Thirst of the Wedding March

I've given myself a 72 hour cap on being the insufferable person who bounces ideas about their thesis off of the majority of people in their life.  Luckily, just shy of the 72 mark, it has been not only decided and solidified - but it has ignited everything in the best of ways.  I look forward to researching and writing it. I can't wait.

I now have three months and two weeks in which to do it.

I'm still chomping at the bit and

as excited as the night before any big event

that keeps you awake at night. 

Thank you to all of those whose ears and eyes I have bent to the ground in discussion. 

In the meantime, I've been picking out lip colors based on documentaries about Jodi Arias
and the only explanation I can offer is that

I

am going


to kill this shit.



Let's go. 


k.

(image: Martina Matencio)

O Say, Can You See

I'm tired of hearing, reading and interpreting the phrase:

during these unprecedented times.

It begs to sound accurate and seismic as, in many ways, I suppose it should be.

But capitalism sucks up a phrase to attach different meanings and weight to a word (insert every commercial ever made with variations of join the revolution and revolution, here)

and here we are with the prerecorded robot voice of business customer service lines making excuses for long hold times due to  

these unprecedented times.




I wish I could tell you what is said and unsaid.

I wish I could tell you of communication during crisis.

Communication during COVID, during the uprisings and protests, during job loss, during life loss, during benefits that never show up and during news being passed.

I wish I could tell you of what I see.

Of being a white interpreter conveying communication between a Black mother and her son. Of being the interpreter conveying last communications between family members. Of being the interpreter during a call contemplating suicide.

I can't tell you.

I can only allude to it.

But to these corporations:

Don't fucking tell me about

these unprecedented times.



k.

(image: Alek Wek photographed by Txema Yeste)

The Difference Between Those Who Smirk When Criticized, and Those Who Pout

Today has felt slightly drugged and overly air conditioned. I've had a hard time keeping my eyes open, no matter the constant stream of caffeine that has been jogging its way through my veins.

One trait of lawyers working within their realm that I have noticed is that, if you ask them a question they don't know the answer to, they will say that. "I don't know the answer to that question. I will have to research that and get back to you." A certain percentage of everyday people, on the other hand, will try and bullshit. Well, you know I think that...blah blah blah...I seem to remember reading somewhere...blah blah blah...when, really: They don't definitively know the answer.

Don't get me wrong, here. I absolutely love a bullshitter in the right context. It is a sport, it is a skill, it is an art form.

But there is also something incredibly thrilling in someone saying quickly, clearly and without an ounce of shame that they do not know the answer to a question.

As it should be. 

(pause)

The other day I found myself daydreaming while laying on an unfamiliar lawn.

A few yards away, I saw a crow feasting on some unknown material in the middle of the road. When a car would come driving toward the crow, the crow would wait until the last minute to give up its feast and levitate into the air. Once the car had passed, it would land its click clack claws back down upon the pavement.

I tried to imagine deciding to live my life like a crow: Deciding to lunch in the middle of the road, a full feast spread before me and a bratty reluctance to protect myself from anything that may come barreling my way.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Robert Frank)

Write Your Day Thus Far in 140 Characters or Less

Galeano & candy sours. The igniting of my body via the brain. Today I had an overactive mind, a bit of a heavy heart, and a neighborhood-wide power outage. Pink wig strands stuck to vanilla scented lipgloss shine; computer blue glow projecting a face of a past I had forgotten.

(image: bbibbi)

Intuitive Reeds and the Sound of Nighttime

I've taken to writing in the dark, again. I've taken to walking my bare feet across a freshly swept cool and dark wood floor toward the couch that my friend demanded I get so that people would stop asking me if I "just moved in". [I like largely empty spaces. I like to feel like I live in something that is between an abandoned building and an unnecessary museum.]

I like it when people read to me. I would like to say that it doesn't matter what language they read to me in, but, it does. Per our conversation tonight, I have to say that I agree with A. that the lyricism of a writer's language, and the way it caresses you - no matter where it is going - makes all of the difference in the world. He read me a beautiful story tonight. I was quiet so that he wouldn't stop reading. I love his reading voice. It is my ear upon the underworld with words being woven around me from deep within its cave.



be well, be loved,

k.


This song will give you both nightmares and release. Hence its name, I suppose. Please do.

https://wizardapprentice.bandcamp.com/track/exorcism

(image: amyzyng)

Accuracy Upon Red Linen

The slim strip of paper sitting atop the split cookie read:

Quit your job. Although the world will be in plague and flames soon thereafter, you will feel more free than you ever have before.

It was followed by the obligatory smiley face and list of lucky numbers.

(pause)

Think of the delicate vase freshly bumped by a velvet patched elbow. The hefty, ceramic teetering. The eventual and certain fall.

Or perhaps the glass that tumbles from someone's fingertips and spins in slow moving wheels as fingers and hands reach and fumble to recover it.  The glass circling in a feigned slow motion, bouncing from flesh to flesh.

The tension and electrocuting brace that ricochets through our bodies.

Our faces that turn slightly away as the moment of shatter comes closer.

Holding.

Go with me into that moment of shatter:

The vase meets floor tile in big, bold pieces while the tiniest slivers shower upwards.

The glass hits hardwood and spreads its shards mixed with the splashing remnants of what it previously held.

Release. 

We can be as careful as we want to be, but at times

it is only the dive into destruction

that can truly set us free.



k.
(image: red by i-shadow)

(Gimme) Everything You Got

I was gifted a bit of an independent perfumer's concoction that smells divine, although it could also be described as smelling like a still-drunk sorority girl laying on her bed with the Sunday morning sun shining in on her through the window. I'm sure this says more about me than the scent. There is something rotten about it: Strawberries that have turned; champagne that was stale in the first place.

Apropos to nothing: People who ask for what they want sexually - directly - will always make me weak in the knees. Even if it is something that can't happen for whatever reason or situation or promise, I love the automatic flush that smears across my face while I maintain eye contact, and the total turn on I experience from the respectful audacity.

(pause)

(pause, Part II)

Yes, I waited for the WAP video to come out. Yes, it is mthrfking incredible. No, I can't stop watching reaction videos because they are great and let me re-live seeing the video for the first time (and are also hilarious). I am only annoyed at the amount of things Youtube blanked out or censored. I wish the video could be seen with the actual song. It censored out a reference to the uvula? Come on. Are you kidding me?

Do not talk to me about a "bad influence" narrative. Women who know what they want are the best influences out there.




be well; be loved,

k. 


The video that is lyrically absurdly censored:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsm4poTWjMs&feature=emb_title

The actual song: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc5IbN4xw70

As an aside, although mostly because of Cardi's openness about having been a dancer:

There is a difference in how women who have worked in sex industry can interact with other women that women (who have not been involved in sex work) can't relate to or see. Women with no experience in sex work won't be able to recognize what it is that I'm describing.

It is subtle, but it is also tangible.

It is invisible, but it is also visceral.

It is both a big "fuck yes" and a big "fuck you'.

It is art.

It is performance.

It is truth.

It is impeccable.




image: Ssense Issey Miyake by Thomas Truam

Fighting for Honor, or, The Sword on Your Wall

I.

Lotion absorbs slowly - differently- into my hands these days. It's as if my hands have cloaked themselves in the questions of 

Have you washed your hands for twenty seconds?

What have you touched?

Have you pulled on the pillars hard enough for this system to, at last, crumble and finally fall?

They are all important questions.  They are all what is in the air while the lotion, reluctantly, starts its journey down into my skin. To dissolve deeply. To be absorbed and, slower these days,  to disappear.

I wonder if the feeling of your fingers on my mouth 

 

will ever be the same.

 

II.

I have been thinking about language again. There is this thing in ASL known as expansion. It is a linguistic trait of ASL that happens sometimes intuitively in a prediction of clarification, and other times, when an aspect of something is unknown or unfamiliar to the other person. 

Either way, in the moment, it is a brief story or illustration that offers an image to meaning.

An example. 

Suppose someone was not familiar with the sign for FIREFIGHTER You sign it. The person responds by  saying "what's that?" to which you would respond (and here I am typing this how it might be signed. Keep in mind there is no written form of the language...) "You know: House, fire ; emergency; what do I do?! Truck red, sirens, speeding, arrives. water, hose big, spray water on house, fire disappear. Person who fire-on-house-spray-water-fire-disappear? Firefighter."

III.

Tonight I had long and energizing conversations with Xavi about the future, the past, ascension and simultaneous realities.

I also came to the conclusion/realization that literally the ONLY people who interrogate me about learning languages [why are you learning (insert language here)? what are you going to do with that? are you going to work for the U.N.?] are U.S. born white people. 

No one else does this.

(pause)

 

My mouth may be bloodied but 

the victory 

will always be seen 

in the earnestness in my eyes 

and the shine of my blade. 

 

 

 be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Yuan Bo Chao By Nick Yang For Marie Claire China May 2020)