Leave It To Man Ray to Make Bitches Look Hot

I've been investigating Beckett, again, as of late.

I've read him.

I've seen him.

I've had a disproportionate amount of white men who are known rapists tell me I would like his work. 

Yeah. I get that it's supposed to lend all philosophers and pseudo-philosophers big vats of lube to jerk off with.  That the deliberateness of movement (get your mind out of the gutter) and intense investigation into the everyday is supposed to make one think about life and what is it but a bunch of moments?  What are we waiting for? Oh, it is not for Godot- it is the very process of waiting. To die or for something to happen. Blah blah and blah.

Godot is boring.  Krapp's Last Tape was like being forced to sit through the rant and mundane actions of the craziest white straight man riding public transit for three hours.  If anything the two inspired me to use my time here for something else. Anything else.

(Full disclosure: Come and Go was really fucking good.)

That said, I still plan on reading Endgame and going to see it.  It's Endgame that the non-rapists tend to favor.  Go figure.

(pause)

Hot-ass bitch as documented by Man Ray (1923)

I've been reading the poetry of Ezra Pound and admiring his profile.  Not his profile of involving himself in fascist shit, but rather, the actual profile of his face.

A few poems that have been sitting with me are (follow the links to read) A Pact, Francesca, and one other poem that I will keep to myself for now.

As the title suggests, leave it to the infamous Man Ray to make bitches look hot.  Check out Man Ray's photo of Ezra Pound and his fabulous and drool-inducing profile,  up and to the right.

 (pause)

Now go back to the top to admire that throat,

as per usual.




be well; be loved,

k.


(top image from Tobias Rocks Tumblr. The image is not by Man Ray; The other image from the Man Ray collection of hot ass bitches)

The Glory Inside the Gutter

Dark, provocative, light, collective and submerged magic have all made appearances this past week.  All of it is important.  I will spare you the yankings of one-cannot-exist-without-the-other narratives.  I don't, entirely, believe them.  But the interlacing of them all is something I can believe in.  Or, at least, something I can understand.

I've been connecting, again, to the parts of myself that I hide the most and celebrating them.

I've been connecting, again, to the parts of myself that exist within other people. Those I know, those I don't know, and those I'm not entirely sure if I know. 

I've been reading Antonin Artaud and Jacques-Yves Cousteau. It has been feeding me splendidly and fully.

[I'm smiling, here, imagining the two having written a collaborative piece of literature.  A heady theater piece written while in a submarine, or perhaps a critique written by aligning rocks to read as text on the bottom of the sea.  Perhaps Artaud was a silent third tag along to test the first aqua lungs with Cousteau - at ages 47 and 33, respectively.

The Theater and Its Double was written, in its original form anyway, in 1938. The Silent World was written in 1953.

It could have happened.

Those texts on the bottom of the sea.

Only the rocks and kicks of sand in the depths of endless mystery know for sure.]

I wrote a letter to a person who matters to me this afternoon.

I included with it, this paragraph from Cousteau's The Silent World.

There is something of it that encompasses everything as of late, and so I will leave it here, with you, as well:

Attentive ears may occasionally perceive a remote creaking sound, especially if the breath is held for a moment.  The hydrophone can, of course, swell this faint sound to a din, helpful for analysis, but not the way it sounds to the submerged ear.  We have not been able to adduce a theory to explain the creaking sounds.  Syrian fishermen select fishing grounds by putting their heads down into their boats to the focal point of the sound shell that is formed by the hull.  Where they hear creaking sounds they cast nets.  They believe that the sound somehow emanates from rocks below, and rocks mean fish pasturage.  Some marine biologists suppose the creaking sound comes from thick thousands of tiny shrimps, scraping pincers in concert.  Such a shrimp in a specimen jar will transmit audible snaps.  But the Syrians net fish, not shrimps.  When we have dived into creaking areas we have never found a single shrimp.  The distant rustle seems stronger in calm seas after a storm, but this is not always the case.  The more we experience the sea, the less certain we are of conclusions.




be well; be loved; be absolutely alive.

k.

Til Then My Windows Ache

Sometimes, the world feels so oversexed and under sexually satisfied all at once. People are quick to make passes or proclaim crushes, but few savor the weaving of sexual tension. Sexual restraint. It isn't about waiting. It's about creativity. Art.  Somehow, I think immediacy and capitalism have become too much a part of people's approaches- their propositions.

People fuck and suck, but how many can maintain eye contact from across the room with those they have had sex with without becoming shy or walking over to end the tension? Why be uncomfortable when you could be pumping away, eyes closed? (Insert the acidic flavor one tastes just before vomiting, here.)

I've dealt with beaus and courters who come on with their fullest sense of artless "charm".  They will try and woo me in ways they have seen in films (Hollywood; porn).

It is as rapid as it is uninteresting.

However, I am fortunate in that I possess both the selective patience and don't fucking care gene.  I don't mind that these mosquitoes come at me.  I just watch them smash on the windshield and become angry with me. (It's strange, is it not? How people will blame you for the fact that they want you.  That somehow the fact of their attraction alone, is justification enough to make you 'villain', 'tease', 'devil'. Tsk, tsk.  Such entitlement you lace in your disappointment.)

But honestly? I don't mind.

I am too busy day dreaming about the lovers I enjoy.

The ones who play with me as much as I play with them.

The ones who read.

The ones who think.

The ones who know that unknown pleasures can be found, and have nothing to do with a Joy Division album.

And so, I enjoy them.

Those who are exactly right.

The ones who know

that thirst is always

the deepest form of want.




-k.

(photo grabbed off a Tumblr I have since forgotten)

(title: From Pablo Neruda. Its full(er) text reads:

So I wait for you like a lonely house
til you will see me again and live in me
til then my windows ache)

The Dust Upon Your Shoulder

The other night, I was unintentionally given the exact conversation that I needed to be a part of.

What started as a person sharing their experiences in the past year with the friendships in their life, ended up being the exact salve and hand-spreading-upon-blueprints of what was needed.

It turned down of the volume of circular reflection and set a shy spark toward the excitement of clarity.

(pause)

I've been thinking a lot about hidden beauty.

Hidden talents.

Hidden truths.

Reluctant unveilings and forthcoming shynesses. 

Because you know what they say:

Nothing that is beautiful asks for attention.


(To my dear friend of Nancy Drew about to embark on a school book'ed journey:

Here is to everything beautiful that will continue to be uncovered this year, and to the pants you will be wearing while it is uncovered.)


be well; be loved-

k.


(Roughness of the good ol' C follow up is finally subsiding.  Thank you to those who didn't challenge or take personally my need to hide out for the past 6 weeks.)


(photo of Otto Dix)

To Be On Top of the World

A few nights ago, I watched Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel (1962) for the first time. Described to me as a representation of Franco's Spain, with a focus on the ruling class of Spain at that time, I really enjoyed it.  There are, of course, surrealist aspects of it (Buñuel hung out with Dalí and García Lorca back when...), but I find them to accentuate the points he is making in profound, comical, not comical ways.  I'm actually thinking of watching it again in a few nights. 

In the meantime, I'm gearing up for the next step part of a larger plan that excites and ignites me.  Here is to keeping with momentum, and letting teenage dreams fall to the wayside for the time being.

There is work to be done, and hidden hands to dirty.

k.

She's Sensitive, But She's Still the Cruelest

I have returned to reading the first volume of a trilogy by Javier Marías that I set aside last year because it was not the time.

In going through my notes on the book, I found that the same passage that resonated into the hollow of my bones recently had a similar impact over a year ago.  (March 28, 2013, to be precise.)

It reads:

Telling is almost always done as a gift, even when the story contains and injects some poison, it is also a bond, a granting of trust, and rare is the trust or confidence that is not sooner or later betrayed, rare is the close bond that does not grow twisted or knotted and, in the end, become so tangled that a razor or knife is needed to cut it.

(pause)

I have been discovering and enjoying the art of Otto Dix as of late.  It has been beautiful, inspiring, and cruel and, thus, is exactly what is called for. 

The painting, above, is The Dancer Anita Berber (1925).



Be well; be loved.


--k.


(Title: A sentence from Neil Gaiman's short story, October In the Chair )

Closed Rooms vs. Locked Rooms

I had thought at first, that they were pen marks on the inside of his hand.  Along his fingers.  But for a split second, my body reacted as if they were tattoos. (How I have always had a thing for finger tattoos.)  He clenched his hands quickly to make them disappear.  They were equal.  Measured.  They had to be tattoos.

(pause)

People's evolution and the capacity to grow; the transformative power of love*; the backdrop refrain of 'people never change'.

Having worked in the domestic violence movement for a good many years, what I know is that people who brutalize, at best, can only take longer breaks from brutalizing.  They never stop brutalizing.  Once someone has done or said something that destroys, the shock at destruction becomes the norm.  Becomes nothing if but a dull, limp high.

(pause)

Because I can see it just under your skin.  Can see the blades lift up and start to sharpen when you feel rejected.  They start to move- like a Ferris wheel but faster, and with knives- just under the surface.  I can see your eyes roll back a bit.  Not as in valley girl, but as in beast throwing its head back in ecstasy in the midst of a particularly gruesome kill.

I watch you harness it.

With such thin threads.

Tell me:

Are eight fingers enough to mark your deeds, and

in the blur of the end of this longer break,

will you see them?

(pause)



In the words of Bianca Del Rio (silencing Laganja and all her dramatic whining about her parents):

Well I was raised by wolves, bitch, and *I'm* still survivin'.


-k.


(photo: Kansuke Yamamoto The Closed Room)
(*="the transformative power of love" is a reference to a quote by bell hooks, which is this: "The transformative power of love is not fully embraced in our society because we often wrongly believe that torment and anguish are our 'natural' condition.")