Show Me the Crook of Your Arm, the Part From Which Blood is Most Likely Drawn

There are particular seasons that dictate the types of books I read.  The summer, for example, has never been the time for me to read books by Poe.

This year, however, this end-of-spring-beginning-of-summer cusp has placed a strange desire deep in my center.  I have been craving- of all things- to read of, and psychologically within, shadows.

It began with the book I mentioned a while ago, Carlos Ruiz Záfon's The Shadow of the Wind, a gothic and incredibly dark mystery of life, love, and literature. It continued on with Ben Catmull's Ghosts and Ruins, a black and white art book of gorgeous haunted houses  has their slow curling stories.

Presently, the theme pushes on with In Praise of Shadows, an essay written by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki that is, without a doubt, seducing me at night.  As it is fairly short, and has language one would wish to savor, I have only been reading it on nights that I am alone in my room- just before bed, with the window open and the night air pouring or pushing in.  

It is exactly where I want to be, and what I want to be reading.  While it does, indeed, feel strange to be reading such dark and charcoal-ed words during these days of sun-warmed skin and grass-stained knees, the soot of these stories is smearing exactly what needs to be reached inside of me.


k.


(photo: artwork of Magdalena Szymaniec- Hannibal á la Saint Sebastian) 

(The photo, of course, is a wink towards my recent introduction and fascination with True Detective mixed with the everlasting love of my chosen patron saint.)

The Everyday Work of Bodies

I can hear the water running in the apartment below mine. Perhaps it is a bathtub running at the late night end of a long day; perhaps it is the rush to launder tomorrow morning's work clothes. There is an occasional clunk. Besides that and the occasional sound of car tires splitting puddles on pavement, everything is quiet tonight.

I am thankful.  I have been wanting things to just slow down. To let me lay, as I am now, in my bedroom, typing a bit while I rub my legs together. It's a habit of mine and one of the free joys in life: to have recently shaved my legs, lotioned them, and lay across my blankets- on my side, elbow propping my arm up to prop my head up- and just enjoy the smoothness of my legs sliding against each other.

(It is the little things: Things that aren't quite perverse, but are still frowned upon in public.)

In any case, I have been thinking of the body-as-machine. Thinking about  disconnection  and mechanics. Thinking of how I do not like attention. I freeze within it and, when I do, I cannot melt again until I am here, in my room.

I've been disappointed in myself lately, and  just being kind of mean inside myself.  And when that happens, I know that it is time to read, and that it is time to connect the beautiful and thick gold ropes I have in my hands. Knot them together. Tighten them. Make sure that I am constructing- confirming- the safety net made of those who love me- to spread out below me as I perform these tricks.


The sound of a lonesome flag, centered at the top of a hill, flapping in the wind at night,

                                         --k.

Photo:  Artwork by Ron Pillar, New Language
Title: A vague reference to a Rodan album with a similar name

And Above All Else: Sissy That Walk

I don't know much about Roddy Doyle, but I've been reading him.  Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, to be exact. I am enjoying the simplicity and obviousness of his writing. It is something I've been needing, lately.   Here is a group of three sentences that I've enjoyed by him:

We were coming down our road.  Kevin stopped at a gate and bashed it with his stick.  It was Missis Quigley's gate; she was always looking out the window but she never did anything.

In any case, this afternoon, after a long yet strangely productive day in the sun by the water with a particular bikini-and-cowboy-hatted lad, I found a copy of Genet's Querelle, one of the few books of his I have yet to read. (To the right, an incredible blending of St. Sebastian mixed with the heavy hand of Genet's Querelle. Pun, indeed, intended.)

(pause)

Other than that, I've been a bit contemplative and generally internal as of late. This may come with working overnights (as I type this, I am attempting to keep myself awake until 6a). It may also come with the reconnection, disconnection, and overall curious beauty of life that has been falling like unceremonious confetti  as of late.  In the blur of its color splayed winter, one has little choice but to wonder in the face of its skies.


Be well; be loved

-k.


Theme song for the past two weeks, roughly:

People talkin since the beginning of time...