Things I Have Knowingly Lead People to Believe* I Enjoy in Order to Go On a Date With Them:

Public transportation

Science fiction

Shitty shoe wear (John Fluevogs)

The intricacies of Communism

“Mod” clothing

Biking for transportation as opposed to recreation

Beer

Dr. Who

Crowds

Raw food

Steam punk

Penises

Painting

Poetry readings

Condos

Porsches

Almonds

*= No lying; all innuendo.

  

(This was a piece that came out of ongoing conversations that an old friend of mine and I would have about things we would do for the sake of having a total crush on someone)

Tell Me Again About How You Scrub Your Dirty Pans

My responses don't tend to match the actual answers people are looking for.  When someone asks me what I have done for fun lately, my mind immediately goes to something horribly amazing, but know that it is completely out of the question to answer with.  Also: What kind of question is that, anyway?

So then my mind shifts to the bottom that loves to be ignored who gave me head underneath the blanket while, on top of the blanket, my books bounced and I studied language until I came. 

But I know that's not what they are looking for.

To me, this seems pretty mid-grade and acceptable. 

But I know that they are looking for something more regular-guy-lady-in-pants-suit, and I'm just not sure what to say.

I rack my brain for something acceptable, but not boring. "How do vanilla people banter with each other?!",  I demand of myself, wondering if I should have gone to see a movie, recently. 

I roll my shoulders back and announce that I finally finishing watching Breaking Bad.

They look disappointed. Like that is *so* 2013.

Touché, my Straight Lady Acquaintance who somehow manages to always smell slightly of some, unnameable fruit:

Let me watch you fuck your boyfriend.


k.

(image: The Bashful One, Jackelizabeth via The Shiny Squirrel Tumblr)

Gorgeous: The Poise of Your Pen

"Once established, you will not want to break your fascinating schedule." 

This was a quote snipped from an interview with Ray Bradbury about his addiction to writing, and his firm belief in refusing to let things take over the time he uses to write.  What can I say?  I feel him.  I just submitted something a few days ago that I should hear back about in the next month or so.  It's all very exciting. 

It feels good to have the focus, the elbow room, the excitement, and the dedication to something so directly celestial - all the time, using its potency to battle some of the hate and destruction that is going on in the world.

If you mandated yourself the time and stretch to connect with what is your art and salvation to offer the world in its descend, what is it?  And what can you do to make sure that it happens?

We need it as much as science books claim we need the oxygen in our bloodstreams.

Be well; be loved,

-k.

Beheading the Wake, or, How Insecurity Begins to Sound the Same as the Buzzing of Flies Around One's Dinner

I can't help you with your mind.


There is a misfortune with your mind, at present. Perhaps forever.  At least up until today. As you have described, it is out to get you and, thus, lashes out at everyone and thing around you. Likening yourself to a dirty sock is both humorous and saddening. I can't imagine the torture of it.

What would you have to offer someone if they told you that they have a hard time telling the truth, controlling their anger, and sharing who they are with the world?

My guess would be: Not much.

Perhaps if you cared about them like a family member,  you would have dinner with them from time to time, taking much of what they say with a pound of salt while pushing your potatoes around on your plate. You would try concentrating on the taste of the food, the patterns of the person's shirt, the clouds that culminate and threaten to rain in their eyes.

But you couldn't much listen to them, now could you?

Not really, anyway.

You would hear stories that never happened, or re-tellings of stories that have entirely changed, or proclamations of feelings that are, more than likely, just the day's form of attempted manipulation: The morning's daily truth.

Eventually, you would wonder: Who is this person sitting across from me?

And wonder, not so much why they are there, but rather,
why you are.

And just as they are midstream of what will one day be revealed as a whopper of a tale, you would simply
put down your fork
dot each corner of your mouth with a napkin
before placing it gently
on your plate
push your chair back
and
distractedly
(distracted by the excitement of life and of love and of truth and of struggle)
stand up
looking out to the furthest reach of the room

and leave.


I can't help you with your mind, dear member of my proverbial family.

And while I have compassion for the torment of your mind
even in this routine hour
the babble of lies
has become

a bore.





Be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Saturno Buttò, Red Skull)

The Thirst of Rigor

There have been some tricks I am learning, as of late. Something between being my own guard dog and laying splayed across a bed in anticipation of being done right and well.

Of admiring someone splayed across a bed in anticipation of being done right and well.

The past few weeks (and into the future) have been about how much you can achieve when you make sure that everything and everyone is disciplined enough, in their own regard, to be aligned to what you are aiming for. 

Language, writing, relationships.

All with the correct amount of focus; all in the perfect and correct order.

This, of course, has less to do with rules and routine as much as it has to do with all that lead us to the ever-seductive intersection of where curiosity meets rigor.

Put that pencil down, and look around you. There is someone in the room that has information you don't know, that you want to know.

Information that will start the sensation of saliva pouring down the walls of your mouth as you keep it shut.

Your job

of course and simply

is to find it.




go.

-k.

Unseen Salve, or, The Feeling in Your Eyes When You Can't Look at Something/Someone, Directly

Every weekday morning, there is a woman who sings hymns on the packed bus of my morning commute. 

She is already singing when I get on the bus, and she steadily continues for the thirty plus minutes of the ride- one song ending only to be replaced by another, seamlessly.

She is not particularly loud or soft of voice.

No one ever tells her to shut up or to keep it down.

In fact, on a bus in which a person is standing or sitting on every inch of its metal and rubber, barely a word is spoken while she sings. The automated bus voice, that doesn't know any better, announces the next stop, and is the only one who speaks above her.

I have never seen the woman who sings. 

The bus is so packed that all I know is the general direction in which the singing is coming from.

And although there have been times that I have put earphones on to drown her out, there have also been times that her songs have helped me along.

Almost brought me to tears, somehow, a few times.

A strange part of the process of waking up- of being delivered from the vulnerability of sleep, into the quickness and starkness of reality.

A part of the beginning of the day with a reflection on something larger than that- even if I am  filtering out the more blatant of the religious blah blah blah.

In any case,

it is Saturday morning. 

I won't be on that bus today.

I am certain that she will not be, either.

And as I'm pulling myself out of a pile of blankets for the second time today, I find myself appreciating her.

Appreciating the presence of this voice that floats above and beyond the mass of us sardine'd into the rumbling tube of the bus.

Quiet, on our morning commute.

There is a beauty in almost missing a voice coming from a person you have never actually seen. 

A voice that offers and is

at times

annoying,

but never enough

to be asked to stop.



be well; be loved

k.

(image: Sacred and Profane Love, Giovanni Baglione, 1602.)

I (Can) Show You Incredible Things

Let's talk some truth.  The candles are lit and the room smells of something between church, and a cabin in the woods forgotten about long ago.

I feel like playing a bit of roulette, tonight.

I've been lucky within my streak of bad luck.

(pause)

Just under twenty four hours ago, I was set free of everything trying to hold me down.  Everything trying to tell me who I was and who I wasn't.

Some of that was me.

I've just managed to shake the last bit of molting from my foot

and keep walking.

(pause)

Magic keeps surfacing.

Books, people, passages, interactions, music, art, and metal rings that are for fingernails, like these (the one in the center. the black. Actually, half the rings on this site.)

I'm enjoying it.

(pause)

Listen, let me tell you something:

When you are faced with something incredible: Believe it.

There are some pretty fucking amazing people in the world.

Don't be so caught up in how you think things should be in the world that you forget to/are too scared to/just don't actually interact with people in the world.

Sure, don't be a dick,

but don't be a perpetual isolationist, either.

There are so many secret passages that emerge in even the most "known" territories.

Keep an eye out for them:

They are there,

in all of their pulse-quickening glory.



be well; be loved

k.


[Highlights from today include: The Crooked Glasses Maybe Works in Tech Guy on my morning commute with his contained-but-bursting smile as he rocked out to the new Taylor Swift on his earphones. Truth be told: I can't blame him. It was loud enough that I got to rock out to it a bit too. Title credit goes to a slightly changed lyric from this song I can't get out of my head, now.]

(image via mode funker tumblr)

Scattered Pins

Objectification is both tiring and boring.

People tend to try and objectify me in a particular way, often.

Not in a bikini and hot cha cha cha way, but in the way that always leaves me feeling like they would like to keep me in a glass jar.

I've talked about this before.

It's like a child running around with a strange bug in a jar. He feels proud of finding it, of temporarily trapping it (in conversation,  in "friendship", etc). That somehow having some interesting bug in a jar elevates his/her own value.

Meanwhile, the bug is being knocked around on glass as the child runs. The bug has no food, no water, and not a lot of air.

In short: The bug, unless it manages to escape or is let go, will die of lack of nutrients or simply, of suffocation.

Nowadays it's more like this:

I see a friendly face.

I have a friendly face.

As the person comes closer, I notice their arms behind their backs.

I know this routine.

Slowly, their arms come around towards me: In one hand, a lid of metal punctured with scattered holes. In the other, a glass jar.

So I turn and walk away.

But it's still boring.

I want to ask (and sometimes do):

Why not be amazed by your own internal and entire beauty?

People are endlessly interesting and strange and wise and beautiful in their stories and secrets and lives and interests and skills.

This is true.

You are.

We are.

All of us.

To see beautiful patterns upon the words and thoughts and hearts of other people, we have to be able to see that same kind of beauty shimmering and reflecting within ourselves.

There is no other way.

Walking around trying to capture other people. Like butterflies. To pin them inside some grotesque shadowbox and hang upon your wall.

It just doesn't work.

"Look how pretty. How interesting. How delicate. How complex..."


The company you are saying this to


blinks in return.

They don't really care

for all of this.

Neither

do I.




-k.


In the royal words of Ru: "And remember: If you can't love yourself-  How the hell you gonna love somebody else?"

The Indulgence of Royalty

Eating ripe pears in bed after a tub full of steaming water and lavender oil.  My body is still warm, legs shaved and lotion'ed, in fresh sheets. There is a tall glass of ice water on my nightstand, and the taste of this pear is incredible.  Hot, smooth skin; cold, clear water; and the feeling of puncture each time I bite into this pear that is slightly cooler than room temperature.  (It is a Bosc pear.  That brownish red kind. It's my favorite.) I am calm, contemplative, and mentally clear: A perfect ending to a long, but enjoyable day.

(pause)

I love Michelle Visage.

I am not one for television shows, much less reality television, but there are a few exceptions.  One of them, as is no shock or surprise to anyone who knows me, is RuPaul's Drag race.  It's through this show that I was introduced to Michelle Visage.  And, by virtue of this, and of my love for her, I will be watching a show entitled Celebrity Big Brother this season because she will be on it.  [I had never even heard of this show before.  She'll be on the British version. CBB take celebrities and has them live in a house together for one month without any contact to the outside world.  Frankly, Michelle and Perez Hilton are the only people who interest me of the crew.]


Let me tell you why I love Michelle Visage.

She is honest and will tell the truth no matter if you want to hear it or not, and it always comes from a place of love.  She loves the shit out of the gays/queers/fags/freaks/weirdos/trans-explosions of the world. I will stop gushing, but really, I won't.  I admire where and how she exists in the queer community, and I love that she is a femme who is sincere and kind to femmes of all kinds. She is a bad ass. She's from New Jersey. She won a Madonna look alike contest when she was 16.

And yes, when you watch the interview with her, below, you will see deeper glimpses of why I over-relate to her, attitude and outlook wise. 

You can see a recent interview with her about being on the show, here.

So, while I will be continuing to nerd it up as per usual over here with studies and acts and creations and buildings in the next season,  I will also be indulging in some good, old fashioned, online Visage cheering.

What can I say?

 She's the kind of diva I can get behind.



Be well; be loved-

k.

P.S. I'm just finishing Mia McKenzie's Black Girl Dangerous: On Race, Queerness, Class and Gender. I've followed the blog for a long time and was excited to finally get a copy of the book. The libraries around me either don't have it or, in the case of the university, the one copy was on loan to a college in another state. It is worth the read- accessible and stated as being written to be accessible to a wider audience than just people in academia. If you can't find a copy, you can order one online. Either way, check out the blog by the same name if you have yet to do so.

(photo: The Glass Slippers, from Polaroids and Thoughts Tumblr.  There is some incredible work on that Tumblr- check it out)

Lipstick and Razor Burn

Last night I dreamt that Sharon Needles and I were partners.

Holy fucking hotness.

2015 came in with a bang

then another

then another

then another.

Sometimes there are those moments that make you absolutely reset everything.

Usually, it is when you your body is turned inside out in a way you didn't even know existed.

All of my love and craving to anyone and everyone who does not give a fuck about gender limitations.  May I fall into a pile of boys in make up, glossed femmes in incredible leg wear, angelic faced lads with sharp parts in their hair and cocks in their book bags, and queens of all sorts to have their way, or to wait on me.

Here's to 2015 and all of the bangs involved.

Destroy, indeed.



-k.

(image: Sharon Needles / Out Magazine)