WEBVTT

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Seasons-- yeah, so just
getting the seasons right

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and just getting an exact
notion of what they are.

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So I'm going to read an old
poem that my dad liked a lot.

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He was a big supporter
and my mother as well.

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This is from my book,
Bright Existence.

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Poets like nonexistence.

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They like not existing, but
also making it into poems.

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And it's-- and it's really true
that nonexistence is as solid

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as existence.

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So I wrote some poems
about waking up at dawn

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and not-- realizing
that you're nothing,

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but that was a very
solid thing to wake up.

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The not being anything, because
you got to be everything else.

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"Black Series."

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"Then in the scalloped
leaves of the plane tree,

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a series of short sharp
who's; a little owl

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had learned to count.

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You lay in your bed as
usual, not existing,

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because of the bright
edges pressing in.

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All at once the black
thick O's of the owl

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made the very
diagram you needed.

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Where there had been two kinds
of infinity, now there was one.

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The smudged circle
around the soul

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was the one the Gnostic's
saw around the cosmos,

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the mathematical toy train,
the snake eating its tail.

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Relieved by the thought that
the owl's O's had changed,

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but not you.

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That something could change
and not be lost in you,

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you asked the voice for more
existence and the voice said,

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'yes, but you must understand,
I loved you not despite

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your great emptiness,
but because of your great

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emptiness.'"

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