WEBVTT

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While I'm reading
to you, I thought

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I would read three very short
vignettes from Working Time.

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These three are from an
essay called "One Day Old."

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This is nonfiction, I
guess that means it's real,

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or anyway, it's the past.

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Is that real?

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Did that happen?

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Anyway, they're very quick.

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Here they are.

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"Number 1.

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I'm in the bathroom
with cherry soda,

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smoking a Marlboro instead
of attending geometry class.

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Everyone's attention
is completely on sex.

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In the stall, we
discuss our attitude

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toward L's recent initiation,
elaborating with circumspection

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on the calamity
of male domination

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because L had been had,
been taken beside an azalea

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bush in 15 minutes and left
to take a bus home alone,

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broad daylight.

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This is minutely compared
to C's transgression

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in the park beneath
the aging elms,

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a week ago, last
Friday night's party.

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It had taken two
hours to get someone

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to sell her beer underage.

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In two more hours, C would
be initiated, experienced,

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and only vaguely remember
how her zipper had

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torn in his mouth.

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And then there was S who
had lost consciousness

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after drinking soda
drenched in Old Grand Dad,

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stolen from someone's
father's liquor cabinet,

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and been abused.

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The fullback drove
her home, walked her

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to her parents' door, left
her leaning on the rail,

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pressed the doorbell, and fled.

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Two weary teenagers whispering
loudly and laughing.

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Now these fits of
giggle, exploded phrases,

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barked in the cafeteria,
or surreptitiously slid off

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the lips during
some history lesson.

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The music of these
memories now is

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turned into a love
of cadenced words

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and an appreciation
of their power.

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No matter what they
were then, these

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mingle with visual
and aural events--

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the wind, for example,
flirting through the trees

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of upstate New York in summer,
the length of rye fields

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and wild strawberry patches.

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2.

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The air is really cool when I
step onto the sorority lawn.

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The singing,
chanting, really, is

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off key, is merry and terrible.

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I hadn't thought to go
this far amidst the singing

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and ineffable conformities,
the light-headedness

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of foolish young women,
myself now among them.

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Girls, really, for all their
makeup and shapeliness.

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I'm woken out of a
deep dream, a dream

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that I'm a warrior in
the Black Moshannon

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hills of Pennsylvania.

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And then I'm shaken out
onto the sweet verbena

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to praise some uninitiated
soul's engagement

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to be married.

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I'm not happy.

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But it's the mild ambiguous
unhappiness of fear,

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really, that which
is holding me back

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from myself as a
matter of course

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and which drags
through me, like a comb

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through knotted, long, wet hair,
drags me down the reverberating

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metal stairs into
the April night.

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I'm taken out of the circle
by a wind faintly full

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of orange blossoms
and of pine cones.

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Others among us also drift
back and out of the crowd.

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It interests me
what specifically

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has become of them.

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K with her peculiar penchant
for the study of porcelain.

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C with her fanatic
rapture for Jim Morrison.

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The sweet marijuana
drifts down from her room

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to those below who now
yawn, and peck, and spoil

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the night for one another,
calling into it too loudly

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about tomorrow, which
determinedly asserts

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its first hours, its darkest.

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We go back to bed.

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Those with an 8
o'clock class slipping

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briefly and deeply asleep.

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This circle of women
is a caricature

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of the
consciousness-raising groups

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we would engender years later.

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First, it's a circle
we're forced out

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of loneliness and repressed
sexualities to join.

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Each in her turn was
wooed, for it is indeed

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a safe house of homoeroticism
by invitations to free dinners

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and by the desire to be
in, but as to what exactly

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we were joining,
no one understood,

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for no one knew herself enough
to know from what that self was

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categorically, by nature
of her gender alone,

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going to be excluded.

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No one yet associated
her private loneliness

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and curiosity with a
greater public, political,

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and historical situation.

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3.

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It's damp.

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I can smell the
earth in the air.

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Few slants of daylight reach
into the row of windows.

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Last night, Richard stole an
easel from the art department

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for me.

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And I now shift my oils
from a slip of wax paper

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to a real palette.

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And I begin the bathers, a group
of nudes at Trinidad Beach.

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The second floor creaks.

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The whole house is redwood,
the whole rented acreage,

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and four miles up and
down this coast, redwood.

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And then the trees cease and
aren't anywhere else on Earth.

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This myopia is the metaphor
of my 20's where the presence

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seems infinitely plentiful,
colorful, primordial,

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the unconscious world
from which we all emerge.

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When eventually I feel beyond
a moment in which I happen

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to be absentmindedly
happy painting nudes,

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I reach into responsibility.

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But for now, that young
woman in Humboldt County,

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California waking to
paint, painting long hours,

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and sleeping to dream
is finding something

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out about shape that later
will be useful in figuring out

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how language takes form."

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[APPLAUSE]

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