WEBVTT

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I really don't want to spill
my water on this computer.

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And I'm capable of
doing such a thing.

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Well let's start with some soup.

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It's always good to start
with soup, isn't it.

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Primordial Soup.

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How is the sound
all the way back?

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Is it good?

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You're good?

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OK.

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Primordial Soup.

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The idea came to
me in the kitchen,

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while I was cutting cilantro
for the black beans,

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and my friend and I were
talking while the sea outside

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remained the sea, holding
its mysteries in the dark,

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tempting us with
its surface dazzle.

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The idea came, as if a theory
of war I'd been working on.

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Though, in truth,
it just bubbled up

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like the first disturbance
in a pot that means

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the soup is about to boil.

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Is there something
in us, I asked

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him, my friend who was
waving the celery tops at me

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and asking with his eyes if
they belonged in the soup.

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And I was saying,
yes, with my eyebrows.

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And by "us," I didn't
mean the man and the woman

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feeling the man and woman
thing while cooking together

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in the kitchen by the sea,
where the wind carried salt

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into our every breath.

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But I meant our animal
selves, our mysteries

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in the dark of mind and body.

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That doesn't feel balanced
without the threat

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of dangerous animals,
the African brain of us,

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the sinew and blood, longing
for the bond between predator

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and prey that we've
tossed with the entrails

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of farm-raised salmon and beef.

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Mine was an amateur theory
of war that we wage it.

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Not our kind, so it's
fine to kill them,

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mindless of the mechanism
ticking and cranking

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and blowing up beneath
the surface inside us.

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We don't even know what
we're doing when we do it.

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What lesson in being
human did we not first

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learn from the animals?

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The cheetah was the
first domestic cat.

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In ancient Egypt, the
keepers asked, as we ask,

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can we please make the violent
lie down and go to sleep,

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and when it wakes to lap
calmly from the saucer?

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And then, the something
that was in us was soup.

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A liquor that had blown from
the sea right into our bowls.

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