Cults and the Color of the Black Baccara Rose

Last night was Conspiracy Night with X at my place. This is where we get pizza and junk food (yes, we always bring our own hot sauce), put our tin foil hats on and do a deep dive into the world at large- past and present. Last night X picked the film Eyes Wide Shut (1999), which he had already seen, but I had never seen. He thought it a good accompaniment to all that's been going on with the release of "the files". Needless to say by the end of the night it was 2am, our stomachs hurt and we had jumped down the conspiracy ideas of how and why Kubrick (who reportedly was in good health) was dead four days after the first viewing of the final cut of the film.  

Anyway. Here is to X and the "caja de metal" that we say we are going to put our phones in at the beginning of these nights.  

In other news, tonight before bed, I watched the 27 minute documentary Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970) that is a bunch of excerpts of interviews with James Baldwin made by what seem to be some pretty fucking obnoxious white guys.  

In talking about despair and stating that he is still writing and that a person in despair would not be able to write, Baldwin says: 

 

I'm aware, you know, that I and the people I love may perish in the morning.  

I know that.  

But there's light on our faces now.

If you live under the shadow of death, it gives you a certain freedom.

I'm perfectly happy, odd as it sounds, and relatively free.  

 

 

 

be well; be loved, click on the painting to make it larger. 

 

k. 

 

[Image: The Apparition (1875) Gustave Moreau] 

Laughing With My Feet in Your Lap Like You Were My Closest Friend

On Valentine's Day, I was at brunch sitting in a booth across from J at a diner. About an hour into our hang out, a person walked in who was a doppelganger of you. Of course. A vaguely military green sweater, stylized camouflage pants, ears sticking out a bit and pierced with small piercing hoops of sorts (the type one associates with the 90s). They sat so they were facing me. Across from them looked to be their father (they looked alike; he was significantly older) but you never know these days. 

For the rest of the time I was there, I looked past J and at them. It was so odd to see you sitting there. Every part of me had the inclination to pass them my number, but I had no idea why.  

Lately, I have been reading Donald Kalsched's work (The Inner World of Trauma in its Diabolical Form) and feeling the sci-fi-ness of it. It makes me think of each season's "Big Bad" from Buffy the Vampire Slayer mixed with the familiar demon-and-angel imagery I grew up with. I've also been reading The Labyrinth: An Existential Odyssey, a graphic novel that - ironically because of all the shit I've talked about him- centers around a particular work of Sartre's. To say I'm reading it more because of the creativity of its cover and the cuteness of the cartoon mouse who stars in it would just come across as defensive. I am grateful for my library hauls and stolen academic library access so much these days. 

Last night I was asked to describe what kind of "weird" I am and I did not have an answer. I have heard people describe me with this word the majority of my life. It does not resonate with me. I suppose there is some hilarity to be found within that fact. 

 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

 

(image: From Sadviolences Tumblr)

(title from Maroon) 

Excess; Reflection

 

It's that weird season again. The one that is laced with memory and fabrication, coziness and outsider status. It's the season where I start working out differently - wanting to feel my body and its limits more. As if pushing to failure will help me realize where I stand. What I'm capable of.  What results are those deep and particular cravings.  In sex, in food, in comfort. All of it. 

Tonight I am writing this with muscles aching, a bag of Takis (Fuego) and the kind of Kinder Egg that requires you to scoop milk-and-white chocolate out of half of an "eggshell" within reach. I've been going back and forth between the two: My mouth on fire and the heat being put out by the thick sweetness of the unreal, but not necessarily good, chocolate.  

A few feet away from me, a stocking with my name on it that arrived as a gift from a friend in New York hangs over a non-functional fireplace with a padlock on it. There is seasonal symbolism in there, somewhere, but I can't quite place it. 

Meanwhile, most of the day has been spent talking to friends who live far away and listening to podcasts on this week's parsha/parasha/parashat. I'll never be clear on how to spell it. 

Reading and listening and learning and reflecting. 

Eating and fucking and lifting and thinking.  

 

I am thinking, tonight, about the minds that I covet. 

I am thinking, tonight, of the minds that I miss. 

I am thinking of the boy who truly loved Genet and the way he would wipe his nose.

I am thinking of the masc who told me of their former lover who liked to be wrapped in Saran Wrap.

I am thinking of the secrets I have held for people.

I am thinking of the people who wanted to hold mine. 

 

How many Decembers have you had in your lifetime so far? 

Can you remember them all? 

 

k.  

 

 

(image: akiphotogrpahthings tumblr) 

The Truest True, or, Fingertips Upon Cold Glass

This evening I sat in a lecture that made me yawn. Yes, it was interesting, but I will admit that I was more interested in pinning various of the Zoom attendees little video squares so that I could get a better look at the posters on the walls in their bedrooms. 

I've been feeling back where I need to be as of late. Something between books and brothels, daring and daydreaming. It feels good. All while the world is burning, but with so many of us maintaining our hands firmly fixed to the love that is inherent in struggle.

 

be well; be loved,

 

k. 

 

The Contraption You Bought to Build Your Jawline

 

 Ill-fitting latex

too thick leather gloves (they remind me of someone's mother)

over-quoting Sartre (does he need to be quoted at all?)

and the misunderstanding of Stoicism 

when what is really happening 

is the simple 

losing 

battle 

of emotional regulation.

I am tired of smiles that have too much gum

and unintelligent contradictions

like bosses who cry

and bottoms 

you don't like to be told 

what to do.

So Much Better When It's Done, or, The Pebbles Placed Under Your Knees as You Kneel

 

One of my favorite feelings is pulsing through my body tonight. I'm unsure how to describe it other than the feeling of pure want. When something as simple as water dripping down your chest from your hair fresh out of the shower can feel like a finger tracing down your throat to in between your tits. 

I've been thinking of jealousy lately, and how rare it is that I experience it.  Not because I think I am cool or above it in a pompous way but, rather, because it becomes a kink of mine. A past girlfriend had a friend who would jokingly call her daddy. I didn't like it. It felt sloppy. Bad boundaries. But how do you explain that to a field of vanilla?  You don't. Instead, you picture your girlfriend's friend and jerk off to her over and over again- you fucking her until she calls you daddy. But beyond that. You fuck her until she begs you to tell her that's she's a good girl. And you make her wait. And you fuck her again and again and again until one day, you tell her she's a good girl. And after that?  You don't care so much that, in real life, your girlfriend has a sloppy friend who mumbles words she does not know the meaning of.

*

Tonight I'm getting dressed for a party. My nails are a black cherry and my tongue swears it can feel the same fruit inside my mouth to play with while socializing. 

Have you ever had someone's words make your breath hitch? Like you've asked them to spin you a fantasy and they do. You figure you've heard it all until they start spinning their tale. And by the end of it, with no touching at all having happened, you can feel your body opening up more than it has under the fingers of any number of lovers.

k.

(Image: Maxime Ballesteros @Iconoclast Germany, 2014, Japan)

I Could Clean Up Good For You (1800s Remix)

 

If I could tell you, I would.

Yesterday, while sitting in a hospital for eleven and a half hours for a reason having little to do with me, I read a book on Jewish meditation by Aryeh Kaplan that was given to me easily a year and a half ago. 

It takes a while to get back to oneself. To go within. To go without. To recognize the feeling of the texture of the walls within ourselves, but also to fall forward into a dimension unknown.

I'm thinking a lot about the things that bring me back to myself. But also how my self is shifting.

Something between listening to piano of the late 1800s and Tommy Richman's Million Dollar Baby. 

be well; be loved,

k.

 

[image: Nicolas Régnier, Saint Sebastian tended by the Holy Irene and her Servant (1626-1630)]

What You Plate When You Move So Fast (from another era)

 

Hiding out.

What were you learning in the workshop today, she asks. Amused and vaguely waiting for my lips to answer.

I waver. Not feeling taken seriously. Is she asking to know? Or is she asking to watch my mouth move. 

There was a lot covered.  Most interesting to me was that the presenter detailed out how to look for and recognize language elements that may denote language deprivation versus a situation where there may be psychiatric reasons for disfluency in the language. 

(pause)

I don’t like pushy people. 

I don’t like when people talk shit on avoidant attachment styles as a sneaky way to try and pressure you into being closer to them than you feel comfortable being.

 

(pause)

 

I know her relationship with her mother.

I know her relationship to her father.

I know how her father died.

I know what her uncomfortableness with him was. 

I know her relationship to a brother.

How her last relationship ended.

How long her relationships have lasted in the last year. 

Her poetry from college:

From high school. 

From a few months ago.

Her diagnosis of her last girlfriend.

The books her last girlfriend published.

The foods she can't eat.

How she felt as a child. 

I know her dreams.

Long term.

Short term.

It had been 7 days. I had seen her two of them.  

All she knows of me is that I am slow burn.

The lick of a candle flame at night.

 

 

The expediting of closeness is a product of capitalism:

 

She is breakaway gym pants

 

And I am Salomé’s Dance of the Seven Veils*. 

 

 

 

Be well; be loved,

 

K. 

 

*= This version of it. But extended. (Rita Hayworth's version is a bit too spectacle and appropriative, somehow.)

(image: Salomé, Jean Benner, 1899.)

The Sound of the Bell

 

And I'm a lioness when it comes to you

If they say a word, it'll be the last mistake they get a chance to make.

                   -- Forgetters; Too Small to Fail

One of the things I have a problem with is being overprotective of my friends. 

Not in the parental "Don't do that! It's not safe!" type way, but in the way that inclines one, immediately, to remove the fucking face of anyone who hurts or messes with their friends. Even when it is completely unasked for and said friend, arguably, does not need protecting. 

Is it a bad trait?

My inclination is to say that it is. The polite me says that advocacy is listening to what a person has explicitly stated needing, and then moving toward that goal. To do otherwise is to lack boundaries, meet fire with fire, to - perhaps- be a brute.

I get away with it more because of looking like a thin white lady. I always have. When a guy in high school sent a girl friend of his to beat me up, I pushed past her to go at him.  When a girl in middle school was picking on a friend of mine that was half her size (and still taller than me…), I stole my brother’s rings, wrapped masking tape around the base of them so that they would fit on my fingers, and walked directly up to her with my ringed fist hidden behind my back and told her to pick on someone her own fucking size. (It was such a corny thing to say. I had obviously gotten it from some after school television special. It did, however, work.) When I got into a fight in elementary school with some girl who was being a jerk, we grabbed each other’s forearms and dug our nails into each other. Then I kneed her in the box and she went down. Game over.

As I moved into adulthood, I recognized the legality of such an approach and moved my crosshairs elsewhere. It didn’t take much, really. I hung out with 99% men and apprenticed by watching their covert-yet-scary-as-shit threats of sliding into a person’s car when they weren’t there, cutting their seat belts, and leaving. I know that women get a bad rap of being cunning and malicious, but I will tell you first hand that you know nothing of the inner world of men like I do. The only difference, anecdotally,  is that they don’t tend to talk about it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve gotten all four of my tires slashed at once before. I’ve had people put up fliers with a list of names of people who should kill themselves (My name was on it. What can I say? We were organizing something women-centered on the cusp of the 2000s. What did you think was going to happen?)  If I deserved it seems debatable, but I would never play entirely innocent.  I know what I’ve been up to.

But is it a bad trait?

Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes when I’m here, sitting in the proverbial penalty box with a proverbial split lip, I’d say it’s worth it. Sometimes I overstep, and that is obviously not cool. So I sit in the penalty box and wipe my lip with the back of my hand: In part to rid the blood; in part to hide the smirk of satisfaction in knowing that that motherfucker will not mess with my friend again.



Be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Colin Farrell on the set of Alexander in 2004)