? 00:03:05.480 --> 00:03:06.260 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:03:06.260 --> 00:03:10.750 align:middle line:84% Yet, how not-- if that's what it takes not to walk out, 00:03:10.750 --> 00:03:15.800 align:middle line:84% awkward, wide-legged, damp from the crotch down? 00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:19.910 align:middle line:84% I cannot believe age could be easy for anyone. 00:03:19.910 --> 00:03:23.450 align:middle line:84% On Golden Pond may be a pleasant picture 00:03:23.450 --> 00:03:27.290 align:middle line:84% of a lake in that general area of New Hampshire, 00:03:27.290 --> 00:03:28.790 align:middle line:90% but it's not true-- 00:03:28.790 --> 00:03:30.230 align:middle line:90% any of it. 00:03:30.230 --> 00:03:32.570 align:middle line:84% Please, don't put, if you can help, 00:03:32.570 --> 00:03:35.325 align:middle line:84% your loved ones in a care facility. 00:03:35.325 --> 00:03:37.340 align:middle line:90% They will only die there. 00:03:37.340 --> 00:03:39.350 align:middle line:90% Everyone's sick there. 00:03:39.350 --> 00:03:41.780 align:middle line:90% It's why they've come. 00:03:41.780 --> 00:03:45.590 align:middle line:84% I don't know now what will or may happen to me. 00:03:45.590 --> 00:03:50.420 align:middle line:84% I don't feel any longer a simple person with a name. 00:03:50.420 --> 00:03:55.040 align:middle line:84% I'm like a kid at his or her first day of school-- 00:03:55.040 --> 00:03:58.310 align:middle line:84% all new, all surprising, the teacher 00:03:58.310 --> 00:04:03.200 align:middle line:84% with her curious, large face, the other unexpected children, 00:04:03.200 --> 00:04:06.830 align:middle line:90% all of us finally unsure. 00:04:06.830 --> 00:04:10.340 align:middle line:84% The seeming fractures of a self grow ominous, 00:04:10.340 --> 00:04:13.370 align:middle line:84% like peaks of old mountains remembered 00:04:13.370 --> 00:04:16.910 align:middle line:90% but faint in the obscuring fog. 00:04:16.910 --> 00:04:21.110 align:middle line:84% Time to push off, do some push-ups perhaps, 00:04:21.110 --> 00:04:26.500 align:middle line:84% take a walk with the neighbors I haven't spoken to in years." 00:04:26.500 --> 00:04:27.000 align:middle line:90%