TALES OF AN ORANGEPEELER an archive of pleasures, wounds, sublimations & other curiosities :: profile 9.7.00 look at my feet, movingThe best after-birthday-dancing-tipsy remedy:tapioca balls like startled guppies swimmingat the bottom of a glass of pearl tea. I was quite cranky last night, but only for a little while. I was suddenly older, for no reason other than theearth's impenitent rotation around the sun. And suddenly yesterday, my birth-day, becamea moment where I had to measure myself.How did I change? What do I look like now? Where are my loved ones in my life's map? How is this birthday different from the other ones?
I run to the photobooth up the street; inspect my features, squinting at every angle and curve. Think about it: in 2 years, I'll be 1/4 century old! My years contain war; the demise of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union; the abolition of apartheid in South Africa, the scourge of AIDS, the US re-institution of the death penalty, corporate control of media, genocide (so relentlessly current); the death of Pol Pot, the . . . And while History happens, my history is being shaped; larger currents contain smaller ones, momentum compels my feet and the feet of my loved ones to change their patterns. Friends are scattered everywhere: I call to invite them to a dinner party (oh I do love to put them all in one room, contain their spirits, if only for a little while, so that I can fall in love with them all over again...), but they've got other plans, other cities to visit, movements that might not include me. sigh This is adulthood, I guess: other plans, other cities, other lives to live. We are growing up and up. (But are we getting wiser?) Once upon a time, everyone was just around the corner or a room away. Now I'm the last one to leave Berkeley, the one who pauses to inscribe the moment in a poem or a journal entry, before turning off the lightand shutting the door behind me, with aclick that will resound deeply, in the heart of my memory-house.
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