Sex and the Red Room of Not Settling

So grateful that I didn't have to go into work today.

Instead, it has been coffee and baths and slow cooked meals and homework and reflecting on the last 72 hours of magic. I am so grateful and I am so excited for more of it as it unfolds.

(interlude)

Dear What I Wouldn't Settle For,

Your beautiful smile and teeth and eyebrows recede into the past. Sadly, steadily, truthfully.

While they evaporate, I hear this clip of this song over and over again and it makes me think of you:

You can bring a bullet
bring a sword 
bring a morgue

but you can't bring the truth to me

(interlude over)


Here is to the best kind of honesty:

To the magic of the mind, heart, body and everything in between.

The view from here is breathtaking
and all who share it with me are
in fact

what creates the view in the first place.




be well; be loved,

k.

(lyrics: Kendrick Lamar from All the Stars)
(image: William Eggleston via lecollecteur tumblr)

The Angel Protecting Your Future, or, For the Love of Lucas

I.

The issue with magic and the existence of angels is that if one does not believe in either or both, they will miss it and/or run it over with their car.

II.

It has been quite a (long) six days.

Friday afternoon I received an envelope mailed to my house by a former date of mine from a while back that included a beautiful letter of thank you and a handmade gift.

I will use this as my beginning simply because it was a notable moment of warmth before events, unrelated, fell directly into the toilet.

The next few days would go on to involve incidents I had to stop counting, multiple police departments, multiple nights, security footage, forced entry, and ending with the last 24 hours that involved a group of three men at night, me and a wooden baseball bat.

My head hurts.

I feel so grateful for the people who surround me.

These statements are true in equal amounts.

Here is to the beautiful balance of standing up for yourself, letting those that love you stand up for you, standing up for other people and standing up for the people that you love.


III.

(related to II. and a reoccurring theme both as of late and forever)

What you do, individually, matters.

Don't let people fuck with you about this and don't let people shit talk who don't have their sleeves rolled up and hearts exposed in what matters. If they don't, they really aren't much more than those asshole old white dudes who sat in the balcony during The Muppet Show and talked shit about everything. (Admittedly funny as fuck at times, but, what were they actually doing with their lives other than sitting on a couch and watching/judging people actually doing shit?)

On levels political and personal, I want to applaud and encourage folks who are engaging. Who aren't sure what to say or do, but say or do something that matters anyway. It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be.

Thank you to those who are engaging in ways that feel scary or uncertain. It's important that this is happening on all levels. It's incredible how much matter can come out of one person's willingness to be a brave, bad-ass, imperfect motherfucker and address the things that need to be addressed in the world or in their lives all while being kind. (Being kind is what moves things forward in the world. That balance of bold truth and kindness.)

Those who stay on their couches in their balconies can have their husks
their scraps
their private frowns.

Perhaps one day they'll join us.

(pause)

I'm going to leave you with this quote. The ideas within the words have been sticking with me in past few weeks in ways that matter:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again...who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."

Here's to those who have gotten off their couches and stepped out of their balconies to engage in love and in what matters.



Be well; be loved,

k.


(title: 2nd half: Most of my life I have over related to Corey Haim's character in the movie Lucas. )
(Image: Chris Friel, 8:28 week 3 #6)
(quote from T. Roosevelt)

The Beauty of Being Welcome: Ode to the Riff Raff

Tonight I feel humbled and appreciative.

I want to walk outside and just scream I'M SO FUCKING GRATEFUL out into the night sky.

It is incredible what can happen when you love the shit out of yourself and the people in (and out) of your life.

First, a nerdy aside:  I got 100% on my second final. I'm pretty proud of the fact that, in both classes, I got a 99.5% out of 100. (Oh, don't front. You know how these profs are. Giving out 100s as final grades for the class makes them look bad hahaha - I am currently showing all of my teeth in the widest smile I have. Which, admittedly, is pretty damn wide).

The holiday went beautifully. Leave it to loved ones who have either gotten kicked out of their families, are immigrants whose families are in other parts of the world, or who are both to be who I celebrate love with most years. I wouldn't have it any other way. I love the way the people in my life love me and love each other. I particularly love it when friends of mine who haven't met before, meet. It is simply the best. New and old, familiar and just wonderfully getting-closer-to.

It's been pretty magical to have family of origin sprinkled into the mix this year- somehow, they fit in the above categories as well. Healing can come in the most unfathomable forms, folks.  And one of them is me and my brother laughing and encouraging the fuck out of my nephew's beautiful antics and hilarity in exploring the world of his relatively new life.

Of a particular shout out is hanging out with Xavi one on one for a million hours. The amount of love I have for him is pretty ridiculous. We have had so many chapters and so many different kinds of adventures within them. On the top of my mind in this moment is his testimony that I'll never forget: Him sitting on the stand in his navy uniform and telling the truth about what happened that night. But, specifically, I will never forget his total badass-ness in taking down the lawyer that tried to fuck with him around his English while he was on the stand. The second that pants-suited dick said something and I saw Xavi lean forward on the stand, I knew it was over. FUCK YESSSSS.  I am still cheering that shit on.

In any case.

Really good things are culminating. I'm grateful for every single person in the mix that chooses to connect to something larger than fear. On all fronts and with hearts fully open and ready. What comes out of it is worth every single moment of courage-mixed-with-fear in order to create something different. In order to create something that matters.

I love you.

Let's do this.

This song, always and over and over again. 


K.

(image: Apollo 8 Coming Home, 1969, Robert McCall)

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)