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TALES OF AN ORANGEPEELER

an archive of pleasures, wounds, sublimations
& other curiosities :: profile


7.08.00

Jeanne of the City of Angels,

At work, I'm rarely focused. I dream of elsewhere. I type letters that are rarely finished. Sometime I have dreams, premonitions, of future poems, with titles like "Dreaming 22" or "The Hooves of Summer," but I never ever write them.

So how do you measure time and space?

The days the sun stays away are many. The hours I have to myself are few. My attic gets smaller. Berkeley is too little to contain me, my history, for I am often in many places, as you and others are, too.

I am in Seattle, wandering a labyrinthine farmer's market, drugged by the smell of salty water, fish, frying chicken. I am in my mother's kitchen, pounding chilies into paste in a mortar. I am in Portland, at a Buddhist ceremony, ill-at-ease, awkward, like a voyeur exposed, while a nun of Portuguese-Cambodian descent chants atonally. I am in a lover's arms at Sutro Beach, shivering and sad, sensing that this, myself in a lover's arms, will end soon.

where are you? are you also in future places?

I'm impatient with the idea of the future, about wasting time on the future, when there is much to do, now. There are many futures to this moment--the moment I am writing this letter, the moment you are reading this sentence--so why dream up something that might never happen? Why not direct the future by what you do now? Those who only dream, stay dreaming. And those who wake up among the sleepwalkers, where do they go?

I'm so excited.

My zine is nearly done. I need a cover page, cover art. I need a title and an intro and an outro that will be like a little record spinning, one little record that might be read many times or picked up and thrown away once-read. But that was a certain me in that certain amount of pages.

Think of the other possible forms, lines, thoughts, etc. that might evolve, that must, because you and I contain many selves; I have desires which often contradict each other. Conflicts must unfold, and as they do unfold, I grow. Evolve, even as I seek to (re)create narratives that seduce, scintillating with our passions and our beliefs as we evoke--not state--what it means to be within our bodies, hurting the way we do and loving the way we do and struggling the way we must.

I guess I'm learning to balance poetry and rage, politics and aesthetics. Appearances beguile and maybe I'm trying to avoid beauty that is not sublime, terrifying and provocative.

I love you.

Phil






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