The Halfway of Languages: The Art of Connection

It's morning. The sky is beautiful, and I am facing a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows in a cafe nowhere near the city in which I live. The music is just right. Guitars: not too country; not too folky.  Cement floors. Wooden tables. Small, bare light bulbs on thick wires strung across the room, above me.

Oatmeal and brown sugar to my left; an americano (with a dash of cinnamon) and a glass of water to my right.

I am waking up.

Thinking of the people in my life.  Thinking of something a good friend said about how being around other people who also use multiple languages somehow gives her a sense of belonging- even when the languages they use are not the ones she uses.  I understand this, somehow.  And it's strange to think about all of the people that have played a hand in me getting here- to this muti-language'd patchwork of connection.  It's awing for me to think about. I know a lot of people are brought up with multiple languages. I wasn't- minus the random scraps of my grandfather's language that was recited at birthday parties, in come-ons and in insults- so it means something to be here.  How much my life has changed.  How much people and language and culture and humor have changed it.

In any case: Back to these window panes. A bit more tracing the clouds with my eyes is due before I start my day.



Be well; be loved; be open: What is confining you may be yourself.



k.


(image: Poldi, 1914, Egon Schiele via giampixx tumblr)

Cross Cultural Discussion of Eyebrow Make Up Application, or, The Chills Down My Spine

Eyes tired from adventure and necessity.

The past week has been strangers and friends and strangers you meet, on purpose, at night.

I haven't been writing much.

Sometimes the stories I live are so vast and bizarre that even I have a hard time believing them.

But in their truth, they take time to dissolve, digest, understand, enjoy.

This time around they involve magicians and mimes and Draculas and gay organists (redundant) and education administrators and no less than five languages and dancing with a person in a tuxedo whose name I do not know and speeding to get to a destination by 2 AM and beautiful views of the city and bites upon my neck (not the kind that leave gross marks) and a charming doppelgänger of Mikhail Baryshnikov who drinks apple-tinis and orders them as if he is stating a fact. 

Life is huge. 

On multiple levels and for a thousand reasons political and enjoyable: 


Step outside of what you know.  



be well; be loved,


k.


(image: Mikhail Baryshnikov)

One Hand Loves the Other

The sun is glaring through my window, illuminating me and the pile of note cards that surround me with things like ANDROGEN INSENSITIVITY SYNDROME and BIPOTENTIAL STRUCTURES PRESENT AT EACH STAGE scribbled across them. My elbow rests on a page from the American Journal of Human Biology to reach my keyboard.

I'm taking a break from studying to write...something...and to take care of the cherry pits that are scattered around my books and cup of coffee upon the table.

These days have been so happy.
Fulfilled.
Strange.
Connected and solitary all at once.

Beautiful.


The family I have created is a strong one.

The visions that I have are strong ones.

Let's get to all of it.


(Imagine the most emotion pulling film score, here. Full of trumpets and violins; crescendos and elation.)


Back to the books and The Case of the Missing Androgen Receptor,


k.

Listen to An Echo a Stain.

(title credit: A lyric from Bjork's song Unison, off the album Verpertine)
(image: I fucked up, here. It's from Tumblr. I'm not sure where it's from, but upon investigating, it looks like it originates from Stephane Rolland Haute Couture)

Conversations of Ghosts and the Like: How to Grieve a Person Who Saw the Truth

I. This Morning: Logistical

Diving down my check list for the day.  I've had too concentrated of caffeine, but it's alright. The temperature is just right (chilly; not too cold) for sweatshirts and typing; fingers dry from page turning; thirst quenched with water.

These next two months will be busy ones. Good busy. Ready busy. Growing busy. Amazing busy.

II. Three Days Ago: Observation

Early morning cleavage is both appreciated and disturbing.  The other morning I was in a ritzy part of town and saw a well cleave'd woman leaving a Starbucks stand in the local grocery.  It wasn't quite 8 am. I had respect for the keyhole shirt she was wearing and the conjuring of sex, pre-8am.  I reserve a particular depth of want for morning sex, as it is indeed one of my favorites, although I had never considered it in flip-flops slapping against the tiles of a supermarket floor.


III. Today: The Taste of Last Night's Conversation

I have been thinking of energy from one's fingertips as of late.

Last night was spent sliding my hands down and across the neck, throat, chest, arms and hands of a person I am incredibly attracted to. It was enjoyable to play with feelings associated with sex without kissing or having any kind of typical or blatant sexual contact. Enjoyable to feel the warmth. The movement of energy.  It puts you in a trance-like state to some extent: That teetering between the push pulls of battling desires.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image: by Hollis Frampton, A Visitation of Insomnia, 1970 via isidoreblog tumblr)

In Between Time

Death is a weird one.

In the past number of years, most of the deaths in my immediate life have all come via a phone call while I am at the library. 

That period of time between when you find out about a death in a public realm, and when you have arrived to a private realm (home and the like) and are finally able to let go, is a strange one.

I'm writing to you now from within that period of time.

Here I am, sitting at my desk in the library, having just received word about 30 minutes ago.

What do you do?

I've downshifted my work to be taken from that labeled more "MINDLESS" than other work. 

I've kept my back to the door as I work, my eyes tearing up. Welling and stinging, but not quite ready to come out. 

There is a shock component that always exists in this period of time.

Instead, a constant and perpetual wetting of the eyes.  Like allergies minus the itchiness. A lump in my throat. Heat upon my cheeks because they are warming to push the tears out.

That last time I saw her. 

Not the emails we have been writing but that last time I saw her.

She knew.

She saw what I had only hoped that someone would. 

(Times two, really.

Times a million.)

The depth of her gaze.

She knew.

And I could feel her heart go out to me.

I felt that.

A rarity in all that surrounded us that evening.

I can only imagine how it has been. 

The thirty some years past losing the love of your life.

But I remember your gentleness. 

How it was wrapped in directness. 

And I take that with me.

Because you are who I got that from.

And now

I just need

to make my way home.




k.

(image:  Kathy Jones via workman tumblr)

Succulent Innocence

(a haiku written while caught in daydreams)



seeing you i see
fingers dripping with honey
rising from the ground







 (image: ivo stoyanov via Art Propelled Tumblr)

Trace Yourself Upon Me: Imagination vs Delusion During the Full Blue Moon

We sat and drank, each with a separate past locked up in him, and fate's alarm clocks set at unrelated futures-- 

        --a partial sentence taken from Pnin, by Vladimir Nabokov


I have eyeliner stripes on my right, outer thigh because I wasn't wearing pants while I was doing my make up tonight.  Now that I am home and, again, I do not have pants on, they are revealed: The hidden tiger of my odd artistry.

I have been appreciating the presence and absence of someone as of late.

Let me tell you what I love about being given the space and time and reason to unravel:

I work harder.

I think more clearly.

I cum harder.

I hustle more.

I miss more deeply.

I love more widely.

I feel gentle towards that which, in usual circumstances, makes me sad.

There is a hope and humor in the children that are in my life, and that matters.




Pretend that it is intentional, no matter if it is.
 
Lie to me and let me believe that the plan is to spread me out:

A map of a thousand galaxies to kiss and evaluate.

Surely everything will be illuminated underneath this simple, stoic full moon that is upon us.

Let the only shadow cast upon me

be the eclipse of your body passing mine.


k.


(Image: Optical Exercise I, Man Ray)

I Can't Help My Mind From Going There

 I.

Our recent conversations about dreams:  How one cannot control how the mind works, and, should we really spend much time and energy into trying to interpret them?

I suppose not.

Mine tend to be fairly blatant.

Not in their details, but in their desires.

Those dreams that can wake you soaking in both fear or desire.

Sometimes both.

II.

Heard your boyfriend was away this weekend: Wanna meet at my place?

It was raining tonight. Finally.

I declined the offer of the ride home so that I could walk. In the dark. As fast as I wanted. As slow as I wanted.

I wanted to feel my thighs touch each other. Rub up against each other. In the rain. While I walked fast. Slow. Became warm. But could still feel the sting of the cold night air.

We could be caught

My thighs pushing against each other while I'm thinking of you touching that secret inside corner of my inner thigh while rain poured down on my face, my lips, my clothes.

Cars went by, their headlights blaring.  An occasional horn to get my attention. I ignored all of them. I didn't want to be saved. I didn't want to be interrupted. I just wanted to walk. Quickly.  Hard steps on the pavement.

We're both convicted criminals of thought

I have to take a minute from you.

Not because I don't like you.

But because I do.

When I lay in bed I touch myself and I think of you

There is more to this.


And I intend on riding it out.



Be well; be loved,


k.


(Title and italicized words thank you to  this song, which I would like you to go listen to.  Right now.)
(image source:  via melisica dot com)

Bus Yodas and Other Sources of Wisdom

Yesterday was one of those days where you come home early from work and end up laying on your bedroom floor, in a pile of unexplained rice, crying to a John Legend song that happened to pop up in your Spotify station.

(I really need to remember to keep that shit to 100% pop.  R&B will have you in love, utterly heart broken, and getting your grind on all within the span of 12 minutes.)

Z unknowingly saved the day, yet again, with one of his hilarious descriptions of life and his adventures within it. Yet again, I can't express how important friends who are former significant exs are to have in your life. If anything, they support you when the few exes you aren’t on good terms with resurface.  Best quote from that conversation would be when he said, in dealing with them, "You have to be able to see the world from the perspective of a baby."

In other news, I just finished the book …y no se lo trigó la tierra…and the Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomás Rivera. Worth a read. Goes into the experiences of migrant workers of the 40s and 50s, although it was published in 1971.

It’s cool to have both of the languages right there (the book is first in Spanish, then the back half of the book is the English version) so you can flip back and forth and see the differences in implication/meaning/translation. Translation will always amaze me: What’s missing; what’s added. What’s explained in one version; what’s left unexplained in another.

(pause)

In any case: Things are good.

For now, I'll leave you with this quote from a conversation I overhead the other morning as I embarked on an hour bus ride to the south end that pretty much sums things up everything as of late:

"I'd rather be real and in a hot spot than superficial and in the zone."

be well; be loved,

k.

(image via unglaubwuerdig tumblr)