(We Live Half at Night)

6:27pm on the evening before Thanksgiving- I'm listening to The XX and the sound of the dishwasher running in the kitchen of a house that is not mine.  I've lit three candles, placed them strategically around the room, and shut off all of the lights.

(November is the month after that in which I tend to think of him, but it is this month that he will be coming to visit.  This week, actually.)

I've been feeling protective of myself as of late. My life. My doings. My constructions of accomplishments.  Is this strange? It is toward no one in particular.

I've been thinking in mathematical terms, lately.  Summing things up.  Dividing things. Subtracting. (Not multiplying. Never multiplying. Some do. Carrie just had her baby today.)

Unrelated, I am thinking of what I had wanted, in a moment, for Thanksgiving this year.  Then, I simply stopped wanting it.  And here I am, in this warm house that is not mine, in candlelight and the reassurance of the dishwasher.

Upstairs, a conversation of smiles is being woven between a long distance sister and her brother.

-k.

title credit: part of a lyric from The XX
photo credit: Logan White

*****
Upon the suggestion of a film genius friend of mine, I recently watched the film Night of the Hunter (1955).  I read a bit about it first- German expressionist in style and, according to a number of famous film types, the film introduces Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum), as one of the most memorable villains of all time. The use of light and shadows (and hilarious use of animals) is absolutely gorgeous.

If you get a chance, watch it.  If anything for the underwater scene of a dead body that is breathtakingly beautiful and unforgettably creepy.   Although I won't spoil that scene for you, I will give you a taste of some of the shadows here.

So That's the Kind of Little Devil That Crouches in Your Heart, My Lad

Last night I dreamt I was caught in a flood that was pushing through the streets on an unnamed city.  The water was filled with blood, shards of glass, and photographs of bad memories.

Light would catch upon the glass and refract through the water as I was tossed beyond my strength.  The sopping photographs and their freeze-frame atrocities rushed past me, as if pulled by an underwater vacuum.

Slamming movement and arms askew as I wondered whose blood- and of how many people- it was that I was struggling through.

*****
Title credit:  A partial line from Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov

I'll Suck My Tongue As a Remembrance of You

My nails are the color of wine-almost-black.  It makes me think of the last bit of wine left in fancy wine glasses sitting on tables and by kitchen sinks after a party.

I've been using a soap that smells like almond croissants and butter. I stay in the shower too long because of it and, when I get out, I crave the type of pastries that melt in your mouth like a silk, edible ribbon.

Tonight has been one of candles, polished wood, ink, and paint.  Violins and pianos have been filling a room with too strong of heat- the type of heat that places dust in your lungs and the deepest thirst in your throat. The door to this room has been a revolving carousel of both unexpected and experienced visitors.

The applause that bursts in between the songs on the live album I'm listening to somehow accentuates each person's entrance.

It also cheers the silence that blooms after each exit.



-k.


**********************


Title credit: Lyric from Possibly Maybe/Bjork
Photo credit: Javi Dardoof of Anatol

Red Curtained Windows Lead to Suspicions of Witchcraft: The Doldrums of Cliche

I have never been particularly fond of actual roses.  Their scent reminds me of funerals, weddings and particularly bad dates.  That said, there is a deep red ink that I use from time to time when hand writing letters to people that is, indeed, rose-scented.  I have become accustomed to, and have even come to enjoy, ink-stained fingertips that smell faintly of petals.

This may simply be a part of the season of reconsideration has been enveloping me as of late.  I've been reconsidering aspects and entities in my life during the past few months- an experience quite different than regret or even changing one's mind:  Taking a few steps in one direction or another can alter the light cast on that which you are observing, and it is this illumination that I find myself enjoying.

-k.


 ****************

In other news, there will be a revival of Cabaret that will include Alan Cumming as the Emcee in 2014. Needless to say, if you place tickets in my eager little palm, I will go anywhere with you.

Dear Emcee I have always been in love with

(photo: Alan Cumming as the Emcee in Cabaret)

The Savored Blurs of Fascination

" "To tell what happened" is inconceivable and futile, or possible only as invention.  The idea of testimony is also futile and there has never been a witness who could truly fulfill his duty.  Anyway, you always forget far too many moments and hours and days and months and years, and the scar on a thigh that I saw and kissed every day for years during its known and lost time.  You forget whole years, and not necessarily the least important ones."

--J. Marías Dark Back of Time

The scent of pine and dirt has been rubbed deep into my clothing as of late.  I've been holing up; reading; writing. The images that are conjured around me leave their scents in my clothing and hair like campfire.

It has been enjoyable, to say the least.

With the time change comes the more dramatic descend of the dark. One can be watching the sky, feeling the slight sting reflection of the clouds in their eyes, only to blink, and open to a sheet of black.

(Did you hear it tonight? The moment you opened your eyes; the quick sound of a sheet pulled taut.)

(pause)

There is a paragraph from a book I am reading that I can't stop thinking about.

The sentence of it threading through my mind in this moment is this:

All anyone has to do is introduce an "as if" into the story, or not even that, all you need to do is use a simile, comparison or figure of speech ("he was acting like a jerk", "she flew into a rage"-- the kind of colloquial expression that belongs to the language more than to the speaker who chooses it, that's all it takes) and fiction creeps into the narration of what happened, altering or falsifying it.

The kind of colloquial expression that belongs to the language more than to the speaker who chooses it, that's all it takes. ("Crossed a line", "it is what I must do", "paint oneself into a corner")

This is what I keep thinking of.  These drops of dye into the water that unravel and spread.  These slight stand ins for communication.

These expressions that belong more to the language, than to the speaker who chooses them.  



-k.

(photo credit: billy kidd)

(scent: Norne, by Slumberhouse)