WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.720 align:middle line:90% 00:00:03.720 --> 00:00:07.520 align:middle line:84% That book, It Must Be a Misunderstanding, 00:00:07.520 --> 00:00:12.560 align:middle line:84% will be coming out later this year from Copper Canyon Press. 00:00:12.560 --> 00:00:16.610 align:middle line:84% So now I'll read some of my own poems from Twice Alive, 00:00:16.610 --> 00:00:19.940 align:middle line:84% and I'm going to have to repeat a little bit of some 00:00:19.940 --> 00:00:24.260 align:middle line:84% of the introduction that Allison gave just 00:00:24.260 --> 00:00:25.550 align:middle line:90% because I think it's helpful. 00:00:25.550 --> 00:00:29.810 align:middle line:90% 00:00:29.810 --> 00:00:33.920 align:middle line:84% This is the author's note in the beginning of the book, 00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:37.040 align:middle line:84% but many of us learned about lichen in high school, 00:00:37.040 --> 00:00:40.400 align:middle line:84% that it's an indicator species for pollution, 00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:44.150 align:middle line:84% and litmus, in fact is derived from lichen, 00:00:44.150 --> 00:00:48.320 align:middle line:84% and that it's the synergistic alliance of a fungus, an algae, 00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:52.970 align:middle line:84% or cyanobacteria, is pretty much true, but it's simplified. 00:00:52.970 --> 00:00:55.580 align:middle line:84% Lichen ecology seems to have more 00:00:55.580 --> 00:01:00.830 align:middle line:84% to do with collaboration than competition and collaboration 00:01:00.830 --> 00:01:05.930 align:middle line:84% is transformative with lichen, which may be more related 00:01:05.930 --> 00:01:08.600 align:middle line:90% to animals than to plants. 00:01:08.600 --> 00:01:11.930 align:middle line:84% The original organisms are utterly changed 00:01:11.930 --> 00:01:13.260 align:middle line:90% in their compact. 00:01:13.260 --> 00:01:15.890 align:middle line:84% They can't return to what they were. 00:01:15.890 --> 00:01:17.690 align:middle line:84% And according to Anne Pringle, one 00:01:17.690 --> 00:01:21.170 align:middle line:84% of the leading contemporary mycologists, with whom I 00:01:21.170 --> 00:01:24.410 align:middle line:84% had the lucky opportunity to collaborate, 00:01:24.410 --> 00:01:27.890 align:middle line:84% it may be that lichen do not, given 00:01:27.890 --> 00:01:31.070 align:middle line:90% sufficient nutrients, age. 00:01:31.070 --> 00:01:34.040 align:middle line:84% Anne and other contemporary biologists 00:01:34.040 --> 00:01:38.150 align:middle line:84% are saying that our sense of the inevitability of death 00:01:38.150 --> 00:01:42.320 align:middle line:84% may be determined by our mammalian orientation. 00:01:42.320 --> 00:01:47.820 align:middle line:84% Perhaps some forms of life have theoretical immortality. 00:01:47.820 --> 00:01:51.560 align:middle line:84% The thought of two things that merge mutually altering 00:01:51.560 --> 00:01:55.610 align:middle line:84% each other two things that intermingled and interactive 00:01:55.610 --> 00:02:00.680 align:middle line:84% become one thing that does not age brings me to think 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:02.510 align:middle line:90% of the nature of intimacy. 00:02:02.510 --> 00:02:06.920 align:middle line:84% Isn't it often in our most intimate relations 00:02:06.920 --> 00:02:09.860 align:middle line:84% that we come to realize our identity? 00:02:09.860 --> 00:02:13.900 align:middle line:90% All identity is combinatory. 00:02:13.900 --> 00:02:16.000 align:middle line:90%