WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.710 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.710 --> 00:00:05.200 align:middle line:90%
Two more poems.

00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:09.560 align:middle line:84%
And then, I will happily
yield to my dear friend, Luci.

00:00:09.560 --> 00:00:12.250 align:middle line:84%
There's a poem in here
that's a sequence.

00:00:12.250 --> 00:00:14.830 align:middle line:84%
It's about salt, and
I don't have time

00:00:14.830 --> 00:00:16.370 align:middle line:90%
to read it all to you.

00:00:16.370 --> 00:00:19.870 align:middle line:84%
But I sat next to this guy
on a plane who works on ions

00:00:19.870 --> 00:00:23.650 align:middle line:84%
and tries to understand what
they're all doing inside

00:00:23.650 --> 00:00:26.140 align:middle line:84%
of our bodies, and it got
me thinking about salt,

00:00:26.140 --> 00:00:29.590 align:middle line:90%
and how important salt is.

00:00:29.590 --> 00:00:33.130 align:middle line:84%
And so, I'll read you the
last section of this poem.

00:00:33.130 --> 00:00:38.170 align:middle line:84%
It refers to an artwork by a
artist named Michael Joo called

00:00:38.170 --> 00:00:39.620 align:middle line:90%
Salt Transfer Cycle.

00:00:39.620 --> 00:00:41.620 align:middle line:84%
A very strange
interaction at the end

00:00:41.620 --> 00:00:46.720 align:middle line:84%
of this poem between
the man and deer.

00:00:46.720 --> 00:00:48.500 align:middle line:90%
"Salt."

00:00:48.500 --> 00:00:51.710 align:middle line:84%
"The God of Abraham
made a religion of salt,

00:00:51.710 --> 00:00:55.190 align:middle line:84%
because it could protect
things from spoiling.

00:00:55.190 --> 00:00:58.700 align:middle line:84%
But first, the people had to
gather it from the Dead Sea,

00:00:58.700 --> 00:01:02.330 align:middle line:84%
building star-shaped
rafts of straw--

00:01:02.330 --> 00:01:06.200 align:middle line:84%
so the Internet Zealot
of Salt writes--

00:01:06.200 --> 00:01:09.740 align:middle line:84%
to give the crystals
purchase on something solid,

00:01:09.740 --> 00:01:12.140 align:middle line:84%
as the ropes and
nets of fishermen

00:01:12.140 --> 00:01:16.370 align:middle line:90%
will serve when drying on shore.

00:01:16.370 --> 00:01:18.830 align:middle line:84%
Can everything
sacred be described

00:01:18.830 --> 00:01:22.750 align:middle line:90%
by things and their emergence?

00:01:22.750 --> 00:01:26.290 align:middle line:84%
Romans paid their soldiers
in salt, their salary.

00:01:26.290 --> 00:01:28.570 align:middle line:90%
So valued were its assets.

00:01:28.570 --> 00:01:32.920 align:middle line:84%
Salt and gunpowder, the planks
of civilization, not gold

00:01:32.920 --> 00:01:34.240 align:middle line:90%
and books.

00:01:34.240 --> 00:01:37.480 align:middle line:84%
A city of five hundred people
needed one ton per year,

00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:42.400 align:middle line:84%
trains one-thousand-camels
long, crossing the Sahara.

00:01:42.400 --> 00:01:45.340 align:middle line:84%
And now at the sad,
mad end of wealth--

00:01:45.340 --> 00:01:49.330 align:middle line:84%
let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea-- fish gone,

00:01:49.330 --> 00:01:56.280 align:middle line:84%
I read and hold up as tithe to
the church of science-made-art,

00:01:56.280 --> 00:02:00.690 align:middle line:84%
the story of the man who
swam through salt, emerged

00:02:00.690 --> 00:02:04.230 align:middle line:84%
on land to crawl
his way upright,

00:02:04.230 --> 00:02:09.840 align:middle line:84%
then sat so still in
a field at wood's edge

00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:15.860 align:middle line:84%
that the wild deer came and
licked the salt from his skin."

00:02:15.860 --> 00:02:18.000 align:middle line:90%