18 Passions
Peter Shaindlin
ISBN 978-0983504139, February 2013
Softcover, 56 pages, 5.25 x 7 in.
A highly personal and inescapably rhetorical collection of reflections on the author's past personal encounters, romances and relationships. In the course of these writings he confesses his own shame and selfishness through an unconditional deconstruction of the metaphysics of sensuality and eroticism.
By the pairing of each original manuscript with its final published rendition the reader is provided the opportunity to consider the genesis of each work within the context of creative process and eventual public access.
I escaped our love through thought
Which dragged me from emotion
With a vengeance and indifference—
I guessed that love
Is simply a condition of two people
Fleeing loneliness together;
And my thinking was
The ticking of a clock upon a table
In a bedroom by the sea
— from EXTERNAL IX, 18 Passions
UNTITLED XI
When I heave within you;
When I penetrate your brilliant walls,
We climb the jagged slope where time will shrink the past
And forge new obligations
EXTERNAL V
This love of mine is like a bed of lava:
As it boils and surges, skies are paled
And humbled—
Yet, it will cease one day abruptly,
At some random, fickle time
And when it’s over—
When the crimson foaming rivers freeze—
We shall walk our separate ways,
Looking down with anxiousness
To find our footing,
Back towards the hills
Shunning saddened seas
