Witch Hunt

Today is slow.  Odd.  Late buses and broken down engines.  My eyes are puffy.  My fingertips have been replaced by miniature marshmallows.

One of the things I have experienced in my life as a woman-read person is this:

A distrust of others around my own sexuality. My own sexual agency.  Everyone accusing me of fucking or wanting to fuck other people.  As if that is an accusation.  And almost always by people who I am not dating.  They are the ones who accuse.

What is it about a woman-read person's sexuality that is such a threat?  It is, of course, no surprise, that this is why sex workers are demonized:  "How dare they capitalize off of their own bodies and sexuality" is the arrogant and ignorant thinking.

Sex workers are forever perceived as both magical, and a threat.

A fantasy that, afterwards, must be destroyed.  (Emotionally, morally, physically...i.e. murdered.)

We are priests to confess every dark and scared and sacred thing to, yet somehow, we are simultaneously entirely untrustworthy. 

We.

Yes.

We. 

(pause) 

What is it about women-read people who are unapologetic and honest about their sexual desires, their preferences, their relationships - that initiates fascination, violence, and obsession?

What is it about women-read people that demands that a hand other than her own must write over her words? Tell her how she exists.  Tell her that she is wrong in what she is doing.  Tell her that she is lying. Tell her that she is a saint and a savior by the same person who moves to destroy and condemn her.

In general, and without beauty:   Fuck your erasure of self-written narrative.  Fuck your distrust of women who don't buy into state-sanctioned marriage.  Fuck your judgements of greed of women without children. Fuck your suspicion of women who fuck who they want and when they want and why they want and are honest about all of it.  Fuck your scandalized face that you display to any woman who simply lives a life equal to any run-of-the-mill bullshit Jack Kerouac.

Fuck your witch hunt. 

Burn our bodies alive if we don't destroy you first -  but the just venom of what you burn will only return, tenfold.  

Has history taught you nothing?


k.

(photo: Isabelle Dépraz, Possibles, 2015 via Gacougnol Tumblr)

The Investigation of Curiosity

Thick fog morning.  It's the perfect white gray against the gold brown black leaves that remain on the tree outside my window.

It's been an incredible and indulgent weekend. The type of weekend where you get to do any and everything you want, when you want, and how you want to do it. 

It feels good to reap the benefits of a gained trust with someone.  

It will also never feel the same as having a few days, unwitnessed, to do anything and everything you want to. 

Both of these things have beauty within them.

(pause to watch a crow land on a low hanging electrical wire a few yards beyond my window)

I feel rested, satisfied, sparked, excited. Lots of art and good conversations and reading and connecting happened this weekend.  I continue to be focused, calm and happy in a way I've never experienced before. 

All things considered, this year has been, unexpectedly, one of the best in my life.

Here is to pushing past the limits we place upon ourselves at times, and to the jackpot of happiness that awaits us on the other side of them.

be well; be loved; be doing things you love as much as humanly possible,

k.

(image via modefunker tumblr)

The Perking of My Ears

Good morning, world. It's 9:22 am on my morning to sleep in a bit. I woke up, earlier, to the sweetest text and sentiment. It's incredible how the timing of such things can inform your day.

Now I'm here, armed with coffee and a sesame bagel (Toasted. Tahini and avocados. Sprinkled with nutritional yeast and black cracked pepper.), typing away before getting out of my pile of blankets and spread, bleached sheets to get to work at eleven.

One of the things I've been appreciating, lately, is the sound of gravel crunching in the morning in the alley beyond my bedroom window.  Cars sleepily sneaking through the alley to the main road in hopes of a shortcut to repay their snooze bar struggles.

I wish them luck.

k.

(image sun is out/ Lisboa via Manoomantero tumblr)

The Sound Of Twigs Snapping Underneath Such Beautiful Shoes

Just out of the shower at 6pm, with a 9pm curtain call of sorts. It feels good- like mint upon one's body. To have wet, combed hair in the coolness of the evening, and be able to see the day's sun setting through my bedroom window.

I feel clean. Washed of the recent dust bunnies that have been developing in the corners of my mind.

I know, I know. It's a gross image.  But you know what I'm talking about.

Tonight will be Spanish and English and ASL and good company and art and darkness.

How could one ever go wrong with that?

be well; be loved,

k.

PS I've been listening to Avec le Soleil Sortant de sa Bouche's Super pastiche fantastique (members of Fly Pan Am) last night/today at the recommendation of a lad whose music tastes I trust/enjoy. Listen along.


(image: via 40 media tumblr)

Examining Light

This morning I woke up and everything felt like Christmas. (In the good way.)

One thing I've realized is that, when one slight part of my life doesn't feel right, while I'm considering it/thinking it over, things feel focused on in a way that is a disservice to the rest of my life.  So, imagine that you are looking at a huge painting.  When there is something I feel unsure about, and need to double check, it is as if I am focusing on one tiny part of the painting for a few days, and can't see much of anything else.

Once I figure out what I need to do, or how to re-position it, and do it, it is as if everything opens up to me, again. The entire painting lights up and begins like a carousel, again, with everything moving in tandem and complement with each other. Life opens up.  And what I see is incredible.

[The conversation about creativity with B. The dinner made of all of my favorite foods that was made for me last night. The banter with C about repression in the fashion industry. Pondering remnants of last week's discussions of advocacy/disability/family with W. The book I just finished. The excitement coursing through me about today, and this week.]

I love the loves in my life who look at things differently- fashion, academia, art, food, gender, love, loving, politics, the world, economics, sharing, learning-  all of the time, and who I learn from.


-k.
(image: Chung King Express, 1994, Wong Kar. Via waitemoss tumblr)

Vision and Beauty

Last night was incredible, peaceful, and perfect.  I woke up with my body wrapped in thick ribbons of silver, white, and a gunmetal blueish gray.  How I was wrapped was beautiful and slow and adoring.
A slow cocooning of beauty around me by the most gentle of hands. Healing. Gorgeous. New. Timeless.

(pause)

I've been reading Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination by Robin D. G. Kelley, again. Reading about the power and importance of the imagination on both individual and social movement levels.  The importance of being able to imagine and look for the future while in the present.

A friend of mine recently posted a memorial/celebration of life post having to do with Grace Lee Boggs who recently passed. My friend who had had the opportunity to be in a series of conversations with her wrote "She told us that she fights for justice with her grandmother in mind, not because she was political woman, but because its important to remember time a hundred years back and a hundred years forward."

I keep thinking of this.

And, in thinking of it, it brought me back to Freedom Dreams because of how closely it relates to what it is about. (It, of course, is no surprise that Kelley mentions Boggs in his book.)

Anyway, what I'm thinking about this morning were some things Kelley wrote about imagination and future vision, and of poetry and poet philosophers and the part they play in creating the imagination that is needed.   Here are three excerpts:

""What presides over the poem" [Aimé Césaire] writes, "is not the most lucid intelligence, the sharpest sensibility or the subtlest feelings, but experience as a whole." This means every thing, every history, every future, every dream, every life form from plant to animal, every creative impulse -plumbed from the depths of the unconscious. Poetry, therefore, is not what we simply recognize as the formal "poem", but a revolt: a scream in the night, an emancipation of language and old ways of thinking."

"In the poetics of struggle and lived experience, in the utterances of ordinary folk, in the cultural products of social movements, in the reflections of activists, we discover the many different cognitive maps of the future, of the world not yet born."

"For Toure [poet Askia Muhammad Toure], the "movement" was more than sit-ins at luch counters, voter registration campaigns, and freedom rides; it was about self-transformation, changing the way we think, live, love, and handle pain."




be well, be loved, be thinking forwards and backwards all at once, and together.

-k.

(image: from the editorial photos from the short film Slumflower)