WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.960 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.960 --> 00:00:06.210 align:middle line:84% I'm just going to read some excerpts now from a longer 00:00:06.210 --> 00:00:08.025 align:middle line:90% piece, again, back to Tucson. 00:00:08.025 --> 00:00:11.000 align:middle line:90% 00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:13.760 align:middle line:84% "Those who make it North across the border to Tucson 00:00:13.760 --> 00:00:16.700 align:middle line:84% have considered what are power and slavery. 00:00:16.700 --> 00:00:19.910 align:middle line:84% Those of us asleep can only dream we are running, thirsty, 00:00:19.910 --> 00:00:21.860 align:middle line:90% scared, and wounded. 00:00:21.860 --> 00:00:24.260 align:middle line:84% We're running through a forest of stinging cacti 00:00:24.260 --> 00:00:27.410 align:middle line:84% with helicopters spraying light like an automatic garden 00:00:27.410 --> 00:00:30.260 align:middle line:84% sprinkler, an automatic weapon spraying death. 00:00:30.260 --> 00:00:32.420 align:middle line:84% Which keeps coming round to little blue violets 00:00:32.420 --> 00:00:35.660 align:middle line:84% expiring of thirst, dying of exposure. 00:00:35.660 --> 00:00:38.090 align:middle line:84% It takes more than a broken poet, 00:00:38.090 --> 00:00:40.730 align:middle line:84% more than the most sacred heart, more 00:00:40.730 --> 00:00:43.340 align:middle line:84% than a cathedral to hold them in its embrace. 00:00:43.340 --> 00:00:47.930 align:middle line:84% These women and girls and boys and men being fired upon. 00:00:47.930 --> 00:00:50.930 align:middle line:84% Those of us who are writers, write about the forlorn. 00:00:50.930 --> 00:00:53.015 align:middle line:90% They are not we in any case. 00:00:53.015 --> 00:00:55.850 align:middle line:90% 00:00:55.850 --> 00:00:59.630 align:middle line:84% Who answers for the dead sister caught in a crossfire? 00:00:59.630 --> 00:01:02.910 align:middle line:84% My nightmare as a writer is that I will have to say something. 00:01:02.910 --> 00:01:05.972 align:middle line:84% Yes, the dead are becoming dead at the Mexican border 00:01:05.972 --> 00:01:08.180 align:middle line:84% because they're moving their own bodies one at a time 00:01:08.180 --> 00:01:10.550 align:middle line:84% through a desert with armed helicopters hovering 30 00:01:10.550 --> 00:01:12.500 align:middle line:90% yards above the pricked Earth. 00:01:12.500 --> 00:01:15.450 align:middle line:84% A wall is being built to make crossing the border harder. 00:01:15.450 --> 00:01:18.470 align:middle line:84% I have failed to leave plastic water bottles in designated 00:01:18.470 --> 00:01:19.980 align:middle line:90% places for the crossing. 00:01:19.980 --> 00:01:21.740 align:middle line:84% Nor, I confess, can I get a man who 00:01:21.740 --> 00:01:25.110 align:middle line:84% slits a woman's throat in revenge to understand death. 00:01:25.110 --> 00:01:28.070 align:middle line:84% I cannot correct death, nor take down so much as an emotional 00:01:28.070 --> 00:01:31.280 align:middle line:84% wall without a pill and a glass of treated water. 00:01:31.280 --> 00:01:34.280 align:middle line:84% I can only make a safe drive across an unprotected border 00:01:34.280 --> 00:01:36.740 align:middle line:84% into Arizona from California lost 00:01:36.740 --> 00:01:38.960 align:middle line:90% in thought, head in the clouds. 00:01:38.960 --> 00:01:42.800 align:middle line:84% I watch movies, I read books, therefore, what? 00:01:42.800 --> 00:01:44.810 align:middle line:90% Therefore reality? 00:01:44.810 --> 00:01:46.910 align:middle line:90% Where is it? 00:01:46.910 --> 00:01:50.240 align:middle line:84% There's the Seine full of water in Paris, 00:01:50.240 --> 00:01:53.420 align:middle line:84% where the movie, Head in the Clouds, was filmed, 00:01:53.420 --> 00:01:55.220 align:middle line:84% seen in the far distance from one 00:01:55.220 --> 00:01:58.840 align:middle line:84% of the world's great cathedrals at the head of Montmartre. 00:01:58.840 --> 00:02:01.930 align:middle line:84% I would like to live in the world in my right mind. 00:02:01.930 --> 00:02:04.990 align:middle line:84% And here is one survivor without a lesson in mind, 00:02:04.990 --> 00:02:08.050 align:middle line:84% with the walls of his religion completely detonated. 00:02:08.050 --> 00:02:11.230 align:middle line:84% The cathedral of his family completely detonated. 00:02:11.230 --> 00:02:14.560 align:middle line:84% And the view from a great mind completely detonated. 00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:16.870 align:middle line:90% Here, my friends, is Paul Celan. 00:02:16.870 --> 00:02:19.030 align:middle line:84% And he jumps into the moving river. 00:02:19.030 --> 00:02:23.920 align:middle line:84% In his little pocket calendar, he has written depart Paul. 00:02:23.920 --> 00:02:27.390 align:middle line:90% Sonoran desert, Paris 02:00 AM."