I cannot confess to a time in which I have not been conscious of the lens.

In terms of image-repertoire, the Photograph (the one I intend) represents that very subtle moment when, to tell the truth, I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death (of parenthesis): I am truly becoming a specter. In other words, a strange action: I do not stop imitating myself, and because of this, each time I am (or let myself be) photographed, I invariably suffer from a sensation of inauthenticity, sometimes of imposture (comparable to certain nightmares). In front of the lens, I am at the same time: the one I think I am, the one I want others to think I am, the one the photographer thinks I am, and the one he makes use of to exhibit his art. Four image-repertoires intersect here, oppose and distort each other. The portrait-photograph is a closed field of forces. What matters isn’t skin, but what pulses, nevertheless, beneath it. Orange and yellow come from the ground, the machine, the orb that reminds you you can rise, too.

What would you say if that other man who I wish I could erase, that who birthed my body and ushered it into the world with an abuse not unlike your villain you identify with the brilliance of a sun rising even as the earth struggles to inhale without a net, what would you say if I marked his large and small cruelties as the yellow-headed monster? Let’s tell it true. You will not see me stain a shade so of the earth, so artificially and wondrously American, with that who detonated the landmines of colorism hid in the homes and hearts of the promised land, of the immigrants’ quote unquote sanctuary. Because if you imply his skin is the color of creamsicles I used to dream I might get to fill my mongrel mouth with, like all those boys and girls who lived my American fantasy, or the sherbet Flintstones pops I pushed up like I imagined I’d do with a bra someday in the cafeteria, staining the corner of my mouth like the Doritos I snuck into my plate lunches, stretching the allowance my father gave me to save, save, save, or the shade of lipstick I smeared on my pale lips even when the queen who managed my favorite cafe admonished me, insisting it clashed with my lemon meringue skin, or the tiny triangles of sweet potato my father slipped into the rice cooker, the bits of carrot tinged with oxtail in my favorite of his stews. As for me you won’t hear me calling him a tangerine or any of its derivatives.

By him I mean that monstrosity you call a tangerine-tinted buffoon. Addie Tsai Dear White Unintending Liberal,

Dear Twin by Addie Brook Tsai