The Click of a Pencil Dropping From My Hair Onto a School-Tile Floor

The problem is that no one uses the library system.

It's like this: There are zero translations of the first play we need to read, online.  None.  There are tons of frantic students' pleas online from over the years.  But no English translations.

But I have a weird predicament.

I use the library system.

And, thus, I know that one translation exists on campus, in the Drama Library.

So I just went and got it.

I know it's like cheating.

But it's not.

I will only be double checking what I think I understand.

I swear.


-k.

Lead Me Astray

My room smells like peppermint tonight, and there are loud thuds happening, sporadically, outside my bedroom window in the alley, below.  I'm not concerned. I've taken to reading cheap suspense novels and drinking chocolate almond milk from crystal wine glasses. It is my last cram of indulgence and summer before my schedule goes haywire.

For now, I've just been wondering where the people I know go to do their best thinking, and what position they sit or lay in.





-k.

Emerge.

Last night I slept more soundly, more deeply, than I have in the past four months. Upon waking today, it felt as if a thick and trembling layer has been sloughed off of me.  Its heaviness left upon the floor.

It feels so good. So calm.  Like being placed, as a precious gem, inside a velvet pouch.

(I am aware of the timing.  I need not look into it.  Only and simpy, to enjoy it.)

I will say it again: It feels so good.

Not elevated
but rather
as if an angel has lifted my chin to be equal with the horizon so that I may see all that is around me
and all that is beyond.

Such a cloud has lifted off of the simple lightness of being.

(pause)

Last night Joaquín and I had conversations that made me think more of connection to community.  People.  Lives. Servitude. Humility. Diligence. Love.

Tonight, before heading out it is me, alone, in my clean and basic bedroom.  Two red candles, lit and tall, on each side of a cherished gift from a long lost-but-remembered inventor.

I wish I could tell you more of this, but the whirl of traffic outside my window and the hush of a braking bus reminds me that it is time to go.

Be well; be loved.

k.

Food for thought, tonight, comes from Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Gay Science.  (Here I'm thinking of style, art, self love, and ugly-as-bitterness):

One Thing is Needful.  To "give style" to one's character that is a grand and a rare art!  He who surveys all that his nature presents in its strength and in its weakness, and then fashions it into an ingenious plan, until everything appears artistic and rational, and even the weaknesses enchant the eye exercises that admirable art.  Here there has been a great amount of second nature added, there a portion of first nature has been taken away: in both cases with long exercise and daily labour at the task.  Here the ugly, which does not permit of being taken away, has been concealed, there it has been re interpreted into the sublime.  Much of the vague, which refuses to take form, has been reserved and utilised for the perspectives: it is meant to give a hint of the remote and immeasurable.  In the end, when the work has been completed, it is revealed how it was the constraint of the same taste that organised and fashioned it in whole and in part: whether the taste was good or bad is of less importance than one thinks, it is sufficient that it was a taste!  It will be the strong imperious natures which experience their most refined joy in such constraint, in such confinement and perfection under their own law; the passion of their violent volition lessens at the sight of all disciplined nature, all conquered and ministering nature: even when they have palaces to build and gardens to lay out, it is not to their taste to allow nature to be free.  It is the reverse with weak characters who have not power over themselves, and hate the restriction of style: they feel that if this repugnant constraint were laid upon them, they would necessarily become vulgarised under it: they become slaves as soon as they serve, they hate service.  Such intellects they may be intellects of the first rank are always concerned with fashioning and interpreting themselves and their surroundings as free nature wild, arbitrary, fantastic, confused and surprising: and it is well for them to do so, because only in this manner can they please themselves!  For one thing is needful: namely, that man should attain to satisfaction with himself be it but through this or that fable and artifice: it is only then that man's aspect is at all endurable!  He who is dissatisfied with himself is continually ready for revenge and we others will be his victims, if only in having always to endure his ugly sight. For the sight of the ugly makes one bad and gloomy. 

(photo: I don't remember. Snatched from someone, I am certain.)

Cinnamon Sticks Among the Steam: A Gentleman's Guide to the Dry-Wet Season

I woke up decently early this morning and made breakfast for myself and a person who makes me laugh.  By the time they arrived to eat it, the kitchen had all of the smells I love:  sauteed onions, potatoes, salt, pepper, black beans, garlic, dark coffee and the tart smell of citrus.

It feels good to be getting things in order for the fall. I've been stuffing my nervousness into the back of my sock drawer and, instead,  putting on a starched and pinstriped button down, thick deep olive tie wear, fitted jacket, and tight mustard corduroys.  A black hanky flowers out of my back pocket as a coded invitation to those who can read it, and a functional middle finger to the vanilla world I must glide through during the day.

For this occasion of fall organization, I chose a matte metal tie clip that is actually a mechanical pencil.  I will need one these days, without doubt. So many things these summer-dirt-deepening-to-autumn-mud days to be jotted, reported, measured. I am making room for what I need and what I love. Strangely, inspiration and direction is following.

In the meantime, I have been having a steamy affair with cinnamon.  I have been adding it on top of steel cut oats, steeping teas heavy with its peppered spice, and tapping sprinkles of it into my coffee.  It has a calming effect.  Warming. For now I am satisfied with circulation it pulls through my veins, and the scented compliment it provides to my wardrobe.




Be well; be warm; be absolutely unapologetic for the love and light you build with your hands and company,

k.


P.S. Neil Gaiman has one of the most conspiratorial and true reading voices that I have heard from an author reading their own work.  If you get the chance sometime this week, make yourself something warm to drink and settle down for a few stories, which may be found and heard, here.  I promise you, you will not be disappointed.

(photo: Tobias Rocks tumblr)

The Necessity of Sharp-Nosed Gentleness and the Depths of a Fake Sea

(My late morning)

It's 9:30 am.

I find myself in the pose and rough dress of Schiele's  reclining woman with green stockings.  Minus green, plus black, without the shoes and what would be under-leg typing.

(pause)

Everyone wants their secrets.

Everyone wants their love.

I've never understood frivolous lying or opacity in the context of loved ones.  Lie for protection from danger. Hide things that will get the ones you love taken away by the uniformed, or worse yet, un-uniformed.

But smallness and insecurity?

It's so far from a reasoning I understand.

(pause)

I've been dragging my fingertip across the dust of a memory I am uncertain I want to follow. After all, aren't some things better kept in the past?  That unchanging aquarium of slow movement.

Slow movement.

I think of those tiny sunken treasure chests you find at the bottom of such a glass tank's floor.  That painted-to-look-heavy box of loot resting upon florescent gravel that opens and closes with the push and pull of the water, tempting you to catch glimpses of what's inside. 

Is the view enough to entertain and satisfy while you wait?

Or is it simply and sadly an obvious fool's gold distraction?


(pause)

Characters from my past have been resurfacing. (Insert image of the continuous trail of air bubbles that rise to a small aquarium's surface, here)

It's strange to me what makes them come forth, but I take it as a compliment.  It is nice, after all, to impact people enough that they seek you out. For people to return from their journeys to place your hands into theirs, look you in the eye, and tell you what you have meant to them and what they have seen.

(insert the image of the tiny treasure chest clamping open and closed, again, here.)

Who knows what it's about, ultimately?

Everyone wants their secrets.

Everyone wants their love.


-k.

(One-song-soundtrack for the end of this entry is Dirty Gold by Angel Haze)
(photo: Sawfish by Mathieu Aubel)

Oh Berlin, Nobody Knows Where You've Been

Nothing I can report today.

I've been listening to this song a lot.  I prefer this lyric version of the video better than the real or official or whatever you call it one.  That one is too hetero and weird. (A potentially redundant phrase, I know.)

There is always something to be said about stories set to music. Especially to piano. Listen to it in the dark if you can.  Shut your laptop or phone screen off. (The video is pointless.) Lay on your back.

Listen.

Feel.

Ask what the matter is.

People should more than they do.

Enjoy.



Perch upon a sturdy bubble and rise,

k.

(photo: stolen)
(title: lyric of a different song by same person)

The Felt Difference in Morning Fucking

 I feel good, I walk alone

This morning I was up by 3 to be out the door by 3:30: my perfect coffee and questionable coordination hitting the road. 

Some of the things I love about being up so early is the lack of filters.  Having a pop song lodged in my head at that hour means that it will be played in the car on repeat for the duration of my trip.  I will grip the wheel, swerve slightly as there are no other cars on the road to hint at lane locations, and sing as loudly as I can while giving the driver's seat a lap dance.

It wakes me up.

This morning's pop song was Lady Gaga's Do What You Want.  I sang along. I fantasized to it in the bold and drowning way one does when just waking up and so would swap the lyrics, unconsciously. "Do what you want with my body" became "Do what I want with your body" without fail the whole 30 minute drive.

In the still-dark-early mornings, need it be said:

We are all still

slightly unmasked.


If you're wondering, know that I'm not sorry


I arrived in the dark to a well-lit industrial cityscape that had been awake for hours.

Decades.

Barbed wire fence, reflective vests, pedestrian walkways marked in yellow.

I stepped out toward the forest of lined up semis, their steel silhouetted by the flood lights above and behind them.  As I followed the yellow paint across the lot,  a forklift rounded the corner and hesitated, as I did, wanting to make sure they could see me in my black jeans and sweatshirt.  It stopped to let me pass- headlights glaring into my eyes.

"You must be new here." a voice snarled.

I stopped directly in front of the forklift, though not facing it, and let the voice hit my throat, slide down my chest to my stomach and spread between my legs.

I've been here a hundred times before. So many times, in so many cities, in so many states, throughout my life.  I knew the rules.  I knew its heightened chivalry and even the tamed the-boss-may-be-watching advances from the men of this world would never allow this.

It was a woman's voice.

My favorite kind.

The voice of a butch unsure of her own masculinity.  The un-finessed touch of a wannabe bully.  All work pants and strut without having found the delicate tension and timing of tender and tough.


You don't own my life but


I let a cocky smile spread slow across my face before I turned to face the headlights of the lift, and walked directly towards them.

"Now, I bet you're someone who could help me...", I said, continuing to walk towards her, my steps taking longer than necessary.

In the shadows above the glare of the headlights, I see her shift her body in her seat. Push herself back. Maintain her grip on the steering wheel.


[A curtain, this time heavy and black, closes upon our scene]

[A beat]

Although there are many things that open me, nothing opens me more than being the first hand to slide a bit
into the mouth
of an unsure and sloppy stallion.


Do what (I) want with (your) body


-k.



(all italicized words are lyrics from the pop song mentioned,  Do What You Want and should, arguably, be sung in your head as you read this.)
(photo from Tobias Rocks tumblr)