1 00:00:00,917 --> 00:00:06,393 I want to talk today about how reading can change our lives 2 00:00:06,417 --> 00:00:08,792 and about the limits of that change. 3 00:00:09,750 --> 00:00:14,018 I want to talk to you about how reading can give us a shareable world 4 00:00:14,042 --> 00:00:16,750 of powerful human connection. 5 00:00:17,833 --> 00:00:21,393 But also about how that connection is always partial. 6 00:00:21,417 --> 00:00:26,500 How reading is ultimately a lonely, idiosyncratic undertaking. 7 00:00:27,625 --> 00:00:30,476 The writer who changed my life 8 00:00:30,500 --> 00:00:34,934 was the great African American novelist James Baldwin. 9 00:00:34,958 --> 00:00:38,226 When I was growing up in Western Michigan in the 1980s, 10 00:00:38,250 --> 00:00:42,167 there weren't many Asian American writers interested in social change. 11 00:00:43,292 --> 00:00:46,518 And so I think I turned to James Baldwin 12 00:00:46,542 --> 00:00:50,583 as a way to fill this void, as a way to feel racially conscious. 13 00:00:51,958 --> 00:00:55,934 But perhaps because I knew I wasn't myself African American, 14 00:00:55,958 --> 00:01:00,476 I also felt challenged and indicted by his words. 15 00:01:00,500 --> 00:01:02,625 Especially these words: 16 00:01:03,458 --> 00:01:07,059 "There are liberals who have all the proper attitudes, 17 00:01:07,083 --> 00:01:09,042 but no real convictions. 18 00:01:10,083 --> 00:01:14,018 When the chips are down and you somehow expect them to deliver, 19 00:01:14,042 --> 00:01:16,518 they are somehow not there." 20 00:01:16,542 --> 00:01:19,351 They are somehow not there. 21 00:01:19,375 --> 00:01:21,726 I took those words very literally. 22 00:01:21,750 --> 00:01:23,458 Where should I put myself? 23 00:01:24,500 --> 00:01:26,518 I went to the Mississippi Delta, 24 00:01:26,542 --> 00:01:29,684 one of the poorest regions in the United States. 25 00:01:29,708 --> 00:01:32,601 This is a place shaped by a powerful history. 26 00:01:32,625 --> 00:01:37,768 In the 1960s, African Americans risked their lives to fight for education, 27 00:01:37,792 --> 00:01:39,500 to fight for the right to vote. 28 00:01:40,625 --> 00:01:43,059 I wanted to be a part of that change, 29 00:01:43,083 --> 00:01:46,792 to help young teenagers graduate and go to college. 30 00:01:48,250 --> 00:01:50,976 When I got to the Mississippi Delta, 31 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:53,434 it was a place that was still poor, 32 00:01:53,458 --> 00:01:55,184 still segregated, 33 00:01:55,208 --> 00:01:57,750 still dramatically in need of change. 34 00:01:58,958 --> 00:02:02,393 My school, where I was placed, 35 00:02:02,417 --> 00:02:06,726 had no library, no guidance counselor, 36 00:02:06,750 --> 00:02:09,726 but it did have a police officer. 37 00:02:09,750 --> 00:02:12,309 Half the teachers were substitutes 38 00:02:12,333 --> 00:02:14,309 and when students got into fights, 39 00:02:14,333 --> 00:02:18,208 the school would send them to the local county jail. 40 00:02:20,250 --> 00:02:23,226 This is the school where I met Patrick. 41 00:02:23,250 --> 00:02:28,184 He was 15 and held back twice, he was in the eighth grade. 42 00:02:28,208 --> 00:02:30,684 He was quiet, introspective, 43 00:02:30,708 --> 00:02:33,518 like he was always in deep thought. 44 00:02:33,542 --> 00:02:36,333 And he hated seeing other people fight. 45 00:02:37,500 --> 00:02:41,309 I saw him once jump between two girls when they got into a fight 46 00:02:41,333 --> 00:02:44,042 and he got himself knocked to the ground. 47 00:02:45,375 --> 00:02:47,893 Patrick had just one problem. 48 00:02:47,917 --> 00:02:49,708 He wouldn't come to school. 49 00:02:51,249 --> 00:02:53,726 He said that sometimes school was just too depressing 50 00:02:53,750 --> 00:02:56,792 because people were always fighting and teachers were quitting. 51 00:02:58,042 --> 00:03:03,500 And also, his mother worked two jobs and was just too tired to make him come. 52 00:03:04,417 --> 00:03:07,184 So I made it my job to get him to come to school. 53 00:03:07,208 --> 00:03:11,268 And because I was crazy and 22 and zealously optimistic, 54 00:03:11,292 --> 00:03:13,434 my strategy was just to show up at his house 55 00:03:13,458 --> 00:03:15,583 and say, "Hey, why don't you come to school?" 56 00:03:16,542 --> 00:03:18,184 And this strategy actually worked, 57 00:03:18,208 --> 00:03:20,643 he started to come to school every day. 58 00:03:20,667 --> 00:03:23,059 And he started to flourish in my class. 59 00:03:23,083 --> 00:03:26,000 He was writing poetry, he was reading books. 60 00:03:26,917 --> 00:03:29,208 He was coming to school every day. 61 00:03:31,042 --> 00:03:32,518 Around the same time 62 00:03:32,542 --> 00:03:35,226 that I had figured out how to connect to Patrick, 63 00:03:35,250 --> 00:03:37,458 I got into law school at Harvard. 64 00:03:39,583 --> 00:03:42,934 I once again faced this question, where should I put myself, 65 00:03:42,958 --> 00:03:44,667 where do I put my body? 66 00:03:45,458 --> 00:03:48,101 And I thought to myself 67 00:03:48,125 --> 00:03:51,643 that the Mississippi Delta was a place where people with money, 68 00:03:51,667 --> 00:03:53,559 people with opportunity, 69 00:03:53,583 --> 00:03:54,833 those people leave. 70 00:03:55,875 --> 00:03:57,309 And the people who stay behind 71 00:03:57,333 --> 00:03:59,833 are the people who don't have the chance to leave. 72 00:04:00,833 --> 00:04:03,101 I didn't want to be a person who left. 73 00:04:03,125 --> 00:04:05,167 I wanted to be a person who stayed. 74 00:04:06,333 --> 00:04:09,268 On the other hand, I was lonely and tired. 75 00:04:09,292 --> 00:04:12,750 And so I convinced myself that I could do more change 76 00:04:14,125 --> 00:04:17,708 on a larger scale if I had a prestigious law degree. 77 00:04:19,541 --> 00:04:20,791 So I left. 78 00:04:22,750 --> 00:04:24,351 Three years later, 79 00:04:24,375 --> 00:04:26,768 when I was about to graduate from law school, 80 00:04:26,792 --> 00:04:28,518 my friend called me 81 00:04:28,542 --> 00:04:33,458 and told me that Patrick had got into a fight and killed someone. 82 00:04:35,333 --> 00:04:37,393 I was devastated. 83 00:04:37,417 --> 00:04:39,851 Part of me didn't believe it, 84 00:04:39,875 --> 00:04:42,542 but part of me also knew that it was true. 85 00:04:43,583 --> 00:04:45,583 I flew down to see Patrick. 86 00:04:46,750 --> 00:04:49,458 I visited him in jail. 87 00:04:50,542 --> 00:04:54,184 And he told me that it was true. 88 00:04:54,208 --> 00:04:56,601 That he had killed someone. 89 00:04:56,625 --> 00:04:58,875 And he didn't want to talk more about it. 90 00:04:59,833 --> 00:05:01,851 I asked him what had happened with school 91 00:05:01,875 --> 00:05:06,018 and he said that he had dropped out the year after I left. 92 00:05:06,042 --> 00:05:08,684 And then he wanted to tell me something else. 93 00:05:08,708 --> 00:05:11,976 He looked down and he said that he had had a baby daughter 94 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:13,768 who was just born. 95 00:05:13,792 --> 00:05:16,375 And he felt like he had let her down. 96 00:05:18,625 --> 00:05:22,000 That was it, our conversation was rushed and awkward. 97 00:05:23,417 --> 00:05:28,476 When I stepped outside the jail, a voice inside me said, 98 00:05:28,500 --> 00:05:29,768 "Come back. 99 00:05:29,792 --> 00:05:33,083 If you don't come back now, you'll never come back." 100 00:05:36,292 --> 00:05:39,875 So I graduated from law school and I went back. 101 00:05:40,833 --> 00:05:42,518 I went back to see Patrick, 102 00:05:42,542 --> 00:05:45,500 I went back to see if I could help him with his legal case. 103 00:05:46,917 --> 00:05:50,268 And this time, when I saw him a second time, 104 00:05:50,292 --> 00:05:52,559 I thought I had this great idea, I said, 105 00:05:52,583 --> 00:05:56,184 "Hey, Patrick, why don't you write a letter to your daughter, 106 00:05:56,208 --> 00:05:59,976 so that you can keep her on your mind?" 107 00:06:00,000 --> 00:06:03,684 And I handed him a pen and a piece of paper, 108 00:06:03,708 --> 00:06:05,333 and he started to write. 109 00:06:06,542 --> 00:06:09,351 But when I saw the paper that he handed back to me, 110 00:06:09,375 --> 00:06:10,708 I was shocked. 111 00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:15,101 I didn't recognize his handwriting, 112 00:06:15,125 --> 00:06:17,958 he had made simple spelling mistakes. 113 00:06:19,167 --> 00:06:21,851 And I thought to myself that as a teacher, 114 00:06:21,875 --> 00:06:25,351 I knew that a student could dramatically improve 115 00:06:25,375 --> 00:06:28,434 in a very quick amount of time, 116 00:06:28,458 --> 00:06:32,125 but I never thought that a student could dramatically regress. 117 00:06:34,375 --> 00:06:36,268 What even pained me more, 118 00:06:36,292 --> 00:06:39,476 was seeing what he had written to his daughter. 119 00:06:39,500 --> 00:06:40,893 He had written, 120 00:06:40,917 --> 00:06:45,208 "I'm sorry for my mistakes, I'm sorry for not being there for you." 121 00:06:46,458 --> 00:06:49,292 And this was all he felt he had to say to her. 122 00:06:50,250 --> 00:06:54,559 And I asked myself how can I convince him that he has more to say, 123 00:06:54,583 --> 00:06:58,000 parts of himself that he doesn't need to apologize for. 124 00:06:58,958 --> 00:07:00,226 I wanted him to feel 125 00:07:00,250 --> 00:07:04,208 that he had something worthwhile to share with his daughter. 126 00:07:05,917 --> 00:07:09,101 For every day the next seven months, 127 00:07:09,125 --> 00:07:11,809 I visited him and brought books. 128 00:07:11,833 --> 00:07:15,684 My tote bag became a little library. 129 00:07:15,708 --> 00:07:17,768 I brought James Baldwin, 130 00:07:17,792 --> 00:07:22,684 I brought Walt Whitman, C.S. Lewis. 131 00:07:22,708 --> 00:07:27,518 I brought guidebooks to trees, to birds, 132 00:07:27,542 --> 00:07:30,750 and what would become his favorite book, the dictionary. 133 00:07:31,667 --> 00:07:33,351 On some days, 134 00:07:33,375 --> 00:07:37,167 we would sit for hours in silence, both of us reading. 135 00:07:38,083 --> 00:07:39,934 And on other days, 136 00:07:39,958 --> 00:07:43,476 we would read together, we would read poetry. 137 00:07:43,500 --> 00:07:47,393 We started by reading haikus, hundreds of haikus, 138 00:07:47,417 --> 00:07:50,309 a deceptively simple masterpiece. 139 00:07:50,333 --> 00:07:53,143 And I would ask him, "Share with me your favorite haikus." 140 00:07:53,167 --> 00:07:56,226 And some of them are quite funny. 141 00:07:56,250 --> 00:07:58,101 So there's this by Issa: 142 00:07:58,125 --> 00:08:01,833 "Don't worry, spiders, I keep house casually." 143 00:08:02,750 --> 00:08:07,292 And this: "Napped half the day, no one punished me!" 144 00:08:08,667 --> 00:08:13,101 And this gorgeous one, which is about the first day of snow falling, 145 00:08:13,125 --> 00:08:17,583 "Deer licking first frost from each other's coats." 146 00:08:19,250 --> 00:08:22,268 There's something mysterious and gorgeous 147 00:08:22,292 --> 00:08:24,934 just about the way a poem looks. 148 00:08:24,958 --> 00:08:29,583 The empty space is as important as the words themselves. 149 00:08:31,375 --> 00:08:33,893 We read this poem by W.S. Merwin, 150 00:08:33,917 --> 00:08:38,143 which he wrote after he saw his wife working in the garden 151 00:08:38,167 --> 00:08:42,042 and realized that they would spend the rest of their lives together. 152 00:08:43,167 --> 00:08:45,518 "Let me imagine that we will come again 153 00:08:45,542 --> 00:08:48,934 when we want to and it will be spring 154 00:08:48,958 --> 00:08:52,143 We will be no older than we ever were 155 00:08:52,167 --> 00:08:56,101 The worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud 156 00:08:56,125 --> 00:08:59,893 through which morning slowly comes to itself" 157 00:08:59,917 --> 00:09:03,309 I asked Patrick what his favorite line was, and he said, 158 00:09:03,333 --> 00:09:06,875 "We will be no older than we ever were." 159 00:09:08,375 --> 00:09:12,809 He said it reminded him of a place where time just stops, 160 00:09:12,833 --> 00:09:15,768 where time doesn't matter anymore. 161 00:09:15,792 --> 00:09:17,851 And I asked him if he had a place like that, 162 00:09:17,875 --> 00:09:20,268 where time lasts forever. 163 00:09:20,292 --> 00:09:21,958 And he said, "My mother." 164 00:09:23,875 --> 00:09:28,184 When you read a poem alongside someone else, 165 00:09:28,208 --> 00:09:30,083 the poem changes in meaning. 166 00:09:31,333 --> 00:09:36,000 Because it becomes personal to that person, becomes personal to you. 167 00:09:37,500 --> 00:09:40,184 We then read books, we read so many books, 168 00:09:40,208 --> 00:09:43,351 we read the memoir of Frederick Douglass, 169 00:09:43,375 --> 00:09:46,976 an American slave who taught himself to read and write 170 00:09:47,000 --> 00:09:50,333 and who escaped to freedom because of his literacy. 171 00:09:51,875 --> 00:09:54,518 I had grown up thinking of Frederick Douglass as a hero 172 00:09:54,542 --> 00:09:57,750 and I thought of this story as one of uplift and hope. 173 00:09:58,917 --> 00:10:01,750 But this book put Patrick in a kind of panic. 174 00:10:02,875 --> 00:10:07,934 He fixated on a story Douglass told of how, over Christmas, 175 00:10:07,958 --> 00:10:11,059 masters give slaves gin 176 00:10:11,083 --> 00:10:14,559 as a way to prove to them that they can't handle freedom. 177 00:10:14,583 --> 00:10:17,375 Because slaves would be stumbling on the fields. 178 00:10:19,500 --> 00:10:21,500 Patrick said he related to this. 179 00:10:22,333 --> 00:10:25,809 He said that there are people in jail who, like slaves, 180 00:10:25,833 --> 00:10:28,059 don't want to think about their condition, 181 00:10:28,083 --> 00:10:29,893 because it's too painful. 182 00:10:29,917 --> 00:10:32,101 Too painful to think about the past, 183 00:10:32,125 --> 00:10:35,458 too painful to think about how far we have to go. 184 00:10:36,958 --> 00:10:39,851 His favorite line was this line: 185 00:10:39,875 --> 00:10:43,476 "Anything, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! 186 00:10:43,500 --> 00:10:48,542 It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me." 187 00:10:49,958 --> 00:10:53,917 Patrick said that Douglass was brave to write, to keep thinking. 188 00:10:55,083 --> 00:11:00,643 But Patrick would never know how much he seemed like Douglass to me. 189 00:11:00,667 --> 00:11:04,417 How he kept reading, even though it put him in a panic. 190 00:11:05,250 --> 00:11:08,309 He finished the book before I did, 191 00:11:08,333 --> 00:11:12,042 reading it in a concrete stairway with no light. 192 00:11:13,583 --> 00:11:16,309 And then we went on to read one of my favorite books, 193 00:11:16,333 --> 00:11:18,518 Marilynne Robinson's "Gilead," 194 00:11:18,542 --> 00:11:22,684 which is an extended letter from a father to his son. 195 00:11:22,708 --> 00:11:25,059 He loved this line: 196 00:11:25,083 --> 00:11:27,268 "I'm writing this in part to tell you 197 00:11:27,292 --> 00:11:30,601 that if you ever wonder what you've done in your life ... 198 00:11:30,625 --> 00:11:32,643 you have been God's grace to me, 199 00:11:32,667 --> 00:11:35,833 a miracle, something more than a miracle." 200 00:11:37,375 --> 00:11:43,018 Something about this language, its love, its longing, its voice, 201 00:11:43,042 --> 00:11:45,500 rekindled Patrick's desire to write. 202 00:11:46,292 --> 00:11:49,393 And he would fill notebooks upon notebooks 203 00:11:49,417 --> 00:11:52,726 with letters to his daughter. 204 00:11:52,750 --> 00:11:55,684 In these beautiful, intricate letters, 205 00:11:55,708 --> 00:12:01,684 he would imagine him and his daughter going canoeing down the Mississippi river. 206 00:12:01,708 --> 00:12:04,518 He would imagine them finding a mountain stream 207 00:12:04,542 --> 00:12:06,708 with perfectly clear water. 208 00:12:08,042 --> 00:12:10,083 As I watched Patrick write, 209 00:12:11,250 --> 00:12:13,393 I thought to myself, 210 00:12:13,417 --> 00:12:15,476 and I now ask all of you, 211 00:12:15,500 --> 00:12:20,792 how many of you have written a letter to somebody you feel you have let down? 212 00:12:22,042 --> 00:12:27,125 It is just much easier to put those people out of your mind. 213 00:12:28,083 --> 00:12:32,726 But Patrick showed up every day, facing his daughter, 214 00:12:32,750 --> 00:12:35,684 holding himself accountable to her, 215 00:12:35,708 --> 00:12:39,417 word by word with intense concentration. 216 00:12:42,417 --> 00:12:44,958 I wanted in my own life 217 00:12:46,042 --> 00:12:49,101 to put myself at risk in that way. 218 00:12:49,125 --> 00:12:52,750 Because that risk reveals the strength of one's heart. 219 00:12:56,625 --> 00:13:00,684 Let me take a step back and just ask an uncomfortable question. 220 00:13:00,708 --> 00:13:04,417 Who am I to tell this story, as in this Patrick story? 221 00:13:06,042 --> 00:13:09,018 Patrick's the one who lived with this pain 222 00:13:09,042 --> 00:13:13,208 and I have never been hungry a day in my life. 223 00:13:15,250 --> 00:13:17,018 I thought about this question a lot, 224 00:13:17,042 --> 00:13:20,768 but what I want to say is that this story is not just about Patrick. 225 00:13:20,792 --> 00:13:22,309 It's about us, 226 00:13:22,333 --> 00:13:24,833 it's about the inequality between us. 227 00:13:25,667 --> 00:13:27,083 The world of plenty 228 00:13:28,375 --> 00:13:32,018 that Patrick and his parents and his grandparents 229 00:13:32,042 --> 00:13:33,851 have been shut out of. 230 00:13:33,875 --> 00:13:36,958 In this story, I represent that world of plenty. 231 00:13:37,792 --> 00:13:41,601 And in telling this story, I didn't want to hide myself. 232 00:13:41,625 --> 00:13:44,292 Hide the power that I do have. 233 00:13:45,333 --> 00:13:48,893 In telling this story, I wanted to expose that power 234 00:13:48,917 --> 00:13:51,309 and then to ask, 235 00:13:51,333 --> 00:13:54,250 how do we diminish the distance between us? 236 00:13:56,250 --> 00:13:59,851 Reading is one way to close that distance. 237 00:13:59,875 --> 00:14:04,309 It gives us a quiet universe that we can share together, 238 00:14:04,333 --> 00:14:06,583 that we can share in equally. 239 00:14:08,500 --> 00:14:11,601 You're probably wondering now what happened to Patrick. 240 00:14:11,625 --> 00:14:13,333 Did reading save his life? 241 00:14:14,583 --> 00:14:16,708 It did and it didn't. 242 00:14:17,875 --> 00:14:20,768 When Patrick got out of prison, 243 00:14:20,792 --> 00:14:23,125 his journey was excruciating. 244 00:14:24,292 --> 00:14:27,768 Employers turned him away because of his record, 245 00:14:27,792 --> 00:14:30,934 his best friend, his mother, died at age 43 246 00:14:30,958 --> 00:14:33,434 from heart disease and diabetes. 247 00:14:33,458 --> 00:14:36,167 He's been homeless, he's been hungry. 248 00:14:38,250 --> 00:14:42,792 So people say a lot of things about reading that feel exaggerated to me. 249 00:14:43,792 --> 00:14:47,768 Being literate didn't stop him form being discriminated against. 250 00:14:47,792 --> 00:14:50,417 It didn't stop his mother from dying. 251 00:14:51,708 --> 00:14:54,083 So what can reading do? 252 00:14:55,375 --> 00:14:59,333 I have a few answers to end with today. 253 00:15:00,667 --> 00:15:03,417 Reading charged his inner life 254 00:15:05,083 --> 00:15:08,143 with mystery, with imagination, 255 00:15:08,167 --> 00:15:09,417 with beauty. 256 00:15:10,292 --> 00:15:14,625 Reading gave him images that gave him joy: 257 00:15:15,417 --> 00:15:20,976 mountain, ocean, deer, frost. 258 00:15:21,000 --> 00:15:25,125 Words that taste of a free, natural world. 259 00:15:27,625 --> 00:15:31,143 Reading gave him a language for what he had lost. 260 00:15:31,167 --> 00:15:35,809 How precious are these lines from the poet Derek Walcott? 261 00:15:35,833 --> 00:15:38,059 Patrick memorized this poem. 262 00:15:38,083 --> 00:15:40,184 "Days that I have held, 263 00:15:40,208 --> 00:15:42,476 days that I have lost, 264 00:15:42,500 --> 00:15:45,726 days that outgrow, like daughters, 265 00:15:45,750 --> 00:15:47,583 my harboring arms." 266 00:15:48,667 --> 00:15:51,643 Reading taught him his own courage. 267 00:15:51,667 --> 00:15:54,976 Remember that he kept reading Frederick Douglass, 268 00:15:55,000 --> 00:15:57,143 even though it was painful. 269 00:15:57,167 --> 00:16:00,875 He kept being conscious, even though being conscious hurts. 270 00:16:02,208 --> 00:16:04,768 Reading is a form of thinking, 271 00:16:04,792 --> 00:16:08,851 that's why it's difficult to read because we have to think. 272 00:16:08,875 --> 00:16:13,125 And Patrick chose to think, rather than to not think. 273 00:16:16,000 --> 00:16:19,958 And last, reading gave him a language to speak to his daughter. 274 00:16:21,375 --> 00:16:24,601 Reading inspired him to want to write. 275 00:16:24,625 --> 00:16:28,768 The link between reading and writing is so powerful. 276 00:16:28,792 --> 00:16:30,851 When we begin to read, 277 00:16:30,875 --> 00:16:32,958 we begin to find the words. 278 00:16:33,958 --> 00:16:38,601 And he found the words to imagine the two of them together. 279 00:16:38,625 --> 00:16:40,333 He found the words 280 00:16:41,958 --> 00:16:44,208 to tell her how much he loved her. 281 00:16:46,042 --> 00:16:49,976 Reading also changed our relationship with each other. 282 00:16:50,000 --> 00:16:52,059 It gave us an occasion for intimacy, 283 00:16:52,083 --> 00:16:54,976 to see beyond our points of view. 284 00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:57,684 And reading took an unequal relationship 285 00:16:57,708 --> 00:17:00,375 and gave us a momentary equality. 286 00:17:02,125 --> 00:17:05,059 When you meet somebody as a reader, 287 00:17:05,083 --> 00:17:07,059 you meet him for the first time, 288 00:17:07,083 --> 00:17:08,791 newly, freshly. 289 00:17:09,875 --> 00:17:13,083 There is no way you can know what his favorite line will be. 290 00:17:14,458 --> 00:17:17,666 What memories and private griefs he has. 291 00:17:18,833 --> 00:17:22,833 And you face the ultimate privacy of his inner life. 292 00:17:23,666 --> 00:17:27,101 And then you start to wonder, "Well, what is my inner life made of? 293 00:17:27,125 --> 00:17:30,375 What do I have that's worthwhile to share with another?" 294 00:17:33,000 --> 00:17:34,333 I want to close 295 00:17:36,208 --> 00:17:40,500 on some of my favorite lines from Patrick's letters to his daughter. 296 00:17:41,333 --> 00:17:44,101 "The river is shadowy in some places 297 00:17:44,125 --> 00:17:47,393 but the light shines through the cracks of trees ... 298 00:17:47,417 --> 00:17:50,976 On some branches hang plenty of mulberries. 299 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:54,458 You stretch your arm straight out to grab some." 300 00:17:56,042 --> 00:17:58,476 And this lovely letter, where he writes, 301 00:17:58,500 --> 00:18:02,851 "Close your eyes and listen to the sounds of the words. 302 00:18:02,875 --> 00:18:05,059 I know this poem by heart 303 00:18:05,083 --> 00:18:07,917 and I would like you to know it, too." 304 00:18:09,375 --> 00:18:11,184 Thank you so much everyone. 305 00:18:11,208 --> 00:18:14,500 (Applause)