This is Really All I Have to Say Today.

On True Blood, My Favorite Character Is PTSD Terry

Last night was spent in a leather bar with my friend Basil, whom I've known since I was 17 having met him in the punk scene. Amidst the displays of spanking (it was, afterall, Spanksgiving at the bar), and an occasional brush of the leather utilikilt of a passing man, Basil and I huddled to trade the jewels of our lives as of late.

He inspires me. He always has. He also manages to validate me in a way I can't explain. Not just being from the midwest, but his entire way of living and being in the world.

Needless to say, it was a well needed evening.

(pause)

It is November on the cusp of December. I feel tired and that I'm-never-warm-enough crave that always seems to hit this time of year is in my veins. I can feel the staleness of the ground under my feet while I walk around patches of snow, and I try not and take it personally: Every being has these seasons of internal reflection to build towards change- how could the earth and its seasons be any different?

(pause)

Be well; be warm. Be facing forward with those you love while supporting yourself and each other in being the best people we can be and in having best lives we can have. There's so much going on under and upon our skin- holding and hearing the invisible just might be the answer.


-k.



(photo credit: bootstrapperboy on tumblr)

"Put Those Ballerina Flats On My Shoulders!" vs. "You Really Need to Address This Budgeting Issue"

I've been reading in the way that impairs me, socially, again. I've been reading a few things at the same time, but the book I just set aside to write this is Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. Here's a sentence I just read that I think is just, well, great:

His breakfast was much more frugal than ours: he swallowed two cups of black coffee and then he smoked a wrinkled cigarette that he pulled from his pocket instead of a pack, watching us in the strangest way, as if he were defying us but at the same time didn't see us.

(pause)

Yerba mate may be the solution.

Here I am, 4:33 pm on a Monday at the Capitol Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library. I smell slightly of Heiress, one of Paris Hilton's perfumes. Sometimes I put on the slightest bit of high-femme perfume so that, in my head at least, it comes across as the trace of a lover I just banged for 13 hours and had to start my day minus the shower. (I know it's horrible. Bleached hair and a pair of contacts a color of periwinkle that has been patented for her. Thin and white and cotton-candy pouty when threatened with jail time. What can I say? A bone is a bone).

I feel hungry and slightly crazy, which is an improvement from feeling half-full and entirely out of my mind. (I've taken to photo documenting my downward turn of psychosis over the past 24 hours. Although no one will see these pictures in their context, I will know what they are and, for that, will have a secret, yet shakey, grin when people come across them in plain view.)

I've been thinking about dehydration and blood flow as of late. I've also been thinking of the Body By Jake episodes I would watch as a child (Google Image it) at 5 in the morning just because I thought it was cool that he would tell people to use household products for the workouts: Cans of tomatoes, ironing boards, broomsticks. I would only work out during these parts of the show. Because somehow it made me feel both totally crazy (how do I explain the ever-dented cans of tomatoes?), and exceptionally d.i.y.(How can I tell Jake, through the television, of my brilliant additions of half-opened bags of flour to this ordeal?)

In anycase, I must get back to the project at hand and end this needed detour. I will leave you with this photograph from a rendition of Shockheaded Peter, and a clip from the actual version I saw some years ago that left me, unsurprisingly, fascinated.




After watching the magnifying-glass face introduction, jump to minute 3:18 to watch Snip, Snip below:

snip snip

Haunted Roller Coasters Keep Rolling, Themselves.

Dark wood and closed buildings at night are exactly what I need 98% of the time.

There is a closed antique mall across the street from the building from which I am writing. I want to slip inside, hold every article that calls to me, and listen to the exact stories that have been absorbed within them. I will fall, slightly, onto my knees and hope that Micki and her cousin-by-marriage, Ryan, from Friday the 13th: The Series walks in.

I don't scare easily, and yet, when a loud noise happens as part of a film in a movie theater, I am one of the only people around me who jumps.

(pause)

There are surprises that make one cover one's mouth; there are horrors that make one do the same. Perhaps it is a carnal response: a reflex that traps the soul within our body when, startled or horrified, it attempts to escape. Birthday parties and atrocities. Sneezes ('bless you' because, it was once believed a sneeze would expel your soul from your body) and eye-tearing fear.

I've been seeing ghosts lately. I'm not sure why. Today, in slight rain, I took my bike helmet off, ran my fingers through my hair to put it up (think: shampoo commercial) and felt someone watching me (think: being hunted). I decided to ignore it but then heard “Hi Kaden”. When I looked up, I saw it moving accidentally towards me in anorexic straw-hair and too much eyeliner trying hard to look "together", purse clutched, jaw defiant. “Hey- what's going on?” but it had already glided false-confidence past me. I remember when she claimed me as best friend. My hands remained at my sides (stories, people, and tornados that do not move me keep them anchored there).

I walked into a grocery store, bought hummus and a small loaf of bread, and sat on the sidewalk under an awning to enjoy my feast and watch the rain.

(pause)



(photo credit: Dark Daze tumblr)

.exit game.

What I now know:

1) I can't hang out with people who use toilets but who have never fucking cleaned one.

2) I realize I can't *really* drug someone. But I can want to. Not to do anything sexual to them, but rather, to get them to calm the fuck down.

3) Going to the Latino Bar Association's discussion on immigration at Town Hall last week was a really fucking good idea. (Thanks, N.T.)

4) Swearing is a part of where I am from. So is ripping on people as a form of love. It shows we're paying attention; watching to make sure you don't take yourself too seriously or end up taking yourself out. We've got you: The rough hand that pulls you by the back of your collar out of traffic. It's not something that I-statements can do, friend, and perhaps that saddens both of us.

(pause)

The West may be making me soft, or it may be making me harder than I ever actually was. But what of it? I may have lost or delayed something incredibly important to me, but why is it that I don't really care? I suppose caring is a problem. Not caring, but feeling. I can't seem to do it. For the past 10 years at least. More than likely 20 years more than that, but it never really bothered me before. I think because there have always been situations around me in which it behooved me not to feel. And now that these situations no longer exist- this non-feeling bothers me. But 'bothers' me in the way one is bothered watching a situation on a television show: "What? What are you doing?" you say, non-moved, but moved enough to say something, albeit, to a television screen.

(pause)

I am reading about disaster capitalism. I am thinking about how, if my life were somehow the scale of a country, there would be quite a bit of money to make. But it's not, and so, here I am: In Bellingham, WA for no apparent reason, typing away just to get my fingers going. I can feel my fingers, at least. I read a few days ago that one's fingertips and lips are the most sensitive parts of the body. Being someone with a clit, I have to say I disagree. Un-underweared days or boxer-briefed nights blows this theory out of the water, along with some other things.

I've been making lists again lately. And progress. Not necessarily progress on the lists, but they aren't the type of lists that it would make sense to 'make progress on' anyway. It's been progress in the non-documentable way.

Yes, my apartment smells horrible with my housemate's dirty laundry. And yes, it will eventually soak into absolutely everything I own, but at least I will be my own. I will just be in a smelly apartment with a new bike light, bike lock, bike, empty refridgerator, and a ticket to Detroit footed by someone who is not me or my family. Insert the proverbial train station, here. Suitcases in hand. Give me a fucking one way, goddamnit. And tell me this fucking cancer has not come back.









No point in holding back on what you're holding,
no matter it be shit or it be golden.
Foundations shift.
Instead of shifting,
We set up
we set up our falls.

Hold on tight to your fears,
'cause that's your hatred
and that's your love as well.

i must always remember:

there's no point to surrender.

-hwm



Long-term is not permanent; here is to ignition.

love,

k.

Cotton Eyes and Train Track Ties

I smell of blood and corn. This is not the intro to some pained story about my life and being from the mid-west. It is literal: I started my period this morning and cannot stop boiling corn on the cob to slather in butter and salt and eat in a bowl in a bed of a hotel-ish room on the 10th floor of a building that is downtown Seattle's version of a skyscraper.

I am tired. I am hungry. I will gladly shove anyone and take their salt, sugar, and/or starch.

Instead of feeling my heart beat in my chest, today, I feel it in my ribs and hips and thighs. It helps. A person close to me just had their mother pass away. And in the silent time- the time after he's fallen asleep or hung up the phone- it brings me back to that first death. Not the first in order, but the first in impact. The first person I actually knew who died. For me, I was just stepping into my 24th year, and it was someone I had always claimed as my best friend.

So today, for a number of reasons, I move slowly. Carefully. I've been listening to Tim Barry's song 222 from the Manchester album and parts of it echo with me as much today as it did before it was written.


And I don't feel alone when I look up anymore.



Give it a listen:

Press the PLAY icon next to where it says 222

Visually. Live.=

Here


Photo credit: From Misskim on Tumblr

Tony Soprano Understands the Lack of Need for Processing

I was told today, "You are so interesting". It was sincere. I felt like dying.

The past few weeks have been beautiful out here. The sun is shining~ I feel spring arriving which means both "Hey you! The one with the eyes/nose/mouth/face! Let's go on a date!" and just generally feeling flirty and wanting to go on dates.

(pause)

Oh, Catholicism. How you rub stained glass on my clit and force me to confess: I have such a love/hate relationship with you. As John Waters is quoted as saying: I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty. I have, yet again, a problem with staying connected to reality. Perhaps it stems from my desire to play D&D and AD&D with my brother growing up but, instead, sat on the sidelines and watched, playing with the purple jewel of an 100-sided die when it was not in use.

Vroom, Vroom, John.

Biking, recycling, the environment, blah blah important blah: It was *STILL* f-ing awesome to drive a new Porsche around town tonight. And in stilettos, no less.

k.

The Sexual Allure of the Purple Pieman, or, Severus Snape Drops His Gaze to Meet the Mouth of Marilyn Manson

I grew up thinking that Axl Rose was a transwoman (although I did not have that language, of course, at the time). It came out of a pre-internet misunderstanding of the lyrics of Rocket Queen, but it validated the shit out of my life in its misunderstanding. I was obsessed. Here was this beautiful gender queer: long red hair, flannel shirts, tight leather pants accented with metal studs and bandanas. I was shocked and amazed that there were so many beautiful, high-haired girls screaming for Axl when they knew. Somehow, I felt validated in everything from gender to the emotionlessness-followed-by-periodic-total-no-skin-on-vulnerability. (Come on folks. The song starts out as an "I'm gonna bang you all night" song and ends with a "I don't want to see you standing in the rain/know that I care" song). I would listen to Rocket Queen over and over and over again because of it. My understanding of the lyrics (there are at least three below) went like this:

Here I am-
Your Rocket Queen
I might be a little young
but honey I ain't naive
Here I am-
your Rocket Queen- oh yeah
I might be too much but honey
I've been obscene...
I've seen everything imaginable
pass before these eyes
I've had everything that's changeable-
honey you'd be surprised."

There it was. Exhale. Validation.


It's amazing how we see and find ourselves in media, toys, culture, etc. growing up. I once asked a group of my friends what were the first MTV videos they remember being turned on by. The responses were amazing and, at the same time, completely matched who they are today. I think the only one that came up multiple times was Paula Abdul's Cold Hearted Snake video, which is not at all a surprise. I mean come on: how many genders can be in one video?! What were some of yours?

(pause)



In other news, I've been realizing that the backward-wig-wearing indie rock boys are plugging into something for me lately: They're getting older. They're doing this 'ironic mustache wax' shit. Their pants are getting tighter. Their asshole-shoe tips are getting longer. All that is left is for them to tie obscenely large measuring spoons around their waists and have a murder of crows around their heads. And pies. One must not forget the bait of pies. It's purely aesthetic, of course. Most are far too timid to pull anything of significance, let alone danger. Vanilla wrapped in electrical tape, but one can still enjoy the show.

"You Told Me Again You Preferred Handsome Men, But For Me You Would Make an Exception"

Then you would recall the deadly houses you grew up in:

Just because they knew your name


doesn't mean they know from where you came






Be well; Be loved.


k.

(photo credit: Juan Camilo Palacio Ruiz)

"No Gods, No Mattress"

I have taken to living like my childhood dog, Honey. I had gotten rid of my bed a few months back and never got a new one. Instead, I've taken to a pile of blankets and a pillow. Every time I enter my bedroom, I have three thoughts that run through my head: 1) I am a horrible host for dates. 2) I am a fucking brilliant host for dates. 3) Didn't Honey used to have a bed like this?"

While I could come up with socially acceptable reasons for not having a bed (i.e. "oh, it's better for your back" blah blah blah), they would all be bullshit. The truth of the matter is that- without a bed- my bedroom looks more like a carpeted dance floor - plain and simple.


This morning's choice was Lil Wayne's "A Milli". Repeat times four. I leave my bedroom flush-faced with slight rug burn on my toes, and I am ready to face the day. In fact, I would argue that today was one of the best I have had in a long, long time.



Be well, be loved,


K.


This morning ritual of mine is roughly portrayed in these two visuals, if one could combine them and, of course, airbrush out the mattresses:



and

this one



(Photo credit: Eau D'Bedroom Dancing by crystalwrists as can be found on Deviant ART)
(Video credit: Well, you know where.)

Additional audio representation= Morrissey's version of T-Rex's "Cosmic Dancer":

here


Title credit to the person who writes the zine "No Gods, No Mattress" which is a play on "No Gods, No Masters", the age-old anarchist slogan.

In a Pinch, Tubes of Mentholated Vaseline Work Gloriously as Big FUCKYOUs. Thanks, Jean.

I have been thinking a lot about the impact one's surroundings has on their mind and writing. By 'surroundings', here, I mean a few things. One, 'surroundings' currently and historically. Two, surroundings as physical: meaning both in structure or lack there of (bedroom? street? someone's porch until they kick you off? ), as well as physical meaning experience of (physical/emotional) of the surroundings (are you safe and warm? are you writing in a graveyard? are you writing when you will ultimately have to hide what you've written in a cavity in order to smuggle it out? are you writing after days of isolation and, if so, was this by your choice or someone else's?)

I think of the descriptions of Heidegger's weird cabin in the Black Forest where he would write to the point that people would, reluctantly, send people out to see if he was still alive. I think of the graphic novelist who wrote From Hell (Alan Moore) who meticulously documented and researched the Jack the Ripper crimes and who also lives more or less as a total recluse writing and researching. I think of people who disappear- consentually and against their will-- and what it does to their minds and writing.

I think of Jean Genet (prison), of Oscar Wilde (prison), of Alicia Partnoy (disappeared/torture survivor of Argentina's dirty war; author of The Little School). I think of passages from Judith Herman's book, again, (Trauma and Recovery), and I think of the writings of the people in my life and in the world who are in prison (state-sanctioned or otherwise), and those who have been released.

(pause. sidenotes that are not-so sidenotes:)

-I remember reading a number of years ago when researching Oscar Wilde's trials and life that he wrote De Profundis (the letter he wrote while in prison to his lover that he basically went to prison for) while only being allowed one (or three, I can't recall) piece of paper a day. When he had filled it, the paper was taken away from him and kept. The next day, he'd the same amount of paper and continue. Far into the process, the prison personnel let him know that they had destroyed the writing. When he learned this, he started over.*

-Heidegger's Hut:



-Alicia Partnoy was disappeared and tortured for seven years, the majority of which she was made to wear a blindfold:

My nose allows me to see. No, I haven't suddenly become metaphoric. Indeed, it's thanks to my nose that I can see. What happens is that its shape keeps my blindfold slightly lifted. Portions of the world parade before these small slits. Only Peine knows how to tie a blindfold well enough so it can trick my nose. Other guards just stuff in pieces of cotton and tape to block these little, illegal and dangerous windows. Meanwhile, my nose seems to grow, proudly, with every new blindfold. The reason is that finally, my nose and I have reconciled.---From "My Nose", The Little School

(pause. end of sidenotes that are not-so sidenotes.)


In any case, it's something I have been thinking about a lot:

Where did the people write that have moved you? What was happening around them? (To them?)

If you write, what are the answers to these questions for yourself?



Be well; Be loved,


K.



*=It is said that this explains a lot of the repetition of the letter: he never knew where he left off or what he had already said.

P.S. Somehow in this I think of Sarah Winchester and her house, but I'm not sure why. I could venture some analytical wonder of what she would have written in that house while she lived there, but really I think it's just because I think it's weird-spooky and kind of awesome:

creep city

Please note the brief appearance of the amazingly limpwristed psychic