Monday, July 30, 2018

Lemonade, Grass Stains and My Arms Around You: A Mid-Summer Reflection

Here is to having manifested and continuing to manifest almost the exact summer I have wanted for this year.  Travel and visitors and food and quasi-filth and the night and good, good people and music to experience it all with.

I.

Last night I met up with Sadie and we went to a different waterfront with soft serve and caught up on the goings-on of the past month.  She loves and supports folks in her life so well.  It always feels good to hear what's going on with her.  The balance of support and love not only feels good, but I feel like I learn a lot from her each time we hang out.  I like how she has my back. It always feels measured, with integrity, and then just straight out raw as fuck when someone is doing me wrong. If *she* is ever mad about some shit going on, you *know* something is wrong.  Integrit-ied love is where it's at.

II.

Last night I finished registering for classes and ordered the textbooks through the library via the sneaky ways that most people are too lazy to look into.  I love it. It saves money, but also gives an injection of library savagery that I love.  I can't wait to start.  The classes look incredible and the content endlessly exciting. It feels good to have supportive folks in my life around this, and definitely folks who are in the same wobbly boat as me in it.  Onward we go, us scholarly misfits and dream having hooligans.

III.

Michi and I are talking about going to LA together and going to tiki bars because, well of course we are. Plus, Casey is already coming up with an agenda for us (which will include the most absurd and glorious things ever). It is summertime, life is short, and there are so many reasons to go. (The shared adventure, Bradly, food, sun, that theater that I really want to go to, more food...)

For now, however, I find myself in air conditioning about to get down to business. There is a time for work and for play and, lately, I find myself smiling widely doing both.






Be well; be loved,

k.
(image RED #1 styled and shot by J. Quazi King via quazimottoonwax tumblr)

Saturday, July 28, 2018

Shit Got Me In My Feelings/Gotta Be Real With It

While staying out until 4 in the morning is worth it at times (last night), what results the next day (today) is both elation (because I'm running on pure adrenaline), followed by fitful naps, followed by total emotional filterlessness.

In times of such emotional filterlessness, I separate myself from society as soon as I feel it coming on.  It's kind of hilarious, in ways. I have too much emotion, read a lot of books and listen to a lot of music, but fall asleep a lot during all of it.

In the end, I end up listening to Drake's In My Feelings and getting all emo, reflect too much, and then continue to jump out of my car door as I have been all month reenacting my In My Feelings Challenge and over and over again and aiming to not end up under the tire or any other unfortunate situation seen in  some of the fail reels.

But, fuck.

This shit has got me in my feelings.

It's passing. I just need to get to bed.

(pause)
 

Are you riding?


k.


P.S. I honestly think one of the best is in this video , the third or fourth person (red shirt; day glow shoes)

(title: lyrics from the song discussed)
(image from toutpourlamour-blog tumblr)

Friday, July 27, 2018

Patience and Taste

Tonight will be incredible.

I'm really excited that good friends of Casey's are in town and that Eugene will assist me in entertaining them.  It's ridiculous how good he is at it. Seamless.

My outfit is both fabulous and insane. (Serving murder trash realness).  I'm currently listening to Wig In a Box, of course, because it is 100% how I arrive at femme.   Joey, Damon, Leilani, Melanie, Xavi and possibly Meri will all be there tonight.  I'm really excited that people are humoring me to come out to support this ordeal. If there's one thing I can do, it's get people excited to meet other good people.

The past two days have been 4am work wake up calls and not enough time for anything. It will be nice to finally just unwind and smile and have fun.

In the meantime, here is a one character play. I credit both Casey and I on this one.

(Curtain opens.)

(We see THE BUTCHER pacing back and forth, then reaches for a cell phone and starts to type on its screen)

THE BUTCHER (aloud to self while typing):  Change of plans. I have recently become a tightrope walker and will be performing for the next  few weeks 24 hours a day.  I was only supposed to be the understudy tightrope walker but the regular person has shingles.

(THE BUTCHER continues to pace, but nods head to self, decidedly.)

(Curtain closes.)





be well; be loved,

k.

(credit goes to Casey for some of the lines of this play. The funnier ones.)
(image Serge Lutens via exercicedestyle tumblr)

Monday, July 23, 2018

Kitchen Caring, or, Watching the Last of the Sugar Dissolve Into Boiling Water



Last week I finally cracked open the fancy olive oil she bought me.  It's a beautiful bottle, and she is loved, but I figure it's best to get rid of frivolous and edible reminders.  I'm about a third of the way though the crushed pepper sauce stuff she got me.  It would be gone by now, but Secret Aardvark is around throwing competition.  Different foods; different spices.  I could live on them both.

Using the oil,  I cooked up a ton of roasted vegetables and other food for dinner and for the week while listening to some music that was sent to me in recommendation. It was nice to be cooking by myself on a Sunday evening. The house filled with heat and steam and the aroma of onions and vegetables of every imaginable color.  It reminded me of this time last year, when I was addicted to making all sorts of food to take with me for lunch and would pull all sorts of people into it.  Guest co-chefs in my kitchen. It's good to be back in this space. It's what I'm used to, and where I like to be. It's fun to cook with people so I can learn a thing or two from them.  I love the food that I make, but I tend to be a one trick pony as it relates to cooking.  (Baking is a different story, but cooking, I have my seven to ten dishes that I adore and could eat until I die.)

I've been thinking about the role that food has always played in Marilyn's life. (Marilyn is a community leader I've known for upwards of 15 years now since I met her by luck and organizing in the midwest once when she was there). Food is always what links people in organizing, community, culture, family. Marilyn has always been more overt in it's placement, I guess. She's big on the abundance theme, and it works. There always feels like there is more than enough food and love and time and light with and around her. Everyone pitches in on various levels, but she is always the person providing the bulk of the food. That stuff about the love going into food creating and binding communities is true.  I've been thinking about this a lot.  I've been thinking about what it means to be connected, held, loved, supported. Providing all of those things, and receiving all of those things. Where and how it happens.  Yes, it is in the details. But, yes, it is also - so much so and in an irreplaceable way -  in the food.

I also, recently, finally finished Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.  There's a lot on my mind these days. Somehow everything seems to echo in on itself when it has to do with matters of the heart.



be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Ed Moses, Mal-a-Vitch (1973) via fuckyeahexpressionism tumblr)

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Let It Fall: The Beauty, in Sound, of Shedding Skin

Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon.  We may ask what is relevant, but anything beyond that is dangerous. 

He's a liar. The demon is a liar.

He will lie to confuse us, but he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us.  The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don't listen to him. 

Remember that: Do not listen.

--Father Merrin,  The Exorcist



Last night was beautiful. Community appreciation and recognition of leaders and bad asses with hearts and minds of gold are no joke. When I think of how to combat some of what is going on in the world, this is part of it.  This kind of community building is part of it.  I feel incredibly honored to be in the presence of leaders from all sorts of generations and backgrounds. Their hilarity and humility is contagious.

I've been listening to the set that M did for KEXP back closer to the beginning of the year.  It's fucking incredible and keeps getting into my dreams.  The first time I listened to it, I dreamt of water for three nights straight.  I enjoy being able to ask him about it and investigate some of the more eerie samples. Fuck yes to artists and art and having them sitting right across from you at midnight to smile with and open.


Create what you want, need, and desire to see in this life,

k.

(Image via humanoidhistory tumblr: The ancient Roman ruins at Baalbek, Lebanon, February 1970)

Friday, July 20, 2018

True Love and the Patience of the Sea

Tonight is clean floors and incense; warm lights and propped up legs.  A solo night in to prepare for this weekend and to learn from people who aren't me via books, comedy, and podcasts.

I just finished listening to What's the Tee Episode 161 : Falling Asleep in the Poppies, and was quite moved by it.

Let me tell you why and why I truly love the fact that Michele and Ru do this podcast.  One of the things I appreciate about Ru is that he is very forthright and honest about his struggles with depression.  He talks a lot about how creative people, who are sensitive to the world around them in a way people who are less creative may not be, are both able to see the magic in the world but also feel and are tempted by the darkness within it.

In this episode, an episode that went very deep in a way it doesn't usually, Michele reveals that she has recently found out that her first boyfriend (who she was with for about 4 years), has killed himself.  From that point, they discuss suicide, depression, creativity, survivors of suicide (parents and kids) and a number of other things.  The title of the episode comes from one of Ru's favorite scenes in The Wizard of Oz that, for him, speaks to the mirage that is life and what people can fall danger to if they are unable to hold on to the fact that it is a mirage.

Of course it made me think both of Travis, who died by suicide, and of R who taught me a lot about being a survivor of suicide.

I just appreciate and love that Ru and Michelle put this out there. For themselves, for each other, for the queer babies out there, for me, for the artists, for everyone. I don't know if there's an episode I listen to of theirs that I don't laugh or tear up to, but this one was one of the more important ones, without question.  Give it a listen if you get the chance.

(pause)

Meanwhile, I'm thinking a lot about last night.  Thinking about how much I love people and their stripes of humor, thinking about the tenderness of the new intersection of lives, thinking about how many perspectives are out there in the world.

Last night I went to see an exhibit I've wanted to see for a while now with a person whose mind (and eyebrow gestures) I admire. Something I enjoyed was when he talked about how reading excites him because it causes him to imagine and experience worlds that he would have never imagined, and how it relates to his relationship to spices and cooking and coming up with tastes that were previously unimagined.  Art, indeed, is everywhere.

Things are good, golden, sad, shining, and elated - all at once.  But most importantly, they are blooming, piece by piece, and peace by peace, with a recognition of one's ability to impact another human in their life, and with all of the space in the world for my feelings to exist and be loved.

It is somehow so fitting that a bit over a week ago, on Thursday morning, I woke up to a single, white flower just starting to bloom on a plant I didn't even know flowered (I've had it for about a year). And equally fitting that, this morning, I woke up to a second flower appear out of nowhere a few inches from the first.

Growth and spirit. Separate and together. 



Special shout out, once again, to Casey who has taught me more about the ability to and the depth of love than I could have ever imagined.  I don't know if I'll ever completely comprehend the amount of alignment that happened for us to have met so long ago and to have grown with each other so much. And all while bantering about everything from corsets and the difficulty of lining a jacket, to what it means to be so easy to care about.

We are.

So are you.



Be well; be loved,

k.

(image via art propelled tumblr)

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Plot Points


Today was spent hanging out with A, who I do not see often and whom I absolutely love.  He's someone that I feel so fortunate to have as someone in my life. It kind of blows my mind how he can orchestrate so many things on such large levels and still have the attention to detail and quick mindedness to know what matters and is important to the people he claims as friends. (Here, I am thinking of him a number of months ago offering his email to an asshole in a position of power that was assuming/wanting mine.) It's been a good bulk of chapters that we have written by now and, somehow, I always feel like we are just getting to the best part. I suppose that's true of all of my closest people.

There are so many things I've learned from and laughed at with him.  Here is to those that are the rough edges of back home mixed with creating, being and sharing the love, support and gentleness we have always wanted.

I love that when we hang out, I think of our conversations for days and weeks to come.  It's always such good content to let simmer and grow.  It will also always be hilarious to add on to a list of "If I am found dead in this situation (insert situation here), I want you to know what really happened" ongoing list.

(pause)

This past weekend was exactly what I needed.  It does feel indulgent to be out of town all weekend and then take a day off  like today to hang out with one of my favorite people, but, that is why I do the work I do:

So that I can do exactly this.

(pause)

I am both nervous and excited about tomorrow. I am overthinking superfluous details while simultaneously overlooking main content. Such is the nature of things that quicken the pulse and excite the brain.

Either way:


Here's to it.





be well; be loved,

k.

(image via witchesxsabbath tumblr. Original source unknown)



Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Silent Servant




A sentence I particularly enjoyed today:

That time she was wearing a backless dress and was so drenched with sweat that even her pearl  necklace was slippery. 

                                     -- Ryu Murakami,  Almost Transparent Blue




(title: I've been listening to some of the Negative Fascination album from Silent Servant as of late)

Thursday, July 12, 2018

Touché: When Your Love is Swapped Out for a Sandwich Board and a Painting of Boobs



His pupil, too, listened within himself, saw fragments of lines of notes before him, saw something moving, something stepping, dancing, and hovering, and tried to perceive and read the movement as if it were the curves in the line of a bird's flight.

--Hermann Hesse; The Glass Bead Game 


Okay, so, remember when I said a while ago that I was working on an art piece to mail to my friend E?  Well, I finished it, wrote a letter with it, and sent it out last Friday.

I am *the worst* at keeping surprises when it is me trying to surprise someone.  But somehow I knew that it would be important to keep it a surprise. Somehow I knew the timing was right even though the gift was almost 9 months overdue.

Today she posted a photo of the piece on her Instagram with such a beautiful message, but sent a separate message to me that made me absolutely cry. It included the sentence: I'm going through the roughest time of my life and this came at the most absolutely divine moment.

How is it that you make someone something to show your love and appreciation of them and somehow you end up getting exactly that in return?

On one hand: No idea.

On the other hand: All of the idea in the world.

Be good to each other out there:

Be brave. Love hard.

It matters. So do you.




be well; be loved,

k.

(photo taken by me, tonight, sitting where she was that night.)

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

The World Worth Swimming


Pt I.

Here's what I've got:  It may be no pants, but it also may be charming humor.

I've been offline for a bit cultivating some good things to come.  There are lots of good things in the air.

I've been going to see lots of really good music in really queer contexts and it's really feeding something in me. Music always has. Sure I've been staying out later than I probably should, but it's paying off in good conversations, music recommendations, and literature nerdiness. It also makes the distance between hearts feel a little smaller knowing that folks I love are listening to some of the same music in cities speckled all over the country.

[Note to self: You have left a tomato in your bag. Do not forget to remove it before the day gets going.]

Pt II.

A beautiful moment tonight was driving with my windows rolled down on an empty street and listening to Nights.

It is summer.

Pt III

Sometimes I wish you'd just let go and let yourself fall backwards into the proverbial pool of love.  You'll be alright. Your fam will get you. They're/we're here. You'll be scared while you're falling and you won't trust if you'll be met with water or concrete until it hits you. You'll probably even punch out at the air a few times while you go down. That's alright.  It's how people who grew up like us can be in these situations, and even some people who didn't.  You'll be drenched and maybe you'll swallow accidental gulps of water and think you're going to die for a while. You won't.  Maybe you'll be momentarily embarrassed with how your hair looks, or maybe you'll feel insecure about what to do next.  That's alright. It doesn't have much to do with looking cool or knowing what to do. It just has to do with direction. Love and trust can feel like kryptonite at times but, don't worry.  They aren't.  I've always tried to aim you in the right direction. The direction that, ultimately, will make you glow.  Even in the worst moments, somewhere in the depths of your own pools you've known that. Keep going and don't let the fact that your feet can't touch the bottom scare you:  This is the weightlessness that we all deserve. This is the tide that makes your stomach lurch, but it is also the tide that brings you home.  I look forward to seeing your illumination one day from afar:

a glowing and proud ferry cutting the black waters at night.



be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Barney Kulok via 20 aliens tumblr)

Tuesday, July 10, 2018

(The Good Kind of) Unstoppable Force


I was up early today, got dressed and ready for the all day job I would have and felt nervous about, then received an email that it was cancelled. I'm grateful for being able to, instead, be paid to FaceTime with a friend, take off all of my work clothes and get into just an oversized t-shirt for bit, and eat bagels before getting dressed again and heading out.

I keep thinking about how one's life can change in the course of a few weeks.

I'm experiencing that fairly profoundly right now.

Everything in its right place, indeed.

Things feel good and the doors that I have discovered and passed through, even better.


(pause)

Last night involved a conversation about Tanizaki, Dazai, Bataille, and Murakami. It was exactly what was needed.  It also involved the utterance of the perhaps accidentally profound declaration:  

"I've learned to keep things decent."






Be well; be loved,

k.

(photo: Thomas van der Zaag via untrustyou tumblr)

Saturday, July 7, 2018

Running Your Fingers Over the Shape of Ideas

I've started reading The Glass Bead Game, finally.

Hermann Hesse reminds me of being 19 or 20. Reading Steppenwolf and broodily over-relating. (I won't front: I still over-relate to that book at times).  I recall reading Siddhartha, as well, but it not having as profound of an impact on me.  The Glass Bead Game, however.  I am curious where it will take me.  A closest friend of mine has made reference to it for years and, now that I'm reading it, I can see so much of him in it.  Pieces of it are lost on me (I am in love with music, but know so very, very little about the actual mechanics of it), but those parts don't impede me from being very engaged with it.

I have come to the part (still in the very beginning of the book) when contemplation is made to be a part of the Glass Bead Game in part to thwart savants with the ability to memorize from just regurgitating/reciting, and thus meditation is made a mandatory part of the game.

I'll have more to say about these themes and what the game is, soon, but not tonight.

Last night was late, with too many new characters, and my mind simply needs to settle.

To be still.




Until then, fight to be a good person that you respect and feel good about.


Be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Will Davidson photo of Kylie Minogue for Vogue Australia, 2014)
("fight to be a good person that you respect and feel good about" is a quote from a Jessica Lanyadoo post that resonated. I'm not sure if they are her words or someone else's, but there they are.)

Monday, July 2, 2018

One Finger, Two Fingers, Three Fingers, Four

It was the perfect early evening to meet up with someone and wash our cars together, and so I did just that. We met smack dab at 8:45- still light out, but on the cusp of dark.

As per usual, someone at the car wash will inevitably be blasting music- wonderfully ignoring the "No Loud Music" signs so that all of us can enjoy the sound while we work. Mostly boys and men with crisp baseball hats and sparkling jewelry that do a double take at women cleaning their cars at night. It always feels so friendly. Welcoming. Fun. Sometimes I chat methods with the boys and men: There's always an amused curiosity in their eyes.

Here's what you need to know about me and washing cars:

I will try and get any and everyone to go wash cars with me.  Yes, there are a number of people in my life who have preferred the drive-thru type car wash, but I always attempt to lure these folks (sometimes virgins, sometimes not) to go with me to a do it yourself place. Some are willing to take me up on it.  Some are not. No matter what my relationship is to the person, car washing with a person is one of the most important bonding experiences with me.

Unrelated or related, depending on the person: It is also one the sexiest things in the world to me.  Washing a car is like sex to me, and to observe how someone else washes their car is much like a window (or a preview, depending on your relationship to the person) into how they fuck. Sometimes I will watch. Sometimes, I will stick to my own business. But when I observe, I observe their attention to detail, their willingness to get dirty, their level of unblinkingness when they get wet, the level of un-self-conscious positions they are willing to get into while vacuuming, the amount of pressure, of force, of delicacy --- all of it.

Tonight it was July and a few random fireworks could be heard booming and exploding in the distance.

It is summertime, indeed. 

(pause)

I had a long conversation with one of my favorite people in the world today. We covered everything imaginable and the beauty of a mystery that must remain unsolved because solving it would dissolve its very bones and direction.

For now, something I've jotted down to fill in the blanks of things that make my toes curl in the best of ways:

Nothing Feels Better Than...  (A Poem)

People who influence
and are open to influence
(not in relation to drugs
but rather)
of the intellect
the mind
the body
the heart
the flesh
there is no other singular way to open me
than all five of these at once

Medical fetish fully owned
because we all know those antique gadgets
are merely just tempts of measured torture
mixed with today's
steel instruments lined up
in order
one by one by one
upon
fresh thin noisy paper
the smell of astringent
mixed with latex gloves

The dress that exposes my collar bone
continuing down
past my breasts
to two inches above my waist
black against the pale of my skin
back straight
chin high
follow the line that goes
from my lips
to my neck
and continues
all the way down my chest

My ideas of
adventures and art and music and aesthetics and politics and family and humor and sex
mixed together
with the ideas of another
Actualized
a mystery box of us both
the kind used in science classes
Opaque, thick-painted wooden boxes with hinged lids
and a hole cut into one side
for you to reach in
and feel
not knowing what it holds
The thrill and the terror
of not knowing
what we will find
but always being curious and connected and true enough
to slide your hand inside

The mark
and the bravery
of truly wanting
to know




-k.

(image is Bondage 506 by Dusty and Lara via tumblr via picssr dot com)

Sunday, July 1, 2018

Six


Today and tonight has been a good one.  The weather excites me. It is something about the wind that happens at night, the color of the sky, and the proximity I have been as of late to the water. It's this time of year that I feel like walking for miles at night. Anywhere and everywhere. And if I pass a 7-Eleven with its weird over-illumination- even better. So much home in the sight.

For tonight, here is a list of six things I'm grateful for:


That I wanted to build with someone: That almost never happens, and I'm really into having felt that.
That I have brilliant minds to collaborate with on writing.
That I have a place to live.
That I have fam that make me think and laugh and who keep me loved in all of the right and collaborative ways that change us all for the better.
That I have food.
That I had conversations with a friend of mine who also went to one of the rallies and her takeaways and perspectives, passed on to me, have influenced my thinking about what it means to love and support your neighbors and the people around you.

 

Be well; be loved,

k.

Morning tarot card drawn over coffee and lavender lemon pound cake: The High Priestess. Of course it was with all of this dream communication and intuition that's been happening. Everything guided into its right place, indeed. In time.
(image by Dorota Górecka via uccellinoazzurro tumblr)

Sandman and the Rudders of the Ship

Last night I had the dream that I needed to. It will never not amaze me how the human mind and subconscious can point you to the exact people and actions that need to transpire. It is both shocking and certain how entire the feeling is once you are given a necessary direction. It can be strange to wake up with a determination in your heart that wasn't there when you fell asleep, but it can also be incredible to feel like a clue in a fancy yet sooty envelope has been slipped to you by a gloved hand while you sleep.

For now, it will be me and activism and books and friendships and probably hiding under my bed for hours from time to time.

It is my blueprint and necessity.

(pause)

Related and unrelated, I do have this self centered thing to say because this bullshit winked its asshole eye at me this morning:

Now is not the time to reveal that you have had a crush on me. It just bums me out and makes me think that you've just been listening to my stories enough to know when I am "finally and actually single".  Anyone with half an eyeball towards my heart or mind would know that this is not the time for that kind of reveal. My heart is sad and there is a beauty in that to respect. I'm not going to numb out and fast forward and all of that crap.  "I'm not that type of bitch", as they (Cardi B) say(s). I will be that little faggot dandy that will need time for a proper burial and send off for my little heart and for a new, seasoned, and bigger one to return in its place.

(pause)

Lastly, again un-related:

1. Everyone has to do something and everything against the detention centers and family separation.

2. Fuck the Janus Decision. Stay in your union. If you start a job that is union, choose to be in it.


be well; be loved

k.