What Do You Have, There?

It's been a weird day.

Lots of needles poking at me for blood draws of various seasonal tests.

Medical settings always make me feel small.  Not "bad", just, size wise, smaller than I actually am.  I always feel like a little pea sitting there on that crinkling thin paper on the exam table. 

At least my favorite blood draw guy was working.  He knows how to work a needle so that it feels like butter. It's those children's butterfly needles, I'm telling you.  He knows what to use.

k.



Read about the short film Slumflower based on a short story by Street Etiquette, who I am always admiring.  Then, if you need 20 minutes of beauty, watch it here.

Rules of Engagement

I wish I could tell you how this works.

I can't.

Last night was spent exactly how I wanted to spend it. 

Such a rare and perfect feeling.

There are times, when you are standing, that I prefer you to kneel.  But you know this. And you respond. Pressing dirt into the knees of your jeans, sometimes soaking right through to your kneecaps when the weather has been just right. That surprise wet that kisses each knee gradually, or all at once. It is your own reward, you once told me.

Sometimes you can feel your heartbeat throb through the entirety of your body when you are like this.  You can taste pennies in your mouth. It, too, is your own reward, you once told me.

It amazes me, the depths you will go.

I remember once, you falling down upon your knees, placing forehead down upon a study desk, staring at the industrial carpet. You weren't certain if anyone was in the building, but you wanted to show me that you didn't care.  You started rubbing yourself through your pants, knowing that you were not to raise your head to look around to see if anyone was there. You heard a door slam, but kept your eyes on the floor and did not stop or look up. You could hear someone, and put your faith in the thought that it was me, watching you, from far above on the second floor of the library.

Do you remember that?

The echo of heels descended on the cement staircase joining the floors of the library.

Had I come to meet you as I said I would? Or had I decided to ignore you simply for the fun of it.  The steps came closer, muffled but coming closer now on the thin carpeted floor.  You kept your head down, eyes on the floor, and continued to fuck yourself.

Would it be me, or was it someone coming to deal with your raw and spread indecency?



-k.

(image: her liquid arms tumblr)

Tailored Comfort

It's raining outside. Pouring.

This afternoon is one of those rare, deep-warm pockets of time where I have gotten off of work early, and come directly home.  While I listen to the busses and cars go by- the running steps of people trapped in the rain- I am here: in slippers and thin pajama pants; a sweatshirt and hair tied and piled atop my head.  There is water about to boil for tea.  I'm thinking something with cinnamon and orange and spice.

My lower back hurts a bit, but my lips are in a slight, continuous smile.  It's so good to be home.

(The whistle of the kettle. A moment, please.)

The steam from my mug a foot away is exactly what is needed. The smell of the leaves and the spices and the heat surrounding me.

The past many months- since January to be more or less exact- I have been working towards some things that will make me happy.  Things that will continue to give me a feeling of accomplishment. Not in the superficial, typical ways that are pumped out and around in the world- but in a way that matters. To me, to those around me, and,  in whatever small way- to you.

It feels right. It feels strange. It feels like exactly the right time for it to happen.

I hope you're well out there. I hope you have an afternoon like this one some day soon, when luck arrives on your side dressed exactly as you need her to be.



be well; be loved,


k.

(image: via n01re tumblr)

Upon My Arrival, You Shiver: Heat and Cold and Excitement.

Low light in the living room, with one candle burning to supplement it.  The constant gurgle and hum of the aquarium in the corner.

Tonight we made soup, broke bread, wrapped blankets around ourselves, watched brief black and white episodes of directorial perfection.

I am here alone, now.

These nights feel good. Worked for. Earned.

(pause)

In the back of my mind, on the tip of the light point in my mouth just behind my front teeth - the alveolar ridge- where my tongue taps and touches to create sound and meaning and differentiation. These secret, dark places.  This is where you live. Ever present. Ever tempting. Ever lasting.

Frigid. Frantic. Fasting.


(image: Red Party- Virginie Bocaert. via Witches' Sabbath tumblr)

Star Witness and the Beauty of the Fall

Sweaters and hot liquid; cashmere and heels. 

This weather gets me.

I've been all over the place in my mind as of late.

Flashes of the night we dragged my mattress out onto my balcony so that we could sleep under the stars. It started to mist rain and, as we spooned and pressed and inhaled the night air, you behind me, you took your cock out and slid it inside me. I pushed back onto you and we fucked frantically for the first time and the stars saw every bit of it.


k.

(image: is not mine. it's from tumblr, though i can't recall from where. i know. i am awful.)

The Delicate Flowers That Fall From Your Lips As You Run

Let's sit down, shall we?

I am warming up to write these cold months.  The season of hypergraphia is upon us.  It is just beginning to open its fingers to me. 

This season comes again, and, with it, comes Marías:

Confronted by that feeling of being examined, however, we all instinctively feel a need to pass, simply because it's a challenge, and still more if the person assessing and judging us is someone we admire. 

I understand why you shy from me. Why your face flushes, your heart beats faster. Why you care too much what I think. 


(pause)

In other news: this weekend I assisted a friend of many, many years in finding a gown for her birthday.  It is gorgeous.  Metallic. Gold and copper and silver and black, all in one. I stood outside of the dressing room and ran back and forth with different bras, slips, corsets.  She will be beautiful on the night of her party.  She is always beautiful.  

I'm proud of her.  

I've watched her start to celebrate her own fabulousness over the past few years.  I've watched her shed a fear of all things feminine. Both always feel so incredible to see.



I've also watched her become supportive of unions, which matters.  

Sometimes people aren't so much "anti-union" as they just didn't grow up with them. They weren't around them, and so think : why would you take more money out of your pay check to be a part of one? And by not having been around unions growing up, they just didn't understand them, necessarily. 

Strangely, and not so strangely, it's the people who grew up with unions around them who understand this, I think.  

Not exclusively, but largely. 

I think sometimes it's the people who grew up with unions who understand that that knowledge, that information, is passed on through families or neighborhoods or trades or jobs or is simply a part of the culture or the local history that surrounds them.  Who understand that it's best to explain because of course it makes sense for there to be working people who are disconnected from labor history. Or from union history.  All of that history: the good and the bad; the solidarity and the total racism. All of it. Because it's all important, really.  The dirty deals. The just causes. All of it. Dismissing a person who isn't outspokenly pro-union isn't the best strategy because, well, what if the person just doesn't know?  Ideally, isn't that what organizing is? Talking with people? Listening. Answering. Questioning. Talking with.

And if the person knows- if the person has time to ask questions and learn more about it - that they may end up being a supporter, after all. A leader, even. 


In any case, this isn't about some idealist concept of unions.  Just something I'm thinking about in relation to my friend.

I'm proud of her. 

Her strength, her convictions, and her washing away of the fear of lipgloss.

Somehow it feels fitting that her gown will be metallic this year:  Strength and beauty, all in one. 



be well; be loved,

k.

Meet Me in the Stacks One Last Time

My friend Dennis once interviewed me about suicide.  He was doing a zine about suicide attempts: If people had ever tried to commit suicide and, if they had survived and/or decided not to attempt it or attempt it again, why that had decided not to. 

It was probably one of the most intimate conversations I have ever had in my life.

There we were, two twenty something punks, sitting on a rooftop in the Midwest, eating a plate full of broccoli and fried tofu covered in a steaming garlic peanut sauce, discussing our relationship to suicide.

I’ll never forget that conversation. 

I barely knew him, and it was our first time hanging out. 

Leave it to the punk kids to decide that this was the appropriate notion for a first hang out. 

The trees hung heavy and green all around us up there on the rooftop: a confessional tree house to keep our secrets that afternoon. To keep our stories.

(pause)

That same year, I met Travis- a punk from the South who was a librarian, wrote zines, was in bands, and was generally all that I aspired to be in the realm of the adult world.  He and I started writing letters. Became pen pals long after “pen pals” were obsolete.  The intimacy of letters: we would write out and share all that we thought and dreamed and wondered and created.  He would stay with me in the various houses in the various states I lived in over the years.  I would randomly show up in his library in Florida, sometimes, and there he would be, behind the reference desk. We would walk around the streets of Gainesville talking about needs and wants and dreams. About life.

The last photograph taken of Travis while he was in my city was a Polaroid, taken just a while ago, long after Polaroids, too, were obsolete. Travis and a group of other beautiful hearts had stayed with me. I left early in the morning for work, and left them all a note to read on their trip to the next town of their various destinations.  They took a photograph of themselves to leave with a thank you.  All of them crammed in and smiling to fit within the small white square of the Polaroid’s borders. 

It was sitting on the wood table close to the large window in my living room when I came home; my spare apartment key had been slid under the door after they left.

(pause)

Sometimes, people say that if you are feeling sad, to just hold on for one more day and things will feel different.  Or eat some protein. Or do ten jumping jacks. Or take a bath.  Breathe deep. Meditate. Everyone has their sworn-by remedies. 

For me, I turn to the library. 

People who work in libraries have a particular experience that is different from those who use them, or from people who have no interest or relationship to libraries.  I have written about this before, and I am certain that I will write about it again.  Any time I find myself lacking faith, lacking belief, lacking knowledge, or just feeling a general lack of anything- I turn to the library. 

In depression, I lose myself in the ideas and words of others- to search for anything to change my mind.  Change my perspective.  A million perspectives, a million tales, a million realities, a million histories- all to change, or at least distract.  

(pause)

Travis killed himself almost three weeks ago, now.  

One of the hardest things was going into my library after I found out.  It was a reminder that the library had failed him, somehow. That he couldn’t find something to help. Maybe he hadn’t tried. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to.

I keep thinking of what and how the library failed him.

It’s an unsettling feeling to feel such a connection to someone- a writer, a punk, a librarian- and to know that the answer, for him, was to end his life:

What does it mean when someone you look up to commits suicide?

(pause)

I quoted him in a post back in 2009.  I’ll leave you all with that same quote.  Somehow, today, it takes on a different meaning.  A different depth.

Rest in peace, old friend. May you be among all of your favorite books you ever read, and among all of those you hadn’t had time to read.

"In the meantime, let's act like what we do matters".      

Be well; be loved,

k. 

(photo credit: Birds / Jack Barnosky via Gacougnol Tumblr)