The Beauty of What We Keep; The Necessity of What We Give Away

Red sheets and mid-afternoon toast in bed. That good bread. The kind that lets the butter melt into it like perfection and makes it taste how it's supposed to: Not like convenience, but like royalty. The world, of course, stops for no one, but there are strange little crevices that we can dig out and rest in. With a mug of a deep red herbal tea steaming beside me, this is one of them.

A week and a half ago, I finished the literature review of my thesis. At present I am knee-cap deep in the analysis and discovery.

As is my habit when writing, I take breaks to walk or clean while letting things roll around in my mind. Today has been packing up things to go to Goodwill- a prerequisite to my voyage home. My trunk is packed up. Muffled voices are out in the alley behind my house along with the slam of an occasional car door. 

I've been thinking of organization, lately. Of thoughts. Of movements. Even, as mentioned above, the areas that surround us. There are so many directions in which to go in order to make things right. It is a matter of moving in one and not simply standing still. We all have something to offer, to give, to fight, to say. It's important, now more than ever, that we do. 

Here's to the hanging closet organizer an ex gave me years ago, and to the lover that laid her dish gloves delicately across the arch of my kitchen sink faucet. All things worth keeping inevitably serve a function. Let's not lose sight of this in these scattered times. 

Be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Kent Andreasen via arpeggia tumblr) 

Sticks of Wet Straw and the Beauty Between Them

There is nothing I love more than this season with you. The rain has started. The blankets are fresh out of the dryer. There is a brick of tea candles in the closet and a box of matches because you know I love the smell and the strike of them. You have the lighter you carry with you. We both know you carry it with you because I will misplace the matchbox right when I need it most, and you will be there to solve the problem. There is the smell of cinnamon and brown sugar in the air and it's dark enough by 5pm to light the candles. I say a makeshift prayer with every candle: Hovering over the wick with my matchstick trying to find the balance of timing involved in detailing enough what I pray for with the prevention of having the wood burn down to my fingers. Sweaters and tea and painting and the illuminated cave we have made together.

[Image from the film Phase IV (1974)]

(title: I enjoy the way my mouth, teeth and tongue feel saying this. Even if silently.)

Gilding the Lillies

If I could tell you everything, I would.

Two days ago, while driving to the park with the large hill overlooking the water and littered with the rusty things that remind me of home, I was listening to a podcast that mentioned a phrase I had never heard before. I believe it may be from Shakespeare. (I've meant to read him ever since you told me that his writing, in its historical context, was never for the pompous assholes that talk about him now.) The phrase, from what I understand, denotes the decorating of something already gorgeous. The unnecessary quality of adding rouge to the sculpt of beautiful bones, or the pointlessness of placing a swath of silk underneath a diamond.

I've been thinking about the love one feels for themselves and the love they offer others. I've been thinking about how lucky I have been in being taught such a depth of love from the people in my life that have schooled and molded me over the years. 

Will it keep my heart from an acidic squeeze any time I see tenderness between a parent and their child portrayed on television? 

Probably not. 

But that is part of its beauty. 

And that, too, requires no adornment to accentuate the brilliance of its light.

be well; be loved,

k.

(image via misanthropicmessiah tumblr)

Hometown Hunger

 

 

My sleep schedule is fucked from last night

but it was worth it.

Tonight, at last, I fulfilled my fantasy of Xavi and I washing our cars from neighboring stalls at the car wash.  Unsurprisingly, we both smuggled rags and our own preference of car wash into the florescent-lit stalls clearly marked with signs prohibiting the action. 

Afterward, we got Taco Bell, went back to his place and talked about everything from Mormonism and parenthood to the phenomenon of white people finding random Black people to momentarily pose with and capture for their Instagram accounts. 

While standing out on his balcony together, he announces that he suspected a long time friend of mine who moved away a few years ago had a crush on me. This is one of the things that I love about Xavi: Apropos to nothing, he will tell you a thought he had years prior but decided, at last, it was the moment to tell you. I don't know why I love this quality. It may be because it causes me to travel back in my mind to particular moments he's referring to and superimpose the new insight or opinion onto what was transpiring. Most of the time, I don't remember exact moments he'll be referring to. And that, too, is something I love about him:  It means that he, too, is a bizarrely acute observer of his friends. 

As we stood out there on his balcony- me closing the bottle of my favorite hot sauce I had brought with me for the Taco Bell (I always hate their sauces), and him blowing cigarette smoke away from me- he points out a black limited edition Ford Mustang in the parking lot below us. Since it's nighttime, the car just looks like a darker shadow underneath a tree, but there's no mistaking the silver Mustang logo on the back of the car. I demand a closer inspection. He stamps his cigarette out.

Below, in the darkened parking lot lit temporarily with the flashing lights on the flying planes above our heads, I peered into around what may be one of the most beautiful cars I've seen in years. Xavi tells me he friends with the owner, an 80-something car enthusiast with too much pocket change. I insist he introduce me to him in the near future. My hands are aching to feel the gear shift. Xavi then confides that once, when he was driving the car back to the man's house for him, he drove the car full throttle over the bridge connecting the East and West sides of the city. His description of the smell of the the clutch, alone, had my heart racing. It's not often that I feel envy but, peering into the window of the car while being able to hear the far off, rain-like sound of freeway traffic at night, I sure did. 

I told him the story of my older, teenage, twin girl cousins who had Mustangs growing up. I told him of how they eventually sold them because they got sick of coming out of the A&P* to realize that their car had gotten hot-wired and stolen every other week.

 but somehow standing there, in the middle of that apartment parking lot on this still-summer evening, I was right back under those Michigan summer night skies of blacktop, car grease and the quickened pulse of sitting on the leather bench seat in a car built to rumble. 

be well; be loved,

k.

 

*= A grocery store in the Detroit area

(image via calaxenicove tumblr)

The Child I Do Not Have Pulling on the Skirt I Do Not Wear

What I love about nights like this is everything about nights like this.  The nights of in between: When my bare legs are entangled with themselves and I have a candle burning on my bookshelf, even though I will have to be up and out the door by 1:15am.

I know when you're trying to communicate with me. I can feel it in the air and in the electricity in, of all places, my toes. Steady may not have won this race, but people usually know exactly where I stand.

It's always amused me, in the most parental of ways, how those that love me as unpredictable have always inked me onto their short list of the people they can always count on.

As within, so without: It's never been unpredictability so much as the commitment to not do shit I don't want to do unless I truly believe it will deepen this world and the connection among the people within it.  

Turns out, it's a pretty good compass to use.



k.

(image via alinascrapbook tumblr)

Good Health and the Lounge Factor of Velour

This morning I tasted a bit of lemon in a gorgeous chocolate muffin today and immediately wondered if it was the sign of a stroke.

Too many conversations these days about health and well being and what is the thing that is going to cause you to lose it all. Catch "the Rona" and forever be altered, health-wise, because of it.

Instead, I ignored the slight impulse to Google, propped my legs up on a nearby chair, and let the coffee I had freshly made warm my chest: 

If I was going to go down, I wanted my morning version of that grand Last Supper that those Catholics were always talking about growing up.




k.
(image: via Exercice de Style tumblr)