WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.047 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.047 --> 00:00:03.630 align:middle line:84%
Two months later I fell in love
for the first time in my life.

00:00:03.630 --> 00:00:15.580 align:middle line:90%


00:00:15.580 --> 00:00:20.010 align:middle line:84%
Here's a poem about
crushing my spine.

00:00:20.010 --> 00:00:25.710 align:middle line:84%
I fell from a tree a
little more than 100 foot,

00:00:25.710 --> 00:00:35.167 align:middle line:84%
head down, like a rocket,
just shearing off branches.

00:00:35.167 --> 00:00:36.000 align:middle line:90%
I'd never been hurt.

00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:39.210 align:middle line:84%
I'd never been in a hospital and
I'd fallen out of many trees.

00:00:39.210 --> 00:00:41.410 align:middle line:84%
I grew up with an
orchard in the backyard.

00:00:41.410 --> 00:00:43.890 align:middle line:84%
You fall and you put out your
hand and you spin around.

00:00:43.890 --> 00:00:47.100 align:middle line:84%
You do something clever and you
break your fall and you thump

00:00:47.100 --> 00:00:48.520 align:middle line:90%
into the Earth.

00:00:48.520 --> 00:00:49.740 align:middle line:90%
This was head down.

00:00:49.740 --> 00:00:52.456 align:middle line:84%
I was going faster
and faster just vwump.

00:00:52.456 --> 00:00:57.190 align:middle line:90%


00:00:57.190 --> 00:01:04.790 align:middle line:84%
And they took me to the
hospital and expected me to die

00:01:04.790 --> 00:01:10.150 align:middle line:84%
and when I didn't die,
I said it right away,

00:01:10.150 --> 00:01:12.420 align:middle line:84%
I said, if I'm going
to die in a few days I

00:01:12.420 --> 00:01:13.420 align:middle line:90%
want to go home and die.

00:01:13.420 --> 00:01:17.290 align:middle line:84%
It's Christmas and I want to
die under the Christmas tree.

00:01:17.290 --> 00:01:21.490 align:middle line:84%
Because Christmas was very
important for Linda and me.

00:01:21.490 --> 00:01:23.290 align:middle line:84%
She always put the
mattress on the floor

00:01:23.290 --> 00:01:25.660 align:middle line:84%
so you wake up looking up
into the Christmas tree

00:01:25.660 --> 00:01:26.410 align:middle line:90%
Christmas morning.

00:01:26.410 --> 00:01:28.780 align:middle line:90%
That's what you first see.

00:01:28.780 --> 00:01:32.020 align:middle line:84%
So I made them
build me a skeleton.

00:01:32.020 --> 00:01:34.480 align:middle line:84%
Everything was smashed,
not just my spine.

00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:37.000 align:middle line:90%
I couldn't support my own body.

00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:38.500 align:middle line:84%
So I had them build
me something out

00:01:38.500 --> 00:01:46.187 align:middle line:84%
of aluminum tubing and canvas
and sheepskin, oddly enough.

00:01:46.187 --> 00:01:48.520 align:middle line:84%
Then I was able to go home
to die and then I didn't die.

00:01:48.520 --> 00:01:52.330 align:middle line:90%


00:01:52.330 --> 00:01:55.353 align:middle line:84%
Well eventually because
they keep giving you X-rays

00:01:55.353 --> 00:01:56.770 align:middle line:84%
and this happens
and that happens,

00:01:56.770 --> 00:02:00.705 align:middle line:84%
but I had to live in the
skeleton for about a year.

00:02:00.705 --> 00:02:02.080 align:middle line:84%
Finally, I said,
well, if I'm not

00:02:02.080 --> 00:02:03.705 align:middle line:84%
going to die I'm
going to go to Europe.

00:02:03.705 --> 00:02:07.197 align:middle line:90%


00:02:07.197 --> 00:02:09.280 align:middle line:84%
So I went for my last
checkup and they said, well,

00:02:09.280 --> 00:02:09.865 align:middle line:90%
you're fine.

00:02:09.865 --> 00:02:11.380 align:middle line:90%
It's a miracle, but you're fine.

00:02:11.380 --> 00:02:13.900 align:middle line:90%


00:02:13.900 --> 00:02:16.690 align:middle line:84%
As I left, I wished them goodbye
and they wished me bon voyage

00:02:16.690 --> 00:02:20.440 align:middle line:84%
and I got to the door and
one doctor said one thing.

00:02:20.440 --> 00:02:24.790 align:middle line:84%
He said, if you notice a kind
of itching in your fingers,

00:02:24.790 --> 00:02:27.280 align:middle line:84%
a little burning
sensation in your fingers,

00:02:27.280 --> 00:02:29.200 align:middle line:84%
you'll know that the
paralysis has begun.

00:02:29.200 --> 00:02:35.620 align:middle line:90%


00:02:35.620 --> 00:02:37.690 align:middle line:84%
Can you imagine
traveling in places

00:02:37.690 --> 00:02:40.180 align:middle line:90%
where they have mosquitoes?

00:02:40.180 --> 00:02:41.890 align:middle line:84%
When you wake up in
the night, and you're

00:02:41.890 --> 00:02:44.500 align:middle line:84%
asleep you're so drugged
with sleep you don't process

00:02:44.500 --> 00:02:46.510 align:middle line:84%
any thoughts at
all, and you find

00:02:46.510 --> 00:02:47.860 align:middle line:90%
yourself scratching your hands?

00:02:47.860 --> 00:02:50.980 align:middle line:90%


00:02:50.980 --> 00:02:53.210 align:middle line:90%
Scary.

00:02:53.210 --> 00:02:55.945 align:middle line:84%
It's called All the
Way from There to Here.

00:02:55.945 --> 00:03:01.260 align:middle line:84%
This is after the marriage
was over with Linda.

00:03:01.260 --> 00:03:04.240 align:middle line:90%


00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:08.920 align:middle line:84%
I'm sitting in San Francisco
up on the Potrero Hill.

00:03:08.920 --> 00:03:14.050 align:middle line:84%
From my hill I look down on
the freeway and over to a gull,

00:03:14.050 --> 00:03:18.790 align:middle line:84%
lifting black against
the gray ridge.

00:03:18.790 --> 00:03:25.420 align:middle line:84%
It lifts slowly higher
and enters the bright sky.

00:03:25.420 --> 00:03:32.920 align:middle line:84%
Surely our long steady dying
brings us to a state of grace.

00:03:32.920 --> 00:03:37.000 align:middle line:84%
What else can I call
this bafflement?

00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:39.520 align:middle line:84%
From here I deal
with my irrelevance

00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:43.570 align:middle line:84%
to love with a bewildering
tenderness of which I

00:03:43.570 --> 00:03:45.880 align:middle line:90%
am composed.

00:03:45.880 --> 00:03:49.450 align:middle line:84%
The sun goes down
and comes up again.

00:03:49.450 --> 00:03:52.840 align:middle line:90%
The moon comes up and goes down.

00:03:52.840 --> 00:03:57.940 align:middle line:84%
I live with the morning air and
the different airs of night.

00:03:57.940 --> 00:04:00.760 align:middle line:90%
I begin to grow old.

00:04:00.760 --> 00:04:04.690 align:middle line:84%
The ships put out
and are lost, put out

00:04:04.690 --> 00:04:09.010 align:middle line:84%
and are lost, leaving me with
their haunting awkwardness

00:04:09.010 --> 00:04:14.080 align:middle line:84%
and the imperfection of
birds while all the time I've

00:04:14.080 --> 00:04:20.320 align:middle line:84%
worked to understand this
happiness I have come into.

00:04:20.320 --> 00:04:24.550 align:middle line:84%
What I remember of my nine-story
fall down through the great fir

00:04:24.550 --> 00:04:28.390 align:middle line:84%
is the rush of green and
the softness of my regret

00:04:28.390 --> 00:04:31.990 align:middle line:84%
and the ambulance going
to my nearby death,

00:04:31.990 --> 00:04:36.820 align:middle line:84%
looking out at the
trees leaving me.

00:04:36.820 --> 00:04:39.190 align:middle line:84%
What I remember of
my crushed spine

00:04:39.190 --> 00:04:43.030 align:middle line:84%
is seeing Linda faint
again and again,

00:04:43.030 --> 00:04:46.750 align:middle line:84%
sliding down the
white X-ray room

00:04:46.750 --> 00:04:52.120 align:middle line:84%
wall as my sweet body
flailed on the steel table,

00:04:52.120 --> 00:04:56.470 align:middle line:84%
unable to manage
the bulk of pain.

00:04:56.470 --> 00:05:00.880 align:middle line:84%
That and waiting in the
years after for the burning

00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:04.880 align:middle line:84%
in my fingertips, which would
announce, the doctor said,

00:05:04.880 --> 00:05:06.850 align:middle line:90%
the beginning of paralysis.

00:05:06.850 --> 00:05:09.880 align:middle line:90%


00:05:09.880 --> 00:05:12.130 align:middle line:84%
What I remember best
of the four years

00:05:12.130 --> 00:05:15.730 align:middle line:84%
of watching in
Greece and Denmark

00:05:15.730 --> 00:05:22.690 align:middle line:84%
and London and Greece
is Linda making lunch.

00:05:22.690 --> 00:05:25.210 align:middle line:84%
Her blondness and
ivory coming up out

00:05:25.210 --> 00:05:30.160 align:middle line:84%
of the blue Aegean, Linda
walking with me daily

00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:36.550 align:middle line:84%
across the island from
Monolithos to Fira and back.

00:05:36.550 --> 00:05:41.350 align:middle line:84%
That's what I remember most
of death, the gentleness of us

00:05:41.350 --> 00:05:48.340 align:middle line:84%
in that bare Greek Eden, the
beauty as the marriage steadily

00:05:48.340 --> 00:05:49.890 align:middle line:90%
failed.

00:05:49.890 --> 00:05:50.485 align:middle line:90%