Other Way Around*

And in fact wrestling is an open-air spectacle, for what makes the circus or the arena what they are is not the sky (a romantic value suited rather to fashionable occasions), it is the drenching and vertical quality of the flood of light. -Roland Barthes

Oh, Honesty: How does one go about you? Is it the strum of multiple lives with only one who is privy to all of them? Is it the truths that come out in the middle of the night, when filters have slipped and all parties are left with eyes wide with surprise? Oh, I do not know. What my body craves and what my heart and mind know are best (best? such a strange and utterly constructed idea...) are, at times, so different. Can they be fused? Perhaps I don't want them to be: these lives that I live like mirror shards in a clothes dryer.

(But why do particular shards feel like such strange drag?)

Ah, for it is, my child, for it is: And it only becomes a questionable honesty when the flood of Barthes's light exposes to reveal who actually knows that the dress-up is going on.




(insert the sudden, metallic sound of a large number of lights being shut off at the same time here)


k.

Artwork: The Lady on the Horse by Alfred Kubin. Currently reading Kubin's "The Other Side" as suggested by Joaquín.
*= Ode to the lyrics of the Rites of Spring song by the same name

Study Station Justification

I've been watching Ninas Mal under the premise of improving my auditory Spanish comprehension. The truth is, Ninas Mal is a soap opera set in Columbia that is on the MTV Spanish channel, Tres, and has stupidly catchy pop music and hot women in incredible amounts of lip gloss complaining about their lives. (See picture above for three of the characters. Adela, in the middle, is my favorite character.) The plot is thinly veiled porn, basically: A handful of rich girls do bad things that wind them up in front of a judge that sends them to a charm school run by a strict older house mother. Hair pulling, alliances between the girls that last roughly half an episode , a developing lesbian plot between two of the girls (not just for show!), eye rolls, and of course the forever winning combination of sleepovers with shirt-and-panties-as-pajamas, nighttime escapes, and revenge in the form of cotton candy pink nails gripping a crowbar and having at people's windshields.

In other words: Bone City. Putting my boner to the side, however, it really does trick me into paying insane amounts of attention to know exactly what is going on and helps reinforce verb conjugation and usage.

In other words: Double Bone City.

this is the main video played at the end of each show. I would pay to be the nerd in this video.



k.

B.F. Skinner's Misunderstood Tenderness, or, Just Because I'm Dressed Like a Hot Dog Doesn't Mean I'm Not a Lady Gaga Impersonator

The woman I live with, who together with a friend of mine have an almost-three-year-old, is failing at politely hiding she is bothered that her son calls me "Da Da". He does not call his father 'Da Da'. I've watched over the few months I've lived here while she sits, frozen-smiled, trying to encourage the boy to say "Mama" (as if talking to her), or "Daddy" as if talking to the father. But, without fail, he will come to my bedroom door and announce "Da Da" until I come out. "That's right..can you say Mama??" she says, slightly stressed out. Staring at me he points and proclaims "Da Da".

(pause)

The beauty of their expert eyes for apparitions : children are able to see things invisible to others.



-k.







photo credit: Weegee, who was a crime scene photographer in the 40s and 50s. Entitled "Their First Murder". It's a candid shot of the crowd- mostly kids- that gathered around a murder scene before the cops had arrived. http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=61129  

This is Really All I Have to Say Today.

On True Blood, My Favorite Character Is PTSD Terry

Last night was spent in a leather bar with my friend Basil, whom I've known since I was 17 having met him in the punk scene. Amidst the displays of spanking (it was, afterall, Spanksgiving at the bar), and an occasional brush of the leather utilikilt of a passing man, Basil and I huddled to trade the jewels of our lives as of late.

He inspires me. He always has. He also manages to validate me in a way I can't explain. Not just being from the midwest, but his entire way of living and being in the world.

Needless to say, it was a well needed evening.

(pause)

It is November on the cusp of December. I feel tired and that I'm-never-warm-enough crave that always seems to hit this time of year is in my veins. I can feel the staleness of the ground under my feet while I walk around patches of snow, and I try not and take it personally: Every being has these seasons of internal reflection to build towards change- how could the earth and its seasons be any different?

(pause)

Be well; be warm. Be facing forward with those you love while supporting yourself and each other in being the best people we can be and in having best lives we can have. There's so much going on under and upon our skin- holding and hearing the invisible just might be the answer.


-k.



(photo credit: bootstrapperboy on tumblr)

"Put Those Ballerina Flats On My Shoulders!" vs. "You Really Need to Address This Budgeting Issue"

I've been reading in the way that impairs me, socially, again. I've been reading a few things at the same time, but the book I just set aside to write this is Roberto Bolaño's The Savage Detectives. Here's a sentence I just read that I think is just, well, great:

His breakfast was much more frugal than ours: he swallowed two cups of black coffee and then he smoked a wrinkled cigarette that he pulled from his pocket instead of a pack, watching us in the strangest way, as if he were defying us but at the same time didn't see us.

(pause)

Yerba mate may be the solution.

Here I am, 4:33 pm on a Monday at the Capitol Hill branch of the Seattle Public Library. I smell slightly of Heiress, one of Paris Hilton's perfumes. Sometimes I put on the slightest bit of high-femme perfume so that, in my head at least, it comes across as the trace of a lover I just banged for 13 hours and had to start my day minus the shower. (I know it's horrible. Bleached hair and a pair of contacts a color of periwinkle that has been patented for her. Thin and white and cotton-candy pouty when threatened with jail time. What can I say? A bone is a bone).

I feel hungry and slightly crazy, which is an improvement from feeling half-full and entirely out of my mind. (I've taken to photo documenting my downward turn of psychosis over the past 24 hours. Although no one will see these pictures in their context, I will know what they are and, for that, will have a secret, yet shakey, grin when people come across them in plain view.)

I've been thinking about dehydration and blood flow as of late. I've also been thinking of the Body By Jake episodes I would watch as a child (Google Image it) at 5 in the morning just because I thought it was cool that he would tell people to use household products for the workouts: Cans of tomatoes, ironing boards, broomsticks. I would only work out during these parts of the show. Because somehow it made me feel both totally crazy (how do I explain the ever-dented cans of tomatoes?), and exceptionally d.i.y.(How can I tell Jake, through the television, of my brilliant additions of half-opened bags of flour to this ordeal?)

In anycase, I must get back to the project at hand and end this needed detour. I will leave you with this photograph from a rendition of Shockheaded Peter, and a clip from the actual version I saw some years ago that left me, unsurprisingly, fascinated.




After watching the magnifying-glass face introduction, jump to minute 3:18 to watch Snip, Snip below:

snip snip

Haunted Roller Coasters Keep Rolling, Themselves.

Dark wood and closed buildings at night are exactly what I need 98% of the time.

There is a closed antique mall across the street from the building from which I am writing. I want to slip inside, hold every article that calls to me, and listen to the exact stories that have been absorbed within them. I will fall, slightly, onto my knees and hope that Micki and her cousin-by-marriage, Ryan, from Friday the 13th: The Series walks in.

I don't scare easily, and yet, when a loud noise happens as part of a film in a movie theater, I am one of the only people around me who jumps.

(pause)

There are surprises that make one cover one's mouth; there are horrors that make one do the same. Perhaps it is a carnal response: a reflex that traps the soul within our body when, startled or horrified, it attempts to escape. Birthday parties and atrocities. Sneezes ('bless you' because, it was once believed a sneeze would expel your soul from your body) and eye-tearing fear.

I've been seeing ghosts lately. I'm not sure why. Today, in slight rain, I took my bike helmet off, ran my fingers through my hair to put it up (think: shampoo commercial) and felt someone watching me (think: being hunted). I decided to ignore it but then heard “Hi Kaden”. When I looked up, I saw it moving accidentally towards me in anorexic straw-hair and too much eyeliner trying hard to look "together", purse clutched, jaw defiant. “Hey- what's going on?” but it had already glided false-confidence past me. I remember when she claimed me as best friend. My hands remained at my sides (stories, people, and tornados that do not move me keep them anchored there).

I walked into a grocery store, bought hummus and a small loaf of bread, and sat on the sidewalk under an awning to enjoy my feast and watch the rain.

(pause)



(photo credit: Dark Daze tumblr)

.exit game.

What I now know:

1) I can't hang out with people who use toilets but who have never fucking cleaned one.

2) I realize I can't *really* drug someone. But I can want to. Not to do anything sexual to them, but rather, to get them to calm the fuck down.

3) Going to the Latino Bar Association's discussion on immigration at Town Hall last week was a really fucking good idea. (Thanks, N.T.)

4) Swearing is a part of where I am from. So is ripping on people as a form of love. It shows we're paying attention; watching to make sure you don't take yourself too seriously or end up taking yourself out. We've got you: The rough hand that pulls you by the back of your collar out of traffic. It's not something that I-statements can do, friend, and perhaps that saddens both of us.

(pause)

The West may be making me soft, or it may be making me harder than I ever actually was. But what of it? I may have lost or delayed something incredibly important to me, but why is it that I don't really care? I suppose caring is a problem. Not caring, but feeling. I can't seem to do it. For the past 10 years at least. More than likely 20 years more than that, but it never really bothered me before. I think because there have always been situations around me in which it behooved me not to feel. And now that these situations no longer exist- this non-feeling bothers me. But 'bothers' me in the way one is bothered watching a situation on a television show: "What? What are you doing?" you say, non-moved, but moved enough to say something, albeit, to a television screen.

(pause)

I am reading about disaster capitalism. I am thinking about how, if my life were somehow the scale of a country, there would be quite a bit of money to make. But it's not, and so, here I am: In Bellingham, WA for no apparent reason, typing away just to get my fingers going. I can feel my fingers, at least. I read a few days ago that one's fingertips and lips are the most sensitive parts of the body. Being someone with a clit, I have to say I disagree. Un-underweared days or boxer-briefed nights blows this theory out of the water, along with some other things.

I've been making lists again lately. And progress. Not necessarily progress on the lists, but they aren't the type of lists that it would make sense to 'make progress on' anyway. It's been progress in the non-documentable way.

Yes, my apartment smells horrible with my housemate's dirty laundry. And yes, it will eventually soak into absolutely everything I own, but at least I will be my own. I will just be in a smelly apartment with a new bike light, bike lock, bike, empty refridgerator, and a ticket to Detroit footed by someone who is not me or my family. Insert the proverbial train station, here. Suitcases in hand. Give me a fucking one way, goddamnit. And tell me this fucking cancer has not come back.









No point in holding back on what you're holding,
no matter it be shit or it be golden.
Foundations shift.
Instead of shifting,
We set up
we set up our falls.

Hold on tight to your fears,
'cause that's your hatred
and that's your love as well.

i must always remember:

there's no point to surrender.

-hwm



Long-term is not permanent; here is to ignition.

love,

k.

Cotton Eyes and Train Track Ties

I smell of blood and corn. This is not the intro to some pained story about my life and being from the mid-west. It is literal: I started my period this morning and cannot stop boiling corn on the cob to slather in butter and salt and eat in a bowl in a bed of a hotel-ish room on the 10th floor of a building that is downtown Seattle's version of a skyscraper.

I am tired. I am hungry. I will gladly shove anyone and take their salt, sugar, and/or starch.

Instead of feeling my heart beat in my chest, today, I feel it in my ribs and hips and thighs. It helps. A person close to me just had their mother pass away. And in the silent time- the time after he's fallen asleep or hung up the phone- it brings me back to that first death. Not the first in order, but the first in impact. The first person I actually knew who died. For me, I was just stepping into my 24th year, and it was someone I had always claimed as my best friend.

So today, for a number of reasons, I move slowly. Carefully. I've been listening to Tim Barry's song 222 from the Manchester album and parts of it echo with me as much today as it did before it was written.


And I don't feel alone when I look up anymore.



Give it a listen:

Press the PLAY icon next to where it says 222

Visually. Live.=

Here


Photo credit: From Misskim on Tumblr