WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.240 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.240 --> 00:00:08.960 align:middle line:84%
The book opens with a poem
titled "These Be the Words."

00:00:08.960 --> 00:00:12.800 align:middle line:84%
And that's the
opening of the book

00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:17.480 align:middle line:90%
of Deuteronomy in the Bible.

00:00:17.480 --> 00:00:20.560 align:middle line:84%
"The words of an
old woman shuffling

00:00:20.560 --> 00:00:25.840 align:middle line:84%
the cards of her own decline,
the decline of her husband,

00:00:25.840 --> 00:00:30.020 align:middle line:84%
the decline of her nation,
her plague-smitten world.

00:00:30.020 --> 00:00:33.240 align:middle line:90%


00:00:33.240 --> 00:00:37.720 align:middle line:84%
Virus that has
slain its millions.

00:00:37.720 --> 00:00:41.080 align:middle line:84%
Rage and despair
driving the body politic

00:00:41.080 --> 00:00:45.460 align:middle line:84%
into violent writhings,
knotted-up heavings.

00:00:45.460 --> 00:00:48.320 align:middle line:90%


00:00:48.320 --> 00:00:51.160 align:middle line:90%
Drama I watch from the wings.

00:00:51.160 --> 00:00:55.320 align:middle line:84%
Telling myself these
two are the wings

00:00:55.320 --> 00:01:00.480 align:middle line:84%
of the Shekinah beneath which
I arise and shower, dress

00:01:00.480 --> 00:01:05.960 align:middle line:84%
in the morning, undress at
night in my house of many doors,

00:01:05.960 --> 00:01:07.640 align:middle line:90%
many windows.

00:01:07.640 --> 00:01:16.306 align:middle line:84%
Little sky song reversed
to clanging alarm, alarm.

00:01:16.306 --> 00:01:20.240 align:middle line:84%
Write if you can find
words, I tell myself.

00:01:20.240 --> 00:01:23.440 align:middle line:84%
Write what you are
afraid to write.

00:01:23.440 --> 00:01:25.160 align:middle line:90%
Lay down your cards.

00:01:25.160 --> 00:01:28.520 align:middle line:84%
Step over the lintel
through that door.

00:01:28.520 --> 00:01:31.400 align:middle line:90%
Write or die."

00:01:31.400 --> 00:01:36.160 align:middle line:84%
And as Cynthia said, that
line, "write or die,"

00:01:36.160 --> 00:01:40.880 align:middle line:84%
is lifted from the early
modernist poet, HD,

00:01:40.880 --> 00:01:43.960 align:middle line:90%
in a poem of her own old age.

00:01:43.960 --> 00:01:48.120 align:middle line:84%
Basically it's a
poem to her muse.

00:01:48.120 --> 00:01:59.800 align:middle line:84%
And the Shekinah, that's from
a Hebrew word meaning presence

00:01:59.800 --> 00:02:06.760 align:middle line:84%
and refers to the mystical
idea of the goddess who

00:02:06.760 --> 00:02:15.160 align:middle line:84%
is the other half, the
broken half of the being we

00:02:15.160 --> 00:02:19.760 align:middle line:84%
in the Western world call
God or God the Father.

00:02:19.760 --> 00:02:24.800 align:middle line:84%
And as a mystical being,
we conceive of her

00:02:24.800 --> 00:02:30.720 align:middle line:84%
as being present to us
and among us and inside us

00:02:30.720 --> 00:02:32.720 align:middle line:90%
and inside every atom.

00:02:32.720 --> 00:02:37.400 align:middle line:84%
Just as we conceive of
God as being above us,

00:02:37.400 --> 00:02:42.500 align:middle line:84%
we conceive of the Shekinah as
being among us and within us.

00:02:42.500 --> 00:02:43.000 align:middle line:90%