WEBVTT

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I'm going to read a little
bit from "RoseSunWater,"

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which came out
with The Operating

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System during the pandemic.

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And this is a book,
in so many ways,

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about gentrification, about
losing my grandmother's home

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to capitalism, to the
gentrifying landscape

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of the San Fernando Valley,
which you would recognize

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if I called Los Angeles, right?

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But tonight it's
not Los Angeles.

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It's Van Nuys.

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Van Nuys is the city where
I was raised, it's the 818.

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And I'm going to read to you
a piece that means everything

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to me because it is a
piece of myth-making,

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and this is called,
"A Cenote Blossoms

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in Van Nuys, California."

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"A family of immigrants moves
to the valley beyond the city.

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The home they find is without
any record of city planning,

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and was built in 1906
when a train still

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ran through this town.

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This house becomes
a home, this home

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becomes a type of
field or portal.

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They plant fruit
trees from seed,

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twin aguacates from the
Yucatan take two decades

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to become a myth.

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The children's children
become a new distance.

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The gardenias
blossom and levitate.

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The pitaya blossoms a
palm tree to grow upon.

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The lemon trees talk to one
another through the night.

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The oranges grow less
sour with every handful

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of salt buried beneath them.

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New trees are planted.

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Many spirits leave their bodies
before these words are ever

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written.

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They live with us, and when
you speak their names aloud,

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they know you better.

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The concrete virgen grows
roses out of nothing

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to watch over
outside the kitchen.

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The mulberry tree plants
legends in the heart

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of the nearby inhabitants before
bowing, before the chainsaw.

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Later a mango tree
grows up to tell

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the story of these
mysterious berries that

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had no name until Colorado
dropped Mayataan words

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into a somnambulist's ear.

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Years later, this
memory would come

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across as orange in
its summer atmosphere,

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orange and creek
sound, and so small.

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The Chaya emerges to nourish the
keeper de la huerta antes que

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the house dissolves,
and the somnambulist

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calls the house a
home, an orchard,

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because the trees allowed
them to blossom and become

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this afterimage beyond the city.

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The city becomes something
else around the orchard.

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The city begins to punch
holes in everyone's memory,

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demanding the inhabitants
adapt to the ongoing evasion

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of everywhere else, wanting
to be where they are not.

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A sickness that spread
to the somnambulist,

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the hunger for departure,
thirsty for a transit fix.

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All of it imaginary.

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None of it real.

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The veins of light that
become asphalt by day

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were a kind of comfort,
now grown strange.

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The truth is a spiral, an
ongoing descent through cycles.

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Each return to origin allows
a further vertical distance

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in memory.

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I sow this now, to
yours, as you read this

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and we become cross stitched
and bound to one another.

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The city continues
humming within the body

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despite all the silence
surrounding the somnambulist.

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Our blood is always buzzing.

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The house is going to be
destroyed before this book is

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ever finished.

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There is nothing to
do but bloom this net

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of neurons and temporality.

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And sometimes you have
to rebuild the structures

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within your body again, and
again, and again, and again,

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and again, and again, and
again, and again, and again.

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I remember that I
do not remember.

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The rain comes down
in thick brush strokes

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of spectral pigments, piles
of color growing thick

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with movement.

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The trees they
dance, they twirl.

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I build a house in the dead end
housing complex of my heart.

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The rent is cheap
enough to live,

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and every tenant is on a second
chance account of some kind,

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my heart included.

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I tried to build the square
footage into my organs.

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I keep trying to form a
floor-plan out of memory.

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Every time I touched my
hands to those walls, feet

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to the floors, I am trying
to remember a feeling

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beyond the ruin to come.

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There will be no pyramid,
there will be no archive.

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Our home will become the
shape of an overpriced future

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I can't afford.

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And I hope every
tenant's aguacates rot

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before they can use them.

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I build a roof above a
dream I have yet to have.

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The empty chairs, they manifest
spirits, and ancestors,

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and we're all moving out of
here before it's too late."