City Night

Focused, excited and utterly exhausted.  This first week of school is attempting to kick my ass, but I am keeping up.

In the other moments of today I have been walking a lot.

In a humorous moment this evening, I was waiting to meet up with a friend on a bench outside one of those fancy date-y ice cream places. I sat on one end of the bench reading by the light of the streetlamp. A few minutes later, a man and a woman very obviously on a date sat down on the other end of the bench.

As they giggled and kissed and discussed their ice cream flavors on one end of the bench, I sat reading an article on how stigma impacts the self esteem of people with mental health issues on the other.

I have a feeling this is going to sum up my life for a while.

When has it not?




Be well; be loved,


k.

I can't bring myself to delete the videos of me and her cat having conversations in her bed when she wasn't at home. They are so adorable. That cat fucking loves me.

(image: Shibuya via m-i-s-o tumblr)

Don't Say a Word: The Art of Attention to Detail

When we walked into the restaurant, there was a line almost out of the door to get food to go.

Without hesitating, he says "I'll wait in line for us." He turns and in one motion and both arms he scoops all of the plates and napkins and glasses off of an unbussed table, dumps them in a nearby bin, turns back around and pulls out a chair for me to sit down. I do.

These kind of gestures matter to me.

I  appreciate them.

I like it when someone can top and serve at the same time like that.

(Here I'm reminded of the first time I hung out with A, years ago, and some of my coffee spilled on the table. He had removed his hanky from his pocket, wiped up the mess in one broad stroke, and placed it back into his left back pocked before I had even registered that it had spilled.)

I find it to be impressive, complex, thoughtful and steady all at once. There is a momentary loyalty in it that I covet beyond what I can articulate in words.

I appreciate these invisible movements that are at once so entirely, and enjoyably, palpable.



be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Louise Bourgeois- Arch of Hysteria, 1993 via lecollecteur tumblr)

Reflecting Skin, or, What is it That You See When Your Eyes Rest Upon Me?

Tonight is the night.  The full moon and rituals associated with what you want to keep, covet, protect - and what you want to sever ties with.

Candles and incense and truth within the heart.

If you don't lie, there is nothing you have to remember.

Some strings are the easiest to keep tied tightly, and some are the easiest to sever.

Some strings are more difficult to keep tied tightly, but there is too much truth and family within the connection for it to be one that hits a cutting room floor.

(pause)

I had a conversation with someone last night and face to face that has been about eight months in the making.

I am ready to let it go.

I may love wearing silver with abandon,

but I will not wear your mirrors.




From within a circle of candles and a pool of smoke,


k.
(title: The name of a weird vampire film I was obsessed with, for years.)
(image: I have used this image before, but, how can I not? It is a self portrait by Egon Schiele as St. Sebastian)

Glory, or, The Fabric of Frenzy

Current state of affairs:

One of the the things I love the most is having a very favorite tank top to wear with the underwear that look like little shorts and curling up on my bed to write late at night after a productive and eventful day/night. On top of that, tonight, I have a favorite incense burning in the hallway. It is frankincense, but a particular, thicker stick and smoke.  It smells like campfire to me and makes me feel like the best of both worlds:  A slumber party and a bonfire- all panties; no mosquitoes.  What could be better?

I'm coming home late tonight.  This morning was filled with family and a little serious nephew I adore and over relate to. The highlight of this afternoon was the wait staff at a restaurant giving him a small bowl of chalk in which to draw on the chalkboard table. He immediately spilled the stumps of colored chalk onto the table and organized them into piles by color and just left them there.  Throughout the meal, if he started getting antsy or nutty, all I would have to do was reach over, grab one of the pieces of chalk, and place it into a pile other than the color of said chalk. He would immediately get quiet and serious again as he picked up the mismatched chalk and placed it into its proper pile.

Later on was filled with pre-semester preparations and postings.  I am very excited and have met some of the people who will be in my program. School starts on Monday: I can't wait!

Other than that, I've been having thoughts and conversations revolving around utopia/dystopia that have been satisfying and igniting in equal parts. I'm excited lately about chivalry and toughness; delicacy and security. I like feeling physically safe. I like feeling taken care of. I like feeling cared for. These three things are things that feel good to receive and to give.  They all lead to learning and love and, best of all, just straight up mthafkin joy.

Things feel good as of late. Big.Wide. Flourishing.

Keep the path, and keep linked with people who truly want you to grow. There is room for everybody here, but first you have to be able to see and believe that you are warmly invited.

You are.

Shout out to my friends that know the art of making a decently convincing fake blood batch in a pinch. Your genius and heart never end.



Be well; be loved,

k.

(image via mudwerks tumblr)

She Says "That's For You", Then the Recording Cuts Off

Currently spread across clean sheets while the tail end of a ton of travel laundry tumbles its way through the dryer.  I've been out of town for the past week. I got home this evening and immediately dove into all of the tasks associated with Sunday nights, but on Wednesday. My suitcase is almost back to empty and can almost be placed back into my closet for the next time I slip out of town with brief trace. My plants have survived, as have I.  It feels good to be home. 

The past three days, in particular, have been filled with a particular type of reflection that feels good.

Other than that, the past week has been filled with good conversations.  Presence. Audio notes from favorite friends.  Laughter. Exhaustion from a good day's work. Tarot. Bleached sheets.  Hotel swimming pools. Tight sweaters. Leg wear.  Heels. Dental floss. Intelligence. Deep sleep. Connection.  Getting into a bit of a confrontation with a Proud Boy that involved me shouldering him. Really, really good vegetarian biscuits and gravy.

I've been around a lot of conversations about sex lately and, following, have been thinking a lot about sex lately.  More so than usual, if that is possible. Thinking about sex that's been had, sex that hasn't been had, and sex that never got to be had. I get enjoyably trapped in my mind sometimes with the topic of sex and, in celebration of this fact, simply take it out via my wardrobe. Sex is so psychological for me. So is gender expression. But it is the fusion of these two things that makes it almost impossible for me to concentrate: All this energy with none of the focus. An exercise in harnessing energy. It's fun to see what comes out of it. So flammable it is.

The remedy, of course, is just as gratifying as the illness, but this time around I want a bit more time to reminisce.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image via stylemasculin-blog tumblr)

Flammable Foldings

I.

It feels incredible to be protected in a way that still supports my agency. It is such a rare combination. I am not used to it, but intend to enjoy every single moment of it. I am incredibly grateful for it. I am equally fascinated by it. It makes me want to do, and be, better.

II.

Today was spent at a history-related museum with a very close friend of a very close friend and, of course, I think she is wonderful.  I interviewed her for/about an upcoming art performance she will be doing here in the winter time having to do with API folks who grew up, more or less, in their parents' restaurants (the project is called, aptly, Restaurant Babies). She gets/understands/lives Spoon Theory (Christine Miserandino), so we could just cut through so much important shit super quickly.  It's been a while since I've found myself, on a weekday, laying in the grass of a central park and talking about life with someone so candidly that I haven't known for very long, but who I've heard about for years.

III.

Some of the things I have thought about today (a list):

Approaching anniversaries. Of both celebratory moments, and of the marking of losses and deaths including but not limited to a best friend's birthday and the death of a good friend two years ago now.

How much I love it when someone curates and sends the music I fall asleep to at night.

The amount of power one  holds when they are the only person in the room that knows all of the languages being used.

How thankful I am to have once met and dated an inspiringly organized good person who was never a liar.

The way that everything is unfolding as of late.

The way my heart feels right now.

The way shyness, sometimes, still gets the best of me.




be loved, be well,

K.


(image: David Prifti via inneroptics tumblr)

The Action of Love, or, How Unconditional Love Doesn't Equate Just Letting People Be a Dicks

Unconditional love and acceptance is beautiful and healthy and appropriate on one level.  But on another level, there needs to be conditions. When you love somebody, without the condition of "I know what I need in order to be healthy and right with myself",  when that condition isn't asserted and maintained by you, then you're not doing a good job of love.  Because if you don't love yourself - in action- it's really hard to recognize when someone else is not loving you - in action.

                              -Jessica Lanyadoo



Today, it has officially become official. I have paid tuition and Bitch Betta Have My Education.  I can't wait. The next few months will let me know how this is going to roll and exactly how much I'm going to have to WORK (and werk, but that goes without saying) to support my success in this.

I've been reading nonstop in some sort of reactionary way before all of my reading is handed to me. So, for now, I continue on with texts on white fragility, on gorgeous literature critiquing academia while simultaneously giving love towards those who snuggle closely with people and books and ideas and conversations more readily than going to a packed bar on a Saturday night.

I feel the thirst of what I need in the back of my throat.  I feel the excitement in my fingertips of writing and page turning and shoulder tapping. I am also thrilled that tomorrow two fabulous people will be in town that I get to see and that I have also just received word from a best friend of a best friend who will also coming through town. We will make a party of it. Good people with good hearts all around.  Add some incredible food, sunshine and water, and there we are.

As an aside: I have been more present in my life in the past two and some months than I have in my life.  It feels incredible.  I'm on day 78 of meditation and let me tell you: It changes shit. 100. You see things more clearly and are just driven and attracted to what feels good. What feels right. What feels healthy. What feels open and hilarious and leaves you up at 11:30 at night laughing so hard there are tears streaming out of both of your eyes.

It feels good.


Be well; be loved.  Keep creating and please keep telling and showing me all about it.


k.


(image: Come Back as a Flower No. 5 via 66lanvin tumblr)

I Know You're Special Girl, Because I Know Too Many

You go to my head and you linger like a haunting refrain 
and I find you spinning round in my brain
Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne

(Thank you Marlene Dietrich, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and everyone else who sang this song. No thank you to most of what this passage describes. I would prefer a clear mind.)

----

Good morning.

It is roughly 6:41am on a Friday. I have been up and working since roughly 4:30am. It is an infrequent occurrence, but the novelty of it is enjoyable.  On days like this, while watching the sky at such an absurd hour, I think of a person I know who gets up like clockwork very early each weekday morning and how we see the same sky and the same oddly empty city.

----

I've been reading White Fragility by Robin Diangelo. I have read articles by her and the concept over the years, and ideas have been super helpful both to me personally but also to foster conversations, and I was interested in reading the book she wrote on it.  There is information and concepts that translate into tools to be used both in my own thinking and in addressing some of the thinking of other white folks. It's plugging into something that feels necessary on quite a few levels at the same time, which is always satisfying.


----

In other news, there has been a theme of parents as of late. Mine. That of friends. That of artists I admire but don't really know but who are open and raw in their willingness to share/connect. There has been a lot going on, and in so many different directions. For me, gratefully, it has been a duo of positive moves in the second and third generations of my parents. News that has and will impact things in such a deep potential for growth. It's strange to think how much a decision or two or three can change the course of everything.

Somehow related and not related at all (and here I will admit it may be that in such early hours of the day I am a bit more emotionally filterless than usual), I am being struck by this story about an Orca in the Pacific Northwest. Somehow, it is fitting to all of the above.  You can read about it here.

Be good out there.  There are so many things to be grateful for, and an equal amount of things to fight for.

be well; be loved,

k.

(title: variation of a lyric from In My Feelings)
(italicized words from the song You Go to My Head)
(image: Daido Moriyama, Love Motel, 1970 via tamburina Tumblr)

A Shared History of Castles, or, Meet Me at Midnight Pt 2

Let me tell you about utilitarian chivalry.

(Here, simply because of the world we live in, I must specify that chivalry has nothing to do with gender or a prescriptive notion of gender roles.)

Something occurred early last week that, when I've told people the story, each person's mouth has dropped open and they have used words like hero, diamond, incredible. That is, if they even believe the story.  If I hadn't been directly involved in it, I would believe exactly zero of the story.

 (pause)

Yes, I can take care of myself.

But it is a beautiful and loving eye that can see I shouldn't have to and don't want to (none of us should), and puts actions behind supporting me or simply getting me out of a jam.

(pause)

We were sitting at a bar by his house catching up on our past few days, getting a nightcap before Wednesday was upon us. It was getting late. 12:30. I told him I had to get home because I had an early job the next day. We settled up. He asked me if he could walk me to my car and we walked the few blocks laughing.  At some point, however, I realized I didn't have my phone.

We retraced the three blocks, asked at the bar: Nothing.

Then I remembered I had my laptop in my trunk and I could try and track the phone.  At this point it was about 1am. We drove around trying to connect to wifi from closed cafes.  Around 1:30,  I had remotely locked the phone with contact information and my companion tried calling the phone a few times.  At some point the person who had it called my companion's phone (the number I had programmed as the call back number) by accident. When he answered the person who had the phone hung up and shut the phone off.

For the 20 minutes while the phone was on, it was being tracked to one place without moving:   The freeway. Now, this meant that either someone had thrown it out onto the freeway or, as was confirmed by the accidental call back: That it was underneath the freeway at one of the homeless encampments.

"Are you up for an adventure?" he asked. 

"You know it.", I replied.

He had mentioned being hungry, so we stopped and got him a sandwich at the grocery store before we drove to the spot the phone had been traced to.

"Do you still have that bat in your car?" he asked, jokingly.

"Yes, but we won't need that."

By now it was two in the morning. I parked. He told me to stay in the car, and I saw him disappear under the freeway.

I waited about 10 minutes and then was like "fuck that", and got out to follow.

Under the freeway, there is a significant drop off and a mixture of pavement and trees.

I jumped.

I landed on kind of a baby tree of sorts. The terrain went more or less straight down, so with every step I took, I would slide about a foot or two.  I tried to see as far as I could underneath the freeway.  It was so dark and so loud all at once. The sound there is both incredible and haunting.

All of a sudden, I saw someone bolt through the trees back towards the street. I got up and ran to cut them off and, when I did, I ran right into my companion.

"What are you doing?! Why did you get out of the car?"

"I wasn't going to let you go down there alone"

He laughed and reached into his back pocket.

"Here is your phone."

I yelled and laughed at the same time, and threw my arms around him.

I'll leave the story there.  In short, he crept until he came upon the encampment and hid behind trees.  Finally, when he saw only one person currently at the camp, he snuck up on them, then stepped out and announced he was looking for a phone. The startled person just handed him the phone, seemingly freaked out that he had been located. My companion asked him if he'd like some money for it and he said yeah, so he gave him twenty dollars.  He told him that he lives in the area and next time he sees him around to say hi.

I arrived home that night with twigs and leaves in my hair.

I liked this adventure.  It's not just that it involved us driving through the city on some weird medium-speed chase, or how we were both under the freeway at 2 in the morning on a weeknight, or how it involved strangers and rescue and ambush and humanity.  I liked it because it involved someone going to bat for me in such a blatant way.  I like the feeling of someone having my back in a way that feels good. In a way that I need and, frankly, couldn't or wouldn't be able to do on my own.



Chivalry can be made up of some of the most completely shallow, self-serving concepts.

But it can also be made up some of the most tailored, needed and sublime moments to exist.


And that is what I am continuing to enjoy getting used to.


Bring it.




be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Tim Davis via untrustyou tumblr)

The Taste of Cherries and My Everlasting Love of Necessary Thieves

I coddle my hooligans when I'm not bullying them. I'm visibly charmed by their extra-curricular excesses and their anti-social tendencies. My love for chaos, conspiracy and the dark side of human nature colors the behavior of my charges, most of whom are already living near the fringes of acceptable conduct.
                                               - Anthony Bourdain

There are many things I have seen and tasted in life.  There are many things I am seeing and tasting in life, currently. But for some reason, tonight, I want to take you back to one of the most innocent moments I can remember in my life.  A moment that feels like it should have existed in the 1950s. A moment that feels so pure in comparison to anything else, arguably, that has transpired.

(pause)

When I was a child, I took a piece of candy from the Brach's candy display in my local supermarket.  It was the candy by the pound bulk bin display.  As my mother pushed the cart past the display, I took the piece that I wanted (a candy coated gumball, if I recall correctly), and placed it on the bottom of the cart. The part underneath the cart, for oversized or heavy things.  Somehow, I got the piece of candy to balance between two of the long, parallel, metal bars that made up the shopping cart.

When we got to the line and we emptied the cart onto the black rubber-ish conveyor belt to check out, the candy remained under the cart. We placed the bags back in the cart and walked out to the car.  I took the piece of candy from underneath the cart.

From this point, my memory gets fuzzy.

One of the strange things about having neglectful and/or abusive parents is that, as you grow up, there are moments of potential tenderness or normalcy that become sublime in their stature.  There are only a handful and so, like some type of strange worry doll, we run our minds over them again and again building a fiction of tenderness and lesson that may or may not have ever existed. Generally speaking, there will be two stories that exist in your mind.  One is an idealized version of what should have happened, usually made up of snippets of television shows and of stories from what you've witnessd or heard about other people's parents.  The other is what actually happened. Over time, these stories intertwine forming a strange rope that attempts to lasso any actual facts but, by adulthood, the fiction is as valuable as any type of truth.

What I recall is that I took the candy off the cart and held it in my small hands, twisting and turning it around in a guilty worry waiting for my mother to notice it.  I waited until she asked me where I had gotten the candy and then I readily confessed to her what I had done.  She turned the car around, marched me back into the store, and had me tell the manager what I had done. I felt ashamed, but I also felt loved. I was glad that my mother had fallen into my trap to love me.

Yet at the same time, I have this memory of the indescribable flavor of a singular, stolen, candy.  I recall the texture of the candy coating over the bubble gum.  As I type this, the memory becomes more vivid.  I am certain that it was a candy covered piece of bubble gum. I can feel the shatter of the candy against my teeth, and the incredible mix of sharp candy mixing with the malluable tough of the gum.  I recall the color of it: Red.  The taste of it: Cherry. My palms start to sweat, and my heart starts to race - not with fear, but with anticipation and want.

What is it that truly happened?  More than likely, a combination of the two. More than likely a child who stole a piece of candy and fantasized while chomping on the stolen gem, and for hours and years afterwards, of the intervention of the care and attention of an imaginary parent.

Be well, be loved,

(If you aren't? Just imagine it. Make it up in your head:  It will come.)


k.