Steady Sailor, or, The Beauty of the Picture You Take, Each Weekday Morning, in Front of a Poster of Tomatoes

 

 

I.

I have just returned from Illinois, Michigan, and the scrape of Ohio. I will return toward the end of the month.

II.

Earlier this evening, I thought of you. It was in the cool, blue light of the apartment you used to live in with the walls that didn’t quite touch the ceiling. Your museum living room. The neighbors that complained about your smoking.

I have a voicemail you sent me on March third of the year you knew me. You had brought a man home from the bar. You didn’t know why. You barely knew what happened. The fear and confusion in your voice is palpable.

Sometimes, I have this odd impulse to send it to you. I don’t know why. I never would, of course, and don’t even know why I still have the voicemail. It was something I held on to for evidence for you, if you ever needed it.  Then, as time went on, I had waited too long to delete it.  Now, with my romance toward archival material, it is too late to destroy it with a clean conscience.  And so, it rests.

III.

I have been reading a lot of research that is fucking me up. It stares me straight in the eyes with its information and blinks only when I do. The curve of its hands hold my jawline and ask me “Didn’t you know this already?”.  I did not. It seems like such an odd Keeper to hand me now, at this point in my life, the keys that unlock the rooms I’ve been trying to get into my entire life.

Behind me, I hear the grumbles of a suspicion only trauma can instill. It makes me smile the smile that sparks a person to defensively ask why I am laughing.

I am not laughing.

I am shining from within in recognition.

I am shining from within in particular love.

You with your hair freshly cut from the barber closest to your work.

You with a microfiber lens cloth dutifully kept deep in your pants pocket.




be well; be loved,


k.

(Photograph by Leslie Zhang for MWMW Studios Fall 2019)

The Scent of Menthol and the Opening of Eyes

I am swaddled in fleece blankets on a couch, propped up by two, immaculate pillows.  My toes are cold, although they are in woolen socks. I am not sick.  I am merely taking the day to hide out, to read, to write, and to drink coffee while no less than seven candles burn around me - even though it is just after noon.

My nails are a gold-ish, gun metal color.

My favorite incense (a kind I am able to find from time to time- it comes in an orange and white box and is called Autumn Leaves) is releasing a thin stream of smoke from the corner.

(pause)

This semester has offered thick, yet stress-less (knock on wood) lesson. When I think of the things I have learned in just the past year, I realize how little I knew when starting this endeavor. It is a good feeling. A necessary one.

I have been thinking about love and about solitude these days.  About introversion and connection. About holding hands in cold weather. About the cologne you leave on your sweatshirts for me, and my refusal to wash them until I know another will be coming in order to exchange it.

I've been reading a lot lately. Extracurricular tales of witches and Gods and myths and estranged siblings. Listening, too, to Pod Save the People and to various interviews with various people throughout various points in time. Here's one to watch just because of it. Something about assumptions and lessons and learning Guess My Disability.

This Tuesday will see the case of Aimee Stephens in front of the Supreme Court. It revolves around the question of if it is constitutional to fire someone for being trans. If you aren't familiar with this case, this summary is worth watching. It involves a number of trans celebrities reading the beautifu letter that Aimee wrote to her co-workers when she came out.  You can see it, here: Aimee.

This has implications for everyone.


Keep watching. Even when this world gives you all of the reason to look away.



be well, be loved,

k.

(image: A la Vivian Maier via giampixxx tumblr)

When You've Got No Other Choice, You Know You Can Follow My Voice

Turning points are always so informative about who you are and what you value.

We've all had them.

Think back to a turning point for yourself.  A moment that made you make a change, or something that shifted how you felt about some thing or some one or some situation in your life.

What was it that happened that made it shift so completely?

Can you recall how time slowed down a bit as you realized what you absolutely had to do?

(pause)

Not too long ago but also long ago, I went to go see a live/play version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

It's a play that has impacted more or less 90% of all queer and trans people I have ever known and, thus, also impacted me profoundly when I saw it for the first time ages ago.  During the more recent show, there was this queer boy sitting behind me and to my left.  We laughed and yelled and cheered for the exact same things while no one else did. (It was opening night.  There were a lot of funders of the theater there, season ticket holders and other people who just didn't get it.)

I recall after the show, going to share one of the songs with the person I had gone to the show with -  someone I had been dating, but was technically broken up with at the time.

Long story short:  She got mad and impatient and exploded. How she interacted with me that night after Hedwig made something shift for me.  It was something of the stark contrast in the meanness of her behavior with the incredible beauty of the story of that show.

What was I doing hanging out with someone who not only didn't get/have interest in the musical Hedwig and the genius of John Cameron Mitchell but, on top of and separate from that, was seemingly fine with speaking to the people she loves with such unkind words in such an explosive way?

It wasn't the first or second time it had happened. I was still getting to know her, but had seen her talk to people she loves in really cruel ways. Then she did it to me. It was why I had broken up with her. This was one of those attempts at friendship or a blurry date or, something that an aching heart tends to do. But that night things shifted for me.

After her outburst, she left in her car.  I sat in mine and listened to various versions of Wicked Little Town. Something had changed for me. It felt positive. Sad. Beautiful. Hard. Loving.  Much like the story I was listening to being sung, or the tale I had just seen on stage.

Love, no matter how it's struggling, would never be fine with those kinds of actions and words. I could love a person in their entirety, but I still - unapologetically and clearly- knew I deserved more than that.

Integrity matters in both words and actions.

['Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of 
Caring about ourselves]

Needless to say: I made some decisions, set some boundaries, and that night of Hedwig would serve as the last time I would interact with her in person.

(pause)

The universe, in its strange and funny way, put me in a gloriously queer context about a week later.  Drag queens and community organizers and djs and dogs. A femmey butch queer man with so much knowledge and incredible taste in/about music and I began chatting. I liked what he had to say. I liked his attitude, his friendliness, his style and what he was involved with.  We kept chatting. Exchanged music recommendations. We kept chatting and chatting and...

He pushed up his sleeves.  I stared.  "I love your tattoo. From Hedwig, right?" (I already knew the answer).

He said yes, paused, and added, "You know, part of why I have this tattoo because it's a way to know pretty immediately if someone is awesome or not.  Awesome people recognize it and, as soon as they do, I already know that they are incredible people."

Word.

(pause)


There will always be something to be said about people who understand the pain, love, tenderness, beauty, loss, gain, terribleness, forgiveness, vulnerability and complexity of this moment:

(From the movie musical) : God, watch their eye contact and exchange


Here is to the necessary turning points and glory of musicals-as-church-yet-of-course-one-of-the-main-characters-last-names-is-Gnosis.


Keep loving out there- yourselves and others. Keep celebrating every piece of the complexity of your beauty - inside and out.


be well; be loved,

k.

P.S. Tonight RENT LIVE will be shown with Valentina as my favorite character !
P.S.S. A general reminder I received today: We need each other to heal. Bam

(image: one of nine zillion drawings related to The Origin of Love from Hedwig found on the internet.)
(italicized words: Lyrics from Under Pressure written by yet another beautiful gender maniac)

You are Not Fit to be a King, or, It Was My Duty to Fight for What I Love

First of all, let's just be reminded that, generally speaking, I love Common's take(s) on love and on organizing. In addition, he remains to be the owner of one of the sexiest voices I've ever heard in my fucking life. I'm thinking about him and love because he posted this New Year's Day video on Instagram that was great. Mostly a push that everything will prosper if you "let love lead' and if you "let love have the last word".

Indeed.

Let love have the last word.

Sometimes people's families and lives break their hearts so deeply that their hearts fill with some kind of weird venom. At the bottom of it, the real deep down story, is that they're afraid they won't be loved. That somewhere, deep down and hidden even to themselves sometimes, they don't believe they are worthy of love. I'm both proud and in awe of the people in my life who have managed - who knows how- to grow open beyond what they experienced growing up. But I also have so much painful compassion for those in the world who haven't or weren't able to.

[If you need to, go and watch Black Panther again because I'm about to make an analogy. That film is about love on so many fucking vital levels.]

It's the difference between T'Challa and Erik Killmonger.  Goddamn did I cry at that last scene with Erik.  We all should have, or wanted to. Like *fuck*, Killmonger, I have seen so many people like you in life and it's so complicated. There are all of the reasons you would/could lack the love/generosity of love, but it's so goddamn hard to see the hate you bring and, ultimately, the sadness you bring into your own life.

(pause)

I'm thinking about love, community, inspiration, connection... all of it, and all of this, a lot.

We all grow.

It's a hopeful and beautiful feeling.

(pause)

I've also been thinking about the love I learned from a friend who passed many years ago.  Recently, I posted a miniature painting I did with an accompanying story that told one, particular and unforgettable story of this love. I was really surprised by overwhelming responses to it. I'm not sure why. Love breeds love, I guess/know. It still felt really good. An unforeseen piece to doing this is that I may have some pieces along with some stories up in an art show (like, in an actual art space that is part of art walks!? The thought of it kind of blows my mind.) That would/will be pretty amazing. More than I can really articulate right here and now.

Anyway.

I'll put a 2016 interview with Common here that was from The Breakfast Club. One, because it has both him and Charlamange Tha God in the same interview and thus is immediately more fabulous, but two because you can hear his voice when he is talking about the kind of energy he wants to be around and says "...man, this is my life.  I want to spend my life with people that I feel are at least going to do their best to bring their best energy." You can hear it in this tiny snippet at 6:53 of this interview. (He later talks about how there is love between him and the majority of his exes. Because of course there is. Exes as continued love as fam for the win.)

And...since I'm on my little Common trip, I'll also leave this song that was the first song that really turned me onto him (thank you, Matthew) so many moons ago. It's a song I think of a lot. Mostly because of the imagery of being able to recognize light in people. All of us have it. It tends to shine brighter for us with the people we love, but all of us have it. "It don't take a whole day to recognize sunshine".  So true in all of its meanings. Here it is:  The Light

That's all for tonight.

Love, love, love and 2019.

Let love lead and do your best to bring your best energy, indeed.


k.
(title: The first part is a part of a line said to Erik Killlmonger in Black Panther. The full line is "Your heart is so full of hatred. You are not fit to be a king."  The second part of the title is said by Nakia. So fucking good. The end.)
(image: from billykidd via le-nuage-sauvage tumblr)

Slipping Duty, or, Your Stripes Have Been Revoked

Sunday night. My second company of the evening has just left. There is the smell of candles just blown out in the air in the living room. I'm curled up on the couch.  My refrigerator is humming. The lamp I've put in the dining room offers the warm glow I'm always craving.  I'm such a weirdo about light.  Jun'ichiro Tanizaki wouldn't think so. He'd be exactly on my side on this one.

I'm listening to a song by Nils Frahm called 4:33 or 4'33" off of his Late Night Tales album (open this in another browser and listen to it) on repeat.  It makes me think of all of the plans I had that never came to fruition.  I remember wanting to take you to see him when he was in town. I think you would have enjoyed it. Maybe not. I was never clear on how you felt about pianos.

Tomorrow I have a 6:30am phone call that is of importance.  Attempting to string together words of clarity and engagement can be more than a bit difficult for me at that hour.  But things have been different lately. It's so strange to think about all of the things that have happened energy/body/health wise in the past nine months. I am so grateful to be where I am at, today.

This evening was the slow enjoyment of other people in my home. There are conversations that happen that are different, here. It's been a while since someone commented on and asked me about the books on the bookshelf in my living room. It's the shelf that is my reference books. The books that, to me, are the most important to have in physical form in my home.  It was ironic that she asked me tonight. I have two books arriving tomorrow that will be added to it. One is the book I just finished reading that I want a copy of to own (White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo) and the other is DeRay Mckesson's book that at last is out, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope. Listen to/watch this recent interview with him about it that was on the Trevor Noah show a week and some ago when you get the chance.

That's where I'm at tonight. Something that resonates with me on so many levels and on so many things from large scale to the most individual change or accomplishment is something that DeRay says in this interview.  I'll leave you with it:

...our tomorrows can be better than our todays. And the thing about hope is that hope is real work, not just magic.

             --  DeRay Mckesson


Here's to hope and the real work behind it.



Be well; be loved,

k.

(image via giampixxx tumblr)