I Think Most Clearly While Sliding a Warm Mug of Something, Slowly, Back and Forth Across My Collar Bone: The Art of Decision-Making

I've just had my morning coffee. It is almost 11 am. I can't remember the last time that I've been able to do this, recently.

I've gotten the job.

I'm on the cusp of getting the apartment.

I knock on wood.

I've always been fascinated with the ritual of superstition.

(pause)

For now, I watch the leaves of the trees outside my window wave hello and goodbye. They know something I don't:

As per usual, and how

it always should be.



Hold on to me.


-k.
(image: arqsa tumblr)

Your Mouth Just Above the Water; My Hand Upon Your Back

...He reacted from it toward the sublime and the ideal.  It was not enough that something should be touching, charming, graceful; it had to have about it a certain radiance, the power to inspire veneration.  One had to feel forced to one's knees before it, or lifted by it to the skies...                                                                                              ---   Some Prefer Nettles by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki



Last Sunday was a night the type in which one is reminded of the heights that are reachable by virtue of one's body. The altered states that can be achieved simply by the rush of strangers, of heat, of pain, of depths, of floating.

There is something quite healing about vulnerability and risk with a stranger.

With a friend.

With an audience.

And in the end, being gently returned :

Home safe and with the excitement of a child.


(pause)


Here is to all of those who know the true meaning of power

Who understand - in its true sense-

how little it has to do

with trickery or misgivings.


[Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
pissing on your own child-bed]


I will run my fingers down the outside of your throat

taut; controlled

so that you may swallow your pride

and enjoy the sweet asphyxiation

of an honest lie.


-k


(italicized in the brackets, above: lines from a favorite A. Sexton poem)
(image: via Redsnapper921 Tumblr)

Don't Gimme Your Love- I Don't Want it: This is the Beginning (of the Rest of Your Life)

Yesterday I had an afternoon conversation with a friend of mine about the oddity of particular types of straight ladies.  The kind who poke holes in condoms and lie about birth control in order to lock a man down.  I feel so naive.  Up until a few years ago, I thought this was some myth that idiot straight men came up with to blame women for their "It Doesn't Feel as Good/Just The Tip" antics.

But a few years ago, I had heard a number of stories that were direct confessions.  I couldn't believe it.  I talked with more straight women and they looked at me like I was an idiot. "Yes, it's a thing", they told me after the disclaimer that they, of course, would never do it.  I was shocked.  I felt betrayed, somehow, and kind of grossed out.  It's the kind of thing none of the "confessors" ever confessed to the fathers of their kids.  The kind of confession that happens when straight ladies have one too many glasses of wine and feel daring.  They feel racy already hanging out with a queer, but then, there it is: The thing they've never told anyone.  They can tell me, of course.  Who would I know to tell?


(Pause)

In any case, let's change the tone and focus back to what has been igniting me, as of late, because there is plenty.

I haven't written in a while because of all of the directions things have been going.  Like some out-of-season fireworks display: Exploding and sudden, but beautiful.


While any decision can change your life, any moment can alter or excel it.

More on this, soon.

For now, as the weather thaws and heats and wets, I will tell you that the venomous combination that has been making me walk into walls in the best of ways these days contains:

Denim, leather, lipstick, and melted eyeliner.


(pause)

In the meantime a thank you, once again, to the ever-glorious diva, Big Feedia. Big Freedia has been on my mind due to the recent collaboration with Rupaul on the song Freaky Money. But today I'm listening to a classic. Whether it be because it has always been and forever will be impossible to hear this song and not move/be motivated, or whether it simply speaks the truth about now, the beginning of springtime, where there is, indeed, Azz Everywhere .

Be well; be loved,

k.

(image: By Caleria Cherchi via Untrustyou Tumblr)
(title: A mishmash of Rupaul lyrics that fit)

The Lights Are Bright, But They Always Are: An Exercise in Waxed-Floor Religion

Tonight my faith in love was restored. Opened. Of all the idiotic places in the world, it happened in a fucking bowling alley. I don't know how to explain this spiritual experience that happened during an early evening, midweek spontaneous outing with someone I haven't hung out with in a while, but, it happened.  It may have been the soundtrack.  It may have been my family's historical relationship to the sport. It may have been the beautiful stranger who complimented my first bowl of a particular frame (9 pins), then stayed to compliment me again when I picked up a spare.

(insert the sound of a last pin being hit, here.  it is something between a click and a clunk.)

That's the thing that is something like love and life:  Nine pins go flying in every direction.  It's chaos.  Then: There is a calm.  There is a clean up.  It takes a steady hand to aim for what you want.  And it's the falling of that last pin- that evasive and slender pin- that is the actual cause of celebration.

Steady, steady.



Tomorrow holds something quite unexpected for me:

Let's see what falls.


(pause)


If you ever doubt what you're doing, just pay attention to what your heart says. If you know it will disappoint people, shed that as a reason against doing it. Be still. Be steady. Be forever with an aim that is, above everything, unapologetic.


be well; be loved,

-k.

(image: by Brendan Shea via Tumblr. Although I can't remember which Tumblr account, the artist's work can be found at BrandanShea95 dot com)

Taste My Mouth: It is Something Between Cherry Blossoms, and You

Spring is here and, with it, everything blooms.

It is strange to think how different my life was, even two months ago.

The weight of a snow I did not see

sliding off of my shoulders

and onto the floor.

A sloppy, heavy crust that falls from my body

to be met by the sun that stings tears to my eyes with the beauty of its brightness.

Let me tell you something:

When you surround yourself with people who inspire the shit out of you
people you truly admire
who you want to be like
who make you want to be better
all of the time



Things change.


k.

(image: Cy Twombly, detail of Untitled, Lexington, 2001. Wood, plastic, pulp and printed paper, plaster, synthetic resin paint, and acrylic.)

Watching Your Lips Part When You Are Told to Be Silent

The past few days have been a whirlwind. Extravagantly so. Even with any logistical (or ridiculous, as the case may be) stressors, there is a feeling of a thousand doors flying open at once.  Even the ones that close have important information written on them.

It feels good. Melting. Opening. Beginning.

There is something to be said about making sure that you are treating yourself right, and making sure that there is a positive reason that everyone who is in your life- is in it. The doors that open and the possibilities that emerge are indeed, incredible.

Back to it~

-k.

[image: from red-lipstick Tumblr via walkerart dot org Yves Klein (French, 1928-1962) - La Rêve du Feu (The Dream of Fire), c. 1961     Dry Pigment and Synthetic Resin on burnt Cardboard mounted on Wood]

Reaching, Underneath

Wearing a good sweater when it's somewhere between 'cold' and 'crisp' outside is just what is needed.

The sun is out. The trees still have their black, broken-fingers silhouettes reaching towards the sky.

Spring is not quite here, but the blood in my veins and the heart that pushes it through me doesn't know that.  Inside, the excitement and possibility of spring zig zags electric through my body.

-k.
(image: Lena Kramaric, L158, 2014)

The Defiance Under Your Radar

There's been a lot of savagery, lately and always.  Things that tear people apart in ways that are so lacking of humanity:

What is it that makes one person view another as less than human? As having less pain, less need, less desire, less hope that their dreams will come true.

In the job that I have, I witness this in some of the most vulnerable contexts. 

I see a lot of its angering pulses as it relates to anti-immigrant sentiment, white supremacist attitudes, and ableist ideas, amongst other things. 

(Here, I pause to be fucking annoyed with the fact that English-language spell check underlines the word ableist with its red dashed line, as if to say "That doesn't exist!" or "That word is not in our dictionaries!", which proves the point even fucking further.)


I find myself swaying to keep the best balance possible on the thread that I have chosen (and, in relation to privilege, has been handed to me) among the roles that I inhabit. I am a person in the world who wants to stop people from being fucked over. I am also a person who needs to respect agency. I am also, as an interpreter, a person who- in following codes of ethics- is not "supposed to be in the situation"- I'm only there to interpret, yet at the same time, in following these same ethics, it is my responsibility to "do any kind of culturally relevant interpreting that aids in communication and understanding".  (This, of course, is ridiculously problematic because it assumes that the interpreter shares or has competent and deep knowledge of all of the cultures in the room. Never going to happen.) 

This is a tall and strange and fucked up bill, but one that I have chosen to take on everyday.

I am certain that this overlaps with every imaginable job to some extent- some more than others. 

It is not something specific to interpreting. 

There are just particular slants and guidelines that apply to it.

(pause)

How do we, as people who value social justice and anti-oppression politics who also choose to work as interpreters, do our best to do what is right and important to do every day?   Even when, and not surprisingly, this shit is manifest among interpreters?  For example, with all due respect to the ADA and all of the access-related legislation, there is no question in my mind that said anti-immigrant and white supremacist bullshit is at play in the fact that sign language interpreters get paid more than, say, Amharic or Spanish language interpreters. In chit chatting a year and some ago with a spoken language interpreter studying to gain legal interpreting status, I learned that after gaining legal interpreting status, he would still only be making just over half of what legally certified ASL interpreters make. 

(pause)


These are things I think about every day. 

I am thinking of them, now.

I just needed to put these thoughts into words,

and to write them.

There is organizing going on across languages,

and I am staying tuned to connect.


-k.

[Image: Mojo Wang aka Mojo Wan (Shanghai, China) - A Boy Without Name, 2013, Digital Arts, via red-lipstick tumblr]

(I) Never Miss a Beat

I can't stop dancing.

Even when I'm sitting.

I love it.

Everything feels as right as rain.





Be well; be loved; be showing lots of leg in every capacity.

-k.


(image: Devon Windsor & Cindy Bruna; Balmain; Pre-Fall 2015)