WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.540 align:middle line:90% 00:00:02.540 --> 00:00:04.980 align:middle line:84% A week before surgery, I practiced my body. 00:00:04.980 --> 00:00:07.950 align:middle line:84% This has kind of a lengthy gloss for a short poem. 00:00:07.950 --> 00:00:10.910 align:middle line:84% So I read there's a wonderful poet 00:00:10.910 --> 00:00:12.720 align:middle line:90% whose name is Tomaz Salamun. 00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:17.390 align:middle line:84% And he is a very lively and eclectic poet 00:00:17.390 --> 00:00:19.020 align:middle line:90% with this incredible vocabulary. 00:00:19.020 --> 00:00:21.230 align:middle line:84% It's like words that you've heard in every corner 00:00:21.230 --> 00:00:24.110 align:middle line:90% of the world come raining down. 00:00:24.110 --> 00:00:25.080 align:middle line:90% And I love him. 00:00:25.080 --> 00:00:29.840 align:middle line:84% And he once said in one of his poems that the painter Giotto, 00:00:29.840 --> 00:00:33.680 align:middle line:84% he used his sketches of sheep in order 00:00:33.680 --> 00:00:36.890 align:middle line:90% to make his paintings of angels. 00:00:36.890 --> 00:00:40.590 align:middle line:84% I've looked at a lot of Giotto's paintings subsequently. 00:00:40.590 --> 00:00:43.130 align:middle line:84% I haven't seen anything very sheepy or sheepish 00:00:43.130 --> 00:00:44.010 align:middle line:90% about the Angels. 00:00:44.010 --> 00:00:45.030 align:middle line:90% But he told me so. 00:00:45.030 --> 00:00:45.900 align:middle line:90% I'm telling you. 00:00:45.900 --> 00:00:47.720 align:middle line:90% It's a poetry fact. 00:00:47.720 --> 00:00:49.255 align:middle line:90% Do with that what you will. 00:00:49.255 --> 00:00:50.780 align:middle line:90% [CHUCKLES] 00:00:50.780 --> 00:00:52.500 align:middle line:90% Secondly, Jonah. 00:00:52.500 --> 00:00:56.280 align:middle line:84% You may be familiar with his story from the Old Testament. 00:00:56.280 --> 00:00:58.280 align:middle line:90% So Jonah was a prophet. 00:00:58.280 --> 00:01:03.930 align:middle line:84% And his job was to tell people that God was the one. 00:01:03.930 --> 00:01:05.310 align:middle line:90% But he did not like the gig. 00:01:05.310 --> 00:01:06.840 align:middle line:90% It was kind of dark. 00:01:06.840 --> 00:01:10.640 align:middle line:84% If you want more information, you can read the Old Testament. 00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:13.370 align:middle line:84% But basically, when he decided he 00:01:13.370 --> 00:01:16.730 align:middle line:84% wanted to run away from the circus, he was on a boat 00:01:16.730 --> 00:01:18.512 align:middle line:90% and there came a storm. 00:01:18.512 --> 00:01:20.970 align:middle line:84% And he fell off the boat and he was swallowed by the whale. 00:01:20.970 --> 00:01:24.870 align:middle line:84% And while he was in there, he had a change of heart. 00:01:24.870 --> 00:01:27.990 align:middle line:84% And so happy ending to the story. 00:01:27.990 --> 00:01:30.480 align:middle line:84% The whale vomited him up on the shore. 00:01:30.480 --> 00:01:32.850 align:middle line:90% So there you go. 00:01:32.850 --> 00:01:34.350 align:middle line:84% Apparently-- did you guys read this? 00:01:34.350 --> 00:01:36.210 align:middle line:84% It was like maybe five or six years ago. 00:01:36.210 --> 00:01:38.210 align:middle line:84% There was a man who claimed that he was actually 00:01:38.210 --> 00:01:39.780 align:middle line:90% swallowed by a whale also. 00:01:39.780 --> 00:01:40.890 align:middle line:90% So it's a thing. 00:01:40.890 --> 00:01:43.580 align:middle line:90% It happens. 00:01:43.580 --> 00:01:45.920 align:middle line:84% And finally, if you're ever walking down the beach 00:01:45.920 --> 00:01:48.750 align:middle line:84% and you come across this sort of grayish, yellowish lump, 00:01:48.750 --> 00:01:53.460 align:middle line:84% it doesn't look like much, but it smells absolutely ambrosial. 00:01:53.460 --> 00:01:55.370 align:middle line:90% Give me a call. 00:01:55.370 --> 00:01:57.840 align:middle line:84% What you've just found is ambergris, 00:01:57.840 --> 00:02:01.430 align:middle line:84% and it is one of the rarest and most precious ingredients 00:02:01.430 --> 00:02:02.850 align:middle line:90% in perfumery. 00:02:02.850 --> 00:02:04.500 align:middle line:90% It also happens to be-- 00:02:04.500 --> 00:02:05.960 align:middle line:84% And this is not a poetry fact, this 00:02:05.960 --> 00:02:07.890 align:middle line:90% is a bankable, real fact fact-- 00:02:07.890 --> 00:02:12.680 align:middle line:84% It also happens to be whale vomit. 00:02:12.680 --> 00:02:16.190 align:middle line:84% A week before surgery, I practice my body. 00:02:16.190 --> 00:02:19.710 align:middle line:84% Like Giotto's angels sketched from his studies of sheep. 00:02:19.710 --> 00:02:22.470 align:middle line:84% I open the jaws of my back to the sky, 00:02:22.470 --> 00:02:25.760 align:middle line:84% eating my body deeper into this blue. 00:02:25.760 --> 00:02:30.740 align:middle line:84% Like Jonah vomited from the whale, fragrant as ambergris, 00:02:30.740 --> 00:02:34.430 align:middle line:84% or plain as any woman who, a week before 00:02:34.430 --> 00:02:38.860 align:middle line:84% mastectomy, practices being opened. 00:02:38.860 --> 00:02:41.000 align:middle line:90%