Your Pin Cushion Lips and the Red Ribbon of your Tongue

 

 

Recently, I was watching an interview with Marc Jacobs in which he is talking about design sketches and how to communicate via the sketches what you actually want and want achieved. What I liked about it is that it functioned as a beautiful illustration of a pretty solid approach to communication in general. 

Think of the sketch as something that needs to be expressed or information that needs to be shared, and the pattern maker as the recipient of said information. In order for is to be as successful as possible, a lot of different tools and angles can be employed.

He says: 

First of all: It's not always easy to understand what someone means by a sketch [...] I can put something down and, while it's very evident to me what it means and what it represents, it's not always very clear to every pattern maker. So, along with the sketch, any other information- written or spoken- is useful. So sometimes I'll draw something out, which to me is clear, then I'll write above the swatch "I want a narrow jacket with the feeling of a high waist"[...] anything I can do to support that sketch: Any references, whether its a swatch of fabric, whether it's a few written words to indicate what the proportions are or what I'm going for, whether its talking through it with a pattern maker or whether is a photograph or a visual reference based on some of the research I've done. Anything I can do to support that sketch and give a clearer message to the pattern maker that is going to interpret it: That is the most useful thing to do. 

I feel you, Marc.

Different types of communication modes for different brains and different modes of accessing and understanding. 

be well; be loved,

k.

(image: a sketch of a Marc Jacobs 2018 Met Gala custom look)

 

 

As She Lay Dying

 

We sat eating Taco Bell in a parking lot outside of an auto detailing store underneath a weird, Michigan moon.  

My niece, behind the steering wheel, contemplated the best way to eat the Mexican pizza she had ordered without the utensils the drive through guy had skimped out on.

This is what home felt like. A nighttime escape from the house and history that trapped us.

The silence and secrecy afforded by the muffled cave of a parked car; the glow of the streetlamps still standing from my childhood.

 

k. 

(Image: via Tumblr: Nick Farhi - Jugheads In A Blanket Roadside, 2019)

(Title: a nod to the Faulkner novel I've never read, even though my library gave it to all staff for free decades ago.)

Meantime We Shall Express Our Darker Purpose, or, Can You Feel It Through the Glove?

Time and treasure have been unfolding. What and who holds me these days are constant: A well-worn and wooden boat creaking and continuing in the sea against the strength of its slams.

Reality, recently, has been a constant recycling of the first scene in King Lear. 

I was born last and was not able to do the dance required of me to be viewed as a child worthy of the crown they are insulted I have no interest in. 

It is not borne of malice nor resentment.  

Simply a love heftily anchored somewhere between the lands of honesty and sadness.

I love your majesty according to my bond - nor more nor less. 

Save the opulence for my older sisters, right?  

The jewels of our father with wash'd eyes. 

 (pause)

The tides have been interesting as of late. 

That which is sent out to sea; that which washes ashore.

There are those we will let go of forever, surfacing only and reluctantly in our strangest dreams.

Then there are those we are forever tied to - only to resurface as if the strangest dream has been conjured 

right in front of our waking-life eyes.  

be well; be loved,

k.

(via summerbummr Tumblr)

(title: taken from King Lear "Meantime, we shall express our darker purpose")

 

 

The Reason I Remember the Name of the Food of a Cat I Don't Feed

I tried to stay upright for the same number of hours I had felt my heart hurt today. Not in the bad way. But  perhaps in the good.

 

 

Simple meets complex

Over-thinker meets oblivious.

You who listens to love songs, and me who listens to metal.

Me who has the blankets in a mountain, and you who tucks all corners in.

Hand holder meets too-PTSD'ed-out-for-most-PDA.

One of the things I love about you is the way that many of the feelings that you have must be documented, written, and pondered while listening to music. 

I know that particular feelings will be soaked in while in the bathtub of your apartment while your cat barges in, walks the edge of the tub, and almost falls in.

In Smurf terms: When I first met you, I was afraid you were Vanity Smurf. Now I realize you are Poet Smurf, described as "very sensitive and artistic...he spends most of his time wandering in nature to improvise poems about it, and sometimes has trouble finding verses that rhyme. He usually manages to do it through some accident." I don't really know how much more fitting you can get. 

What I love about you is that you are so clear to me. 

I know that when you are angry and hurt, you put your sunglasses on even if they are unnecessary.

I know that if I go to take a picture of you, you will start with your "cool kid with no emotions" face, but you will hear me snickering from behind the camera and, eventually, your lips will spill into the widest grin. (That is the picture that I take.)

I know that you get a sense of safety out of knowing that your cat is okay.

I know the reason you fought so hard to keep him was a form of self-love.

 

So there you are

in your bathtub tonight.

Wrapped inside its porceline arms

while your crooked cat circles you 

like a wobbling

shaky 

shark.

k.

(image: luli sanchez)

The Water I Pour Over Me

 

I recently read a book of love poems written by Bertolt Brecht. 

They were not very good. 

There was one that was okay.

 I will put it, here:

 

When I Left You, Afterwards...

 

When I left you, afterwards

On that great today

I saw nothing, when I began

To see, but gaiety.

 

Since that evening, that hour

You know the one I mean

Livelier is my stride and more

Beautiful this mouth of mine.

Greener are, now that I feel,

Meadow, bush and tree,

The water is more lovely cool

That I pour over me. 

 

 --Bertolt Brecht (I don't know the specific year)

You see what I mean.  It's okay. I like the last two lines.

In other news, I have been having that particular stripe of gender dysphoria, again. That kind that leaves me dressed in roughly a three piece suit, but with my fingers painted a bright, popsicle red-orange and the tiniest strawberry decal on my left index finger. Tie wear and thigh harnesses. 

It is springtime, but there will forever be the quasi-uniformed femmey boy who occupies my genders. 

be well; be loved,

k.

(Image: Pierre Molinier, Sans titre 1960, via fiac tumblr)

(Title: Line of the aforementioned Brecht poem that was okay.)

Will You Find Me on Your Way Out?

Today I feel the un-seasonal sting of a slight sunburn upon my arms. 

(Sometimes, we are caught off guard.)

I was in a bookstore today in a town I am not from, but that I've been in once before in my lifetime. I notice the curation of certain, small bookstores. I appreciate the stores that, in their limited space, stock good literature as opposed to seventeen copies of the book that will/should sell. I appreciate being able to find new authors- magical enough to entice me. 

I've been thinking of you breathing into my hands. 

I've been thinking of the slender-voiced singers whose songs I avoid in order not to be overcome with emotion. 

My emotions have been more of an on/off switch as off late. 

If you ever get a chance to read all of Nabokov, do it. His descriptions are so tailored they will make the heft of all of your clothes fall to the floor immediately by slicing one, simple, stitch.

 

k.

image via rawforms Tumblr

But Will You Look Over the Brink With Me?

I watched a documentary on Yves Saint Laurent, recently. But also on the seven dancers that made up the most famous and infamous troupe of Madonna's dancers circa Blonde Ambition aka "the ones who were in the Truth or Dare film". It included the remaining six of the seven. 

Thank you to those who are patient with me when I slip away to get lost in documents and stories to take me away for a bit. 

Today I received an email from the school I received a master's degree from two years ago. They are offering a make up in person graduation if we are inclined to go. Cap and gown and diploma. It's not really my style, but I like the idea of also going to New York while I'm out there, and I think I would like the novelty of feeling like I am walking in a time capsule.

 

                                                                                                                be well; be loved,

 

                                                                                                                                        k. 

Who Are the Other Two People in Your No Exit* Room?

The other night, I watched a documentary on Marcel Duchamp. 

I'll be honest: I had always dismissed him as an artist craving attention in a bratty boy way. Mostly because of the urinal. But the documentary taught me a lot about him, and where one may find traces of his influence.

The most beautiful part of the documentary, however, was a brief side note of a story told by his (very senior now) grandson. It was about how, when his grandfather died, he watched his grandfather's casket go into the incinerator to be cremated. The box went in, and then they (he and his family) waited.  They had to wait for the remains to cool so that they could be placed into a box. 

Before they could leave, someone had to open the box in order to confirm that Duchamp's remains were, indeed, inside. That job had been tasked to his grandson. He took the box, which he described as the type of box an expensive whiskey might come in, and opened its lid. There, laying on the top of his cremated remains, were his keys. It was beautiful. The way his grandson described how fitting it was to find the tempt and symbolism of Duchamp's keys to be laying upon the dust of his human form.

(pause)

My mother was diagnosed with cancer, and has been given three to six months to live. 

There is a strange, heavy pair of hands that grip my arms and pull them down toward the earth. The dirt, in particular. All day. Even when I'm not thinking much of anything.

be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Unknown via cosmicclusters Tumblr.)

*: As in, No Exit, the Sartre play. I think of it and its handmade hell, often.