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Apresenta um retrato de Ted Rosenthal, um poeta que foi informado de que lhe restam seis meses de vida. Ele discute como enfrenta a morte e lê poemas que escreveu durante esse período.
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00:00I'm sick of dying. I tell you, it's a drag. It's a waste of time.
00:03I don't think people are afraid of death.
00:06What they're afraid of is the incompleteness of their life.
00:15Oh, wilderness of all thoughts, even hello.
00:19Even birch extinct, melting snow, rushing streams, rusty rails, timber, hammer, and spike.
00:26I am lost in Tiaga forest of words.
00:30Questions tumble from my lips like plunging river logs.
00:34What action, what quest of open mind brings me in restless boredom craving freedom, not isolation,
00:43roping reindeer dreams with long, thin lines of song?
00:47I sing the ancient folk song of the soul, dreaming glorious poetry of cracked steel,
00:54split rubber, courage hung on air, frozen wall of soul melting holes for birds to fly through.
01:02Oh, still power!
01:04Oh, walls three feet thick and triple panes of glass against the sparkling color joyous air.
01:20Over thirty in search of vitality, so lonely, longing, yearning, afraid to give anything up.
01:28Hired, earthbound I.
01:31Am I to leap north?
01:32Ultimate north?
01:34Siberia fur trade north?
01:36Where all sound turns to roaring, crackling noise in the transcontinental trap of time?
01:43I cannot turn it off, cannot be naked, cannot go away.
01:48I pace madly, flop in bed, sit hunched, vaguely applauding, thinking time for inspiration, and dreaming of love.
01:57What place for me in this pioneer steel-jawed daring rush north to plow hard and free treasures from ice
02:06-clenched fist of self?
02:08I must pull myself together.
02:10I must go.
02:12To leap past prayers, come I north, unprepared, breathing madly, wondering about my soul and the real lost love to
02:21find.
02:55The doctor is a lady doctor, and she looked a little bit like a horse.
02:57She was a little bit fiendish-looking, but she was, uh, she said, um, I think we have a problem
03:05here.
03:07And my head flashed.
03:08I knew something was disastrously wrong, but I'd ignored my own, my own warning.
03:12Just the look in her eye, she was blinking.
03:14You know the way people blink when I have something disastrous to tell you?
03:18And she, um, uh, she said, we have a bit of a problem here.
03:24And I asked quite naively, well, what do you mean?
03:27But in my heart, my heart was racing when she said that.
03:30And she said, well, um, you have acute leukemia.
03:38Open one eye, suck thermometer, extend pulse, exchange water pitchers, feel skull for night hair loss, verify it in mirror,
03:48swallow theoguinine, eat breakfast, re-read night poem written in anger, consult physician, change pajamas, feed the fish, water the
03:57chrysanthemums, write the hody, straighten the picture, raise the dead, vomit the mind, my dreams are beyond control.
04:04Take a piss standing up, reel, enter a trio of doctors, any problems of any sort, not a one, finish
04:11piss.
04:12My darling, for God's sake, I give up, how do I make you vanish?
04:17Answer the phone, open other eye, suck thermometer.
04:21I was confused, if anything, but I did have certain positive feelings.
04:26And one was that of the total sympathy I would get from all people by making a kind of a
04:33grandstand play and announcing it.
04:35And it was almost a sadistic feeling.
04:37I called up countless people, person after person, and said, guess what's happened to me?
04:45And that felt good.
04:47And everybody came over and kissed me and loved me and hugged me up.
04:52But there was this undercurrent, this sinking, despairing, feeling underneath it all.
04:55I was scared.
04:57They train you there at the hospital not to think in terms of the future at all.
05:02They never speak in terms of dates or lengths of time.
05:05They don't promise you anything.
05:07Therefore, when they give you good news, all they're essentially telling you is that you're not dead.
05:14All those people who say that you're predictable, that you die in the same way everyone else dies, are right.
05:19I resented that at first.
05:21I resented them saying, oh, you're at the two-week stage, you're feeling this, you're free.
05:24Oh, you're at the angry stage, I understand that.
05:27Oh, you're depressed, oh, you're lost.
05:28Well, three and a half weeks after you find this out, you always feel lost.
05:32Well, they're right.
05:34It works that way with me.
05:35I'm following patterns, I'm following the guidelines for dying of terminal cancer patients down to the letter.
05:44They all told me how this would be, how I would be reacting.
05:47It's fiendish.
05:48No matter what I say, they say, mm-hmm, just what we thought you'd say.
05:52Especially the nurses.
05:54And the doctors, too, all of them.
05:56I'm supposed to still be in the hospital.
05:57He only let me out because I was picking up room.
06:00As frightened as I thought I should be, or might be, everybody else expressed feelings in striking contrast to my
06:09own.
06:10And then I never really saw what fear was until I looked at everybody else looking at me.
06:16And I didn't reciprocate.
06:18I didn't feel it.
06:19I didn't feel their sympathy.
06:19I didn't have any need for any of their feelings that made me nervous.
06:25And I realized that I wasn't frightened at all.
06:29And I realized, in fact, that I felt really, really good for the first time in my life.
06:35Not just a flash of good feeling or 20 minutes of good feeling, but a sustained feeling of that I
06:43had nothing.
06:44And having nothing, I had nothing to lose.
06:47And having nothing to lose, I could be anything.
06:49I didn't have a self-image to worry about.
06:54And not having a self-image to worry about meant I had no definition.
06:57I had nothing I had to be, nothing I had to care about.
06:59And I felt free.
07:01I felt as if I could leap out the window, not out of despair or fear, but just for the
07:04hell of it.
07:05Just for the fun of it.
07:08There's something about dying that separates you from all other people.
07:14Nobody can come to terms with death.
07:16Nobody can walk into death and walk back out the same person.
07:26Now, everybody else, no matter who they are, whether they're a poet, a man of power,
07:32a frightened little child, whoever it is, they're afraid of the limitless possibilities of their own nature.
07:44Once you have nothing, you can be anything.
07:47And that's a feeling of freedom.
07:49When you're dying, you have an answer.
07:51You intuit.
07:52You feel where you're at.
07:53You feel what you are.
07:56Statistically, across the country, my chances were 5% of pulling through.
08:00I don't mean pulling through.
08:01I mean of getting a remission.
08:03Temporary arresting of the progress of the disease.
08:06There are all kinds of remissions.
08:08There are poor remissions and partial remissions and fair remissions and good remissions and total remissions.
08:14My chances of getting any kind of remission through the drugs was 5%.
08:18My only request was, the thing I was most concerned about was that, should I die, I wanted a warning
08:24in advance of dying
08:26so that I could get out of the hospital, get back to California, get into the country, and die there.
08:33And I was shocked when he said, we'll do the best we can.
08:37I thought he could do, I'd say more than that.
08:39I thought he could say, sure, we'll do that for you.
08:41He said, we'll do the best we can.
08:43In the year of my death, this year, month unknown, scum God, after all torture of days, needle after needle
08:55after needle,
08:56searching for robust veins, really now?
08:59Oh God, oh son of a bitch, think you I got nothing but time to suffer for a few puny
09:07flying hours?
09:08Not going through this twice, without infinite stretch of bones first, and feel to live.
09:15Stay thy scared death, or I'm not returning to ladies in white and green walls, but hemorrhaging my own decent
09:24way.
09:24How, when, and where, don't know, but look it, it will be clean and outdoors.
09:31Little boy out on pass, phyto strain at leash, but just to pee on fire hydrant, drawn back to face
09:38full of pills.
09:40Peace, say I to security guard, who is disarmed, cause I'm regular, and cause I dare to address him,
09:46and cause I show not that he fills me with shooting sadness.
09:50I squeeze the shoulders of a thousand elevator men, calling out nine for bed, treatment, and death.
09:58Calling out three for salarium or hematology.
10:01Plummeting platelets, white cells a-wilting.
10:04Calling out one to escape, or to visit Christ's children of my wife.
10:09How about so lucky to dream of making love to women who wouldn't ever love me for very long?
10:16After all, I was happy to leap across mountains, hide myself in mist, and unwittingly laugh a mile of river.
10:26Wouldn't the breeze have played with my hair, too?
10:29Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve, where in the name of Christ are you?
10:35I'm looking desperate down into crevice to see smoke.
10:39Couldn't there have been a kinder moment?
10:42Must we all rot preening our ribbons and our feathers?
10:47Was that the original idea?
10:49You got nothing, you got nothing to lose.
10:52So you can play tootsies with the strangest toes, if that's what you want.
10:57But touch tongues with a witch, and you'll never smile again.
11:01Cause after all, Maggie's farm's hiring, now that I've been alive for a whole second,
11:06Popo already spanked and scrubbed.
11:08And all I really did was something few people in all the damn history of mankind's done.
11:15Walked bravely into the gray zone, and come back with nary a twitch or a shudder.
11:22Ah, well, I can always pick up option on that curb I'd selected to sit upon throughout eternity.
11:29But when it rains, dear God, it will rain.
11:35Dying's easy, but never like burning bras or screaming at your guitar teacher.
11:40It demands attention.
11:42My son would like to bang, crush, blend his mother's and my heads together,
11:48and have a father-mother safe unto stop time in his small hand to love.
11:54Being invisible, I invite only generalizations.
11:58He's scared of life.
12:00He's tripped out.
12:01And he flips from flower to flower.
12:03He's good for a contact high.
12:05From my curb shall rise.
12:07I'm the last of the red-hop pops getting hotter all the time.
12:12Get your genuine contact highs before I simmer down.
12:15It's all in the way you wash your daughter's sweaters.
12:19And didn't she herself, reeling, press love, come into there through we?
12:26The time is short for you as well as us.
12:30I'll unbutton you if you'll unbutton mine.
12:37Well, dying is a matter of feeling.
12:40I think dying is no different than being born.
12:43When I was told that I was going to die in five months,
12:45I thought that was the same as telling me I was going to die that afternoon.
12:49And the whole idea of going through an awful lot of pain or frustration or embarrassment from one day to
12:59the next
13:01to prolong my life a few days or a few weeks or a few months or even a year or
13:04so
13:05was frightening in itself.
13:09But it turns out that you can live a lifetime in a day,
13:14and you can live a lifetime in a moment,
13:16and you can live a lifetime in a year.
13:18So to the extent that they prolong your life, dying is not a lie.
13:21It's something that's beautiful.
13:28I don't think people are afraid of death.
13:30What they're afraid of is the incompleteness of their life.
13:34So that I think what society does is strip you of your self-confidence from the moment you're born,
13:45strip you of the sense that what you are is all you're ever going to be.
13:49And so you accumulate, and you tell yourself lie after lie after lie.
13:53And as you grow older, you begin to feel that whatever life is going to mean to you,
13:58it's going to mean it in the future, depending upon what you're grabbing for,
14:02what your ambition is, to get to the other shore, to be enlightened, or whatever it is.
14:09And it isn't until you discover that you're going to die that you realize whatever it is you have,
14:15you've already got right there.
14:16And that makes that moment an eternity.
14:18And it doesn't matter if you die then or in a million years from then.
14:21It's that sense of already being dead, I suppose.
14:24It makes you feel that you don't have to be just you,
14:29or an extension of what's in your hip pocket,
14:33but the infinite potential of the whole race.
14:38Man, first man, last man, all men.
14:42It's like a good trip.
14:47Because I had nothing, because I had no needs of my own,
14:52I wasn't self-preoccupied, so I had a feeling of love for everybody,
14:58unilaterally.
15:00Unequivocally.
15:01I liked everybody.
15:03And, which didn't mean that I had a loss of sensitivity to the pain of other people,
15:09or in the hospital.
15:10I was acutely sensitive to everyone else's pain,
15:13and I took a great interest,
15:14far greater interest in other people's problems as much as I could get into,
15:18poke my nose into,
15:20than I had for my own problems.
15:25And it cut very deeply into me,
15:27but in cutting into me, it opened me up at the same time.
15:30and I didn't feel the resistance to the pain around me or to my own situation at all.
15:37It all went through me almost like a melody.
15:39It was something that I didn't enjoy in the sense that it was fun.
15:43It was, it was a full feeling.
15:45I felt full and rich inside it.
15:47And I, and I had no sense of anxiety, no sense of boredom,
15:51no sense of impatience, no sense of time.
15:54I, I, I didn't need books, I didn't need crossword puzzles, I didn't need company.
15:59I could just sit there and enjoy my environment, look out the window.
16:02I could see the birds for the, for the first time in my life.
16:07Instead of just looking at the birds and just saying,
16:09ah, yes, birds, I could see them,
16:11without calling them birds, without seeing them as being something.
16:14I could see the sky, I could see the clouds,
16:16and I could lay back and people could talk around me,
16:18and I could be so receptive to what anybody was saying.
16:23And yet at the same time, be just watching the birds fly across the sky.
16:26That's all I could feel.
16:27That's all I could care about.
16:28Without even caring, just feeling that they were flying through the,
16:32like the empty cage of my mind.
16:34It was just an open, full, rich feeling.
16:37And as soon as I was told that I had a chance of surviving like this one,
16:41crashing to the ground, I just got scared from that point on.
16:53Right now all I want is a little time, a little freedom, a little, a little,
16:59a little peace.
17:00I want to stretch my bones.
17:01I want to stretch my bones where there's room to stretch,
17:03where there's country where there's a little fresh air.
17:05I just want to feel life run through me again.
17:08That's all I really want.
17:11I'm sick of dying.
17:12I tell you, it's a drag.
17:14It's a waste of time.
17:16Makes me depressed.
17:20Laura said she wanted children, but a six years' wait left her old.
17:26Floris transferred out of nine because the head nurse bothered her bad as her children.
17:31Down the hall, a cancerous man fell drunk out of bed and fractured his skull.
17:36Another just up the hall wept when scolded like a schoolboy by his wife.
17:40But even while life is brief, come December, we all shall sing O Little Town of Bethlehem,
17:48posing for Polaroid yes shots beneath the tinsel.
17:52One fresh, shy nurse is sleepless over vision of virginity, the bonafide old virgin, scared cause she's growing deaf.
18:01All I know is I don't feel so good, got chills and my fingers don't work.
18:07The doctor gives me shots till I'm numb, first to admit he knows not what I got.
18:12But even while life is brief, come December, we shall dream of some strange white vision and Donder and Blitzen,
18:20all a-smiling, a-showing teeth till the tinsel falls.
18:24And in the front row, the kids, noses pressed to glass, eyes swirling in their sockets,
18:32looking at what they think's stage center, asking,
18:35Gee, Pa, ain't there a Santa Claus? Ain't it all real?
18:39And what can I say, except sorry, kids, but I'm too weak to talk.
18:43But think upon the possibility there's no stage center,
18:47and no one shall stay in the wings, and maybe you're not in the audience.
18:52But I'm afraid, lest they learn too soon that life is brief, and we're all so alone,
18:58it'll have to be to the tune of Jing, Jing, Jingle Bells.
19:06Most people live only for their ambitions,
19:10and they spend their time boasting about where they've been and where they're going.
19:15I was a person whose only ambition was to be without any.
19:19So it was, I realized unconsciously that I was a happier person once I became sick.
19:29That doesn't make sense to most people, and it's a state of mind.
19:32I remember feeling, if only I could live to benefit from my present state of mind,
19:37if only I could take this with me and go back, I'd be free.
19:41But in so doing, in being given the time, I lost the state of mind.
19:47You can't have it both ways.
19:49People misunderstand the whole notion of living for the moment versus living in the moment.
19:54I think living for the moment is a difficult thing to do, and it just makes you sort of goofy
19:58anyway.
19:59People who are desolate live for the moment.
20:02People who have no future, in the sense of, no economic future.
20:06say, black people in the ghettos who have no hope of advancing themselves.
20:10You see them living for the moment, but they're not happy.
20:12That's very different than living in the moment.
20:14And to live in the moment, you literally have to have a sense of having nothing to live for.
20:19Not in the sense of future economic opportunities and that sort of thing,
20:23but just realizing that there's no real purpose to life
20:26and being able to live life fully from moment to moment.
20:29And that's something I can't even tell myself how to do.
20:32I can't tell anybody else how to do it.
20:34I'm changed. I'll always be changed.
20:36I'll always be happier for what I've gone through.
20:39Only because it's enabled me to have the courage to open myself up to anything that happens.
20:44And I'm no longer afraid of death.
20:47At least I'm not afraid of death the way I might have been having I become sick.
20:54But I do forget that it's me.
20:58My days are ticking off. I hate that.
21:01Asparaginase, which is the drug I've been on for the last couple of weeks,
21:05causes acute nausea that no drug, no pill will do anything to help.
21:12So my doctor came rushing in one day as I was laying on my back underneath this bottle of asparaginase
21:17and said,
21:19do you have any weed? Do you have any access to weed?
21:22And I said, what kind of weed do you mean?
21:25And he said, grass, pot, marijuana.
21:28And so I got some that night.
21:31And I sat there.
21:33I decided to wait until I felt at my worst.
21:36I sat there with a bowl in my lap,
21:39ready to vomit, and a pipe of pot in my other hand.
21:43And just as I was about to let loose, I took a puff and whee, it was gone.
21:46And I felt fine.
21:47And then I went right in after two or three puffs,
21:50and I ate a dozen clams and a huge lobster and a piece of chocolate cake on top of that.
21:55And I went rushing back to the doctor the next day and told him, he said,
22:00fantastic.
22:02So he's got me on part now.
22:05Kind of grabs you to think that maybe you just closed a fold-out tape stick for the very last
22:11time in your life.
22:12Makes you feel low down dirty and mean till you realize that maybe a goat's just a goat,
22:18but a human being is a goat trying to be a goat,
22:21except for the little girl who's trying to hear the sound of cutting grapefruit,
22:25and he that knows that when you're holding a sword, you might as well stab someone.
22:31Nothing's lost by letting someone else's film be wasted on you for a change,
22:36when the mind's own camera is forever turned on self.
22:40And as Iris said,
22:50My medical condition was such that it changed dramatically from moment to moment,
22:55from day to day, with bone marrows that I had taken, with blood tests, constant all day long.
23:00I was never able to synchronize my feelings with the information that came,
23:03and every bit of information had to alter my feelings about myself in terms of survival
23:08and where I stood in relation to the future, and even that moment.
23:15I became frightened.
23:19How long do I have to live?
23:22That's not the sort of thing that happens to me.
23:24People die from that, isn't that so?
23:29My name is Ted Rosenthal. I'm 31.
23:32I live in Berkeley, where I've lived for the last 10 years.
23:36I was born and raised in New York City.
23:39So I'm 31.
23:41And I lived well into my 30s. I can always say that.
23:47Though you may find me picking flowers,
23:50or washing my body in a river, or kicking rocks,
23:54don't think my eyes don't hold yours,
23:57and look hard upon them,
23:58and drop tears as long as you stay before me.
24:01Because I live as a man who knows death,
24:05and I speak the only truth to those who will listen.
24:09Never yield a minute to despair, sloth, fantasy.
24:13I say to you, you will face pain in your life.
24:17You may lose your limbs, bleed to death,
24:20shriek for hours on into weeks in unimaginable agony.
24:23It's not aimed at anyone,
24:26but it will come your way.
24:28The wind sweeps over everyone.
24:31You will feel so all alone, abandoned.
24:35Come to see that life is brief,
24:37and you will cry,
24:39no, it cannot be so,
24:41but nothing will avail you.
24:43I tell you never to yearn for the past.
24:47Speak certain knowledge.
24:49Your childhood is worthless.
24:52Seek not ritual.
24:53There is no escape in Christmas.
24:56Santa Claus will not ease your pain.
24:58No fantasy will soothe you.
25:01You must open your heart
25:02and expect nothing in return.
25:05You must respond totally to nature.
25:08You must return to your simple self.
25:11I do not fool you.
25:13There lies no other path.
25:15I have not forsaken you,
25:17but I cannot be among you all.
25:20You are not alone so long as you love
25:22your own true simple selves,
25:25your natural hair,
25:26your skin,
25:27your graceful bodies,
25:29your knowing eyes,
25:30and your tears and tongues.
25:32I stand before you all aching with truth,
25:36trembling with desire to make you know.
25:39Eat, sleep, and be serious about life.
25:42To be serious is to be simple.
25:45To be simple is to love.
25:48Don't wait another minute.
25:49Make tracks.
25:50Go home.
25:51Admit you have some place to return to.
25:54The bugs are crawling over the earth.
25:56The sun's shining over everyone.
25:59The rains are pounding.
26:01The wind's driving.
26:02The breeze is gentle and the grass burns.
26:05The earth is dusty.
26:07Go ankle deep in mud.
26:09Get tickled by the tall cattails.
26:12Kick crazily into the burrs and prickles.
26:15Rub your back against the bark and go ahead.
26:18Peel it.
26:20Adore the sun.
26:21Oh, people, you're dying.
26:24Live while you can.
26:26What can I say?
26:27The black birds blow the bush.
26:30Get glass in your feet if you must,
26:32but take off the shoes.
26:34Oh, heed me.
26:35There's pain all over.
26:37There's continual suffering,
26:39puking and coughing.
26:40Don't wait on it.
26:41It's stalking you.
26:42Tear ass up the mountainside.
26:45Duck into the mist.
26:46Roll among the wet daisies.
26:48Blow out your lungs among the dead dandelion fields.
26:51But don't delay.
26:53Time is not on your side.
26:55Soon you'll be crying for the hurt.
26:57Make speed.
26:59Splash in the ocean.
27:00Leap in the snow.
27:01Come on, everybody.
27:02Love your neighbor.
27:04Love your mother.
27:05Love your lover.
27:06Love the man who just stands there staring.
27:10But first, that's all right.
27:12Go ahead and cry.
27:14Cry, cry, cry your heart out.
27:16It's love.
27:17It's your only path.
27:19Oh, people, I'm so sorry.
27:21Nothing can be hid.
27:23It's a circle in the round.
27:25It's group theater.
27:26No wings.
27:27No backstage.
27:28No leading act.
27:30Oh, I'm weeping.
27:31But it's stage center for all of us.
27:34Hide in the reeds, but come out naked.
27:37Dance in the sad sand while lightning bangs all around us.
27:41Step lightly.
27:42We're walking home now.
27:44The clouds take every shape.
27:46We climb up the boulders.
27:48There is no plateau.
27:51We cross the stream and walk up the slope.
27:54See, the hawk is diving.
27:57The plain stretches out ahead.
27:59Then the hills, the valleys, the meadows.
28:02Keep moving, people.
28:03How could I not be among you?
28:07So I take all my feet.infeldies.
28:24I'm a lion.
28:25Somebody inglés's 20 Ihr
28:26faults and a half. See? You're you
28:26step in the road. What can I not be
28:26here? You know? I am
28:27not going away.
28:27You know? I'll be
28:27ありがとう. I'm a Jew. They're
28:28lovely. You're way
28:28home,ened youhay?
28:29I am aная. You're a transformations.
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