Let Me Get That For You: Choreographed Movement For Being Caught in a Sudden Rainstorm

It's taking me time to emerge from a cocoon made something of vital attention and action, and a pandemic. Somewhere, in between it all, I was in grad school. Next semester will be my last. Even as I type that sentence, I feel the soured pain of denied pleasure spread across my face in the beginning of a smile. (It's too early; don't jinx it.)

Since ending my most recent semester last week, I have been wrapped in literature, the news, protest, information, a new razor and a satisfying bar of soap that smells of walnut shells and tar. There are a line of masks hanging by my front door. Some are clear face shields. Most are black. There is a green one in there for a surgical flair and because it feels a bit more precise than the others do.

Today I needed to hide out. The day has been spent mostly in an orange bikini top, a thin black slip, and with a freshly painted pedicure I did myself. A deep blue-green.  I have been watching films in Spanish and noticing, again, the pause and dance that happens in doorways with con permiso and with pasa. I feel satisfied in recognizing the conjugation in the sharp edged gossip of se follaron.

I've spent a good deal of the day on the floor.

Today, no book holds my attention but, in the one book that held my attention for a bit longer than the others, a man is found laying on the floor by his assistant. The assistant asks him if he's okay, if he fell, etc. and the man responds with annoyance at his questions. He is simply smoking on the floor and is it really so strange? He goes on to proclaim the function and necessity of laying on the floor at times:

The ground or, in this case, the floor, is the safest, firmest and most modest place there is; and, as well as providing the best view of the sky or the ceiling, it's an ideal spot in which to do some thinking [...]You'll have to get used to seeing me here, because once on the floor you cannot fall over or, indeed, fall any lower, a great advantage when it comes to making decisions, which one should always base on the worst possible hypothesis, if not on sheer desperation and its usual companion, meanness, then there's no risk of your giving way to sentimentality or being disappointed by whatever decision you happen to take.

be loved; be well,

k.

[Image: Guy Bourdin]
[Excerpt (As if the punctuation did not give it away):  Javier Marías, Thus Bad Begins]

When I Was Growing Up, One of My Brothers Referred to Me as Sir

I just saw The Field Guide to Evil, which is a bunch of shorts from really great film makers from around the globe that were asked to make a film based on folklore or a fairy tale.

Here's the thing.

The last film is Peter Strickland's The Cobbler's Lot and I CAN'T STOP FLIPPING OUT ABOUT HOW GOOD IT IS.

It has everything:

Shoe fetish, men with eyeliner, a woman with a trained raven, a toppy king (also in eyeliner) who pulls the most fucked and amazing toppy death couture I've ever seen in my life, blood on a quasi-wedding dress, jizz, women in these weird body stockings that are supposed to make them look naked, young men kneeling in front of an older man in a throne, two brothers who look like young/weird Robert Smiths, a forest, embroidered stockings, a princess, murder, ghosts...  It is a visual and thematic orgasm. Someone *please go and see this so that we can talk about it*.


(image: Man Ray, Legs)

Unfold in a Generous Way: The Art of Undoing

Meet me at midnight.

When I was twenty, I fell in love.  The best friend of a best friend. The strangest part of the story is that, although I had always found him to be a kind and beautiful heart-ed person, I had never been attracted to him. Actually, that is putting it lightly.  I had always actively been slightly repulsed by him.  I recall finally cluing into the fact that he wanted to kiss me just as he went in for the kiss. I froze, didn't kiss back (his mouth just pushing against mine like a warm but dead fish) then clumsily made an excuse to leave the room.

If one asks me to recount how I got from repulsion to being clearly and honestly in love, I would have no idea how to draw that meandering scrawl of a path. I simply know that that is what happened.

We were/are both magic, and the combination of those two magics went on to create the lyrics of at least a dozen songs, collages, zines, journal entries, discussions on rooftops, slow dances, running in dress shoes, and no less than two meetings (one with candles; one without) in a deep forest just outside of a Michigan city.

(pause)

I want to say something about magic:

It exists.

People who don't believe this are missing out on everything.

The art you make, the ideas you have, the bizarre connections that happen in collaborative weavings.  There have been, will be, and are people in our lives who glimmer when we remember or think of them. It is not make-believe. It is not delusion.

I've always felt a particular pity in my heart for people who shoot down the incredible.

The unbelievable.

Dismiss and strip down the spectacular things that happen in our lives and, ultimately, make them go away.

It is unfortunate, but never has to be that way.

There are those of us who lean into these bits of magic- curious and enamored- to see what will happen.  That's when it happens. That's when the strange back plates of the universe start to shift.

It is when we lean into these particular moments that their invisible trap doors fly open, playfully sucking us through their doorways lined with floral garland and golden light. We fall through their depths that somehow, and confusingly, leave us both falling and floating- perfect and scared- in the heights and beauty of the clouds, above.

(pause)

Friendship and love and art and strength. Building always being bigger than hiding away:

The best places to find yourself will always be with the ones that carry you away.





Let them.




Happy New Year~ be well; be loved~ always.


k.


(image by: Steven Meisel, 1991 via lilyhex Tumblr. Yes, that's Madonna in the middle.)
(title, in part, is a reference to the Bjork song, Undo)