Peter Kohler was told that he was born in California but he has no direct memory of the event so it might not be true. He does remember spending a lot of time in the smog of Los Angeles County but no longer knows anybody from that place and time who could corroborate this. Anyway, that he was born, and where, is not important; the problems enter with the why and the wherefore of it all.
Memories, stories, facts and fictions have all played their cameo roles in his life. Religious figures and street people have appeared in his dreams. Therefore he steadfastly maintains that flying is better than sex while asleep, whereas in waking it is the other way around. Obfuscation has not been a specialty or a habit, really, but the clearest way he has of pointing to his greatest accomplishments. A puff of smoke in the wind; a drop of dye in the ocean -- thus is one’s life.
Along the way work has been performed in warehouses, offices, public and private gardens, libraries, the inside of his head, and bookstores of various sizes and with varying reputations. In recent years, while he'd usually rather be out hiking in the high deserts of Central Oregon, he is constrained to spend a lot of time in front of a danged computer, where he does a bit of freelance writing and also, with his wife and business partner, runs Turn-The-Page Books, a modest but thriving online bookstore.
He's keenly interested in human behavior, folklore, mythology, and narratives as printed in books or displayed on a screen. For more than three decades now, whenever asked who his favorite musician is, he has invariably answered, "Leo Kottke." And that ought to tell you something.
