WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.570 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.570 --> 00:00:03.480 align:middle line:84% This is called "The Great Events I've Missed." 00:00:03.480 --> 00:00:06.360 align:middle line:84% And it was called The Great Events. 00:00:06.360 --> 00:00:08.670 align:middle line:84% And my friend read it and said Oh, this 00:00:08.670 --> 00:00:10.710 align:middle line:90% is like an Ashbery poem. 00:00:10.710 --> 00:00:14.040 align:middle line:84% You don't tell us what the great events are, 00:00:14.040 --> 00:00:16.470 align:middle line:84% you only tell us the ones you've missed. 00:00:16.470 --> 00:00:18.570 align:middle line:84% So I call it "The Great Events I've Missed." 00:00:18.570 --> 00:00:22.800 align:middle line:90% 00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:26.310 align:middle line:84% Some of you might not know who Catherine Deneuve is, 00:00:26.310 --> 00:00:32.640 align:middle line:84% the beautiful, now aging French film actress, very cold-looking 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:34.470 align:middle line:90% beauty. 00:00:34.470 --> 00:00:35.280 align:middle line:90% She comes up. 00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:37.650 align:middle line:84% And Jayne Mansfield is in here too. 00:00:37.650 --> 00:00:39.480 align:middle line:84% She's the mother of-- does anybody 00:00:39.480 --> 00:00:42.187 align:middle line:84% know who she's the mother of, was the mother of? 00:00:42.187 --> 00:00:43.470 align:middle line:90% The Law and Order woman. 00:00:43.470 --> 00:00:45.540 align:middle line:90% The woman on Law and Order. 00:00:45.540 --> 00:00:46.680 align:middle line:90% That's right, thank you. 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:50.150 align:middle line:84% Mickey Hargitay's daughter, Mickey Hargitay, a muscle man. 00:00:50.150 --> 00:00:55.340 align:middle line:90% 00:00:55.340 --> 00:00:57.750 align:middle line:90% "The Great Events I've Missed"-- 00:00:57.750 --> 00:01:02.130 align:middle line:84% the Northern Lights and more than once, a falling star. 00:01:02.130 --> 00:01:06.000 align:middle line:84% In a yellow bikini, Jayne Mansfield, stepping off a yacht 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:07.890 align:middle line:90% with Frank Sinatra. 00:01:07.890 --> 00:01:11.160 align:middle line:84% In the woods outside Avignon, two deer 00:01:11.160 --> 00:01:15.660 align:middle line:84% nibbled wild strawberries behind the ruins of a Roman wall. 00:01:15.660 --> 00:01:18.540 align:middle line:84% I was reading, I was taking a nap. 00:01:18.540 --> 00:01:21.360 align:middle line:84% I was momentarily entranced by a different sector 00:01:21.360 --> 00:01:23.580 align:middle line:90% of the universe. 00:01:23.580 --> 00:01:27.420 align:middle line:84% At an indoor table among the lightly burnished sun 00:01:27.420 --> 00:01:32.220 align:middle line:84% intellectuals at Café de Flore, I watched some men on ladders 00:01:32.220 --> 00:01:34.267 align:middle line:90% pollarding the plane trees." 00:01:34.267 --> 00:01:35.850 align:middle line:84% I don't know if you know what that is. 00:01:35.850 --> 00:01:38.040 align:middle line:84% But these plane trees, they just chop 00:01:38.040 --> 00:01:39.340 align:middle line:90% the hell out of the branches. 00:01:39.340 --> 00:01:44.520 align:middle line:84% So look like ugly fat sticks, and then spring. 00:01:44.520 --> 00:01:48.130 align:middle line:84% "I watched some men on ladders pollarding the plane trees. 00:01:48.130 --> 00:01:50.550 align:middle line:84% So in spring, they'll be perceived 00:01:50.550 --> 00:01:52.500 align:middle line:90% as that much more beautiful. 00:01:52.500 --> 00:01:58.170 align:middle line:84% And almost missed her, Catherine Deneuve, aging alabaster. 00:01:58.170 --> 00:02:02.700 align:middle line:84% She carried a shopping bag from Biondini's, not a lyre." 00:02:02.700 --> 00:02:03.600 align:middle line:90% Lyre? 00:02:03.600 --> 00:02:05.640 align:middle line:90% What's this called? 00:02:05.640 --> 00:02:08.789 align:middle line:90% Lyre-- The old instrument. 00:02:08.789 --> 00:02:12.960 align:middle line:84% "She carried a shopping bag from Biondini's, not a lyre. 00:02:12.960 --> 00:02:16.500 align:middle line:84% But in my mind, she was the muse Erato. 00:02:16.500 --> 00:02:20.640 align:middle line:84% I'd seen her in a stone sarcophagus at the Louvre. 00:02:20.640 --> 00:02:24.360 align:middle line:84% She looked almost as beautiful and vulnerable and cold 00:02:24.360 --> 00:02:27.030 align:middle line:90% as she had in Belle de Jour. 00:02:27.030 --> 00:02:29.520 align:middle line:84% I watched the even less than fleeting glances 00:02:29.520 --> 00:02:32.310 align:middle line:84% from the tables, returning to their books 00:02:32.310 --> 00:02:35.640 align:middle line:84% in the French style of affected disinterest. 00:02:35.640 --> 00:02:39.630 align:middle line:84% And what came to mind were the blank pages of diaries 00:02:39.630 --> 00:02:47.130 align:middle line:84% and a house key and an unhappy wife has lost on purpose. 00:02:47.130 --> 00:02:51.930 align:middle line:84% I remembered Euclid's concept of Pons Asinorum, The Bridge 00:02:51.930 --> 00:02:55.680 align:middle line:84% of Asses, that point at which some learners failed 00:02:55.680 --> 00:03:00.780 align:middle line:84% to grasp the difficult. Now I wonder if it wasn't actually 00:03:00.780 --> 00:03:04.290 align:middle line:84% my girlfriend, but Erato in that night 00:03:04.290 --> 00:03:09.570 align:middle line:84% meadow, sloping down from the notch in western Massachusetts. 00:03:09.570 --> 00:03:12.150 align:middle line:84% Her hips rose and fell beneath me. 00:03:12.150 --> 00:03:15.300 align:middle line:84% I thought those small high lonely sounds 00:03:15.300 --> 00:03:17.640 align:middle line:90% were leading to her orgasm. 00:03:17.640 --> 00:03:23.490 align:middle line:84% She wasn't gazing at my eyes, but at the northern lights." 00:03:23.490 --> 00:03:25.910 align:middle line:90% That's long before Gail. 00:03:25.910 --> 00:03:28.000 align:middle line:90%