From: “Orion Cervio”
Date: Fri Aug 24, 2001 23:12:58 US/Pacific
To: …

when we quantify our lifetimes using the most commonplace systems of mensuration -numbers, sequences, the like - there is a deflating sense of vulgarity in the exercise that poisons the little butterfly concepts of hope we have fought so hard to preserve since childhood. to hell and begone with this crushing age of rationalism that has so overwhelmingly polluted romanticism, belittled it through a million empirical triumphs that were spun into the word RIGHT by the clerical legions of propagandists in the employ of regimes… the patriarchs have discovered that rationalism means a mass produced product, a sleek and sexy presentation and a profit index that is as unshakeable, unassailable and unwavering as a giant cored monolith, a huge granite phallus that only becomes more defined and turgid through the weatherings of time… i know you will all think that i’m raving along my usual lines, overusing words to hide something unmentioned, etc… but assuredly i have a purpose. three weeks ago i turned thirty years old, and the prospect of viewing this landmark season of mine in rational terms - that is by considering myself to be a ten thousand, nine hundred and fifty day old homosapien whose burden it is now to legitimize himself through the usual means of a tie and collar, a high dollar occupation, expensive habits and a brood of small people who share my dna - to still be repellant… i am now in the city the arabs slavers named the haven peace. tommorow i will go with no less a personage than my mother to the spice island where the food is taken from the sea floor and bathed in the cloves and peppers that called persian ships from the north through the red sea to this clime so long ago. i will immerse myself in the aquamarine of the littoral: an ablution; a purposeful rite to ask the water to prepare me, just as i used when i was a young man here on my first time out, my first romantic gyration. and when i am going along the strand, looking at the water, considering the carved lintels on the look-to-the-morning-star-for-god architecture of that old sailing culture, i will definitely want to see death, neptune’s lolling, terrible, foam encrusted head amd beard, dolphin women and mermaids instead of detailed reports about salinity content… but god, i’m writing because i know and don’t really know. thirty years old my friends. if i do take the rational approach, i’m sure i’ll fail: i’ll measure out my time in micrometres and pervert the intentions of science and rational thought by referring to everything microscopically, or some such divine rubbish: “yes mr. johnson, i appreciate the fact that i’m -–nanoseconds late. my attention was consumed by an insect that had been imbedded in the paint on a column of the filling station i stopped at on the way to work. it definitely won’t happen again.” and if i marry and have the expected children i will name them cygnus after the swan constellation, or kalyambya after the kavango sunbird, or elk face just for the indigenous hell of it. and who can rise to dizzying heights in the rational world with a name like elk face? dissolution of the physical body may be the greatest challenge we face as we seek to maintain our moral courage… i want to stay out on the shaggy fringe, the searing mal pais; i want to drain through cracks in the structure and deepen them in doing so; i want to live where the animals howl… and i’m thirty. consider this to be a formal petition for advice then. be frank. what should i do. (the omission of a question mark at the end of the last sentence is not accidental. respect for the power of rhetoric in a pure form demands the abolishment of such overt punctuation.) explosive gusts of bowel-shaking love rattle my skeleton as i write this: orion