WEBVTT

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And the next one that I'm going
to read is in honor of-- it's

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actually two years
to the day-- or was

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written about an event
two years to the day ago.

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And I know that because the
first line is "your birthday

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tomorrow" and then referencing
my husband John Melillo.

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And tomorrow is going
to be his birthday

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again, two years later.

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So this is Whitewater Draw
for John, and for all of you.

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And some of you might know
Whitewater Draw is this--

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the conservation area not
too far south from here,

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which is a site for--

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the migratory site
for sandhill cranes.

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Whitewater Draw.

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"Your birthday tomorrow.

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We drove down with my
parents, got out just

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as the light was
beginning to fade.

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The baby asleep, we shifted
her gently as we could,

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but still she woke, cried,
was hushed back to sleep.

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My parents walked ahead
toward the look off.

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We followed.

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Took turns straining through
the set of government binoculars

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mounted on the boardwalk rail.

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When I looked, everything seemed
to blink in and out of focus

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as if I was examining a dream
I was having about birds, where

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birds stood in
for something more

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complex, impossible to define.

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You can always
feel it, the moment

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she falls back to sleep
when you're carrying her.

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A subtle shift in
weight and pressure.

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The next morning I wrote
on the back of a postcard

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I'd picked up years ago.

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A series of 12 frames
from Eadweard Muybridge,

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Horse Walking Free.

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How we always imagine time
like that, as stalled moments.

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And although probably
it's true that it

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exists like that in some sense,
if only because we imagine

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that it does, really,
I wrote, everything

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is always escaping in between.

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My ambition-- I don't remember
if I wrote this down--

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is not to attempt any
longer, just stall time.

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Or second guess
its impulse, which,

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for lack of a better
word, is always forward.

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Always past and through
the ambitions of the mind

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or of the body, or
whatever it is that seeks

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to stop it or slow it down.

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As in, we didn't know
that the birds would

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fly until they actually did.

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Slowly at first, one by one.

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And then all at once.

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A dark mass on the horizon
above the irrigated field.

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From a distance, they
appeared a black swirl.

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In themselves, a landscape.

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But when they drew near, they
flew singly or in small groups.

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Just as clouds appear in the
distance, dripping with rain

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that will never actually
reach the ground.

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Or mountains appear as a
single shape, rather than

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the innumerable
small gestures made

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by rock against the pressure
of millions of years.

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Though even to speak
of millions of years

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is a euphemism of sorts, used in
order to express, what exactly?

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The way that all
things that exist,

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exist in relation
to single moments?

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In some sense of the Holy?

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Of what exists beneath or
beyond all of this somehow?

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Of what beyond a stubborn
insistence upon the particular,

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simply exists is eternal in the
way that the sleep of a baby

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is eternal.

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Always, that is, just
about to be interrupted.

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Like the air the beating of
wings might at any moment

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redirect.

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The whole way home my
mother in the back seat,

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we might easily have
turned a moment too soon.

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Everything occurs like
this, reminding you

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of something else.

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Perhaps life itself
occurs in this way.

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As a metaphor for something
which is also itself.

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And everything from what
is visible and known,

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birds, and mountains
in the distance,

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and patterns of wind
to be invisible motives

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and directions of life
and love is always.

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Into a moment of
which we can only

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say afterward that it
might never have arrived.

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Arriving.

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Creating only the
impression of stillness.

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Of there having been
a moment at all.

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Perhaps everything slips.

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Is slipping even now.

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Is utterly free.

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But at such a distance,
such a distance."

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