TALES OF AN ORANGEPEELER an archive of pleasures, wounds, sublimations & other curiosities :: profile 05.02.06, tuesday afternoon What are the limitations of my sphere of influence? Why and how I have or don't have power . . . and how to expand power in a way that works toward a sublime vision of the world, as a poetic pragmatist? Also, re: the loss of a certain friend: It's like last night's episode of Smallville where Lex and Clark die and their dead parents confront them re: their respective destinies. Every moment in their lives have led to this moment. How have they dealt with their histories, issues, circumstances, weaknesses, and strengths? What choices will they make when confronted? Will he become evil? Will he save the world? More importantly, will Lex and Clark apprehend that destiny is provisional, and as such improvised and immensely flexible? That is, this particular friendship does not have to end, another million undocumented workers might have gone on strike, or Lex could have said, I need to change my nasty ways. To inelegantly paraphrase Rilke, it's not that destiny happens outside of us, to us, it is us. Sure, things happen to ppl due to certain confluences of gender, race, class, nationalisms, etc. but I refuse to victimize myself; my fate is determined by all the (possible, actual) choices and actions that I choose to make or ignore because of whatever principles, issues, and baggage that I've amassed by a certain point in time and space. Hmm, it appears that I have lost a point somewhere (as it is my wont) or that I'm not thinking as thoroughly as I should (another pesky wont). As to my friend, although I want to say I'll be your friend for life, I simply can't. My friend is a different person than when I first met her. It's taken me a year to get to that last, simple, hard sentence. Why remain friends with a person who assumes the worst and, worse, wants you to fail? Sometime in the last year, I've made some decisions based on certain principles, and I realize that these principles will determine the outcome of my relationships to people, cities, nature, etc., despite my tendency for histrionics, equivocation, and sentimentalism. This, I think is related to my desire to develop a careful and unassailable expansion of my sphere of influence. <<