Conversations of Ghosts and the Like: How to Grieve a Person Who Saw the Truth

I. This Morning: Logistical

Diving down my check list for the day.  I've had too concentrated of caffeine, but it's alright. The temperature is just right (chilly; not too cold) for sweatshirts and typing; fingers dry from page turning; thirst quenched with water.

These next two months will be busy ones. Good busy. Ready busy. Growing busy. Amazing busy.

II. Three Days Ago: Observation

Early morning cleavage is both appreciated and disturbing.  The other morning I was in a ritzy part of town and saw a well cleave'd woman leaving a Starbucks stand in the local grocery.  It wasn't quite 8 am. I had respect for the keyhole shirt she was wearing and the conjuring of sex, pre-8am.  I reserve a particular depth of want for morning sex, as it is indeed one of my favorites, although I had never considered it in flip-flops slapping against the tiles of a supermarket floor.


III. Today: The Taste of Last Night's Conversation

I have been thinking of energy from one's fingertips as of late.

Last night was spent sliding my hands down and across the neck, throat, chest, arms and hands of a person I am incredibly attracted to. It was enjoyable to play with feelings associated with sex without kissing or having any kind of typical or blatant sexual contact. Enjoyable to feel the warmth. The movement of energy.  It puts you in a trance-like state to some extent: That teetering between the push pulls of battling desires.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image: by Hollis Frampton, A Visitation of Insomnia, 1970 via isidoreblog tumblr)

In Between Time

Death is a weird one.

In the past number of years, most of the deaths in my immediate life have all come via a phone call while I am at the library. 

That period of time between when you find out about a death in a public realm, and when you have arrived to a private realm (home and the like) and are finally able to let go, is a strange one.

I'm writing to you now from within that period of time.

Here I am, sitting at my desk in the library, having just received word about 30 minutes ago.

What do you do?

I've downshifted my work to be taken from that labeled more "MINDLESS" than other work. 

I've kept my back to the door as I work, my eyes tearing up. Welling and stinging, but not quite ready to come out. 

There is a shock component that always exists in this period of time.

Instead, a constant and perpetual wetting of the eyes.  Like allergies minus the itchiness. A lump in my throat. Heat upon my cheeks because they are warming to push the tears out.

That last time I saw her. 

Not the emails we have been writing but that last time I saw her.

She knew.

She saw what I had only hoped that someone would. 

(Times two, really.

Times a million.)

The depth of her gaze.

She knew.

And I could feel her heart go out to me.

I felt that.

A rarity in all that surrounded us that evening.

I can only imagine how it has been. 

The thirty some years past losing the love of your life.

But I remember your gentleness. 

How it was wrapped in directness. 

And I take that with me.

Because you are who I got that from.

And now

I just need

to make my way home.




k.

(image:  Kathy Jones via workman tumblr)

Succulent Innocence

(a haiku written while caught in daydreams)



seeing you i see
fingers dripping with honey
rising from the ground







 (image: ivo stoyanov via Art Propelled Tumblr)

Trace Yourself Upon Me: Imagination vs Delusion During the Full Blue Moon

We sat and drank, each with a separate past locked up in him, and fate's alarm clocks set at unrelated futures-- 

        --a partial sentence taken from Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov


I have eyeliner stripes on my right, outer thigh because I wasn't wearing pants while I was doing my make up tonight.  Now that I am home and, again, I do not have pants on, they are revealed: The hidden tiger of my odd artistry.

I have been appreciating the presence and absence of someone as of late.

Let me tell you what I love about being given the space and time and reason to unravel:

I work harder.

I think more clearly.

I cum harder.

I hustle more.

I miss more deeply.

I love more widely.

I feel gentle towards that which, in usual circumstances, makes me sad.

There is a hope and humor in the children that are in my life, and that matters.




Pretend that it is intentional, no matter if it is.
 
Lie to me and let me believe that the plan is to spread me out:

A map of a thousand galaxies to kiss and evaluate.

Surely everything will be illuminated underneath this simple, stoic full moon that is upon us.

Let the only shadow cast upon me

be the eclipse of your body passing mine.


k.


(Image: Optical Exercise I, Man Ray)

I Can't Help My Mind From Going There

 I.

Our recent conversations about dreams:  How one cannot control how the mind works, and, should we really spend much time and energy into trying to interpret them?

I suppose not.

Mine tend to be fairly blatant.

Not in their details, but in their desires.

Those dreams that can wake you soaking in both fear or desire.

Sometimes both.

II.

Heard your boyfriend was away this weekend: Wanna meet at my place?

It was raining tonight. Finally.

I declined the offer of the ride home so that I could walk. In the dark. As fast as I wanted. As slow as I wanted.

I wanted to feel my thighs touch each other. Rub up against each other. In the rain. While I walked fast. Slow. Became warm. But could still feel the sting of the cold night air.

We could be caught

My thighs pushing against each other while I'm thinking of you touching that secret inside corner of my inner thigh while rain poured down on my face, my lips, my clothes.

Cars went by, their headlights blaring.  An occasional horn to get my attention. I ignored all of them. I didn't want to be saved. I didn't want to be interrupted. I just wanted to walk. Quickly.  Hard steps on the pavement.

We're both convicted criminals of thought

I have to take a minute from you.

Not because I don't like you.

But because I do.

When I lay in bed I touch myself and I think of you

There is more to this.


And I intend on riding it out.



Be well; be loved,


k.


(Title and italicized words thank you to  this song, which I would like you to go listen to.  Right now.)
(image source:  via melisica dot com)

Bus Yodas and Other Sources of Wisdom

Yesterday was one of those days where you come home early from work and end up laying on your bedroom floor, in a pile of unexplained rice, crying to a John Legend song that happened to pop up in your Spotify station.

(I really need to remember to keep that shit to 100% pop.  R&B will have you in love, utterly heart broken, and getting your grind on all within the span of 12 minutes.)

Z unknowingly saved the day, yet again, with one of his hilarious descriptions of life and his adventures within it. Yet again, I can't express how important friends who are former significant exs are to have in your life. If anything, they support you when the few exes you aren’t on good terms with resurface.  Best quote from that conversation would be when he said, in dealing with them, "You have to be able to see the world from the perspective of a baby."

In other news, I just finished the book …y no se lo trigó la tierra…and the Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomás Rivera. Worth a read. Goes into the experiences of migrant workers of the 40s and 50s, although it was published in 1971.

It’s cool to have both of the languages right there (the book is first in Spanish, then the back half of the book is the English version) so you can flip back and forth and see the differences in implication/meaning/translation. Translation will always amaze me: What’s missing; what’s added. What’s explained in one version; what’s left unexplained in another.

(pause)

In any case: Things are good.

For now, I'll leave you with this quote from a conversation I overhead the other morning as I embarked on an hour bus ride to the south end that pretty much sums things up everything as of late:

"I'd rather be real and in a hot spot than superficial and in the zone."

be well; be loved,

k.

(image via unglaubwuerdig tumblr)

Citrus Kisses, or, How Your Glasses Sliding Down Your Nose as You Look at Me Will Always Be Entirely Charming

It's a quarter to midnight, and I am eating mandarin oranges out of a tin can.  Growing up, they always felt like such an exquisite and rare dessert. Of course, that may have been because we were always hiding from our father growing up, and home wasn't exactly a meal spot, let alone a dessert bar, but still: Opening that tin can felt like I was unveiling orange jewels from a golden case.
Why is it that most mandarin orange cans are gold instead of the usual silver tin, anyway?

It's been a long day:  Good, productive, multi-directional, but good.

A sweet someone informed me that today was the queen's 90th birthday.  I informed this sweet person that it was the season 8 finale of Rupaul's Drag Race.  A celebration of queens, all around. It is nice to have this atypical cultural exchange.

Earlier today, I talked with Z for quite a while. We laughed about the people we ask for life advice from being people who exist more or less entirely outside of life. Like asking for stock investment advice from the Baron in the Trees or something. It's laughable and amazing all at once.  I am proud of the people who are in my life.

(pause)

I've been happy in life as of late. Content. Productive. Excited for what I am building. Who knew that life could be so fun, even when it's tiring?

Note to self: It feels good to have positive people in my life. People who are intelligent and wise, loving and funny, creative and a step or five outside of the anticipated trajectory.

And so we travel, together.



For now, to bed with me: Another day is about to arrive. 


be well; be loved,

k.
(image via 130186 tumblr)

Baby, Don't Get it Twisted: You Were Just Another on a Hit List

When I walked out of the room, the grin still smeared across my face.

Pt I.

I know you think it's wrong.

I know you don't like the way the sun on my back bothers me in the best of ways.

It bothers me well.

It's silly for you to be jealous of the sun.

It was silly for you to be jealous of everything and always.


Pt III (IV?).

Once I realized that you didn't believe me, I helped you along by showing you the inverse of that which sought to hold you.

Everything has a light and a dark side.

People are no exception.

Pt XII.

By the end, I ate dessert off of the back of your torment. 

Decedent slices of marble cheesecake with wine while you told me your boring stories of coworkers giving you the snub. Boring because you would get so angry and blaming about it. How could they not want you in their circle?

Why did you care?

So anti-establishment, but there you were scooting your dirty ass around the carpet like an ashamed dog.

[Stop blaming people and begin to own yourself. The only people who are incredible on their knees are the ones who stand upright and tall in their lives. The only ones with an appetite to serve deep enough, insatiable enough, are the ones who serve themselves respect, first.]

The table that was your back would shake as I ate my dessert.

The arching of your back would shift my plate

Teeter my wine glass:

What a pity.

How I concentrated on sugar, and the way it made my brain shake, in order to drown out your words blaming

your mother
your father
your sister
your boss
your friends (who you took turns distrusting)


the world.


(pause)

Pt May 11, 2016.

Now?

The light shines every day for me.

My back is warm

my lips are plump

with an ever ready and true smile

that widens them.





Es un(a) pícar(a) capaz de lo que sea.




Didn't they tell you I was a savage?

Fuck your white horse and a carriage. 

k.


 (title and italicized words from Rihanna's Needed Me)

(image: Take My Love and Wear It by Lotus Carroll via Lotus Carroll Flickr)

The Sweetness of Symmetry; The Successful Sidestepping of Poisonings

This morning started with accidental weak coffee and an intentionally stale doughnut. I did a do-over with the coffee but when I bit into the doughnut that I had brought home with me from work yesterday in my bag, I tasted and realized that a bottle of cologne must have leaked in my bag.

So here I am, just before 8:30 in the morning, drinking strong coffee in an attempt to rinse the flavor of a cake doughnut soaked in bergamot with undertones of possibly patchouli from my mouth.

Good morning.


The past few days have proved to be both inspiring and challenging.

Let me pull over and talk about, historically and in the past, being the stone emotional butch in a disproportionate number of my friendships and relationships. Stone emotional butch happens when people perceive you as strong and, so relieved to have finally found such a strong person who can obviously handle the knocks of life, will want to unload - in an unending and unreciprocated manner - the depths of their sadnesses, difficulties, relationships with their families/wives/workplaces/bosses onto you because they know you can handle it. This is also, at times, mixed with a somewhat never ending desire, in that child like way, to forever feel that they are the center of said mommy/daddy's world.

It's a kind of West End Girl Syndrome. You are perceived as being built for them.  For this very purpose.  You can handle it.

[We've got no future, we've got no past
Here today, built to last
In every city, in every nation
From Lake Geneva to the Finland station
(How far have you been?)]

(pause)

I don't buy into it much these days/years.

It's fine that I am perceived as strong. I am strong. That's a point of pride, I suppose.  That I'm not a big baby padding around. But I also threw the dynamic of being everyone's emotional daddy and mommy out a while back.

There have been quite a few tantrums, of course. People having melt downs because they don't know how to handle it when I set limits to how much of their demands or emotional boiling-overs I feel good about showing up for. How much of their brattiness or expectations of me as a source of support and attention when what they offer me in return is, well, more of the same brattiness and expectation. It's just not something I'm into these years. And so, situations either have to change, or they have to be faded out.

All in all, it feels good. It has felt good over the past, I'd say four years or so, to be sweeping off the proverbial front porch to my home.   To make room for and cultivate the loving vines that surround me. (I've always pictured the people I'm thinking about as plants.  Big, thick, green, lush plants that intertwine with each other and surround me.  Plants that are seemingly delicate, yet, together and in their fed mass, can take down entire buildings.)

That's all for today.  Just thinking on this as I clear the last bit of that pastry mishap from my palate while the doughnut with one bite missing remains unfinished on my plate, acting as an air freshener.



Be well; be loved; be loved well.


Be conscious of what you choose to keep and what is better left alone after you get a taste for it.


k.

(image: Esther Quek)

Follow Me Into the Unknown (The Love of Family)

 I also knew that, in spite of everything, I had to protect her.
                                       
                                                --from Snow by Roberto Bolaño


The beauty of family is that, even when they are pissed at you or you are pissed at them, they are still there to hold you. Literally; figuratively. Chosen family is no different, although there are those who believe it is. Sometimes, people who have the privilege of family of origin miss the most obvious fact:  If one must choose their family, there is no point in settling for a wilted offering of family that doesn't show up for each other. Which is to say: A charity offer of 'family' isn't something I'm interested in.  It reminds me of the wealthy ladies that would try and donate their half used lipsticks to the domestic violence shelter I used to manage.  When we would say "no thanks", they seemed appalled: How dare survivors of domestic violence not happily accept their gross-ass, half slobbered-on, reeking-of-perfume designer lipsticks, right?

Fuck off.

Everyone deserves and has standards and dignity, and that doesn't lower based on how people who should have loved them have treated them.  If you wouldn't accept something, yourself, stop and think about why it is you would offer it to other people.

(pause)

The past few days have been beautiful and inspiring. Speaking of chosen family, I have been hanging out with a loved one as we inspire/encourage/support each other in some pretty epic and exciting stuff. (Scary, but exciting!).  I love the conversations we are able to have.  I love the nerdy and loving space we have created over the years. One thing I love about this level of family is that you can be gross and silly and funny and ridiculous and talk about, well, pretty much anything.  From dripping menstrual blood on the bathroom tile to the inherent sexiness of people with state jobs.

Tonight we will be carrying out a plan that has been in the making for a while, now. It's going to change some things. Move some things. Put some things into action.

I'm excited, and I'm ready.

Here's to family you build with.

With them, you are unstoppable.

Right as rain, and all of the other sayings, here.

Now let's get to it.



Love,


k.


P.S. A toast to the brief Zeb, Jodi and me FaceTime extravaganza.  Same cloth. Same love.

 (image: Ming Xi as photographed in Vogue China, September 2012 via Pivovaroward Tumblr)

Significance and Steamed Windows

Your words, I admit, were kind. Nevertheless, I fear that you did not give sufficient thought to what you were saying. And even less to what I was saying. You should always listen carefully, Max, to what women say while they're being fucked. If they don't speak, fine, there's nothing to listen to, and you'll probably have nothing to think about, but if they do, even if it's only a murmur, listen to their words and think about them, think about their meanings, think about what they express and leave unexpressed, try to understand what it is they really signify. 

--from Murdering Whores by Roberto Bolaño


It's roughly 10:25 am, and I am laying on a bed holding a mug of coffee steady in between my knees (at 90 degree angles, on their sides) as I type.  Fiction has been good to me lately.  Reality, perhaps more so.

There are a number of plots and plans that I have simmering on the proverbial stove, and the mixture and direction of their scents seem to be in profound agreement as of late. Step by step and with an eye on everything at once can both sharpen the senses as well as leave you inspired to bring on more to the mix.  Patience and a steady eye, however, seems to be the winning combination.

These days I am excited by the balance of the step by step plan: The satisfaction involved in putting a solid, inked line through a task written down on a To Do list.  Watching the ink spread into the paper makes me more attentive to the air that hovers just above and upon the nape of my neck. The patterned click clop click of heels making their unquestioned way across academic tile (we all know that corporate has long since switched out to be a disappointing industrial grade carpet).

I will see you soon, and with measured steps.



k.

(image: Richard Serra, To Lift, 1967.)

Left Cocoon: The Emergence of New

This weekend I received a very beautiful sentiment (compliment?) from someone who has been in my life, in one form or another, for over ten years.

He told me that a particular experience in our relationship to each other had made a huge impact on him.  He told me that at a point in time when he made some odd/not so great decisions in his life, I had let let him know that love is big enough to have room for messiness.  And then I acted on that. While the majority of the people in his life were shaming him, blaming him, politicizing every misstep he had taken, that I had held onto him without throwing a shame fest at him.  Given some of the specifics of what the situation was, I had told him more or less that I loved him and that, when he felt he had something different/better to offer, to be in touch with me.  Which he was, every year, roughly.  Until about three years ago when he, indeed, had something very different to offer.

And we have been connected, again and more consistently, ever since that time.

And so, there we were, yesterday morning, sitting in the sun just after 10 in the morning, telling each other what we have meant to each other over the years. Talking about what our connections are and always have been. Our mutual inspiration to/for/on each other. The love of the complexity of each others mind.

He said something to the extent that the experience with me, in contrast to what he had been experiencing at that time from other sources, made him realize and wonder when shaming someone is ever the answer to something.

I thought about that.

I think he's right.

It never is the answer to something, really.

How strange and beautiful that I can glean lesson from an insight someone gained as a product of my love. It makes me feel good. Proud? Humbled.

[I learned a lot about not bullying by being and hanging out with people who have been bullied in their homes; in the society at large.

Sometimes the judgey, shame-y thing seems so steeped in privilege. The holier than thou politic-os that seem more invested in patting themselves and each other on the back for their ideas, than in doing any real bridging of experiences and realities. Because to do so means that you *will* be wrong. You *will* "look ignorant". You *will* not have the answer.  But these are the things revolutions are made out of.  I remember Matthew talking with me about this.  About how bits of revolution exists within these types of struggles.  That these struggles *are* the revolution. It exists and builds within these types of reachings, collaborations, coalitions, and bridges.]

Love is, indeed, a transformative force.

For everyone involved in creating, tending to, and maintaining it.

Keep doing it (Love).


be well; be loved,


k.


(image via misanthropicmessiah tumblr)