Sometimes I work at a local City College.
I'm an adjunct teacher there.
I teach a comm class.
English 1A kind of thing.
And now that the Supreme Court has
made it legal for small fire teams of soldiers
to come on campus and recruit.
Sometimes what I do when I'm not busy, during lunchtime,
is I'll sort of follow them.
They'll talk with a group and then I'll mirror the group.
Kind of go, and just add to their thing.
You know what I mean?
To the conversation.
So sometimes I'll talk about things I'll
say, look, I'm not wounded.
And I don't feel as wounded as a lot of other soldiers
psychically, but I said, but when you sign that contract,
you may realize there's things you may
have to carry back with you.
Like, when I say I have a woman crying in my ear, late at night
when the stars go down.
That's a woman in Balad.
We had arrested her husband.
He was the right guy.
He's the guy that they sent me there to get.
He had an RPG on him and other stuff.
An RPG is a rocket propelled grenade.
It's like a bazooka, kind of.
It's a military grade weapon.
Andy of you have a military grade weapon in your house?
Most likely, the guy I'm supposed to get.
But anyways, we put him in the vehicle.
And his wife I believe, was crying
and there's an older woman next to them with her shoes
up, with the soles of her feet.
Giving me, one of the biggest insults you can give.
And a little boy walks up to me.
His son.
and he said-- And said in English to me.
He said, my father no bad man.
Let free my father.
My father a good man.
So I tell that to people listening to the other pitch
too.
Go ahead and join, but realize what you're signing up for.
And I'll read one last poem.
It's a short poem, but I would like to say,
there's an amazing culture in Iraq.
Like most country-- all countries.
But when I was there, I felt like I could just
barely scratch the surface of stuff that
was there that it was crucial and important to learn.
And this poem is called "Alhazen of Basra" and I should say,
Abu Ali-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, born in 965 died 1040 AD.
Known as Alhazen to the West, was an eminent physicist
whose contribution to science remained vital and relevant
to the present day.
Blah, blah, blah, right?
But if you have glasses and stuff,
his contributions to optometry, for example,
still relevant to the present day.
Used by people in science classes and stuff.
"Alhazen of Basra."
If I could travel 1,000 years back to August 1,004,
to a small tent where Alhazen who has fallen
asleep among books about sunsets, shadows, and light
itself, I wouldn't ask whether light travels
in a straight line, or whether what governs
the laws of refraction, or how he discovered the bridgework
of analytical geometry.
I would ask about the light within us.
What shines in the mind's great repository of dream,
whether he studied the deep shadows daylight brings,
how light defines us.
Thank you, all for having me here and for doing this for me.
Thank you.
It's been an honor to share the stage with these two gentlemen.
Thank you.