WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.437 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:00:03.437 --> 00:00:08.360 align:middle line:90% 00:00:08.360 --> 00:00:11.180 align:middle line:90% Thank you so much, Maya. 00:00:11.180 --> 00:00:16.129 align:middle line:84% I met Maya in the Green Mountains of Vermont 00:00:16.129 --> 00:00:18.920 align:middle line:84% a year ago at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers' 00:00:18.920 --> 00:00:19.640 align:middle line:90% Conference. 00:00:19.640 --> 00:00:23.900 align:middle line:90% 00:00:23.900 --> 00:00:27.140 align:middle line:84% Like she was talking about here, about binaries and overcoming 00:00:27.140 --> 00:00:34.160 align:middle line:84% binaries, she practices precisely that in her own work 00:00:34.160 --> 00:00:40.080 align:middle line:84% and is part of, really, I think, an amazing surging-- 00:00:40.080 --> 00:00:43.250 align:middle line:84% We'll talk about this keyword in a minute. 00:00:43.250 --> 00:00:50.960 align:middle line:84% --global project of moving beyond old schisms between 00:00:50.960 --> 00:00:55.610 align:middle line:84% movements of people who care deeply about place, 00:00:55.610 --> 00:01:00.320 align:middle line:84% about history, about culture, about animals, about land, 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:02.830 align:middle line:90% about plants-- 00:01:02.830 --> 00:01:07.790 align:middle line:84% And how, in Laudato Si', Pope Francis tells us, 00:01:07.790 --> 00:01:11.030 align:middle line:84% like Saint Francis did in the Canticle of the Sun, 00:01:11.030 --> 00:01:16.550 align:middle line:84% how brother Sun and sister Moon and sister 00:01:16.550 --> 00:01:21.380 align:middle line:84% Wind all come together in one beautiful whole, 00:01:21.380 --> 00:01:25.520 align:middle line:84% that when we open our hearts and minds, 00:01:25.520 --> 00:01:30.200 align:middle line:84% we can sometimes apprehend truly being whole. 00:01:30.200 --> 00:01:34.850 align:middle line:84% So let me set up my geography a little bit here. 00:01:34.850 --> 00:01:39.335 align:middle line:84% I am not a PowerPoint guy, but I've got a PowerPoint tonight. 00:01:39.335 --> 00:01:42.800 align:middle line:90% 00:01:42.800 --> 00:01:46.040 align:middle line:84% I've got to put an asterisk around this reading. 00:01:46.040 --> 00:01:50.910 align:middle line:90% 00:01:50.910 --> 00:01:53.190 align:middle line:84% This is especially for the creative writing students. 00:01:53.190 --> 00:01:54.260 align:middle line:84% Raise your hands, the creative writing 00:01:54.260 --> 00:01:55.550 align:middle line:90% students who are out there. 00:01:55.550 --> 00:01:58.430 align:middle line:90% Hey, I met most of you. 00:01:58.430 --> 00:02:01.820 align:middle line:84% They get drunk every night and I was with them last night. 00:02:01.820 --> 00:02:02.990 align:middle line:90% They're real writers. 00:02:02.990 --> 00:02:09.470 align:middle line:90% 00:02:09.470 --> 00:02:14.240 align:middle line:84% I got a question today about impasses in writing, 00:02:14.240 --> 00:02:16.070 align:middle line:90% about getting stuck. 00:02:16.070 --> 00:02:18.467 align:middle line:84% People used to call it writer's block. 00:02:18.467 --> 00:02:20.300 align:middle line:84% Thankfully, that term has gone out of vogue. 00:02:20.300 --> 00:02:26.190 align:middle line:84% I think it's very 20th century, very Mad Men era kind of thing. 00:02:26.190 --> 00:02:28.700 align:middle line:90% There's no such thing. 00:02:28.700 --> 00:02:30.260 align:middle line:90% And indeed, impasse-- 00:02:30.260 --> 00:02:32.600 align:middle line:84% Impasse, though, the word impasse itself, 00:02:32.600 --> 00:02:35.420 align:middle line:90% does have a deep history. 00:02:35.420 --> 00:02:38.630 align:middle line:84% The Greeks were dealing with it as Aporia-- 00:02:38.630 --> 00:02:40.280 align:middle line:90% How mean philosophy majors? 00:02:40.280 --> 00:02:40.830 align:middle line:90% No? 00:02:40.830 --> 00:02:41.330 align:middle line:90% None. 00:02:41.330 --> 00:02:43.040 align:middle line:90% Anybody studied philosophy? 00:02:43.040 --> 00:02:43.730 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:02:43.730 --> 00:02:44.750 align:middle line:90% Aporia. 00:02:44.750 --> 00:02:47.950 align:middle line:84% The Greeks talked about Aporia a lot. 00:02:47.950 --> 00:02:51.100 align:middle line:84% But Aporia wasn't actually a block. 00:02:51.100 --> 00:02:53.500 align:middle line:84% It was part of a process that you moved through. 00:02:53.500 --> 00:02:54.400 align:middle line:90% It wasn't a wall. 00:02:54.400 --> 00:02:55.600 align:middle line:90% It was a sieve. 00:02:55.600 --> 00:02:56.750 align:middle line:90% It was a moment. 00:02:56.750 --> 00:03:00.970 align:middle line:84% It was an ambiguous moment where several forces were at play 00:03:00.970 --> 00:03:02.785 align:middle line:90% in contradiction in the soul. 00:03:02.785 --> 00:03:05.590 align:middle line:90% 00:03:05.590 --> 00:03:09.550 align:middle line:84% So it got kind of collapsed, I think, into the idea, 00:03:09.550 --> 00:03:15.355 align:middle line:84% in the English language, that it was more blockage than passage. 00:03:15.355 --> 00:03:18.160 align:middle line:90% 00:03:18.160 --> 00:03:20.800 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to model for the creative writing students, 00:03:20.800 --> 00:03:22.633 align:middle line:84% in particular, and for everybody else. 00:03:22.633 --> 00:03:24.050 align:middle line:84% Lovers of literature here tonight, 00:03:24.050 --> 00:03:25.092 align:middle line:90% thank you for being here. 00:03:25.092 --> 00:03:27.130 align:middle line:84% And thank you to all the coalition 00:03:27.130 --> 00:03:32.020 align:middle line:84% of sponsors on both sides, environmental sciences 00:03:32.020 --> 00:03:35.920 align:middle line:84% and creative literary arts, for bringing me here. 00:03:35.920 --> 00:03:41.050 align:middle line:84% I'm going to model what happens when a writer is at impasse. 00:03:41.050 --> 00:03:44.740 align:middle line:84% I am at a impasse right now in my writing. 00:03:44.740 --> 00:03:46.630 align:middle line:90% In a moment of-- 00:03:46.630 --> 00:03:49.000 align:middle line:84% I'm using, instead of impasse, really, 00:03:49.000 --> 00:03:51.100 align:middle line:90% as a keyword, surgimiento. 00:03:51.100 --> 00:03:54.280 align:middle line:90% "Surgimiento". 00:03:54.280 --> 00:03:56.950 align:middle line:84% I was looking for the translation 00:03:56.950 --> 00:04:02.290 align:middle line:84% because I first thought of this idea in English 00:04:02.290 --> 00:04:09.005 align:middle line:84% and I was with a friend hiking in the desert a few weeks ago, 00:04:09.005 --> 00:04:11.050 align:middle line:84% a person I'm just trying to get to know, 00:04:11.050 --> 00:04:14.080 align:middle line:84% who both loves the land and literature, 00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:16.540 align:middle line:84% kind of in the spirit of what Maya was talking about. 00:04:16.540 --> 00:04:19.300 align:middle line:84% Her name is María José Jiménez, an amazing literary translator 00:04:19.300 --> 00:04:20.500 align:middle line:90% as well. 00:04:20.500 --> 00:04:25.210 align:middle line:84% And I was talking to her about the philosophical idea 00:04:25.210 --> 00:04:27.370 align:middle line:84% of emergence and psychological idea of emergence, 00:04:27.370 --> 00:04:29.710 align:middle line:90% or spiritual idea of emergence. 00:04:29.710 --> 00:04:32.140 align:middle line:84% And I said, you know, I've been trying 00:04:32.140 --> 00:04:35.420 align:middle line:84% to translate it into Spanish and it doesn't sound quite right. 00:04:35.420 --> 00:04:39.560 align:middle line:84% There is a verb in Spanish, emerger, to emerge, 00:04:39.560 --> 00:04:41.440 align:middle line:90% and you can use that. 00:04:41.440 --> 00:04:46.960 align:middle line:84% Tú emerges de la nada y apareces llena de luz. 00:04:46.960 --> 00:04:48.460 align:middle line:84% You could say something like that. 00:04:48.460 --> 00:04:50.410 align:middle line:90% You emerge. 00:04:50.410 --> 00:04:55.270 align:middle line:84% But to say emergence, then you would have to say emergencia, 00:04:55.270 --> 00:04:56.830 align:middle line:84% and that would have a double meaning. 00:04:56.830 --> 00:04:58.450 align:middle line:84% You could see emergencia does exist, 00:04:58.450 --> 00:05:01.240 align:middle line:84% third or fourth definition, as emergence, 00:05:01.240 --> 00:05:03.610 align:middle line:90% but the first one is emergency. 00:05:03.610 --> 00:05:06.070 align:middle line:84% So I didn't want to put the red flashing lights 00:05:06.070 --> 00:05:08.595 align:middle line:90% on the word I wanted. 00:05:08.595 --> 00:05:09.970 align:middle line:84% And so we batted it around a bit. 00:05:09.970 --> 00:05:11.678 align:middle line:84% And she's an amazing literary translator. 00:05:11.678 --> 00:05:12.850 align:middle line:90% And it came to her. 00:05:12.850 --> 00:05:16.450 align:middle line:90% It's something that surges. 00:05:16.450 --> 00:05:19.060 align:middle line:84% All translation is about approximation. 00:05:19.060 --> 00:05:21.580 align:middle line:90% It's never completely perfect. 00:05:21.580 --> 00:05:25.630 align:middle line:84% But I landed with her prompting at surgimiento. 00:05:25.630 --> 00:05:29.800 align:middle line:84% So that's the word I'm using as an approximation of the idea 00:05:29.800 --> 00:05:36.130 align:middle line:84% of emergence in English and in philosophical, spiritual 00:05:36.130 --> 00:05:37.900 align:middle line:90% traditions. 00:05:37.900 --> 00:05:42.610 align:middle line:84% I am emerging tonight with texts that 00:05:42.610 --> 00:05:45.470 align:middle line:90% are in no particular order. 00:05:45.470 --> 00:05:50.080 align:middle line:84% I'm going to have some sort of order emerge. 00:05:50.080 --> 00:05:53.350 align:middle line:84% I have a PowerPoint to guide me into the desert with you, 00:05:53.350 --> 00:05:55.840 align:middle line:84% to take you along with me into the desert. 00:05:55.840 --> 00:05:56.980 align:middle line:90% Oh, we're in the desert. 00:05:56.980 --> 00:05:58.870 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:05:58.870 --> 00:06:01.180 align:middle line:84% And I'll tell you how I got there. 00:06:01.180 --> 00:06:03.610 align:middle line:84% And the several deserts in the desert 00:06:03.610 --> 00:06:06.310 align:middle line:84% that I'm inhabiting simultaneously. 00:06:06.310 --> 00:06:08.860 align:middle line:84% And eventually, we're going to fall off the cliff. 00:06:08.860 --> 00:06:11.800 align:middle line:84% There will be no more PowerPoint and there 00:06:11.800 --> 00:06:15.970 align:middle line:84% will be just some disjointed raw text 00:06:15.970 --> 00:06:19.480 align:middle line:84% that I'm working with right now that is at a very beginning 00:06:19.480 --> 00:06:29.140 align:middle line:84% stage of writing, alongside a liberal usage of excerpts 00:06:29.140 --> 00:06:32.770 align:middle line:84% of people I should not be putting alongside my text, 00:06:32.770 --> 00:06:35.470 align:middle line:84% but they're going to forgive me from the grave. 00:06:35.470 --> 00:06:37.540 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:37.540 --> 00:06:39.280 align:middle line:90% So "Surgimiento". 00:06:39.280 --> 00:06:46.150 align:middle line:90% 00:06:46.150 --> 00:06:49.320 align:middle line:84% I have been emerging and re-emerging in the desert 00:06:49.320 --> 00:06:51.390 align:middle line:90% most of my life. 00:06:51.390 --> 00:06:53.130 align:middle line:84% Some of my earliest childhood memories 00:06:53.130 --> 00:06:55.830 align:middle line:84% are of gazing through the family red Chevy station wagon 00:06:55.830 --> 00:06:59.010 align:middle line:84% windows upon the furnace floor of the Colorado desert, Palm 00:06:59.010 --> 00:07:02.940 align:middle line:84% Springs, Indio, and the other desert cities of the Coachella 00:07:02.940 --> 00:07:05.580 align:middle line:84% Valley, once famous for its date shakes, 00:07:05.580 --> 00:07:07.920 align:middle line:90% and now as a hipster desert. 00:07:07.920 --> 00:07:12.270 align:middle line:84% The desert that I arrived in as a kid was not Palm Springs, 00:07:12.270 --> 00:07:14.520 align:middle line:84% was not the strip in Palm Springs. 00:07:14.520 --> 00:07:17.820 align:middle line:84% My father was a blue collar worker with a middle class 00:07:17.820 --> 00:07:19.890 align:middle line:84% wage that pulled us into the middle class, 00:07:19.890 --> 00:07:23.250 align:middle line:84% but still called himself a child of the Depression 00:07:23.250 --> 00:07:25.410 align:middle line:84% and literally has picked up pennies on the street 00:07:25.410 --> 00:07:26.080 align:middle line:90% his whole life. 00:07:26.080 --> 00:07:28.620 align:middle line:84% He has a huge jar of all the pennies he's picked up 00:07:28.620 --> 00:07:30.060 align:middle line:90% on the street over the years. 00:07:30.060 --> 00:07:33.330 align:middle line:84% He was always looking for the cut-rate motel rates, which 00:07:33.330 --> 00:07:36.720 align:middle line:84% were in Indio, well 30 miles past Palm Springs, 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:40.560 align:middle line:84% in the dead of the dog days of August when it was 120 degrees 00:07:40.560 --> 00:07:43.050 align:middle line:84% and the motel rates were at their cheapest. 00:07:43.050 --> 00:07:45.270 align:middle line:84% That was my first introduction to the desert, 00:07:45.270 --> 00:07:47.940 align:middle line:84% which happened almost simultaneously 00:07:47.940 --> 00:07:51.030 align:middle line:84% with my introduction to the desert as Western. 00:07:51.030 --> 00:07:52.890 align:middle line:84% My father, Mexican-American, growing up 00:07:52.890 --> 00:07:56.520 align:middle line:84% in Los Angeles and the borderlands and the deserts 00:07:56.520 --> 00:08:00.720 align:middle line:84% that my grandparents came from in northern Mexico, 00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:04.500 align:middle line:84% was very much a child of the Western. 00:08:04.500 --> 00:08:08.040 align:middle line:84% Brown kids were children of the westerns 00:08:08.040 --> 00:08:09.630 align:middle line:90% as much as white kids were. 00:08:09.630 --> 00:08:12.180 align:middle line:84% It's just that when they played the Western on the school 00:08:12.180 --> 00:08:17.400 align:middle line:84% playground, guess who was the Indian and guess who got shot? 00:08:17.400 --> 00:08:19.020 align:middle line:90% My dad. 00:08:19.020 --> 00:08:24.720 align:middle line:84% This is an iconic moment from John Ford's The Searchers, 00:08:24.720 --> 00:08:28.740 align:middle line:84% classic Western that's endlessly interpretable. 00:08:28.740 --> 00:08:33.000 align:middle line:84% And later on, I would realize was my first foray 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:36.510 align:middle line:84% into postcolonial studies in black and white. 00:08:36.510 --> 00:08:41.984 align:middle line:84% Then, at a very early age, I saw this film. 00:08:41.984 --> 00:08:45.180 align:middle line:90% 00:08:45.180 --> 00:08:48.570 align:middle line:84% Let's see if we can get the audio going. 00:08:48.570 --> 00:08:49.600 align:middle line:90% There's a little clip. 00:08:49.600 --> 00:08:50.725 align:middle line:90% Let's see if it cooperates. 00:08:50.725 --> 00:08:53.658 align:middle line:84% If it doesn't, I can perform it for you. 00:08:53.658 --> 00:08:55.575 align:middle line:84% Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Humphrey Bogart. 00:08:55.575 --> 00:08:58.668 align:middle line:90% 00:08:58.668 --> 00:09:00.050 align:middle line:90% Ja, ja, ja. 00:09:00.050 --> 00:09:02.390 align:middle line:90% Está echadita. 00:09:02.390 --> 00:09:03.740 align:middle line:90% Oiga, señor. 00:09:03.740 --> 00:09:05.360 align:middle line:90% We are Federales. 00:09:05.360 --> 00:09:08.090 align:middle line:90% You know, The mountain police. 00:09:08.090 --> 00:09:10.640 align:middle line:84% If you are the police, where are your badges? 00:09:10.640 --> 00:09:12.140 align:middle line:90% Badges? 00:09:12.140 --> 00:09:14.450 align:middle line:90% We ain't got no badges. 00:09:14.450 --> 00:09:16.320 align:middle line:90% We don't need no badges. 00:09:16.320 --> 00:09:18.710 align:middle line:84% I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges. 00:09:18.710 --> 00:09:21.470 align:middle line:84% You'd better not come any closer. 00:09:21.470 --> 00:09:28.040 align:middle line:84% So that little bit of dialogue, which some of you might 00:09:28.040 --> 00:09:31.430 align:middle line:90% have seen. 00:09:31.430 --> 00:09:34.820 align:middle line:84% I just discovered that that famous bit of it 00:09:34.820 --> 00:09:37.670 align:middle line:84% is slightly altered from the original B. Traven 00:09:37.670 --> 00:09:40.040 align:middle line:84% novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 00:09:40.040 --> 00:09:41.840 align:middle line:90% that the film is based on. 00:09:41.840 --> 00:09:44.840 align:middle line:84% The dialogue in the novel is rated R. 00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:47.960 align:middle line:84% And I can't resist quoting it in full here. 00:09:47.960 --> 00:09:49.130 align:middle line:90% Badges? 00:09:49.130 --> 00:09:51.440 align:middle line:90% To goddamn hell with badges. 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:52.640 align:middle line:90% We have no badges. 00:09:52.640 --> 00:09:54.840 align:middle line:90% In fact, we don't need badges. 00:09:54.840 --> 00:09:57.320 align:middle line:84% I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges, 00:09:57.320 --> 00:09:58.670 align:middle line:90% you goddamn cabrón. 00:09:58.670 --> 00:10:00.350 align:middle line:90% Y chinga tu madre también, güey. 00:10:00.350 --> 00:10:03.140 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:10:03.140 --> 00:10:05.600 align:middle line:84% B. Traven was a German anarchist. 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:06.390 align:middle line:90% This is true. 00:10:06.390 --> 00:10:08.510 align:middle line:84% Anybody know the story of B. Traven? 00:10:08.510 --> 00:10:10.880 align:middle line:84% B. Traven, German anarchist, there's 00:10:10.880 --> 00:10:13.460 align:middle line:84% a lot of apocryphal stories about him. 00:10:13.460 --> 00:10:15.822 align:middle line:84% But it's pretty commonly accepted now 00:10:15.822 --> 00:10:17.780 align:middle line:84% that he was a radical German anarchist arriving 00:10:17.780 --> 00:10:18.560 align:middle line:90% in the United States. 00:10:18.560 --> 00:10:19.935 align:middle line:84% He spent a lot of time in Mexico. 00:10:19.935 --> 00:10:22.790 align:middle line:84% All serious modernist artists, writers, painters, 00:10:22.790 --> 00:10:24.800 align:middle line:84% were going to Mexico at that time. 00:10:24.800 --> 00:10:26.865 align:middle line:84% Where was the birth of the modern? 00:10:26.865 --> 00:10:27.740 align:middle line:90% It wasn't Henry Ford. 00:10:27.740 --> 00:10:29.780 align:middle line:84% It was the Mexican Revolution, right? 00:10:29.780 --> 00:10:32.720 align:middle line:84% And that's where the surrealists got their groove going. 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:34.850 align:middle line:84% And B. Traven went down there and he 00:10:34.850 --> 00:10:40.640 align:middle line:84% got some good Mexican vulgarity in his dialogue. 00:10:40.640 --> 00:10:43.610 align:middle line:84% Very authentic dialogue there, which didn't quite 00:10:43.610 --> 00:10:44.750 align:middle line:90% translate to the film. 00:10:44.750 --> 00:10:46.550 align:middle line:84% When I saw the film as a child, I 00:10:46.550 --> 00:10:49.310 align:middle line:84% was embarrassed by the figure of the Mexican bandido, played 00:10:49.310 --> 00:10:51.980 align:middle line:84% by Alfonso Bedoya, who had a distinguished career 00:10:51.980 --> 00:10:55.040 align:middle line:84% as a character actor during the golden era of Mexican film. 00:10:55.040 --> 00:10:56.540 align:middle line:84% Gringos didn't know this, of course. 00:10:56.540 --> 00:10:58.430 align:middle line:84% It was only much later as an adult 00:10:58.430 --> 00:11:02.360 align:middle line:84% that I learned that B. Traven had a hand in this, 00:11:02.360 --> 00:11:03.860 align:middle line:84% and that what he was really doing 00:11:03.860 --> 00:11:06.080 align:middle line:84% was having Bogart's character stand 00:11:06.080 --> 00:11:08.870 align:middle line:84% for the worst of American capitalist greed and paranoia. 00:11:08.870 --> 00:11:10.953 align:middle line:84% And it was Alfonso Bedoya's character, 00:11:10.953 --> 00:11:12.620 align:middle line:84% which comes across as a stereotype here, 00:11:12.620 --> 00:11:15.150 align:middle line:90% that shamed me so much as a kid. 00:11:15.150 --> 00:11:18.530 align:middle line:84% Bedoya's character didn't need any badges, 00:11:18.530 --> 00:11:21.020 align:middle line:84% didn't need any documents because it 00:11:21.020 --> 00:11:24.440 align:middle line:84% was Humphrey Bogart's character that was undocumented. 00:11:24.440 --> 00:11:27.470 align:middle line:84% Humphrey Bogart was the illegal looting the Sierra Madre 00:11:27.470 --> 00:11:29.330 align:middle line:84% and its Indigenous peoples of its treasure. 00:11:29.330 --> 00:11:31.430 align:middle line:90% Chinga tu madre, güey. 00:11:31.430 --> 00:11:33.500 align:middle line:90% But I digress. 00:11:33.500 --> 00:11:38.030 align:middle line:84% As an adult, I've had several emergences in the desert. 00:11:38.030 --> 00:11:40.543 align:middle line:84% As the son and grandson of immigrants 00:11:40.543 --> 00:11:41.960 align:middle line:84% from Mexico and Central America, I 00:11:41.960 --> 00:11:45.140 align:middle line:84% felt called upon as a writer to document migrant journeys 00:11:45.140 --> 00:11:46.650 align:middle line:90% across the border. 00:11:46.650 --> 00:11:49.400 align:middle line:84% Most of the 2000 mile-long line between the United States 00:11:49.400 --> 00:11:51.830 align:middle line:84% and Mexico is, of course, desert. 00:11:51.830 --> 00:11:54.890 align:middle line:90% 00:11:54.890 --> 00:11:58.130 align:middle line:84% The migrant story that takes place in it 00:11:58.130 --> 00:12:01.970 align:middle line:84% is also a version of the Western. 00:12:01.970 --> 00:12:04.160 align:middle line:90% There are men with badges. 00:12:04.160 --> 00:12:06.050 align:middle line:90% There is a dark other. 00:12:06.050 --> 00:12:10.010 align:middle line:90% There are some bad hombres. 00:12:10.010 --> 00:12:14.330 align:middle line:84% What I wanted to do was turn the lens of the camera around 00:12:14.330 --> 00:12:16.940 align:middle line:84% and make it visible, make the story 00:12:16.940 --> 00:12:19.400 align:middle line:84% visible from the point of view of the migrants themselves, 00:12:19.400 --> 00:12:22.280 align:middle line:84% to render bodies and names and narrative, 00:12:22.280 --> 00:12:26.210 align:middle line:84% to render intimate and relational lives. 00:12:26.210 --> 00:12:29.060 align:middle line:84% This resulted in the book Crossing Over, a Mexican family 00:12:29.060 --> 00:12:32.000 align:middle line:84% in the migrant trail, which I intended as an argument 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:35.810 align:middle line:84% about point of view and desire, about death and violence, 00:12:35.810 --> 00:12:37.590 align:middle line:90% and hope and vitality. 00:12:37.590 --> 00:12:39.865 align:middle line:84% It begins and ends in the desert. 00:12:39.865 --> 00:12:41.990 align:middle line:84% And because most of the migrants that I accompanied 00:12:41.990 --> 00:12:43.760 align:middle line:90% were deeply Catholic-- 00:12:43.760 --> 00:12:46.370 align:middle line:84% Catholicism heavily synchronized with Indigenous 00:12:46.370 --> 00:12:48.020 align:middle line:90% spirituality, of course. 00:12:48.020 --> 00:12:49.620 align:middle line:90% For the first time. 00:12:49.620 --> 00:12:52.640 align:middle line:84% I consciously considered what is obvious, 00:12:52.640 --> 00:12:55.160 align:middle line:84% the layering of Judeo-Christian symbolism 00:12:55.160 --> 00:12:57.350 align:middle line:90% across this landscape. 00:12:57.350 --> 00:13:00.320 align:middle line:84% Israel wandering the desert for 40 years. 00:13:00.320 --> 00:13:02.990 align:middle line:90% Jesus tested for those 40 days. 00:13:02.990 --> 00:13:05.390 align:middle line:84% The Rio Grande as the River Jordan. 00:13:05.390 --> 00:13:08.030 align:middle line:84% The migrants need to get to the other side. 00:13:08.030 --> 00:13:10.610 align:middle line:84% Their journey, their pain, their grief 00:13:10.610 --> 00:13:15.530 align:middle line:84% was a spiritual portal as well as a physical one 00:13:15.530 --> 00:13:20.460 align:middle line:84% with profound political and moral implications. 00:13:20.460 --> 00:13:22.460 align:middle line:84% Every migrant brought their own particular story 00:13:22.460 --> 00:13:26.240 align:middle line:84% to this larger historical frame, their subjectivity, 00:13:26.240 --> 00:13:31.520 align:middle line:84% and so did I. I became aware of the deserts in the desert. 00:13:31.520 --> 00:13:34.820 align:middle line:84% The interior landscape imbuing the physical geography with, 00:13:34.820 --> 00:13:38.510 align:middle line:84% to use Raymond Williams's phrase, structures of feeling. 00:13:38.510 --> 00:13:42.380 align:middle line:84% The inner desert as palimpsest to the material one. 00:13:42.380 --> 00:13:46.640 align:middle line:90% 00:13:46.640 --> 00:13:51.670 align:middle line:84% Harry Dean Stanton just passed away recently. 00:13:51.670 --> 00:13:52.670 align:middle line:90% Amazing character actor. 00:13:52.670 --> 00:13:56.450 align:middle line:84% How many people have seen the film Paris, Texas? 00:13:56.450 --> 00:14:00.590 align:middle line:84% It's a great desert film made by a German anarchist, not 00:14:00.590 --> 00:14:01.940 align:middle line:90% B. Traven. 00:14:01.940 --> 00:14:05.900 align:middle line:84% But when I arrived in the desert, 00:14:05.900 --> 00:14:12.140 align:middle line:84% I was arriving much in the state that Harry Dean Stanton begins 00:14:12.140 --> 00:14:16.310 align:middle line:84% in Paris, Texas, wandering the desert with an empty gallon 00:14:16.310 --> 00:14:18.320 align:middle line:90% jug. 00:14:18.320 --> 00:14:21.290 align:middle line:84% When I first arrived, snow suffused the sand, 00:14:21.290 --> 00:14:23.600 align:middle line:90% icicles hung from yucca spikes. 00:14:23.600 --> 00:14:26.410 align:middle line:84% It was the beginning of an El Niño winter. 00:14:26.410 --> 00:14:29.150 align:middle line:84% I'd come running from Mexico City with a nosebleed 00:14:29.150 --> 00:14:31.370 align:middle line:90% from smog and cocaine. 00:14:31.370 --> 00:14:34.220 align:middle line:90% And I stopped in the Mojave. 00:14:34.220 --> 00:14:36.470 align:middle line:84% Harry Dean Stanton is playing me there. 00:14:36.470 --> 00:14:39.770 align:middle line:84% I went because my friend Elia was in the Mojave. 00:14:39.770 --> 00:14:42.920 align:middle line:84% She, along with a small crew of LA expatriates, 00:14:42.920 --> 00:14:45.860 align:middle line:84% optimistic bohos, was creating a life for herself 00:14:45.860 --> 00:14:48.860 align:middle line:84% in the village of Joshua Tree at the edge of the famous National 00:14:48.860 --> 00:14:49.760 align:middle line:90% Park. 00:14:49.760 --> 00:14:53.090 align:middle line:84% Me, I was simply trying to save my life. 00:14:53.090 --> 00:14:55.070 align:middle line:84% I was supposed to be finishing a book. 00:14:55.070 --> 00:14:57.715 align:middle line:84% I had completed the research, as writers 00:14:57.715 --> 00:14:59.840 align:middle line:84% like to say to editors when they miss the deadline. 00:14:59.840 --> 00:15:00.600 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:15:00.600 --> 00:15:02.390 align:middle line:84% I had just enough in the bank to put down 00:15:02.390 --> 00:15:04.850 align:middle line:84% the first and last month's rent on a house down the road 00:15:04.850 --> 00:15:09.590 align:middle line:84% from my friend's in Twentynine Palms, 00:15:09.590 --> 00:15:13.130 align:middle line:84% a small town sandwiched between the iconic vistas of Joshua 00:15:13.130 --> 00:15:17.270 align:middle line:84% Tree National Park and another equally massive iconic tract 00:15:17.270 --> 00:15:22.100 align:middle line:84% of public land, the Marine Corps Air Ground and Combat Center, 00:15:22.100 --> 00:15:25.550 align:middle line:84% the largest Corps training facility in the United States. 00:15:25.550 --> 00:15:28.490 align:middle line:90% The rent was $275 a month. 00:15:28.490 --> 00:15:31.790 align:middle line:84% I had talked the rental agency down from 400. 00:15:31.790 --> 00:15:37.100 align:middle line:84% A sign nearby said, "Next Services 100 miles." 00:15:37.100 --> 00:15:42.470 align:middle line:84% I went to the local animal shelter called Palms N Paws, 00:15:42.470 --> 00:15:46.040 align:middle line:84% and I found a one-year-old Akita mix named Bear. 00:15:46.040 --> 00:15:49.200 align:middle line:84% He walked me in the desert every day. 00:15:49.200 --> 00:15:51.470 align:middle line:84% And at this point, something that's 00:15:51.470 --> 00:15:56.520 align:middle line:84% followed me all the way here to tonight took hold of me. 00:15:56.520 --> 00:15:59.780 align:middle line:84% I became obsessed with water sources. 00:15:59.780 --> 00:16:03.590 align:middle line:84% I had bought US GS topographical maps, highlighted 00:16:03.590 --> 00:16:07.460 align:middle line:84% Springs and seeps, heights deep into the backcountry, 00:16:07.460 --> 00:16:08.690 align:middle line:90% looking for them. 00:16:08.690 --> 00:16:10.640 align:middle line:90% Sometimes, they were dry. 00:16:10.640 --> 00:16:13.070 align:middle line:84% Sometimes a tuft of grass hinted at water 00:16:13.070 --> 00:16:14.880 align:middle line:90% just below the surface. 00:16:14.880 --> 00:16:17.690 align:middle line:84% Sometimes, water gurgled up from the sand. 00:16:17.690 --> 00:16:23.300 align:middle line:84% And this emergence would give me great joy. 00:16:23.300 --> 00:16:26.570 align:middle line:84% I went to the desert to escape the desert in my soul, 00:16:26.570 --> 00:16:28.640 align:middle line:90% to get clean. 00:16:28.640 --> 00:16:31.880 align:middle line:84% But I quickly realized that that which I was fleeing 00:16:31.880 --> 00:16:34.250 align:middle line:90% was in the desert as well. 00:16:34.250 --> 00:16:37.280 align:middle line:84% The walls of my house shuddered from explosions 00:16:37.280 --> 00:16:38.990 align:middle line:90% on the military base. 00:16:38.990 --> 00:16:42.830 align:middle line:84% Coils of oily smoke rose over the dunes in the distance. 00:16:42.830 --> 00:16:46.700 align:middle line:84% Meth tweakers paced by the payphones at the Circle K. 00:16:46.700 --> 00:16:51.080 align:middle line:84% I'd imagined that the land as pure, as empty, 00:16:51.080 --> 00:16:54.230 align:middle line:84% but I was in the known world after all. 00:16:54.230 --> 00:16:55.850 align:middle line:90% And it was still beautiful. 00:16:55.850 --> 00:16:57.350 align:middle line:90% The coyotes howled. 00:16:57.350 --> 00:17:00.710 align:middle line:84% The tortoises foraged on cacti thorns and all 00:17:00.710 --> 00:17:02.030 align:middle line:90% during the dead of summer. 00:17:02.030 --> 00:17:05.329 align:middle line:84% The creosote bushes bloomed their tiny luminescent yellow 00:17:05.329 --> 00:17:08.240 align:middle line:84% flowers after the monsoon storms. 00:17:08.240 --> 00:17:10.880 align:middle line:84% In the beginning, I was unaware of the spiritual symbolism 00:17:10.880 --> 00:17:11.720 align:middle line:90% of my pilgrimage. 00:17:11.720 --> 00:17:14.730 align:middle line:84% I was too much the materialist back then. 00:17:14.730 --> 00:17:17.270 align:middle line:84% And in any event, too broken to imagine myself 00:17:17.270 --> 00:17:20.030 align:middle line:90% in any larger context. 00:17:20.030 --> 00:17:22.310 align:middle line:84% I had never seen snow in the desert. 00:17:22.310 --> 00:17:24.859 align:middle line:90% Had hardly ever imagined it. 00:17:24.859 --> 00:17:27.440 align:middle line:84% But that is how the Mojave greeted me. 00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:30.290 align:middle line:84% A frigid wind blew and thick flakes 00:17:30.290 --> 00:17:33.365 align:middle line:84% fell to efface the land I thought I knew. 00:17:33.365 --> 00:17:36.590 align:middle line:84% On one of my first nights in my thin walled house 00:17:36.590 --> 00:17:38.720 align:middle line:84% on the edge of the 100-mile nothing, 00:17:38.720 --> 00:17:42.470 align:middle line:84% I heard what I thought was the hiss of a gas leak. 00:17:42.470 --> 00:17:45.500 align:middle line:84% A thorough inspection turned up nothing. 00:17:45.500 --> 00:17:49.310 align:middle line:84% It wasn't a rattlesnake or wind through the tamarisks. 00:17:49.310 --> 00:17:51.260 align:middle line:84% It took me a long while to realize 00:17:51.260 --> 00:17:53.660 align:middle line:84% that I had never before been in a place 00:17:53.660 --> 00:17:56.390 align:middle line:90% of such perfect silence. 00:17:56.390 --> 00:17:59.240 align:middle line:84% What I was listening to was the blood 00:17:59.240 --> 00:18:01.205 align:middle line:90% coursing through my own body. 00:18:01.205 --> 00:18:04.130 align:middle line:90% 00:18:04.130 --> 00:18:07.250 align:middle line:84% A few years later, I arrived in another desert, the high desert 00:18:07.250 --> 00:18:10.730 align:middle line:84% edging into Ponderosa Fir Spruce Aspen Forest in northern New 00:18:10.730 --> 00:18:13.610 align:middle line:84% Mexico, the desert that Ansel Adams and Georgia 00:18:13.610 --> 00:18:17.720 align:middle line:84% O'Keeffe represented usually without human figures on it. 00:18:17.720 --> 00:18:20.960 align:middle line:84% I came following the woman I would marry, Angela Garcia, 00:18:20.960 --> 00:18:23.090 align:middle line:84% then a doctoral candidate in medical anthropology 00:18:23.090 --> 00:18:24.230 align:middle line:90% at Harvard. 00:18:24.230 --> 00:18:27.170 align:middle line:84% She wasn't doing her fieldwork in some exotic remote locale. 00:18:27.170 --> 00:18:30.590 align:middle line:84% She was going home to the landscape of addiction and loss 00:18:30.590 --> 00:18:33.620 align:middle line:90% she'd grown up in. 00:18:33.620 --> 00:18:36.740 align:middle line:84% For three years, we watched as our neighbors 00:18:36.740 --> 00:18:38.930 align:middle line:90% struggled with substance abuse. 00:18:38.930 --> 00:18:43.250 align:middle line:84% Three of them overdosed, including a two-year-old boy 00:18:43.250 --> 00:18:47.000 align:middle line:84% who died in a drug-related accident. 00:18:47.000 --> 00:18:50.360 align:middle line:84% Both Angela and I emerged from families of addiction. 00:18:50.360 --> 00:18:53.120 align:middle line:84% Now, we were witnesses to devastation and families 00:18:53.120 --> 00:18:55.110 align:middle line:90% living within yards of us. 00:18:55.110 --> 00:18:57.710 align:middle line:84% We both wrote books about our time there, 00:18:57.710 --> 00:19:03.680 align:middle line:84% about suffering and love, and how suffering together 00:19:03.680 --> 00:19:09.200 align:middle line:84% can itself be love on a landscape of loss. 00:19:09.200 --> 00:19:13.460 align:middle line:84% Just a couple of years later, another desert landscape, 00:19:13.460 --> 00:19:17.330 align:middle line:84% Mexico in the throes of, what we call in Latin America today, 00:19:17.330 --> 00:19:20.000 align:middle line:90% las violencias, violences. 00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:22.460 align:middle line:84% In Latin American Spanish, violence 00:19:22.460 --> 00:19:29.480 align:middle line:84% is always plural now because, if you're a poor Indigenous woman, 00:19:29.480 --> 00:19:31.850 align:middle line:84% you've got all kinds of violence coming at you 00:19:31.850 --> 00:19:35.180 align:middle line:90% from different directions. 00:19:35.180 --> 00:19:41.580 align:middle line:84% The violence has been called the war on drugs. 00:19:41.580 --> 00:19:43.380 align:middle line:84% It could also be called the war of guns 00:19:43.380 --> 00:19:47.340 align:middle line:84% or the war of drugs and guns because, of course, here 00:19:47.340 --> 00:19:50.040 align:middle line:84% in the borderlands, we know the story well. 00:19:50.040 --> 00:19:51.990 align:middle line:84% A large number of the victims are in Mexico, 00:19:51.990 --> 00:19:55.560 align:middle line:84% El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and their loss 00:19:55.560 --> 00:19:57.720 align:middle line:90% is mostly hidden. 00:19:57.720 --> 00:20:01.020 align:middle line:84% They grieve for the victims on the other side of the border, 00:20:01.020 --> 00:20:06.830 align:middle line:84% as the guns flow southward and the drugs flow northward. 00:20:06.830 --> 00:20:09.140 align:middle line:84% And Trump's wall is not going to make much 00:20:09.140 --> 00:20:10.820 align:middle line:90% of a difference about that. 00:20:10.820 --> 00:20:13.040 align:middle line:90% Legalization might. 00:20:13.040 --> 00:20:15.200 align:middle line:90% We were witnesses again. 00:20:15.200 --> 00:20:19.400 align:middle line:84% From this abyss, emerged hope in the figure of a poet who 00:20:19.400 --> 00:20:21.380 align:middle line:90% lost a son to the violence. 00:20:21.380 --> 00:20:26.810 align:middle line:84% Javier Sicilia registered the darkness with silence. 00:20:26.810 --> 00:20:31.190 align:middle line:84% He wrote what he said would be his final poem. 00:20:31.190 --> 00:20:33.690 align:middle line:90% I'll read you the Spanish. 00:20:33.690 --> 00:20:36.065 align:middle line:84% And for those who need the translation, it's right below. 00:20:36.065 --> 00:20:39.542 align:middle line:90% 00:20:39.542 --> 00:20:43.690 align:middle line:84% El mundo ya no es digno de la palabra. 00:20:43.690 --> 00:20:48.910 align:middle line:84% Nos la ahogaron adentro como te asfixiaron, 00:20:48.910 --> 00:20:52.870 align:middle line:84% como te desgarraron a ti los pulmones. 00:20:52.870 --> 00:20:56.200 align:middle line:90% Y el dolor no se me aparta. 00:20:56.200 --> 00:21:01.780 align:middle line:84% Sólo queda un mundo por el silencio de los justos. 00:21:01.780 --> 00:21:06.040 align:middle line:84% Sólo por tu silencio y el mío, Juanelo. 00:21:06.040 --> 00:21:08.303 align:middle line:90% 00:21:08.303 --> 00:21:09.720 align:middle line:84% Juanelo was the term of endearment 00:21:09.720 --> 00:21:12.300 align:middle line:84% for his son, Juan Francisco Sicilia, who was 00:21:12.300 --> 00:21:15.930 align:middle line:90% killed in a drug-related crime. 00:21:15.930 --> 00:21:17.310 align:middle line:90% From the silence. 00:21:17.310 --> 00:21:20.300 align:middle line:90% 00:21:20.300 --> 00:21:23.600 align:middle line:84% We know silence in the desert relative to our city lives, 00:21:23.600 --> 00:21:27.240 align:middle line:84% right, when we go out into the desert. 00:21:27.240 --> 00:21:30.300 align:middle line:84% And silence is a huge part of the spiritual tradition 00:21:30.300 --> 00:21:30.960 align:middle line:90% of the desert. 00:21:30.960 --> 00:21:35.130 align:middle line:84% The contemplative tradition of the desert calls for silence. 00:21:35.130 --> 00:21:40.920 align:middle line:84% The early monks, Saint Anthony, going out to the desert 00:21:40.920 --> 00:21:44.683 align:middle line:84% to get rid of the noise in their heads. 00:21:44.683 --> 00:21:46.350 align:middle line:84% And in a version of what I just told you 00:21:46.350 --> 00:21:53.910 align:middle line:84% about me going out to the nothing, they also hear things. 00:21:53.910 --> 00:21:57.670 align:middle line:84% It wasn't a military base in fourth century Egypt. 00:21:57.670 --> 00:22:02.460 align:middle line:84% But the description of the early monks was encountering demons. 00:22:02.460 --> 00:22:05.040 align:middle line:90% The noises were in their heads. 00:22:05.040 --> 00:22:07.590 align:middle line:84% What they took with them from the Nile River Valley 00:22:07.590 --> 00:22:11.190 align:middle line:84% into the Egyptian desert, where the social contradictions 00:22:11.190 --> 00:22:15.180 align:middle line:84% registering inside them and they're trying to get away, 00:22:15.180 --> 00:22:17.152 align:middle line:84% and the echoes follow them into the desert, 00:22:17.152 --> 00:22:19.110 align:middle line:84% and they're trying to get to that desert quiet. 00:22:19.110 --> 00:22:22.834 align:middle line:90% That's the monastic quest. 00:22:22.834 --> 00:22:26.450 align:middle line:84% Javier Sicilia happened to be a very serious Christian mystic 00:22:26.450 --> 00:22:27.950 align:middle line:90% poet. 00:22:27.950 --> 00:22:31.880 align:middle line:84% Every poem he'd ever written was about the mystical desert, 00:22:31.880 --> 00:22:33.260 align:middle line:84% the desert that you're ultimately 00:22:33.260 --> 00:22:37.850 align:middle line:84% trying to arrive at that's beyond or before language. 00:22:37.850 --> 00:22:40.550 align:middle line:84% The nothing, the darkness, that's 00:22:40.550 --> 00:22:43.250 align:middle line:84% talked about not just in Judeo-Christian tradition, 00:22:43.250 --> 00:22:46.130 align:middle line:84% but in many contemplative traditions. 00:22:46.130 --> 00:22:49.220 align:middle line:84% The nothing or the divine resides. 00:22:49.220 --> 00:22:54.060 align:middle line:84% The nothing, the divine that is beyond name. 00:22:54.060 --> 00:22:59.450 align:middle line:84% And in this gesture, he makes sacred his son 00:22:59.450 --> 00:23:04.130 align:middle line:84% with silence, reverential silence, 00:23:04.130 --> 00:23:07.040 align:middle line:84% enveloping in some of the reverential silence. 00:23:07.040 --> 00:23:09.380 align:middle line:84% And it also becomes the beginning 00:23:09.380 --> 00:23:11.690 align:middle line:84% of a huge political movement in Mexico 00:23:11.690 --> 00:23:15.500 align:middle line:84% called The Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which 00:23:15.500 --> 00:23:16.910 align:middle line:90% transformed Mexican society. 00:23:16.910 --> 00:23:18.380 align:middle line:90% It did not finish the drug war. 00:23:18.380 --> 00:23:20.030 align:middle line:90% We know that. 00:23:20.030 --> 00:23:24.950 align:middle line:84% But it mobilized civil society in Mexico for the first time 00:23:24.950 --> 00:23:27.620 align:middle line:84% and gave hope to millions of people. 00:23:27.620 --> 00:23:30.350 align:middle line:90% 00:23:30.350 --> 00:23:33.710 align:middle line:84% The grief was a portal for hope, pointing out 00:23:33.710 --> 00:23:36.560 align:middle line:84% the path from the abyss into emergence, 00:23:36.560 --> 00:23:41.000 align:middle line:84% from chaos and formlessness into a new world that 00:23:41.000 --> 00:23:46.940 align:middle line:84% began with the verb, dolerse, to begin with the grief, 00:23:46.940 --> 00:23:49.880 align:middle line:90% to stay in the grieving moment. 00:23:49.880 --> 00:23:53.750 align:middle line:84% The movement like the Madres y Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo 00:23:53.750 --> 00:23:59.540 align:middle line:84% in Argentina, a generation ago, the movement silently 00:23:59.540 --> 00:24:03.500 align:middle line:90% held up images of the victims. 00:24:03.500 --> 00:24:06.140 align:middle line:84% The marches, where there were no slogans, 00:24:06.140 --> 00:24:08.000 align:middle line:90% there was no megaphones. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:10.200 align:middle line:90% There was this image. 00:24:10.200 --> 00:24:15.740 align:middle line:84% There was silent grief, silent and reverential grief. 00:24:15.740 --> 00:24:22.160 align:middle line:90% 00:24:22.160 --> 00:24:23.870 align:middle line:84% So many parts of Mexican society were 00:24:23.870 --> 00:24:28.130 align:middle line:84% mobilized, including writers, an amazing writer named 00:24:28.130 --> 00:24:31.040 align:middle line:90% Cristina Rivera Garza. 00:24:31.040 --> 00:24:34.040 align:middle line:84% If you don't know her, she's one of the most important living 00:24:34.040 --> 00:24:35.570 align:middle line:90% writers today. 00:24:35.570 --> 00:24:38.600 align:middle line:90% And wrote a book called Dolerse. 00:24:38.600 --> 00:24:43.730 align:middle line:84% Dolerse is the reflexive mode of the verb doler. 00:24:43.730 --> 00:24:45.200 align:middle line:90% The noun is dolor. 00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:47.420 align:middle line:90% Pain, to be in pain. 00:24:47.420 --> 00:24:50.960 align:middle line:84% And I just want to invoke this text here. 00:24:50.960 --> 00:24:53.690 align:middle line:84% Hence the importance of being in pain. 00:24:53.690 --> 00:24:57.470 align:middle line:84% The political necessity of saying, you pain me. 00:24:57.470 --> 00:24:59.390 align:middle line:84% And if taking stock of my history 00:24:59.390 --> 00:25:02.150 align:middle line:84% with you, you who are on my country 00:25:02.150 --> 00:25:04.940 align:middle line:84% from the singular, though generalized, perspective of we 00:25:04.940 --> 00:25:06.980 align:middle line:90% who are in pain. 00:25:06.980 --> 00:25:09.980 align:middle line:84% Hence the aesthetic urgency of saying in the most basic 00:25:09.980 --> 00:25:12.830 align:middle line:84% and also the most disjointed language possible, 00:25:12.830 --> 00:25:15.470 align:middle line:90% this pains me. 00:25:15.470 --> 00:25:17.690 align:middle line:84% Because Edmond Jabès was right when he critiqued 00:25:17.690 --> 00:25:18.740 align:middle line:90% Adorno's dictum. 00:25:18.740 --> 00:25:21.500 align:middle line:84% It's not that after horror we should not or cannot write 00:25:21.500 --> 00:25:22.430 align:middle line:90% poetry. 00:25:22.430 --> 00:25:25.820 align:middle line:84% It's that, while we are integral witnesses to horror, 00:25:25.820 --> 00:25:30.530 align:middle line:84% we must write poetry in another way. 00:25:30.530 --> 00:25:35.420 align:middle line:84% Jen Hofer is an amazing translator in Los Angeles 00:25:35.420 --> 00:25:38.910 align:middle line:90% and poet in her own right. 00:25:38.910 --> 00:25:42.540 align:middle line:84% I'm trying to weave together here different threads. 00:25:42.540 --> 00:25:45.780 align:middle line:90% I just said silence. 00:25:45.780 --> 00:25:48.910 align:middle line:84% The idea of being shocked into silence. 00:25:48.910 --> 00:25:50.400 align:middle line:90% We say we were shocked silent. 00:25:50.400 --> 00:25:53.220 align:middle line:90% Remember, the silence. 00:25:53.220 --> 00:25:57.540 align:middle line:84% I heard silence a year ago, November 8. 00:25:57.540 --> 00:26:02.220 align:middle line:84% When everybody went to bed, that was a quiet night. 00:26:02.220 --> 00:26:05.280 align:middle line:84% And there was no language really to speak with about the crisis 00:26:05.280 --> 00:26:08.450 align:middle line:84% that we entered it in that moment. 00:26:08.450 --> 00:26:12.620 align:middle line:90% A new language is building now. 00:26:12.620 --> 00:26:18.500 align:middle line:84% But the silence itself is allowing 00:26:18.500 --> 00:26:26.900 align:middle line:84% us to open, to register how we respond emotionally, 00:26:26.900 --> 00:26:33.790 align:middle line:84% spiritually to an event like this, to a natural disaster, 00:26:33.790 --> 00:26:37.180 align:middle line:84% or political disaster, to femicide, to the drug 00:26:37.180 --> 00:26:40.600 align:middle line:84% war, devastation of drug addiction, 00:26:40.600 --> 00:26:44.740 align:middle line:84% to losing somebody to suicide, to violences 00:26:44.740 --> 00:26:48.530 align:middle line:90% that are historically rooted. 00:26:48.530 --> 00:26:54.320 align:middle line:84% And the path that the spiritual masters point to is 00:26:54.320 --> 00:26:58.430 align:middle line:84% stay in the pain, to register the pain. 00:26:58.430 --> 00:27:03.920 align:middle line:84% And hear Cristina Rivera Garza saying stay with that, 00:27:03.920 --> 00:27:09.725 align:middle line:84% let that be the starting point for your new language. 00:27:09.725 --> 00:27:12.690 align:middle line:90% 00:27:12.690 --> 00:27:14.565 align:middle line:84% So this is where we kind of go off the cliff. 00:27:14.565 --> 00:27:22.050 align:middle line:90% 00:27:22.050 --> 00:27:24.250 align:middle line:90% I am at an impasse. 00:27:24.250 --> 00:27:28.510 align:middle line:84% I've basically brought you up to the present, the places 00:27:28.510 --> 00:27:31.020 align:middle line:84% that I've been in the desert, right? 00:27:31.020 --> 00:27:35.710 align:middle line:90% 00:27:35.710 --> 00:27:37.900 align:middle line:84% The places and peoples that I've rendered 00:27:37.900 --> 00:27:41.560 align:middle line:84% in writing that I've been drawn to 00:27:41.560 --> 00:27:43.990 align:middle line:84% for my own subjective reasons, which I alluded 00:27:43.990 --> 00:27:46.180 align:middle line:84% to, my own struggles in the desert, my personal 00:27:46.180 --> 00:27:49.750 align:middle line:84% struggles with the desert, which are historically situated, 00:27:49.750 --> 00:27:52.440 align:middle line:90% right? 00:27:52.440 --> 00:27:56.940 align:middle line:84% And the nature of the impasse that I'm at right now 00:27:56.940 --> 00:27:58.900 align:middle line:90% is complicated. 00:27:58.900 --> 00:28:02.370 align:middle line:84% I'm not going to give you the whole story, 00:28:02.370 --> 00:28:06.240 align:middle line:84% but I'll read a little bit of a kind of raw journal 00:28:06.240 --> 00:28:12.540 align:middle line:84% and begin by telling you that I began a contemplative practice 00:28:12.540 --> 00:28:15.900 align:middle line:84% because I feel like I'd fallen into a kind of abyss 00:28:15.900 --> 00:28:18.540 align:middle line:90% a few years back. 00:28:18.540 --> 00:28:23.370 align:middle line:84% And I'm still kind of emerging from it. 00:28:23.370 --> 00:28:25.800 align:middle line:84% I'm still in the process of emerging. 00:28:25.800 --> 00:28:29.715 align:middle line:84% And it's taken on a particular narrative in recent months. 00:28:29.715 --> 00:28:32.470 align:middle line:90% 00:28:32.470 --> 00:28:36.030 align:middle line:84% And this particular image that you're seeing right now 00:28:36.030 --> 00:28:39.720 align:middle line:90% is from a monastery. 00:28:39.720 --> 00:28:40.960 align:middle line:90% I'm sworn to secrecy. 00:28:40.960 --> 00:28:43.860 align:middle line:90% I can't tell you where it is. 00:28:43.860 --> 00:28:46.980 align:middle line:84% Suffice to say that they're Cistercian nuns. 00:28:46.980 --> 00:28:51.240 align:middle line:84% And my mentor and spiritual director 00:28:51.240 --> 00:28:57.060 align:middle line:84% sent me there at a moment when my head was filling with dust. 00:28:57.060 --> 00:29:00.240 align:middle line:90% 00:29:00.240 --> 00:29:04.530 align:middle line:84% My twin daughters are 10 years old. 00:29:04.530 --> 00:29:08.850 align:middle line:84% And this is about five years ago. 00:29:08.850 --> 00:29:12.420 align:middle line:84% Anxiety was just building in me for a lot of different reasons 00:29:12.420 --> 00:29:16.450 align:middle line:84% and expressing itself in a very particular way in my brain, 00:29:16.450 --> 00:29:21.390 align:middle line:84% which was what I refer to as dust filling my head. 00:29:21.390 --> 00:29:23.310 align:middle line:84% They were what psychologists refer 00:29:23.310 --> 00:29:26.010 align:middle line:90% to as catastrophizing thoughts. 00:29:26.010 --> 00:29:30.230 align:middle line:84% I would be walking with my twin daughters, five years old. 00:29:30.230 --> 00:29:33.090 align:middle line:84% Just walking up the hill behind my house. 00:29:33.090 --> 00:29:35.610 align:middle line:84% And I would hold on so tight to their hands. 00:29:35.610 --> 00:29:36.780 align:middle line:90% "Daddy!" 00:29:36.780 --> 00:29:38.820 align:middle line:84% And I didn't realize I was holding on so tight 00:29:38.820 --> 00:29:41.820 align:middle line:84% because I just kept on thinking she's going to fall down 00:29:41.820 --> 00:29:44.530 align:middle line:90% the cliff, break her neck. 00:29:44.530 --> 00:29:47.310 align:middle line:84% If a car went by, she's going to get run over by the car. 00:29:47.310 --> 00:29:49.020 align:middle line:84% If I got behind the wheel, I'm going 00:29:49.020 --> 00:29:50.670 align:middle line:90% to lose control on the freeway. 00:29:50.670 --> 00:29:52.290 align:middle line:84% I'm going to have a heart attack. 00:29:52.290 --> 00:29:54.870 align:middle line:84% Ultimately, I wound up in the emergency room. 00:29:54.870 --> 00:29:58.810 align:middle line:84% My body mimicking all the symptoms of heart attack. 00:29:58.810 --> 00:30:01.650 align:middle line:84% And I was told to see a psychiatrist. 00:30:01.650 --> 00:30:03.360 align:middle line:84% And over the next weeks and months, 00:30:03.360 --> 00:30:07.590 align:middle line:84% I tried every mode of therapy a native Californian can access. 00:30:07.590 --> 00:30:10.890 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:30:10.890 --> 00:30:13.950 align:middle line:84% Wellbutrin gave me more panic attacks. 00:30:13.950 --> 00:30:16.740 align:middle line:84% Zoloft gave me heart palpitations. 00:30:16.740 --> 00:30:20.160 align:middle line:90% Aromatherapy made me sneeze. 00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:21.720 align:middle line:90% Hypnosis didn't work. 00:30:21.720 --> 00:30:25.585 align:middle line:84% Although, I felt so sorry for the hypnotist that I pretended 00:30:25.585 --> 00:30:26.085 align:middle line:90% it did. 00:30:26.085 --> 00:30:29.280 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:30:29.280 --> 00:30:32.082 align:middle line:84% And around this time is when I met 00:30:32.082 --> 00:30:33.540 align:middle line:84% Douglas Christie, who I referred to 00:30:33.540 --> 00:30:35.790 align:middle line:84% as my spiritual mentor and elder. 00:30:35.790 --> 00:30:37.890 align:middle line:84% He's a theologian at Loyola Marymount University 00:30:37.890 --> 00:30:40.740 align:middle line:84% and his life's scholarly work is about 00:30:40.740 --> 00:30:43.740 align:middle line:90% early Christian monasticism. 00:30:43.740 --> 00:30:48.570 align:middle line:84% I began searching for the nothing beyond the body, 00:30:48.570 --> 00:30:53.310 align:middle line:84% even as I was in my body, even as I negated my body 00:30:53.310 --> 00:30:55.050 align:middle line:90% relationally with my partner. 00:30:55.050 --> 00:30:56.100 align:middle line:90% Desire deferred. 00:30:56.100 --> 00:30:57.540 align:middle line:90% Desire as absence. 00:30:57.540 --> 00:31:01.350 align:middle line:84% Desire as gap, as deferral, constant deferral. 00:31:01.350 --> 00:31:06.180 align:middle line:84% My partner playing Socrates to my Alcibiades. 00:31:06.180 --> 00:31:08.370 align:middle line:84% Here, I'll just take a quick digression 00:31:08.370 --> 00:31:11.445 align:middle line:90% into classical thinking on Eros. 00:31:11.445 --> 00:31:13.970 align:middle line:90% 00:31:13.970 --> 00:31:14.832 align:middle line:90% The Symposium. 00:31:14.832 --> 00:31:16.790 align:middle line:84% You had to have read The Symposium, if you took 00:31:16.790 --> 00:31:18.980 align:middle line:90% philosophy in college, right? 00:31:18.980 --> 00:31:23.600 align:middle line:84% I dropped out, but I did take first-year philosophy. 00:31:23.600 --> 00:31:26.780 align:middle line:84% And I do remember something about The Symposium, 00:31:26.780 --> 00:31:29.390 align:middle line:84% Plato's writing essentially about Socrates. 00:31:29.390 --> 00:31:31.550 align:middle line:90% Socrates, the main dude here. 00:31:31.550 --> 00:31:34.520 align:middle line:84% And there's a very famous bit of dialogue. 00:31:34.520 --> 00:31:36.710 align:middle line:90% There's a party happening. 00:31:36.710 --> 00:31:38.360 align:middle line:84% It's actually a post-party party. 00:31:38.360 --> 00:31:40.850 align:middle line:84% The night before, everybody got really, really drunk. 00:31:40.850 --> 00:31:42.380 align:middle line:90% All the dudes got really drunk. 00:31:42.380 --> 00:31:43.280 align:middle line:90% It was a great party. 00:31:43.280 --> 00:31:45.290 align:middle line:84% And then, the next night they swore they 00:31:45.290 --> 00:31:49.280 align:middle line:84% would have their dialogue before they drank. 00:31:49.280 --> 00:31:51.830 align:middle line:84% But Alcibiades didn't get the word 00:31:51.830 --> 00:31:53.810 align:middle line:84% about not drinking the wine before the party. 00:31:53.810 --> 00:31:55.400 align:middle line:90% And he's already wasted. 00:31:55.400 --> 00:31:57.560 align:middle line:90% He's a beautiful hot boy. 00:31:57.560 --> 00:31:59.420 align:middle line:90% He is just one of the hottest-- 00:31:59.420 --> 00:32:02.180 align:middle line:84% You can tell who the hottest boy there is. 00:32:02.180 --> 00:32:03.830 align:middle line:90% Socrates is the ugly one. 00:32:03.830 --> 00:32:06.980 align:middle line:84% He's always described as having a sadder face. 00:32:06.980 --> 00:32:08.810 align:middle line:90% He's ugly, ugly, ugly. 00:32:08.810 --> 00:32:11.810 align:middle line:90% He's beautiful inside. 00:32:11.810 --> 00:32:14.840 align:middle line:90% Alcibiades shows up drunk. 00:32:14.840 --> 00:32:17.200 align:middle line:90% And what's wrong with everybody? 00:32:17.200 --> 00:32:18.200 align:middle line:90% Why aren't you drinking? 00:32:18.200 --> 00:32:19.575 align:middle line:84% Well, you didn't get the message. 00:32:19.575 --> 00:32:22.580 align:middle line:84% And there's quite a bit of comedy there and some banter. 00:32:22.580 --> 00:32:24.350 align:middle line:84% But then, the real discussion begins. 00:32:24.350 --> 00:32:27.470 align:middle line:84% And Alcibiades, despite his drunkenness, 00:32:27.470 --> 00:32:30.170 align:middle line:84% starts to talk about Socrates and talks 00:32:30.170 --> 00:32:33.333 align:middle line:84% about the night that he thought Socrates-- 00:32:33.333 --> 00:32:35.000 align:middle line:84% That he was going to allow himself to be 00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:38.180 align:middle line:90% seduced by Socrates corporally. 00:32:38.180 --> 00:32:39.350 align:middle line:90% They were going to have sex. 00:32:39.350 --> 00:32:42.110 align:middle line:84% Because he felt that Socrates had been seducing him, 00:32:42.110 --> 00:32:45.230 align:middle line:84% had been trying to get him in bed all along. 00:32:45.230 --> 00:32:49.760 align:middle line:84% And Alcibiades had been rebuffing him. 00:32:49.760 --> 00:32:51.950 align:middle line:90% Finally, they were alone. 00:32:51.950 --> 00:32:54.020 align:middle line:90% And it was cold. 00:32:54.020 --> 00:32:56.570 align:middle line:84% And they lay down together on the couch. 00:32:56.570 --> 00:32:59.600 align:middle line:84% And Alcibiades pulls the cloak over both of them 00:32:59.600 --> 00:33:01.820 align:middle line:84% and he snuggles up to him and he says 00:33:01.820 --> 00:33:04.340 align:middle line:90% to Socrates, "Are you asleep?" 00:33:04.340 --> 00:33:07.670 align:middle line:84% And Socrates says, "No, of course not." 00:33:07.670 --> 00:33:12.200 align:middle line:84% And Alcibiades says, essentially, "Well, I'm yours." 00:33:12.200 --> 00:33:14.330 align:middle line:84% And so he says, "What are you thinking? 00:33:14.330 --> 00:33:16.340 align:middle line:90% I don't want you." 00:33:16.340 --> 00:33:21.740 align:middle line:84% And this begins our Western problem with Eros. 00:33:21.740 --> 00:33:24.500 align:middle line:84% It's a wonderful ironic moment, where 00:33:24.500 --> 00:33:27.532 align:middle line:84% there's a play that has a lot of nuance in it, 00:33:27.532 --> 00:33:29.990 align:middle line:84% and philosophers and theologians have been talking about it 00:33:29.990 --> 00:33:30.680 align:middle line:90% for 2,000 years. 00:33:30.680 --> 00:33:32.430 align:middle line:84% We're not going to go all the way into it. 00:33:32.430 --> 00:33:34.040 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:33:34.040 --> 00:33:35.870 align:middle line:84% And everybody has weighed in, believe me. 00:33:35.870 --> 00:33:37.328 align:middle line:84% I've been looking at the genealogy. 00:33:37.328 --> 00:33:41.030 align:middle line:84% And some of you may know some of this better than I. 00:33:41.030 --> 00:33:42.380 align:middle line:90% But it's fascinating. 00:33:42.380 --> 00:33:46.100 align:middle line:84% You could really go down a rabbit hole with this. 00:33:46.100 --> 00:33:52.730 align:middle line:84% Eros as sensuality, as erotic, as desire, 00:33:52.730 --> 00:33:55.922 align:middle line:84% fulfilled when bodies come together. 00:33:55.922 --> 00:34:00.560 align:middle line:84% Agape, in the Christian sense, a love 00:34:00.560 --> 00:34:04.280 align:middle line:84% that is beyond the body, that is the higher form. 00:34:04.280 --> 00:34:08.889 align:middle line:84% There's some of that play going on here. 00:34:08.889 --> 00:34:13.630 align:middle line:84% Recent scholarship has tried to unpack 00:34:13.630 --> 00:34:17.560 align:middle line:84% 2000 years of different powers having 00:34:17.560 --> 00:34:20.040 align:middle line:90% their way with this text. 00:34:20.040 --> 00:34:26.170 align:middle line:84% And here, how is desire being represented? 00:34:26.170 --> 00:34:29.480 align:middle line:90% It's completely heteronormative. 00:34:29.480 --> 00:34:33.650 align:middle line:90% There was no mention of any-- 00:34:33.650 --> 00:34:36.230 align:middle line:84% The French painter, Renault, in the 19th century, 00:34:36.230 --> 00:34:39.739 align:middle line:90% amazing technique. 00:34:39.739 --> 00:34:44.120 align:middle line:90% But look at the figures, right? 00:34:44.120 --> 00:34:45.980 align:middle line:84% None of this is part of the scene. 00:34:45.980 --> 00:34:47.389 align:middle line:90% It's all homoerotic. 00:34:47.389 --> 00:34:49.077 align:middle line:90% It's Greece, for Christ's sake. 00:34:49.077 --> 00:34:50.449 align:middle line:90% Right? 00:34:50.449 --> 00:34:53.989 align:middle line:84% So patriarchy has its way with it. 00:34:53.989 --> 00:34:55.610 align:middle line:84% Heteronormativity has its way with it 00:34:55.610 --> 00:34:58.370 align:middle line:84% across the centuries through the Church, of course. 00:34:58.370 --> 00:34:59.870 align:middle line:90% Right? 00:34:59.870 --> 00:35:03.170 align:middle line:84% And it gets stripped down to a binary, which 00:35:03.170 --> 00:35:06.110 align:middle line:84% essentially the Church has been saying all along, 00:35:06.110 --> 00:35:08.660 align:middle line:90% the carnal stuff is bad. 00:35:08.660 --> 00:35:10.190 align:middle line:90% You know? 00:35:10.190 --> 00:35:13.550 align:middle line:90% Especially when it's same sex. 00:35:13.550 --> 00:35:17.330 align:middle line:84% And the Agape, the pure love, the spiritual love, 00:35:17.330 --> 00:35:19.915 align:middle line:84% that longing for God, that's beyond the body. 00:35:19.915 --> 00:35:22.040 align:middle line:84% You might feel it in your body, but it's actually-- 00:35:22.040 --> 00:35:23.740 align:middle line:90% You know what? 00:35:23.740 --> 00:35:25.490 align:middle line:84% Get beyond the body, get beyond that lust. 00:35:25.490 --> 00:35:28.860 align:middle line:90% 00:35:28.860 --> 00:35:33.810 align:middle line:84% Queer theologians have been taking this apart for some time 00:35:33.810 --> 00:35:34.690 align:middle line:90% now. 00:35:34.690 --> 00:35:37.920 align:middle line:84% There's been some really influential writing going on 00:35:37.920 --> 00:35:38.550 align:middle line:90% about it. 00:35:38.550 --> 00:35:41.190 align:middle line:90% 00:35:41.190 --> 00:35:41.940 align:middle line:90% Whoops. 00:35:41.940 --> 00:35:43.680 align:middle line:90% Went forward too fast. 00:35:43.680 --> 00:35:49.260 align:middle line:84% I'll just end to say here that I'm in a place 00:35:49.260 --> 00:36:04.430 align:middle line:84% right now where a kind of game between Socrates and Alcibiades 00:36:04.430 --> 00:36:07.320 align:middle line:90% is going on in my life. 00:36:07.320 --> 00:36:10.670 align:middle line:84% And I just want to register time here. 00:36:10.670 --> 00:36:15.830 align:middle line:90% 00:36:15.830 --> 00:36:16.330 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:36:16.330 --> 00:36:19.280 align:middle line:90% 00:36:19.280 --> 00:36:20.755 align:middle line:90% Surgir. 00:36:20.755 --> 00:36:22.660 align:middle line:90% This is the raw stuff. 00:36:22.660 --> 00:36:24.220 align:middle line:90% To emerge. 00:36:24.220 --> 00:36:25.990 align:middle line:90% Surgimiento. 00:36:25.990 --> 00:36:27.160 align:middle line:90% Emergence. 00:36:27.160 --> 00:36:30.220 align:middle line:84% To the desert, the emergence place, with you. 00:36:30.220 --> 00:36:32.930 align:middle line:90% 00:36:32.930 --> 00:36:34.550 align:middle line:90% I pick you up at LAX. 00:36:34.550 --> 00:36:35.180 align:middle line:90% Anxious. 00:36:35.180 --> 00:36:36.710 align:middle line:90% My invitation ambiguous. 00:36:36.710 --> 00:36:38.150 align:middle line:90% Our identities more so. 00:36:38.150 --> 00:36:41.120 align:middle line:84% My Tinder relationship status, ditto. 00:36:41.120 --> 00:36:43.280 align:middle line:84% You have lost your leather jacket. 00:36:43.280 --> 00:36:45.200 align:middle line:90% You post in Facebook. 00:36:45.200 --> 00:36:46.130 align:middle line:90% This is her text. 00:36:46.130 --> 00:36:49.460 align:middle line:90% 00:36:49.460 --> 00:36:52.640 align:middle line:84% Thinking about what we each wrap ourselves in 00:36:52.640 --> 00:36:56.000 align:middle line:84% to feel held in strength, comfort, hope. 00:36:56.000 --> 00:36:59.990 align:middle line:84% Thinking about what we keep close, words, objects, songs, 00:36:59.990 --> 00:37:04.130 align:middle line:84% images, foods, inks, memories, familias, to weave ourselves 00:37:04.130 --> 00:37:07.460 align:middle line:84% together, to remind ourselves of where we come from 00:37:07.460 --> 00:37:08.660 align:middle line:90% and bring it forward. 00:37:08.660 --> 00:37:11.600 align:middle line:84% Thinking about a handful of yous who 00:37:11.600 --> 00:37:15.740 align:middle line:84% understand what leather and all the rest of this means. 00:37:15.740 --> 00:37:18.020 align:middle line:84% You wear a leather band on your wrist. 00:37:18.020 --> 00:37:20.780 align:middle line:84% The leather emerges from within and coils you 00:37:20.780 --> 00:37:22.880 align:middle line:90% with perfect tension. 00:37:22.880 --> 00:37:26.090 align:middle line:84% We begin the dialogue over lunch at El Texate, 00:37:26.090 --> 00:37:28.190 align:middle line:90% Oaxacan on Pico Boulevard. 00:37:28.190 --> 00:37:32.180 align:middle line:84% Zapotec indigeneity staged for the mezcal sipping cast 00:37:32.180 --> 00:37:35.480 align:middle line:84% a few blocks from the beach, in the misty silver light 00:37:35.480 --> 00:37:39.410 align:middle line:84% next to the Pacific, which echoes your deserts. 00:37:39.410 --> 00:37:41.900 align:middle line:84% Desert and oceans coincide in their vastnesses, 00:37:41.900 --> 00:37:44.690 align:middle line:84% their emptinesses, their overdetermined symbolic 00:37:44.690 --> 00:37:45.830 align:middle line:90% valances. 00:37:45.830 --> 00:37:48.230 align:middle line:84% Your corporeal and spiritual fulcrums 00:37:48.230 --> 00:37:51.920 align:middle line:84% are the Caribbean, the North Atlantic, the rolls and folds 00:37:51.920 --> 00:37:54.620 align:middle line:84% and deeps, a sudden stillness, and heaven 00:37:54.620 --> 00:37:59.570 align:middle line:84% folded on the obsidian surface on a moonless night. 00:37:59.570 --> 00:38:02.690 align:middle line:84% That leather band on your wrist, something 00:38:02.690 --> 00:38:04.820 align:middle line:90% of the look of a warrior. 00:38:04.820 --> 00:38:06.410 align:middle line:84% I'm a man that is trying to emerge 00:38:06.410 --> 00:38:08.540 align:middle line:84% from the shackles of a gender queer marriage that 00:38:08.540 --> 00:38:10.940 align:middle line:84% was swallowed unwittingly, but inexorably, 00:38:10.940 --> 00:38:14.330 align:middle line:84% by heteronormativity and by the ghosts of crimes committed 00:38:14.330 --> 00:38:16.880 align:middle line:90% against the lesbian that I love. 00:38:16.880 --> 00:38:21.020 align:middle line:84% I am attracted to your leather strength, your tongues. 00:38:21.020 --> 00:38:22.910 align:middle line:84% No, let's say that in Castellano. 00:38:22.910 --> 00:38:24.230 align:middle line:90% Tus lenguas. 00:38:24.230 --> 00:38:28.110 align:middle line:84% Las muchas lenguas que manejas, que disparas, que versificas, 00:38:28.110 --> 00:38:29.180 align:middle line:90% que traduces. 00:38:29.180 --> 00:38:32.900 align:middle line:84% The ocean of words that you whip up with your leather breath. 00:38:32.900 --> 00:38:36.140 align:middle line:84% Spanish, English, and Canadian French. 00:38:36.140 --> 00:38:38.780 align:middle line:84% Early on in our conversation, you 00:38:38.780 --> 00:38:41.270 align:middle line:84% establish the themes of breaching borders. 00:38:41.270 --> 00:38:43.730 align:middle line:84% You are, after all, a trilingual, 00:38:43.730 --> 00:38:46.250 align:middle line:90% nonconforming, perhaps poly-- 00:38:46.250 --> 00:38:48.830 align:middle line:84% You say you love five or six people of different genders 00:38:48.830 --> 00:38:49.940 align:middle line:90% in different ways. 00:38:49.940 --> 00:38:53.690 align:middle line:84% I try to slip in somewhere that I am bisexual, 00:38:53.690 --> 00:39:00.860 align:middle line:84% which I realize for the first time sounds so very 1990s, so 00:39:00.860 --> 00:39:01.580 align:middle line:90% square. 00:39:01.580 --> 00:39:03.120 align:middle line:90% God. 00:39:03.120 --> 00:39:05.318 align:middle line:90% I'm another generation, man. 00:39:05.318 --> 00:39:06.860 align:middle line:84% For the first time, I think of myself 00:39:06.860 --> 00:39:08.450 align:middle line:84% as emerging in a new identity that 00:39:08.450 --> 00:39:10.130 align:middle line:84% has been closeted during my largely 00:39:10.130 --> 00:39:14.120 align:middle line:84% straight relationship to my lesbian life partner, gender 00:39:14.120 --> 00:39:15.080 align:middle line:90% queer. 00:39:15.080 --> 00:39:16.640 align:middle line:90% Yeah, yeah, that's right. 00:39:16.640 --> 00:39:17.908 align:middle line:90% Gender queer. 00:39:17.908 --> 00:39:19.700 align:middle line:84% Wait, I don't think there should be a space 00:39:19.700 --> 00:39:21.100 align:middle line:90% or a hyphen in gender queer. 00:39:21.100 --> 00:39:22.940 align:middle line:90% Genderqueer. 00:39:22.940 --> 00:39:26.180 align:middle line:84% I feel a freshness now, thinking of my body and yours, not 00:39:26.180 --> 00:39:27.320 align:middle line:90% together sexually, though. 00:39:27.320 --> 00:39:29.240 align:middle line:84% I do think about you erotically at times. 00:39:29.240 --> 00:39:32.260 align:middle line:90% But right now, an allyship. 00:39:32.260 --> 00:39:34.790 align:middle line:90% I WhatsApped Raquel today. 00:39:34.790 --> 00:39:38.900 align:middle line:84% I'm referring to Raquel in the program, by the way. 00:39:38.900 --> 00:39:40.850 align:middle line:90% I WhatsApped Raquel. 00:39:40.850 --> 00:39:43.010 align:middle line:84% One thing-- I'm putting this in italics. 00:39:43.010 --> 00:39:45.020 align:middle line:84% One thing I'm clear about, I am not 00:39:45.020 --> 00:39:47.210 align:middle line:84% attracted to straight women at all. 00:39:47.210 --> 00:39:48.833 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:39:48.833 --> 00:39:50.750 align:middle line:84% Those white girls jogging around Lake Merritt, 00:39:50.750 --> 00:39:54.590 align:middle line:84% their ponytail swinging so annoyingly. 00:39:54.590 --> 00:39:56.610 align:middle line:90% I invert my gaze. 00:39:56.610 --> 00:39:58.980 align:middle line:90% I'm cockless. 00:39:58.980 --> 00:40:00.480 align:middle line:84% It's a claim that we should probably 00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:02.010 align:middle line:90% problematize at some point. 00:40:02.010 --> 00:40:03.390 align:middle line:90% I know, I know. 00:40:03.390 --> 00:40:05.970 align:middle line:84% I tell Raquel that I am developing ideas 00:40:05.970 --> 00:40:09.810 align:middle line:84% about writing a spiritual Eros, a term that I have just 00:40:09.810 --> 00:40:10.380 align:middle line:90% Googled. 00:40:10.380 --> 00:40:12.570 align:middle line:84% This is before I read about Alcibiades. 00:40:12.570 --> 00:40:16.500 align:middle line:84% Serious scholar that I am, Google is my first stop. 00:40:16.500 --> 00:40:19.440 align:middle line:84% I come up with very few hits on a precise pairing of the terms. 00:40:19.440 --> 00:40:22.230 align:middle line:84% The most direct one being CS Lewis citing Plato 00:40:22.230 --> 00:40:23.670 align:middle line:90% about a spiritual longing. 00:40:23.670 --> 00:40:27.390 align:middle line:84% That was the beginning of going down the rabbit hole. 00:40:27.390 --> 00:40:31.440 align:middle line:84% Soon, I will immerse myself in the ambiguous genealogy 00:40:31.440 --> 00:40:34.740 align:middle line:84% of Eros, a Western argument that gets trapped in binaries 00:40:34.740 --> 00:40:37.200 align:middle line:84% and has been liberated by radical bodies 00:40:37.200 --> 00:40:38.700 align:middle line:90% across the centuries. 00:40:38.700 --> 00:40:42.480 align:middle line:84% Right now with you, I'm talking about a twining 00:40:42.480 --> 00:40:44.790 align:middle line:84% between the mystical and the embodied, which 00:40:44.790 --> 00:40:49.950 align:middle line:84% leads to my cocklessness and a sense of being fucked, filled. 00:40:49.950 --> 00:40:51.413 align:middle line:90% This line came to me today. 00:40:51.413 --> 00:40:53.580 align:middle line:84% Perhaps, the opening line of the chapter of the book 00:40:53.580 --> 00:40:55.260 align:middle line:84% that right now I can only apprehend 00:40:55.260 --> 00:40:57.450 align:middle line:90% in wispy serious visions. 00:40:57.450 --> 00:41:00.570 align:middle line:84% This is the opening of the book as it stands right now, guys. 00:41:00.570 --> 00:41:03.150 align:middle line:84% A few weeks after my lesbian life partner told me that she 00:41:03.150 --> 00:41:05.280 align:middle line:84% had fallen in love with another woman, 00:41:05.280 --> 00:41:08.960 align:middle line:84% I sat in a pew in the back of the Marian Chapel at La Iglesia 00:41:08.960 --> 00:41:12.990 align:middle line:84% de la Compañia de Jesus in Córdoba, Argentina. 00:41:12.990 --> 00:41:18.030 align:middle line:84% I suddenly felt myself filled, sublimely fucked, but not 00:41:18.030 --> 00:41:22.920 align:middle line:84% penetrated, a feeling of rectal fullness that then suffused 00:41:22.920 --> 00:41:24.375 align:middle line:90% my entire body. 00:41:24.375 --> 00:41:29.000 align:middle line:90% 00:41:29.000 --> 00:41:30.250 align:middle line:90% Maybe it's a run-on sentence. 00:41:30.250 --> 00:41:32.360 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:41:32.360 --> 00:41:34.190 align:middle line:90% Cocklessness as castration? 00:41:34.190 --> 00:41:35.180 align:middle line:90% No, no, no, no. 00:41:35.180 --> 00:41:37.940 align:middle line:84% That's too cleanly Freudian, too binary. 00:41:37.940 --> 00:41:40.610 align:middle line:84% Relieved of my cockness somehow, the deadweight, 00:41:40.610 --> 00:41:43.610 align:middle line:84% the murderous weight, as I would feel often with you 00:41:43.610 --> 00:41:45.410 align:middle line:84% in the desert that was once an ocean. 00:41:45.410 --> 00:41:47.450 align:middle line:84% You who were born not far from the Caribbean 00:41:47.450 --> 00:41:49.010 align:middle line:90% that is desert in its vastness. 00:41:49.010 --> 00:41:51.050 align:middle line:84% You who wrote a scholarship to private school 00:41:51.050 --> 00:41:54.140 align:middle line:84% in New England, a colder sea just as immense. 00:41:54.140 --> 00:41:56.480 align:middle line:84% You who I would meet in the Green Mountains of Vermont, 00:41:56.480 --> 00:42:00.470 align:middle line:84% trying to keep up with you on the Appalachian Trail. 00:42:00.470 --> 00:42:02.680 align:middle line:84% Hablamos en español toda la tarde. 00:42:02.680 --> 00:42:04.430 align:middle line:84% Sólo algunas frasesitas en inglés, 00:42:04.430 --> 00:42:06.800 align:middle line:84% términos técnicos que tardaríamos demasiado en 00:42:06.800 --> 00:42:08.120 align:middle line:90% traducir. 00:42:08.120 --> 00:42:12.110 align:middle line:84% My heartlessness expresses itself in language. 00:42:12.110 --> 00:42:14.510 align:middle line:84% And you will tell me, a little over 24 hours later, 00:42:14.510 --> 00:42:16.130 align:middle line:84% that you are not having sex right now. 00:42:16.130 --> 00:42:17.720 align:middle line:90% This is Socrates. 00:42:17.720 --> 00:42:20.175 align:middle line:84% You're not having sex right now because of-- 00:42:20.175 --> 00:42:21.050 align:middle line:90% Filling in the blank. 00:42:21.050 --> 00:42:21.560 align:middle line:90% Trump. 00:42:21.560 --> 00:42:23.870 align:middle line:84% Because your Eros is your writing practice. 00:42:23.870 --> 00:42:26.480 align:middle line:84% Because there are other ways to love beyond the body. 00:42:26.480 --> 00:42:28.280 align:middle line:84% Because your body is collaborating, 00:42:28.280 --> 00:42:30.170 align:middle line:84% not just resisting, but producing community, 00:42:30.170 --> 00:42:31.070 align:middle line:90% not an orgy. 00:42:31.070 --> 00:42:33.580 align:middle line:90% Comunidad. 00:42:33.580 --> 00:42:36.080 align:middle line:84% You were wearing a jean skirt, tennis shoes, a black t-shirt 00:42:36.080 --> 00:42:38.405 align:middle line:84% with the name of a band, pelo largo y suelto, 00:42:38.405 --> 00:42:41.900 align:middle line:84% canas descubiertas, head shaved close on your sienes, 00:42:41.900 --> 00:42:45.560 align:middle line:84% a modest echo of the faux hawk you once wore. 00:42:45.560 --> 00:42:48.560 align:middle line:84% Earnestly trying to prove to you my cockless cred, 00:42:48.560 --> 00:42:51.200 align:middle line:84% I drive towards the hammer and the exhibit, 00:42:51.200 --> 00:42:56.180 align:middle line:84% Radical Women Latin American Art, 1962 - 1985. 00:42:56.180 --> 00:42:59.060 align:middle line:90% We walk among the radical women. 00:42:59.060 --> 00:43:01.950 align:middle line:84% You take a selfie at Judy Baca's triptych, 00:43:01.950 --> 00:43:03.800 align:middle line:84% which places the viewer in the center 00:43:03.800 --> 00:43:06.500 align:middle line:84% panel via a mirror flanked by cholas 00:43:06.500 --> 00:43:10.070 align:middle line:84% of distinct styles, perhaps distinctive generations, 00:43:10.070 --> 00:43:14.480 align:middle line:84% daring the viewer to define her relationship to the other two. 00:43:14.480 --> 00:43:16.310 align:middle line:90% Is there a relationship? 00:43:16.310 --> 00:43:18.170 align:middle line:90% A non-relationship? 00:43:18.170 --> 00:43:19.730 align:middle line:90% An incommensurability? 00:43:19.730 --> 00:43:21.080 align:middle line:90% A stylistic affinity? 00:43:21.080 --> 00:43:21.890 align:middle line:90% A competition? 00:43:21.890 --> 00:43:22.460 align:middle line:90% A desire? 00:43:22.460 --> 00:43:23.030 align:middle line:90% A jealousy? 00:43:23.030 --> 00:43:23.900 align:middle line:90% A contention? 00:43:23.900 --> 00:43:24.710 align:middle line:90% A question? 00:43:24.710 --> 00:43:25.400 align:middle line:90% A love? 00:43:25.400 --> 00:43:26.180 align:middle line:90% A sympathy? 00:43:26.180 --> 00:43:27.140 align:middle line:90% A condescension? 00:43:27.140 --> 00:43:28.850 align:middle line:90% An incomprehension? 00:43:28.850 --> 00:43:31.490 align:middle line:90% Productive piece. 00:43:31.490 --> 00:43:33.740 align:middle line:84% What if you're momentarily a cockless man reflected 00:43:33.740 --> 00:43:34.970 align:middle line:90% in the mirror? 00:43:34.970 --> 00:43:37.850 align:middle line:84% The cholas dare us to define ourselves alongside them. 00:43:37.850 --> 00:43:38.990 align:middle line:90% Where you from? 00:43:38.990 --> 00:43:41.030 align:middle line:90% The classic chola taunt. 00:43:41.030 --> 00:43:44.310 align:middle line:84% Are you a threat from outside or from within the community? 00:43:44.310 --> 00:43:46.640 align:middle line:90% Am I safe around you? 00:43:46.640 --> 00:43:48.470 align:middle line:90% Probably not. 00:43:48.470 --> 00:43:50.360 align:middle line:90% Safe spaces. 00:43:50.360 --> 00:43:52.880 align:middle line:84% When I first brought you to the desert, 00:43:52.880 --> 00:43:55.040 align:middle line:90% your trauma was very recent. 00:43:55.040 --> 00:43:57.830 align:middle line:90% Violencias. 00:43:57.830 --> 00:44:01.190 align:middle line:84% That I would not hear of for months, and then not again 00:44:01.190 --> 00:44:06.740 align:middle line:84% for years, until this last season, this season of loss. 00:44:06.740 --> 00:44:08.870 align:middle line:84% I was still slowly emerging from self-harm 00:44:08.870 --> 00:44:11.750 align:middle line:84% in the Bohemian circuits between Mexico City and Los Angeles 00:44:11.750 --> 00:44:13.070 align:middle line:90% when I met you. 00:44:13.070 --> 00:44:16.490 align:middle line:84% Ya no [? huelía ?] la coca, but a cocktail of Zoloft and red 00:44:16.490 --> 00:44:20.660 align:middle line:84% wine kept the performance going, a dark charismatic turn that 00:44:20.660 --> 00:44:21.560 align:middle line:90% lured you. 00:44:21.560 --> 00:44:23.630 align:middle line:90% Wound seeking wound. 00:44:23.630 --> 00:44:28.160 align:middle line:84% You had broken up with Jamie, then with Ann, then with me, 00:44:28.160 --> 00:44:29.810 align:middle line:90% and then called me up again. 00:44:29.810 --> 00:44:32.660 align:middle line:90% I was with another you, but not. 00:44:32.660 --> 00:44:34.160 align:middle line:90% Both of us too broken. 00:44:34.160 --> 00:44:37.110 align:middle line:84% The relational field strewn with casualties. 00:44:37.110 --> 00:44:38.750 align:middle line:90% I answered your call. 00:44:38.750 --> 00:44:40.880 align:middle line:84% I was always going to answer your call. 00:44:40.880 --> 00:44:43.490 align:middle line:84% I'm answering it still to the extent that I can, 00:44:43.490 --> 00:44:45.980 align:middle line:90% to the extent that you allow. 00:44:45.980 --> 00:44:47.720 align:middle line:90% You talk to the desert. 00:44:47.720 --> 00:44:49.640 align:middle line:90% That's where you're from. 00:44:49.640 --> 00:44:52.670 align:middle line:84% The desert is where I'd gone to heal. 00:44:52.670 --> 00:44:55.080 align:middle line:90% I was the desert troubadour. 00:44:55.080 --> 00:44:57.800 align:middle line:84% I was going to become the subject of your dissertation, 00:44:57.800 --> 00:45:00.170 align:middle line:90% The Desert of Drugs. 00:45:00.170 --> 00:45:03.170 align:middle line:84% I'll take you back to the desert, I told you. 00:45:03.170 --> 00:45:05.240 align:middle line:84% I picked you up at the airport in Ontario 00:45:05.240 --> 00:45:08.330 align:middle line:84% and got into my 1991 two-door Chevy Blazer. 00:45:08.330 --> 00:45:10.580 align:middle line:84% Drove the four lane to the two lane to the dirt road, 00:45:10.580 --> 00:45:12.080 align:middle line:90% kicking up dust in the night. 00:45:12.080 --> 00:45:13.760 align:middle line:90% Doorless shacks. 00:45:13.760 --> 00:45:16.760 align:middle line:90% The thought crossed your mind. 00:45:16.760 --> 00:45:19.175 align:middle line:90% You did not feel safe. 00:45:19.175 --> 00:45:31.600 align:middle line:90% 00:45:31.600 --> 00:45:34.360 align:middle line:84% This is where we extemporize, improvise, just 00:45:34.360 --> 00:45:35.110 align:middle line:90% for a few minutes. 00:45:35.110 --> 00:45:37.330 align:middle line:84% And then, I'd love to talk to you about your deserts. 00:45:37.330 --> 00:45:44.970 align:middle line:90% 00:45:44.970 --> 00:45:49.560 align:middle line:84% I had a desert experience recently, 00:45:49.560 --> 00:45:53.002 align:middle line:84% where the environmental concerns-- 00:45:53.002 --> 00:45:54.960 align:middle line:84% They're all around us because of climate change 00:45:54.960 --> 00:45:57.120 align:middle line:84% registered in a very particular way, 00:45:57.120 --> 00:46:02.490 align:middle line:84% even as it was having a spiritual and effective 00:46:02.490 --> 00:46:05.220 align:middle line:84% resonance for me because of some of the narrative 00:46:05.220 --> 00:46:06.510 align:middle line:90% I was just giving you. 00:46:06.510 --> 00:46:09.360 align:middle line:84% I got to go to Argentina for six months with my twin daughters, 00:46:09.360 --> 00:46:12.090 align:middle line:90% 10 years old, I told you about. 00:46:12.090 --> 00:46:15.250 align:middle line:90% And I was drawn to the desert. 00:46:15.250 --> 00:46:19.740 align:middle line:84% We were living in Córdoba, the center of the country. 00:46:19.740 --> 00:46:23.820 align:middle line:84% But I kept on wanting to go to Salta, Jujuy, Catamarca, 00:46:23.820 --> 00:46:28.990 align:middle line:84% the Argentine side of the Atacama Desert. 00:46:28.990 --> 00:46:31.240 align:middle line:90% And this is what it looks like. 00:46:31.240 --> 00:46:33.450 align:middle line:84% Anybody know what those animals are? 00:46:33.450 --> 00:46:34.680 align:middle line:90% Alpaca. 00:46:34.680 --> 00:46:36.771 align:middle line:90% Vicuña. 00:46:36.771 --> 00:46:41.220 align:middle line:84% There's vicuñas, guanaca, guanacos, alpacas, llamas, 00:46:41.220 --> 00:46:43.350 align:middle line:90% of course. 00:46:43.350 --> 00:46:47.250 align:middle line:90% That's at 14,000 feet. 00:46:47.250 --> 00:46:51.705 align:middle line:84% And what's sustaining that herd is this. 00:46:51.705 --> 00:46:56.890 align:middle line:90% 00:46:56.890 --> 00:47:02.030 align:middle line:84% There are just a handful of these water sources up there. 00:47:02.030 --> 00:47:04.370 align:middle line:84% And it was by chance that I arrived at them 00:47:04.370 --> 00:47:08.150 align:middle line:84% through my theologian friend who keeps on showing up in my life, 00:47:08.150 --> 00:47:12.170 align:middle line:84% telling me go see those Cistercian nuns and be quiet. 00:47:12.170 --> 00:47:14.750 align:middle line:84% Now, go to this place, this weird place in the desert 00:47:14.750 --> 00:47:17.060 align:middle line:90% I just went to in Argentina. 00:47:17.060 --> 00:47:20.660 align:middle line:90% 00:47:20.660 --> 00:47:22.910 align:middle line:90% Hundreds of miles around. 00:47:22.910 --> 00:47:27.200 align:middle line:84% It's blasted like Mars, like moon. 00:47:27.200 --> 00:47:28.930 align:middle line:84% There's a handful of species that 00:47:28.930 --> 00:47:30.680 align:middle line:84% survive because of the thinness of the air 00:47:30.680 --> 00:47:32.570 align:middle line:90% and the dryness of the climate. 00:47:32.570 --> 00:47:34.910 align:middle line:84% And then, suddenly, this happens. 00:47:34.910 --> 00:47:37.690 align:middle line:90% 00:47:37.690 --> 00:47:40.060 align:middle line:84% And there's microorganisms there. 00:47:40.060 --> 00:47:41.980 align:middle line:84% Fresh water coming up, making contact 00:47:41.980 --> 00:47:45.610 align:middle line:84% with the salt from the dry lake beds, 00:47:45.610 --> 00:47:51.790 align:middle line:84% making the perfect soup for flamingos. 00:47:51.790 --> 00:47:55.720 align:middle line:84% There's huge colonies, huge colonies of flamingos up there. 00:47:55.720 --> 00:48:00.440 align:middle line:90% 00:48:00.440 --> 00:48:07.120 align:middle line:84% And everybody has a cell phone here tonight. 00:48:07.120 --> 00:48:11.737 align:middle line:84% The battery in your cell phone is running on lithium 00:48:11.737 --> 00:48:12.445 align:middle line:90% from that desert. 00:48:12.445 --> 00:48:15.040 align:middle line:90% 00:48:15.040 --> 00:48:21.610 align:middle line:84% Lithium mining is the most hydro-intensive mining 00:48:21.610 --> 00:48:23.260 align:middle line:90% there is. 00:48:23.260 --> 00:48:27.400 align:middle line:84% And they're processing the lithium on site. 00:48:27.400 --> 00:48:31.000 align:middle line:84% They're pumping groundwater into huge evaporation pools. 00:48:31.000 --> 00:48:38.610 align:middle line:90% 00:48:38.610 --> 00:48:41.400 align:middle line:84% Minera Exar struck deals with six Aboriginal communities 00:48:41.400 --> 00:48:44.790 align:middle line:84% for a new mine in this exact place where I just showed you. 00:48:44.790 --> 00:48:47.520 align:middle line:84% The operation is expected to generate about $250 million 00:48:47.520 --> 00:48:51.810 align:middle line:84% a year in sales, while the communities get 9,000 00:48:51.810 --> 00:48:58.180 align:middle line:84% to about 60,000 one-time payment for extensive surface and water 00:48:58.180 --> 00:48:58.680 align:middle line:90% rights. 00:48:58.680 --> 00:49:01.650 align:middle line:90% 00:49:01.650 --> 00:49:08.325 align:middle line:84% The flamingos, the Cachua, the emergence place itself. 00:49:08.325 --> 00:49:09.200 align:middle line:90% Sorry for doing this. 00:49:09.200 --> 00:49:11.200 align:middle line:84% I'm going to backtrack just a second because I skipped 00:49:11.200 --> 00:49:12.430 align:middle line:90% over Leslie Marmon Silko. 00:49:12.430 --> 00:49:15.080 align:middle line:90% 00:49:15.080 --> 00:49:16.175 align:middle line:90% Laguna Pueblo. 00:49:16.175 --> 00:49:19.070 align:middle line:90% 00:49:19.070 --> 00:49:26.210 align:middle line:84% Who helped me see these places, these 00:49:26.210 --> 00:49:30.410 align:middle line:84% springs in the desert, in their spiritual dimension, 00:49:30.410 --> 00:49:33.860 align:middle line:84% in their native mythological dimension. 00:49:33.860 --> 00:49:35.510 align:middle line:84% Natural Springs are crucial sources 00:49:35.510 --> 00:49:38.580 align:middle line:84% of water for all life in the high desert plateau country. 00:49:38.580 --> 00:49:41.330 align:middle line:84% So the small Spring near Paguate Village 00:49:41.330 --> 00:49:43.370 align:middle line:84% is literally the source and continuance 00:49:43.370 --> 00:49:45.380 align:middle line:84% of life for the people in the area. 00:49:45.380 --> 00:49:47.870 align:middle line:84% The Spring also functions on a spiritual level, 00:49:47.870 --> 00:49:50.600 align:middle line:84% recalling the original emergence place 00:49:50.600 --> 00:49:53.240 align:middle line:84% and linking the people and the Spring water 00:49:53.240 --> 00:49:56.570 align:middle line:84% to all other people, and to that moment when the Pueblo 00:49:56.570 --> 00:49:58.400 align:middle line:84% people became aware of themselves 00:49:58.400 --> 00:50:00.830 align:middle line:90% as they are even now. 00:50:00.830 --> 00:50:05.060 align:middle line:84% This was an emergence into a precise cultural identity. 00:50:05.060 --> 00:50:08.840 align:middle line:84% Life on the high arid plateau became viable 00:50:08.840 --> 00:50:11.840 align:middle line:84% when the human beings were able to imagine themselves 00:50:11.840 --> 00:50:16.850 align:middle line:84% as sisters and brothers to the badger, antelope, clay, yucca, 00:50:16.850 --> 00:50:18.380 align:middle line:90% and sun. 00:50:18.380 --> 00:50:20.900 align:middle line:84% Not until they could find a viable relationship 00:50:20.900 --> 00:50:24.980 align:middle line:84% to the terrain, the landscape they found themselves in, 00:50:24.980 --> 00:50:28.530 align:middle line:90% could they emerge. 00:50:28.530 --> 00:50:31.712 align:middle line:84% So I'm just going to flip forward really fast again. 00:50:31.712 --> 00:50:32.545 align:middle line:90% It's our last image. 00:50:32.545 --> 00:50:36.440 align:middle line:90% 00:50:36.440 --> 00:50:42.230 align:middle line:90% And I'll leave you with this. 00:50:42.230 --> 00:50:45.740 align:middle line:90% Just a couple of other texts. 00:50:45.740 --> 00:50:53.530 align:middle line:84% My plan had actually been to collate these other texts 00:50:53.530 --> 00:50:55.280 align:middle line:84% into everything that I've just been doing. 00:50:55.280 --> 00:50:57.363 align:middle line:84% I'm just going to give you a couple of quick ones. 00:50:57.363 --> 00:51:00.510 align:middle line:90% 00:51:00.510 --> 00:51:03.180 align:middle line:84% The Earth was a formless void and darkness 00:51:03.180 --> 00:51:05.820 align:middle line:84% covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God 00:51:05.820 --> 00:51:08.720 align:middle line:84% swept over the face of the waters. 00:51:08.720 --> 00:51:10.430 align:middle line:90% Genesis Chapter 1 Verse 2. 00:51:10.430 --> 00:51:15.540 align:middle line:90% 00:51:15.540 --> 00:51:17.550 align:middle line:90% So Anthony moves. 00:51:17.550 --> 00:51:19.860 align:middle line:84% Initially, renouncing village, home, 00:51:19.860 --> 00:51:23.250 align:middle line:84% and the entire domestic sphere for the sake of and as 00:51:23.250 --> 00:51:25.980 align:middle line:84% yet undetermined life on the margins of the village 00:51:25.980 --> 00:51:28.200 align:middle line:90% at the edge of the desert. 00:51:28.200 --> 00:51:30.450 align:middle line:84% After a time, he sets off again, traveling deeper 00:51:30.450 --> 00:51:34.290 align:middle line:84% into the wilderness, into the precarious space of solitude. 00:51:34.290 --> 00:51:37.680 align:middle line:84% He walks a path concretely and metaphorically, 00:51:37.680 --> 00:51:39.840 align:middle line:84% filled with challenges and temptations 00:51:39.840 --> 00:51:41.520 align:middle line:90% with which he must reckon. 00:51:41.520 --> 00:51:43.800 align:middle line:84% Eventually, settling down in an old 00:51:43.800 --> 00:51:47.250 align:middle line:84% fortress, and then moving into an abandoned tomb. 00:51:47.250 --> 00:51:49.290 align:middle line:84% The tomb becomes a crucible, in which 00:51:49.290 --> 00:51:51.810 align:middle line:84% Anthony opens himself little by little to the work 00:51:51.810 --> 00:51:54.040 align:middle line:90% of purification and renewal. 00:51:54.040 --> 00:51:56.580 align:middle line:84% It is here in the lonely solitude of the cell 00:51:56.580 --> 00:51:59.070 align:middle line:84% that the true meaning of the desert in the life of the monk 00:51:59.070 --> 00:52:00.780 align:middle line:90% becomes clear. 00:52:00.780 --> 00:52:04.479 align:middle line:84% Douglas Christie, Blue Sapphire of the Mind. 00:52:04.479 --> 00:52:09.370 align:middle line:90% 00:52:09.370 --> 00:52:11.200 align:middle line:84% The work of mestiza consciousness 00:52:11.200 --> 00:52:13.750 align:middle line:84% is to break down the subject object duality that 00:52:13.750 --> 00:52:16.510 align:middle line:84% keeps her a prisoner and to show in the flesh 00:52:16.510 --> 00:52:18.100 align:middle line:84% and through the images in her work 00:52:18.100 --> 00:52:20.320 align:middle line:90% how duality is transcended. 00:52:20.320 --> 00:52:22.330 align:middle line:84% The answer to the problem between the White 00:52:22.330 --> 00:52:25.120 align:middle line:84% race and the colored, between males and females, 00:52:25.120 --> 00:52:27.250 align:middle line:84% lies in healing the split that originates 00:52:27.250 --> 00:52:30.250 align:middle line:84% in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, 00:52:30.250 --> 00:52:32.470 align:middle line:90% our languages, our thoughts. 00:52:32.470 --> 00:52:35.470 align:middle line:84% A massive uprooting of dualistic thinking 00:52:35.470 --> 00:52:38.260 align:middle line:84% in the individual and collective consciousness 00:52:38.260 --> 00:52:40.460 align:middle line:84% is the beginning of a long struggle, 00:52:40.460 --> 00:52:43.150 align:middle line:84% but one that could, in our best hopes, 00:52:43.150 --> 00:52:48.190 align:middle line:84% bring an end to rape, violence, and war. 00:52:48.190 --> 00:52:59.290 align:middle line:90% 00:52:59.290 --> 00:53:03.252 align:middle line:84% All right, you guys pick, Nietzsche or Simone Weil. 00:53:03.252 --> 00:53:05.610 align:middle line:90% Simone Weil. 00:53:05.610 --> 00:53:06.200 align:middle line:90% Good choice. 00:53:06.200 --> 00:53:07.950 align:middle line:84% Although, the Nietzsche is pretty amazing. 00:53:07.950 --> 00:53:13.420 align:middle line:90% 00:53:13.420 --> 00:53:17.380 align:middle line:84% Love on the part of someone who is happy 00:53:17.380 --> 00:53:20.350 align:middle line:84% is the wish to share the suffering of the beloved 00:53:20.350 --> 00:53:21.085 align:middle line:90% who is unhappy. 00:53:21.085 --> 00:53:23.610 align:middle line:90% 00:53:23.610 --> 00:53:26.220 align:middle line:84% Love on the part of someone who is unhappy 00:53:26.220 --> 00:53:29.130 align:middle line:84% is to be filled with joy by the mere knowledge 00:53:29.130 --> 00:53:31.890 align:middle line:84% that his beloved is happy without sharing 00:53:31.890 --> 00:53:34.620 align:middle line:84% in this happiness or even wishing to do so. 00:53:34.620 --> 00:53:37.180 align:middle line:90% 00:53:37.180 --> 00:53:41.170 align:middle line:84% Love tends to go further and further, but there is a limit. 00:53:41.170 --> 00:53:43.810 align:middle line:84% When the limit is passed, love turns to hate. 00:53:43.810 --> 00:53:49.983 align:middle line:84% To avoid this love, it has to become different. 00:53:49.983 --> 00:53:52.150 align:middle line:84% Note that she doesn't say that it's the end of love. 00:53:52.150 --> 00:54:00.620 align:middle line:90% 00:54:00.620 --> 00:54:04.340 align:middle line:84% And finally, from Simone Weil, it's Gravity and Grace. 00:54:04.340 --> 00:54:07.310 align:middle line:84% Do not allow yourself to be imprisoned by any affection. 00:54:07.310 --> 00:54:08.570 align:middle line:90% Keep your solitude. 00:54:08.570 --> 00:54:11.750 align:middle line:84% The day, if it ever comes, when you are given true affection, 00:54:11.750 --> 00:54:14.810 align:middle line:84% there will be no opposition between interior solitude 00:54:14.810 --> 00:54:15.740 align:middle line:90% and friendship. 00:54:15.740 --> 00:54:17.600 align:middle line:90% Quite the reverse. 00:54:17.600 --> 00:54:19.760 align:middle line:84% It is even by this infallible sign 00:54:19.760 --> 00:54:22.340 align:middle line:90% that you will recognize it. 00:54:22.340 --> 00:54:30.420 align:middle line:90% 00:54:30.420 --> 00:54:32.130 align:middle line:90% And I'll close with this. 00:54:32.130 --> 00:54:39.880 align:middle line:84% Martín-Baró was a Salvadoran psychologist, a Jesuit, 00:54:39.880 --> 00:54:45.250 align:middle line:84% working at the Universidad Centroamericana in November 00:54:45.250 --> 00:54:50.770 align:middle line:84% of 1989 during the Salvadoran Civil War when a special 00:54:50.770 --> 00:54:55.480 align:middle line:84% commando unit and the Salvadoran army broke onto the campus 00:54:55.480 --> 00:55:01.015 align:middle line:84% and shot seven Jesuits, their cook, and the cook's daughter. 00:55:01.015 --> 00:55:04.340 align:middle line:90% 00:55:04.340 --> 00:55:06.770 align:middle line:84% And there's a place on the campus that 00:55:06.770 --> 00:55:11.150 align:middle line:90% is a shrine to these martyrs. 00:55:11.150 --> 00:55:14.060 align:middle line:90% Martín-Baró wrote this. 00:55:14.060 --> 00:55:16.670 align:middle line:90% 00:55:16.670 --> 00:55:17.370 align:middle line:90% "Caricia." 00:55:17.370 --> 00:55:20.990 align:middle line:90% 00:55:20.990 --> 00:55:23.270 align:middle line:84% For the sake of time, I'll just read the English. 00:55:23.270 --> 00:55:24.600 align:middle line:90% But it's beautiful in Spanish. 00:55:24.600 --> 00:55:28.670 align:middle line:84% And this translation, I rendered it the rough draft of it 00:55:28.670 --> 00:55:35.480 align:middle line:84% and María José Jiménez made it elegant as it really is 00:55:35.480 --> 00:55:37.820 align:middle line:90% in Spanish. 00:55:37.820 --> 00:55:41.270 align:middle line:84% The caress acquires the plenitude of its being 00:55:41.270 --> 00:55:43.490 align:middle line:90% when it becomes dialogue. 00:55:43.490 --> 00:55:46.490 align:middle line:84% That is to say, when it is the vehicle of communication 00:55:46.490 --> 00:55:49.520 align:middle line:84% between two personal beings, an I and a you, 00:55:49.520 --> 00:55:54.990 align:middle line:84% existentially linked in the vibration of an us. 00:55:54.990 --> 00:55:59.580 align:middle line:84% In the caress dialogue, the hand loses its materiality 00:55:59.580 --> 00:56:02.130 align:middle line:90% and becomes transparency. 00:56:02.130 --> 00:56:04.380 align:middle line:90% We speak and we listen. 00:56:04.380 --> 00:56:08.920 align:middle line:84% And speaking is itself already a listening. 00:56:08.920 --> 00:56:12.990 align:middle line:84% There's a communion between two beings in one heartbeat. 00:56:12.990 --> 00:56:17.010 align:middle line:84% In the authentic caress, one person reaches the other. 00:56:17.010 --> 00:56:20.880 align:middle line:84% The skin loses its objectness and becomes 00:56:20.880 --> 00:56:22.350 align:middle line:90% the whisper of love. 00:56:22.350 --> 00:56:26.240 align:middle line:90% 00:56:26.240 --> 00:56:30.855 align:middle line:84% What I'm trying to weave together here, 00:56:30.855 --> 00:56:35.240 align:middle line:84% the mining in the desert, the physical emergence 00:56:35.240 --> 00:56:39.380 align:middle line:84% place, the violence is visited on our bodies 00:56:39.380 --> 00:56:44.170 align:middle line:84% and our communities, the silence that we 00:56:44.170 --> 00:56:48.250 align:middle line:84% are shocked into by pain, allowing the pain 00:56:48.250 --> 00:56:54.370 align:middle line:84% to really take hold of us and not turn away from it, 00:56:54.370 --> 00:57:00.790 align:middle line:84% looking at dualistic thinking, gender, queer, genderqueer. 00:57:00.790 --> 00:57:06.650 align:middle line:90% 00:57:06.650 --> 00:57:09.380 align:middle line:90% Any hyphen, any space. 00:57:09.380 --> 00:57:14.930 align:middle line:84% Noticing that the gaps are not walls, not divisions, 00:57:14.930 --> 00:57:15.590 align:middle line:90% but pathways. 00:57:15.590 --> 00:57:18.530 align:middle line:90% 00:57:18.530 --> 00:57:22.330 align:middle line:90% The impasse is a path. 00:57:22.330 --> 00:57:23.790 align:middle line:90% Right? 00:57:23.790 --> 00:57:26.370 align:middle line:90% I've been saying that-- 00:57:26.370 --> 00:57:30.390 align:middle line:84% For those of us who consider ourselves 00:57:30.390 --> 00:57:33.150 align:middle line:84% part of a movement that is the antithesis 00:57:33.150 --> 00:57:40.560 align:middle line:84% of the official government that we have empowered today, 00:57:40.560 --> 00:57:43.230 align:middle line:84% we often say the resistance, and it's great to say that, 00:57:43.230 --> 00:57:44.350 align:middle line:90% but it's also a defense-- 00:57:44.350 --> 00:57:45.683 align:middle line:90% It seems to me a defensive term. 00:57:45.683 --> 00:57:48.780 align:middle line:90% 00:57:48.780 --> 00:57:51.010 align:middle line:90% We're defending something. 00:57:51.010 --> 00:57:54.000 align:middle line:84% We're holding on to what we have rather than continuing 00:57:54.000 --> 00:57:59.210 align:middle line:84% to imagine where we really want to go. 00:57:59.210 --> 00:58:03.220 align:middle line:84% This is a personal, subjective journey for all of us. 00:58:03.220 --> 00:58:06.580 align:middle line:84% And it's a journey for all of us in community. 00:58:06.580 --> 00:58:10.240 align:middle line:84% And what gives me consolation, in my personal journey, 00:58:10.240 --> 00:58:13.570 align:middle line:84% in my body and in my spirit, and my political journey 00:58:13.570 --> 00:58:17.980 align:middle line:84% alongside all of you, is being in community. 00:58:17.980 --> 00:58:21.760 align:middle line:84% I read a lot of first person tonight, 00:58:21.760 --> 00:58:24.640 align:middle line:84% but I did it in the spirit of wanting 00:58:24.640 --> 00:58:31.460 align:middle line:84% to be an I alongside you and to hear your pain, too. 00:58:31.460 --> 00:58:37.420 align:middle line:84% We are all in pain, all of us, In a very special kind of pain 00:58:37.420 --> 00:58:39.820 align:middle line:90% right now. 00:58:39.820 --> 00:58:44.220 align:middle line:84% And we need to care for each other, 00:58:44.220 --> 00:58:51.060 align:middle line:84% revere each other in silence, and then emerge together 00:58:51.060 --> 00:58:55.655 align:middle line:84% from the silence into language, a new language. 00:58:55.655 --> 00:58:57.030 align:middle line:84% Thank you for being here tonight. 00:58:57.030 --> 00:59:00.380 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:59:00.380 --> 00:59:04.000 align:middle line:90%