WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.140 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.140 --> 00:00:02.160 align:middle line:90%
"The Last Version."

00:00:02.160 --> 00:00:05.410 align:middle line:90%


00:00:05.410 --> 00:00:08.080 align:middle line:84%
"Far away from
here the Rio Grande

00:00:08.080 --> 00:00:11.170 align:middle line:84%
is being threaded
down its tracks,

00:00:11.170 --> 00:00:14.560 align:middle line:84%
tugging its little trail
of noise and light.

00:00:14.560 --> 00:00:18.040 align:middle line:84%
The tracks are a scar
in a leveled stair.

00:00:18.040 --> 00:00:20.710 align:middle line:84%
There's no up here,
there's no down,

00:00:20.710 --> 00:00:24.070 align:middle line:84%
there's only near
and far and farther.

00:00:24.070 --> 00:00:26.980 align:middle line:84%
The sun leaks across
the horizon at dawn

00:00:26.980 --> 00:00:30.160 align:middle line:84%
and is sponged up
at dusk by distance.

00:00:30.160 --> 00:00:34.300 align:middle line:84%
That is our most lavish
natural resource.

00:00:34.300 --> 00:00:35.920 align:middle line:90%
Except for the bomb.

00:00:35.920 --> 00:00:37.840 align:middle line:90%
There is the bomb.

00:00:37.840 --> 00:00:40.240 align:middle line:84%
At night, if the wand
of the Geiger counter

00:00:40.240 --> 00:00:43.540 align:middle line:84%
is held into the wind on
the hotel's flat roof,

00:00:43.540 --> 00:00:46.930 align:middle line:84%
you can hear the spit
and hiss of fallout.

00:00:46.930 --> 00:00:50.140 align:middle line:84%
It's the voice of radium
released from earth.

00:00:50.140 --> 00:00:54.610 align:middle line:84%
And what must that be like,
after centuries sealed up

00:00:54.610 --> 00:00:55.870 align:middle line:90%
in the marrow?

00:00:55.870 --> 00:00:59.920 align:middle line:84%
The giddy stretch,
the sinuous unlocking,

00:00:59.920 --> 00:01:03.130 align:middle line:84%
the lift and catapult
out of matter

00:01:03.130 --> 00:01:07.030 align:middle line:84%
into the huge, wobbly,
weightless tonnage

00:01:07.030 --> 00:01:09.040 align:middle line:90%
of the explosion.

00:01:09.040 --> 00:01:14.380 align:middle line:84%
The detonation has always
sounded like a sob of relief.

00:01:14.380 --> 00:01:16.660 align:middle line:90%
I can see it from here.

00:01:16.660 --> 00:01:19.600 align:middle line:84%
It looks like a baby's
rattle, the glittering

00:01:19.600 --> 00:01:20.890 align:middle line:90%
bulb of that blast.

00:01:20.890 --> 00:01:22.900 align:middle line:90%
And now you can see me.

00:01:22.900 --> 00:01:25.660 align:middle line:84%
I am sitting, typing
by the window.

00:01:25.660 --> 00:01:29.290 align:middle line:84%
I am a thin woman wearing
a flowered house dress.

00:01:29.290 --> 00:01:32.650 align:middle line:90%
Perhaps you now wonder who I am.

00:01:32.650 --> 00:01:34.120 align:middle line:90%
I'm nobody.

00:01:34.120 --> 00:01:36.430 align:middle line:90%
I'm the voiceover.

00:01:36.430 --> 00:01:38.410 align:middle line:90%
I'm the writer.

00:01:38.410 --> 00:01:41.980 align:middle line:84%
That is my hand on the
rattle of the bomb.

00:01:41.980 --> 00:01:44.450 align:middle line:90%
And this is my story.

00:01:44.450 --> 00:01:46.120 align:middle line:90%
I was poor.

00:01:46.120 --> 00:01:47.560 align:middle line:90%
I wrote.

00:01:47.560 --> 00:01:49.500 align:middle line:90%
I killed myself."

00:01:49.500 --> 00:01:50.000 align:middle line:90%