Let Me Get That For You: Choreographed Movement For Being Caught in a Sudden Rainstorm

It's taking me time to emerge from a cocoon made something of vital attention and action, and a pandemic. Somewhere, in between it all, I was in grad school. Next semester will be my last. Even as I type that sentence, I feel the soured pain of denied pleasure spread across my face in the beginning of a smile. (It's too early; don't jinx it.)

Since ending my most recent semester last week, I have been wrapped in literature, the news, protest, information, a new razor and a satisfying bar of soap that smells of walnut shells and tar. There are a line of masks hanging by my front door. Some are clear face shields. Most are black. There is a green one in there for a surgical flair and because it feels a bit more precise than the others do.

Today I needed to hide out. The day has been spent mostly in an orange bikini top, a thin black slip, and with a freshly painted pedicure I did myself. A deep blue-green.  I have been watching films in Spanish and noticing, again, the pause and dance that happens in doorways with con permiso and with pasa. I feel satisfied in recognizing the conjugation in the sharp edged gossip of se follaron.

I've spent a good deal of the day on the floor.

Today, no book holds my attention but, in the one book that held my attention for a bit longer than the others, a man is found laying on the floor by his assistant. The assistant asks him if he's okay, if he fell, etc. and the man responds with annoyance at his questions. He is simply smoking on the floor and is it really so strange? He goes on to proclaim the function and necessity of laying on the floor at times:

The ground or, in this case, the floor, is the safest, firmest and most modest place there is; and, as well as providing the best view of the sky or the ceiling, it's an ideal spot in which to do some thinking [...]You'll have to get used to seeing me here, because once on the floor you cannot fall over or, indeed, fall any lower, a great advantage when it comes to making decisions, which one should always base on the worst possible hypothesis, if not on sheer desperation and its usual companion, meanness, then there's no risk of your giving way to sentimentality or being disappointed by whatever decision you happen to take.

be loved; be well,

k.

[Image: Guy Bourdin]
[Excerpt (As if the punctuation did not give it away):  Javier Marías, Thus Bad Begins]

The Firmament Above Your Lighttable, or, Your Meditation Room's Vibrator

Let me tell you something.

It's been a while since I have received one of those electric, invisible, psychic means of communication from you. Here and there, yes. But not like this. I can taste it. I can smell the edge of your shirt collar and the stiff writing instruments you tend to line up like a surgeon or a serial killer: Beauty in your precision.

This morning at 3:45 am I was speeding down the freeway in darkness. A song came on that always makes me think of you. It makes me think of your old apartment: The wood of it, and the old fashioned tile floor in the bathroom. The darkness of the living room, and the brightness of your bathroom. I recall the straight razor you kept on the shelf just under your bathroom mirror. I recall your knees on those tiles that looked like flattened adult and aging teeth. I remember your knees pressing into their coldness that one afternoon you jerked off for me as I stood over you- you pressing into the wood for the door frame for balance.

I see your hands; the palm side of your fingers. Everyone has always told me that tattoos on the insides of ones hands will wear out and away, but, I know that these stay.

I think of the photograph you had of me. The one I took of myself when I had a bloody nose. What you would do with it atop your light table at work: It's the reason my headlights reflecting off the freeway at night conjures you from between the highway lines.

Do you remember that independent perfumer whose potions reminded us of the scent of running full force through a forest at night, lost and in attempt to murder? Slumberhouse. The tiny vile of something else of theirs I gave you.

Last week, a box came in the mail from them that I had been waiting for. Inside of it was a black velvet drawstring bag and, inside of that, a new scent that I had bought with the only description of its scent being a string of words like grey and goodbye; distant and delete. I slid the bottle out of its cloak and sprayed it on my wrists and neck. Sliding my wrists down my forearms and raising them up to my nose. I inhaled so deeply. My lips parted and traced their way down my forearms like a lover's would. The scent was exact and I, as any good and urgent clairvoyant would, wrote it down as it came to me:

It is every witchcraft store I've ever been in if it had been converted into a greenhouse made of the old thick stained glass of churches- but clear, not color- placed in the middle of a field of dry, dead, yellow grass in the middle of a scorching summer. 

There is a forest that surrounds the field, but no trees offer shade or reprieve.  

I feel grounded, tortured, and entirely confident that I can cast perfect spells 

from here on out. 

k.

(image: Guy Bourdin)