1
00:00:00,645 --> 00:00:01,774
I see the moon.

2
00:00:03,212 --> 00:00:05,500
The moon sees me.

3
00:00:06,678 --> 00:00:08,720
The moon sees somebody

4
00:00:08,940 --> 00:00:10,957
that I don't see.

5
00:00:12,594 --> 00:00:14,725
God bless the moon,

6
00:00:15,961 --> 00:00:17,818
and God bless me.

7
00:00:19,251 --> 00:00:24,079
And God bless the somebody 
that I don't see.

8
00:00:25,542 --> 00:00:28,387
If I get to heaven

9
00:00:28,722 --> 00:00:30,838
before you do,

10
00:00:31,950 --> 00:00:34,135
I'll make a hole

11
00:00:34,771 --> 00:00:36,992
and pull you through.

12
00:00:37,991 --> 00:00:40,340
And I'll write your name

13
00:00:40,964 --> 00:00:43,209
on every star.

14
00:00:44,071 --> 00:00:46,459
And that way the world

15
00:00:47,354 --> 00:00:50,130
won't seem so far.

16
00:00:51,195 --> 00:00:54,305
The astronaut will not be at work today.

17
00:00:54,985 --> 00:00:56,575
He has called in sick.

18
00:00:56,745 --> 00:01:01,729
He has turned off his cell phone,
his laptop, his pager, his alarm clock.

19
00:01:01,932 --> 00:01:04,855
There is a fat yellow cat
asleep on his couch,

20
00:01:04,965 --> 00:01:06,815
raindrops against the window

21
00:01:06,865 --> 00:01:10,332
and not even the hint coffee
in the kitchen air.

22
00:01:10,617 --> 00:01:11,763
Everybody is in a tizzy.

23
00:01:11,866 --> 00:01:15,655
The engineers on the 15th floor have
stopped working on their particle machine.

24
00:01:15,800 --> 00:01:19,559
The anti-gravity room is leaking,
and even the freckled kid with glasses,

25
00:01:19,580 --> 00:01:23,014
whose only job it is to take out the trash
is nervous, fumbles the bag,

26
00:01:23,076 --> 00:01:26,300
spills the banana peel and a paper cup.
Nobody notices.

27
00:01:26,534 --> 00:01:29,744
They're too busy re-calculating
what this will mean for lost time.

28
00:01:29,819 --> 00:01:31,931
How many galaxies
are we losing per second?

29
00:01:31,972 --> 00:01:33,884
How long before the next rocket
can be launched?

30
00:01:35,515 --> 00:01:37,258
Somewhere an electron
flies off its energy cloud.

31
00:01:37,565 --> 00:01:39,533
A black hole has erupted.

32
00:01:39,885 --> 00:01:41,618
A mother finishes setting
the table for dinner.

33
00:01:41,869 --> 00:01:43,893
A "Law and Order" marathon is starting.
The astronaut is asleep.

34
00:01:45,866 --> 00:01:48,133
He has forgotten to turn off his watch
which ticks like a metal pulse

35
00:01:48,163 --> 00:01:49,308
against his wrist.
He does not hear it.

36
00:01:50,672 --> 00:01:51,945
He dreams of coral reefs and plankton.

37
00:01:55,376 --> 00:01:58,327
His fingers find the pillow cases,
sailing masts.

38
00:01:59,063 --> 00:02:02,195
He turns on his side, opens his eyes once.

39
00:02:02,195 --> 00:02:06,782
He thinks that scuba divers must have
the most wonderful job in the world,

40
00:02:06,782 --> 00:02:09,365
so much water to glide through.

41
00:02:09,365 --> 00:02:10,025
Thank you.

42
00:02:18,413 --> 00:02:20,255
When I was little,

43
00:02:20,888 --> 00:02:25,881
I could not understand the concept
that you could only live one life.

44
00:02:25,881 --> 00:02:27,747
And I don't mean this metaphorically --

45
00:02:27,747 --> 00:02:30,878
I mean I literally thought
that I was going to get to do

46
00:02:30,878 --> 00:02:35,570
everything there was to do
and be everything there was to be.

47
00:02:35,570 --> 00:02:37,962
It was only a matter of time.

48
00:02:37,962 --> 00:02:38,888
And there was no limitation

49
00:02:38,888 --> 00:02:43,344
based on age or gender or race
or even appropriate time period.

50
00:02:43,344 --> 00:02:47,147
I was sure that I was
actually going to experience

51
00:02:47,147 --> 00:02:51,121
what it felt like to be a leader
of the civil rights movement,

52
00:02:51,121 --> 00:02:54,537
or a ten-year-old boy living on a farm
during the dust bowl.

53
00:02:54,537 --> 00:02:57,502
or an emperor
of the Tang dynasty in China.

54
00:02:57,502 --> 00:03:01,847
My mom says that when people asked me
what I wanted to be when I grew up,

55
00:03:01,847 --> 00:03:06,426
my typical response was
princess, ballerina, astronaut,

56
00:03:06,426 --> 00:03:08,237
and what she doesn't understand is that

57
00:03:08,237 --> 00:03:10,899
I wasn't trying to invent
some combined super-profession.


58
00:03:10,899 --> 00:03:14,473
I was listing things I thought
I was going to get to be,

59
00:03:14,473 --> 00:03:17,646
a princess and a ballerina
and an astronaut.

60
00:03:17,646 --> 00:03:20,154
And I'm pretty sure the list
probably went on from there --

61
00:03:20,154 --> 00:03:22,675
I usually just got cut off.

62
00:03:22,675 --> 00:03:24,821
It was never a question of if
I was going to get to do something,

63
00:03:24,821 --> 00:03:28,644
so much as a question of when.

64
00:03:28,644 --> 00:03:30,713
And I was sure
that if I was going to do everything

65
00:03:30,713 --> 00:03:32,568
that it probably meant
that I had to move pretty quickly

66
00:03:32,568 --> 00:03:35,069
because there was a lot of stuff 
I needed to do.

67
00:03:35,069 --> 00:03:36,605
So my life was constantly
in a state of rushing.

68
00:03:36,605 --> 00:03:38,977
I was always scared
that I was falling behind,

69
00:03:38,977 --> 00:03:42,007
and since I grew up in New York City,
as far as I could tell,

70
00:03:42,007 --> 00:03:46,077
rushing was pretty normal.

71
00:03:46,077 --> 00:03:49,667
But as I grew up,
I had this sinking realization

72
00:03:49,667 --> 00:03:54,118
that I wasn't going to get to live
any more than one life.

73
00:03:54,118 --> 00:03:58,022
I only knew what it felt like
to be a teenaged girl in New York City,

74
00:03:58,022 --> 00:04:02,538
not a teenage boy in New Zealand,
not a prom queen in Kansas.

75
00:04:02,538 --> 00:04:06,669
I only got to see through my lens,
and it was around this time

76
00:04:06,669 --> 00:04:12,454
I became obsessed with stories
because it was through stories

77
00:04:12,454 --> 00:04:13,976
that I was able to see
through someone else's lens,

78
00:04:13,976 --> 00:04:16,449
however briefly or imperfectly.

79
00:04:16,449 --> 00:04:19,175
And I started craving
hearing other people's experiences

80
00:04:20,069 --> 00:04:24,910
because I was so jealous
that there were entire lives

81
00:04:24,910 --> 00:04:26,817
that I was never going to get to live

82
00:04:26,817 --> 00:04:28,440
and I wanted to hear about everything
that I was missing.

83
00:04:28,440 --> 00:04:30,012
And by the transitive property,

84
00:04:30,012 --> 00:04:31,766
I realized that some people were never
going to get to experience

85
00:04:31,766 --> 00:04:34,358
what it felt like to be a teenage girl
in New York City --

86
00:04:34,358 --> 00:04:36,663
which meant that
they weren't going to know

87
00:04:36,663 --> 00:04:40,156
what the subway ride
after your first kiss feels like

88
00:04:40,156 --> 00:04:44,388
or how quiet it gets when it snows,
and I wanted them to know.

89
00:04:44,388 --> 00:04:47,669
I wanted to tell them,
and this became the focus of my obsession.

90
00:04:47,669 --> 00:04:51,333
I busied myself telling stories
and sharing stories and collecting them

91
00:04:51,333 --> 00:04:57,719
and it's not until recently that I realized
that I can't always rush poetry.

92
00:04:57,719 --> 00:05:00,481
In April, the National Poetry Month,

93
00:05:00,481 --> 00:05:03,924
there's this challenge that many poets
in the poetry community participate in.

94
00:05:03,924 --> 00:05:07,671
And it's called the 30/30 challenge.

95
00:05:07,671 --> 00:05:09,852
And the idea is, you write a new poem

96
00:05:09,852 --> 00:05:13,384
every single day
for the entire month of April

97
00:05:13,384 --> 00:05:15,195
and last year,
I tried it for the first time

98
00:05:15,195 --> 00:05:20,462
and was thrilled by the efficiency
at which I was able to produce poetry.

99
00:05:20,462 --> 00:05:23,041
But at the end of the month,
I looked back at these 30 poems

100
00:05:23,041 --> 00:05:24,503
that I had written and discovered that

101
00:05:24,503 --> 00:05:27,711
they were all trying to tell
the same story,

102
00:05:27,711 --> 00:05:32,822
it had just taken me 30 tries to figure out
the way that it wanted to be told.

103
00:05:32,822 --> 00:05:35,286
And I realized that
this is probably true of other stories

104
00:05:35,286 --> 00:05:36,421
on an even larger scale.


105
00:05:36,421 --> 00:05:39,070
I have stories
that I have tried to tell for years,

106
00:05:39,070 --> 00:05:42,541
re-writing and re-writing,
constantly searching for the right words.

107
00:05:42,541 --> 00:05:48,811
There's a French poet and essayist
by the name of Paul Valéry who said that

108
00:05:48,811 --> 00:05:51,064
a poem is never finished,
it is only abandoned,

109
00:05:51,064 --> 00:05:52,331
and this terrifies me because it implies

110
00:05:52,331 --> 00:05:54,925
that I could keep re-editing
and re-writing forever

111
00:05:54,925 --> 00:05:58,277
and it's up to me to decide
when a poem's finished

112
00:05:58,277 --> 00:06:01,330
and when I can walk away from it.

113
00:06:01,330 --> 00:06:04,232
And this goes directly against
my very obsessive nature

114
00:06:04,232 --> 00:06:07,465
to try to find the right answer
and the perfect words and the right form.

115
00:06:07,465 --> 00:06:09,963
And I use poetry in my life

116
00:06:09,963 --> 00:06:12,391
as a way to help me navigate
and work through things

117
00:06:12,391 --> 00:06:15,351
but just because I end a poem
doesn't mean that I've solved

118
00:06:15,351 --> 00:06:18,554
what it was I was puzzling through.


119
00:06:18,554 --> 00:06:22,031
I like to re-visit old poetry
because it shows me exactly

120
00:06:22,031 --> 00:06:23,994
where I was at that moment.

121
00:06:23,994 --> 00:06:27,924
What it was I was trying to navigate
and the words that I chose to help me.

122
00:06:27,924 --> 00:06:29,966
Now I have a story

123
00:06:29,966 --> 00:06:33,502
that I've been stumbling over
for years and years,

124
00:06:33,502 --> 00:06:35,790
and I'm not sure if I've found
the perfect form,

125
00:06:35,790 --> 00:06:39,224
or whether this is just one attempt,
and I will try to re-write it later

126
00:06:39,224 --> 00:06:43,760
in search of a better way to tell it.
But I do know that later when I look back,

127
00:06:43,760 --> 00:06:49,196
I will be able to know that
this is where I was at this moment.

128
00:06:49,196 --> 00:06:54,425
And this is what I was trying to navigate,
these words, here in this room, with you.

129
00:06:54,425 --> 00:07:02,601
So, smile

130
00:07:05,848 --> 00:07:08,558
It didn't always work this way.

131
00:07:09,278 --> 00:07:11,150
There was a time
when you had to get your hands dirty.

132
00:07:11,150 --> 00:07:14,901
When you were in the dark for most of it,
fumbling was a given..

133
00:07:14,901 --> 00:07:18,695
If you needed more contrast,
more saturation,

134
00:07:18,695 --> 00:07:23,190
darker darks and brighter brights,
they called it extended development.

135
00:07:23,190 --> 00:07:26,203
Meant you spent longer inhaling chemicals.
Longer up to your wrists.

136
00:07:26,203 --> 00:07:29,389
It wasn't always easy.
Grandpa Stuart was a navy photographer.

137
00:07:29,389 --> 00:07:36,593
Young, red-faced with sleeves rolled up,
fists of fingers like fat rolls of coins,

138
00:07:36,593 --> 00:07:38,970
he looked like
Popeye the Sailor Man, come to life.

139
00:07:38,970 --> 00:07:42,515
Crooked smile, tuft of chest hair,

140
00:07:42,515 --> 00:07:45,466
he showed up to World War II
with a smirk and a hobby.

141
00:07:45,466 --> 00:07:48,511
When they asked him
if he knew much about photography,

142
00:07:48,511 --> 00:07:51,021
he lied, learned to read Europe like a map

143
00:07:51,021 --> 00:07:54,550
upside down,
from the height of a fighter plane,

144
00:07:54,550 --> 00:07:59,530
camera snapping, eyelids flapping,
the darkest darks and brightest brights,

145
00:07:59,530 --> 00:08:02,177
he learned war
like he could read his way home.

146
00:08:02,177 --> 00:08:06,115
When other men returned,
they put their weapons out to rust,

147
00:08:06,115 --> 00:08:08,554
but he brought the lenses
and the cameras home with him,

148
00:08:08,554 --> 00:08:12,000
opened a shop,
turned it into a family affair.

149
00:08:12,000 --> 00:08:15,569
My father was born into this world,
a black and white.

150
00:08:15,569 --> 00:08:18,207
His basketball hands
learned the tiny clicks and slides

151
00:08:18,207 --> 00:08:22,423
of lens into frame, film into camera,
chemical into plastic bin,

152
00:08:22,423 --> 00:08:25,403
his father knew the equipment
but not the art.

153
00:08:25,403 --> 00:08:27,855
He knew the darks but not the brights.

154
00:08:27,855 --> 00:08:30,613
My father learned the magic,
spent his time following light.

155
00:08:30,613 --> 00:08:35,191
Once he traveled across the country
to follow a forest fire,

156
00:08:35,191 --> 00:08:38,771
hunted with his camera for a week.

157
00:08:38,771 --> 00:08:41,486
Follow the light, he said.
Follow the light.

158
00:08:41,486 --> 00:08:43,964
There are parts of me
I only recognize from photographs:

159
00:08:43,964 --> 00:08:47,081
the loft on Wooster Street
with the creaky hallways,

160
00:08:47,081 --> 00:08:50,038
the 12-foot ceilings,
white walls and cold floors.

161
00:08:50,038 --> 00:08:52,231
This was my mother's home

162
00:08:52,231 --> 00:08:54,862
before she was mother,
before she was wife, she was artist.

163
00:08:54,862 --> 00:08:57,646
And the only two rooms in the house

164
00:08:57,646 --> 00:08:59,914
with the walls that reached
all the way up to the ceiling

165
00:08:59,914 --> 00:09:04,577
and doors that opened and closed
were the bathroom and the darkroom.

166
00:09:04,577 --> 00:09:09,220
The darkroom she built herself
with custom-made stainless steel sinks,

167
00:09:09,220 --> 00:09:13,309
an 8x10 bed enlarger that moved
up and down by a giant hand crank.

168
00:09:13,309 --> 00:09:17,094
A bank of color balanced lights,
a white glass wall for viewing prints,

169
00:09:17,094 --> 00:09:19,563
a drying rack
that moved in and out from the wall.

170
00:09:19,563 --> 00:09:23,000
My mother built herself a dark room.
Made it her home.

171
00:09:23,000 --> 00:09:25,397
Fell in love with a man
with basketball hands,

172
00:09:25,397 --> 00:09:28,192
with the way he looked at light.

173
00:09:28,192 --> 00:09:32,056
They got married, had a baby,
moved to a house near a park

174
00:09:32,056 --> 00:09:36,865
but they kept the loft on Wooster Street
for birthday parties and treasure hunts.


175
00:09:36,865 --> 00:09:39,432
The baby tipped the gray scale,

176
00:09:39,432 --> 00:09:42,795
filled her parents' photo albums
with red balloons and yellow icing.

177
00:09:42,795 --> 00:09:47,156
The baby grew into a girl without freckles,
with a crooked smile,

178
00:09:47,156 --> 00:09:51,557
who didn't understand why her friends
did not have dark rooms in their houses,

179
00:09:51,557 --> 00:09:55,443
who never saw her parents kiss.
Who never saw them hold hands.

180
00:09:55,443 --> 00:09:59,298
But one day another baby showed up,
this one with perfect, straight hair

181
00:09:59,298 --> 00:10:02,225
and bubble gum cheeks,
they named him Sweet Potato

182
00:10:02,225 --> 00:10:04,161
and when he laughed,
he laughed so loudly,

183
00:10:04,161 --> 00:10:06,518
he scared the pigeons on the fire escape.

184
00:10:06,518 --> 00:10:09,054
And the four of them lived
in that house near the park:

185
00:10:09,054 --> 00:10:11,643
the girl with no freckles,
the Sweet Potato boy,

186
00:10:11,643 --> 00:10:14,165
the basketball father and darkroom mother.

187
00:10:14,165 --> 00:10:16,967
And they lit their candles
and said their prayers

188
00:10:16,967 --> 00:10:19,969
and the corners of the photographs curled.

189
00:10:19,969 --> 00:10:22,933
One day, some towers fell
and the house near the park

190
00:10:22,933 --> 00:10:25,348
became a house under ash,

191
00:10:25,348 --> 00:10:29,061
so they escaped in backpacks,
on bicycles to dark rooms,

192
00:10:29,061 --> 00:10:30,652
but the loft on Wooster Street

193
00:10:30,652 --> 00:10:34,379
was built for an artist,
not a family of pigeons

194
00:10:34,379 --> 00:10:38,048
and walls that do not reach the ceiling
do not hold in the yelling

195
00:10:38,048 --> 00:10:41,992
and the man with the basketball hands
put his weapons out to rust.

196
00:10:41,992 --> 00:10:46,107
He could not fight this war
and no maps pointed home.

197
00:10:46,107 --> 00:10:49,347
His hands no longer fit his camera.
No longer fit his wife's.

198
00:10:49,347 --> 00:10:51,977
No longer fit his body.

199
00:10:51,977 --> 00:10:55,032
Sweet potato boy mashed his fists
into his mouth

200
00:10:55,032 --> 00:10:56,653
until he had nothing more to say.

201
00:10:56,653 --> 00:10:59,811
So this girl without freckles
went treasure hunting on her own.

202
00:10:59,811 --> 00:11:03,539
And on Wooster Street,
in the building with the creaky hallways

203
00:11:03,539 --> 00:11:07,254
and the loft with the 12-foot ceilings
and the darkroom with too many sinks,

204
00:11:07,254 --> 00:11:09,890
under the color balanced lights,
she found a note,

205
00:11:09,890 --> 00:11:13,642
tacked to the wall with a thumbtack,
left over from a time before towers,

206
00:11:13,642 --> 00:11:18,432
from a time before babies,
and the note said,

207
00:11:18,432 --> 00:11:24,084
a guy sure loves a girl
who works in the dark.

208
00:11:24,084 --> 00:11:26,813
It was a year before
my father picked up a camera again.

209
00:11:26,813 --> 00:11:29,582
His first time out,
he followed the Christmas lights,

210
00:11:29,582 --> 00:11:31,998
dotting their way
through New York City's trees.

211
00:11:31,998 --> 00:11:36,235
Tiny dots of light blinking out at him
from out of the darkest darks.

212
00:11:36,235 --> 00:11:38,752
A year later, he traveled
across the country

213
00:11:38,752 --> 00:11:41,879
to follow a forest fire,
stayed for a week

214
00:11:41,879 --> 00:11:44,622
hunting it with his camera.
It was ravaging the west coast,

215
00:11:44,622 --> 00:11:48,992
eating 18-wheeler trucks in its stride.
On the other side of the country,

216
00:11:48,992 --> 00:11:52,162
I went to class and wrote a poem
in the margins of my notebook.

217
00:11:52,162 --> 00:11:54,994
We have both learned the art of capture.

218
00:11:54,994 --> 00:11:57,260
Maybe we are learning
the art of embracing.

219
00:11:57,260 --> 00:12:02,092
Maybe we are learning
the art of letting go.