Two Tale Juxtoposition: Feeling the World as it Rains, and, The Sun Upon My Shoulders

I'm thinking about all of this detention center bullshit that has been going on forever and the family separation bullshit that has been going on at the border. Trying to do, connect with, and plug into everything that matters with this. It's a nightmare that is part of a nightmare that has already been going on.

It takes a moment to be grounded in doing something and not fall into thinking that nothing is going to stop this or, alternately, thinking that any moment you savor in life is somehow extravagant when thinking about what is happening in the world right now.

Just connect and do. Don't martyr but don't succumb to overwhelm.  But don't just stand still. It's what I keep telling myself step by step by step.

(pause)

Some things that I'm grateful for that are on my mind:

I received a gift of a piece of art in the mail made by a friend of mine in California and it is absolutely perfect. It is the kind of thing that, when I hang it on the wall, I will get excited and inspired by it every time I look at it.

A friend gave me a box of lavender shortbread cookies that she made with the lavender she bought on a road trip we went on together a number of weeks ago.  They smell amazing. Such an incredibly thoughtful gift: To take one memory and fold it in to become another.

People don't tend to give me necklaces. (One, because I tend to keep my throat covered. Some misread this as a shyness about a scar that I have. That's not what it is. It's something more primal than that.)

Today a person gave me a necklace that they made that they weren't sure that I would wear, but that they thought it would look beautiful around my neck.  It is gorgeous. I'm not sure if I will wear it either, but I think I will one day. I'd need to work up to it. Create a gender for it. I can. I will. It's beautiful. Stunningly so. The light that catches on the tiny stones that lay on my collarbone (I tried it on) is absolutely ethereal.

I feel flattered in a strange way. People here tend to misread me or want me to be a person who is eternally or only "tough". I am not. I would not ever want to be that misread or that one dimensional. It freezes me in an extreme that doesn't actually exist in anyone. This freezing can be used to excuse anything. ("He would fight you like a man", my brother once said in describing my father's interactions with me.) "Can't you take it?" The answer is that I don't want to.

No matter the thinness of my body structure, it is rare to be viewed as delicate enough to wear something as intricate and fine as this necklace. It's not me talking shit about myself. It's just rare. Being viewed as delicate has always made me feel relieved, somehow. Like I can let my guard down. Fall into the arms behind me and know that I will be caught and kept and held.

Light reflecting off of tiny crystals without a single fear in my spine.

I like imagining that feeling.

I have had it before.

I will create it, again.

To take one memory and fold it in to become another.



be well; be loved,

k.
(image: Three Tulips - 1967 © Irving Penn)