Watching Coins Through Water

Hiding out.

Obsessing.

Curling up.

Building.

This week's interview was perhaps the strangest I've had. Sitting on a wrought iron patio chair facing two other chairs that contained two other people. When one of them stood up, I was provided with a curious line of sight: The gun the person had in their lower back/hip holster, so close I could feel its weight, and, just beyond on a glass patio table, a large glass jug of sun tea being brewed- its seven tea bags bobbing dutifully in stained water.

I was sweating, but oddly, solely from the glare of the sun.

(pause)

There has been an inexplicable calm in me for the past few weeks.  It is not warm sand between the toes: it is the feeling of warm sand underneath the entire length and weight of the body.

There is something to be said of feeding oneself and one's self well, in all senses of the matter.

 -k.


(photo: c Suffering the Labyrinth by Reese Herrington per Geistersucher tumblr)

Exorcizing the Labyrinth's Lure

Sometimes, when it is really hot outside, or when you are really running (in panic or exercise), you can feel a bead of sweat slip down in between your breasts. Or pecs. Or both. Or all.  And when it drops, it always surprises me.  I always find myself with an idiot's wonderment of where, exactly, it is coming from, and feeling silly that the sensation surprises me.  As if someone has dropped slightly warmed water down the front of my shirt, or the clouds have decided to rain upon me starting with the exact center of my chest.

In any case.  I've been thinking about how our bodies can surprise us.  Within and of themselves, and in the way they react to others.  People. Scents. Sensations. Colors. Memories. Sounds.

Have you ever noticed the exact moment you became turned on and the cause of it?

One day while checking in materials at a library, I came across a book of interest.  When I flipped through it, my eyes caught on the bold print of a section of a chapter in a book.  With the tug of these darkly printed words, my body was instantly flooded with impulses and want.  It was, incredible. Memorable. Savorable. The name of the book it was in is Italo Calvino and the Compass of Literature.  The name of the section of the chapter within this book that left me in such a state, in bold, is atop this entry.


Standing on the lip of the dirt green hedge maze that beckons,

k.

(image: Val Telberg)

All Colors Will Agree in the Dark

I'm typing this next to a fire in the quasi- woods.  It is ridiculous, I know.  I am wearing a white cabled sweater.  One a father from the 1960s would wear while smoking a respectable and wood-colored pipe. The fire is less than two feet from me, and the flames are warming the right side of my face.  A friend of mine is en route from a near-by but far away store with the makings of S'mores.

(pause)

Last night I lay in decently long grass (by city standards, anyway) with six other people who felt exactly right.  Most of us lay on our backs watching the sky and the birds as a friend of mine created an atmosphere of sound. Ambient and geographically curated sound. And although some of them, most of them, didn't know each other, it was beautiful to see the stories they pulled and teased from each other throughout the night. There, in the grass, and later, winding a bit throughout the city.

There is nothing more enjoyable than being around people you like who genuinely want to connect.

(pause)

Things feel good, lately.  Calm.  Right, somehow.  There is the feeling, like tonight, of pure juxtaposition: pure cold air and the snapping of twigs in night mud mixed with the heat of a flame that can consume you.

But alas: The sound of returning footsteps, and promise of S'mores pulls me away.



Until soon,

k.


(title: quote from Francis Bacon, Essay III: Of Unity in Religion. Something I am thinking of in part (the quote) and in partial whole as it relates to life and current context. The partial whole is a chunk from the essay that reads: There be also two false peaces or unities: the one, when the peace is grounded but upon an implicit ignorance; for all colors will agree in the dark: the other, when it is pieced up upon a direct admission of contraries in fundamental points. For truth and falsehood, in such things, are like the iron and clay in the toes of Nebuchadnezzar’s image; they may cleave, but they will not incorporate.)

( Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis - Forest,1906 per Mmme Gaudissart Tumblr)

The Shadow Beneath Your Fingertips Upon a Desk

Tonight I came home and opened my bedroom door to reveal a new mattress and box spring atop my bed frame.

This may seem like no big event.

It is a big event.

Within five minutes, I had it dressed in white sheets smelling of bleach. At the final pull and tuck of the top sheet, I immediately ran and locked the door, stripped off all of my clothes minus a black tank top, bra and panties and jumped onto the bed. With my head sinking back into the cool white of the pillow, I inhaled deeply and smiled.

Laying on my back, I looked up at the ceiling trying to touch opposite corners of the bed with my toes- my legs spread as far as they could go and still reaching.

It is incredible to take up so much space.  To spread myself out in all directions without modesty. Without a fear of unwanted attention.

The bed is along one wall that is the color of a stone one would find on a beach.  Perhaps a shade darker.

As I lay there on my bed, the small metal banker's lamp that I use for reading on the other side of the bed cast a shadow of my body on the wall.  The shadow of my leg closest to the wall a darker black than the blurry dark gray of the leg further away. I moved them. Slowly; quickly. And watched as the color changed: a darkness coming in and out of focus.

I studied myself- the landscape of my body cast upon the wall.

(pause)

The book I mentioned earlier, In Praise of Shadows by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, has pulled me into an obsessive thought pattern related to light, the absence of light, and all of the depths and shades in between the two. It is impacting how I think and what draws my attention.  I see its heavy influence in everything from how I have been dressing, to the ink in my pen, to the weight of kohl I use to line my eyes with.

I have become obsessive about translucent shades and all that lies beneath and behind them.

(unpause)

Here is to this bed that will be something between a shadowbox and Salomé's Dance of Seven Veils performed from behind a paper screen.

Truth be told, it will resemble something closer to The Dance of Seven Veils-based tempt seen in The Night Porter, but this comes as no surprise.


-k.


(The Night Porter minus the fascist theme, plus the andro-gloved-uniform theme. anyway.)
(photo from woodydoow tumblr)
(thank you to the ever famous yldarb for always introducing me to film and music of interest.)

I Left You a Polaroid in the Theater

A friend of mine who lives in New York now was in town this weekend. It was perfect timing.  I will always love the blending of growth (how things change), and core (how things stay the same at particular roots):  I love the way she loves her family and friends, her puppet making skills, and the way she always appears to be up to something, have just jumped up and ran from her bed, have just dropped from the sky in some makeshift reenactment of a celestial fall, or all three.

Our conversations and adventures always feed me and make me laugh. It's so strange to think back to that day so ridiculously long ago when we met, sheepishly, upon worn red chairs in a small Seattle theater.

(pause)

It is still the season of red.

The sun is out, and that both bothers and helps me.  'Bothers', here, used in the best sense of the word.

I will be slipping messages into red velum envelopes, and hiding them for you in our 'city'.  The glue on those envelopes never quite sticks.

Once again, a seal of wax is the only option.


-k.



(photo honesty:  I had to crop the shoes out of this photo because I simply couldn't stand to look at them.)