Edison's Stigmata & the Art of Cupping Your Hands

I had gotten up early this AM to do some reading, homework and to act like I am a person who gets up early every morning.  So far I have a cup of coffee, some downloaded readings, and a stack of jalapeño bagels in a crinkly plastic bag.

One step at a time.

If you have not read it yet, I would suggest reading Sonya Renee Taylor's The Body is Not an Apology. In particular, I would recommend the audio version of it, if it is accessible to you. Sonya Renee Taylor was in some of the same circles as I was at a point in time, and her reading voice - her reading or spitting her own words, in particular- is amazing.  The epigraph and prologue, alone, had me tearing up. She writes an ode to her mother's belly in the very beginning of the book that will squeeze, ruin and save you- all in the course of less than two minutes.

It is a necessary read.

As I sit here, gearing up, I am surrounded by a string of lights that have bulbs on them the exact size of my palm. It creates the feeling of light illuminating from my palms, and I find it both comforting and sublime.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Anjelica Huston, 1972, Bob Richardson via Secretcinema1 Tumblr)

The Beauty Beyond What You Know: A Story in Three and a Half Parts

Recently and inadvertently, I identified a gesture that makes me feel so loved. It's not the gesture, itself.  I would have never recognized it as something that made me feel loved except that it is something that almost all of the people in my life I feel incredibly loved by have in common. And so, in almost a reverse engineered manner: I feel loved when people do or say this because almost all of the people who have made me feel so, incredibly loved have this tendency:

When parting ways at night, they ask me to tell them when I get home.

(pause)

I.

Let me tell you about joy.

To do so, I will have to tell you about a person I have loved for many years. Someone I have been friends with, dated, been friends with again and who I negotiated away a wedding plan with at some point in there.

I love who he is. I love our connection and our absurd and constant hilarity, yet our seriousness when it matters.  I love the attention we pay to each other.  The details we retain of each other's histories, families, dates, irrational phobias, guilty pleasures and dreams.

We share the same love of scents. Each time we meet up we wear something complex because we know the other person will push their nose up to that curve behind the other's ear, and inquire; then discuss. (Who knew Viktor & Rolf released a second version of Spicebomb? Now I know. My God, now I know.)

I love, simply but fully, how much we enjoy each other. Make fun of each other. Know each other. How we don't even have to discuss the fact that, yes, there will be at least two kinds of hot sauce on the popcorn (each kind on a separate side of the bowl) while we watch some movie or idiotic television show at his house, talking a quarter of the time, all while under either a blanket or his elegant and beautiful dog that is almost bigger than I am.

II.

For the first part of the night we sat at a bar and, as is the annoying obligatory presence, some random white guy interrupted our conversation with the same tired ass line of "I'm sorry to interrupt you" (they never are) followed by some pseudo-intellectual crap of how they were trying to identify the exact accent of Spanish we were using (the punchline is that these dudes almost never know more than even three words of the language) which they then use as a launchpad to talk about their travels to Spanish-speaking countries. Like who gives a fuck, Chad?

In these situations, there is always a balance to feel out and to act upon: I name/jab at the interruption in order to check the person and situation for what it is (some weird, racist, colonizer attempt at monopolizing strangers' time to play out their Christopher Columbus and/or "adventurer" fantasies). At the same time, there's this fucked line of things.

Typically, being a woman-read person, if I'm a dick to a guy and am with another guy, the guy I'm a dick to doesn't go after me: He goes after the guy I am with. It's a bizarre function of sexism. It gets tricky. I have to know that the level of aggression I spit towards some idiot may end up making the person I am with a target in a way they hadn't bargained for. When the asshole is a white dude and the guy I'm with is a man of color who has English as a second language, the balance becomes even tighter/more important. This balance is something that I think about so much. So much of maintaining it has to do with the endless variables in endless situations that no one asked for.

III.

Let me tell you about joy.

When we left the bar and went to his house to continue hanging out, I had this moment of experiencing just the pure joy of us both laughing while he was asking and I was trying to explain the concept of "teenage angst". (Ask yourself: How would you explain this concept to someone? I can almost guarantee you that you will end up laughing while doing some kind of impersonation of the concept.) The conversations he and I have about language are different from any others I have. He used to work as a language assistant years ago. He and I are both so serious when it comes to understanding meaning and nuance, but also laugh like hell knowing that we will never fully understand each other's language. I love these conversations. I love things like him laughing at me when I forget the word for "comb" and, instead, use some janky circumlocution that involves the phrase "the plastic thing you organize your hair with".

(pause)

It got late. He welcomed me to stay. I knew I had to go home.

Before I left, he pulled out a worn leather bag from his closet.  It was a medical bag of sorts from WWII that he had gotten in Poland. I know that you love tijeras, Tía*- and he opened the bag that had about fifteen pairs of antique looking scissors- I love them, too. I picked up a few different pairs. My eyes widened. Each were both delicate and heavy all at once. When I picked up a particular pair, my pulse quickened. Admittedly, I don't think they even constitute being scissors- they are more of a surgical tool that look like scissors. They gave such a satisfying and heavy snap when you closed them. I thanked him, and slipped them in my bag.

He walked me outside.

We hugged.

I started making my way down the steps to my car.



Text me when you get home, Tía.







be well; be loved,


k.
(*= He calls me "Tía" because he's making fun of the accent and slang I have from some of my friends and teachers who are from Spain. He's always trying to scrub me of that slang and accent and, as part of it, he calls me Tía and, because of my ever-bratty-sister composure, I call him Tío in return. He hates it.)
(image: Javier Torok via untrustyou tumblr)

Witchcraft and Hanging Out on Porches

Life gets weirder and weirder, yet better and better.

Is it strange to have had so many odd (and arguably terrible) things happen at once and walk out with the same glow that is, well, growing?

The excitement of anticipation and knowing is in the air and in my body and it feels incredible.

It's day 227 (shout out to anyone who ever knew, watched and loved that show. I remember once talking to Jodi because I was confused as to why no one who was roughly our peer in age seemed to know it and then she reminded me that we grew up in an area where there was actually black representation on television in both programming and newscasters- unlike the majority of the country. What up Doris Biscoe!) of meditation and next level weird ass mental wizardry.

To the people in my life who I find endlessly lovable:

Be good to yourself, be good to your body, be good to your brain, be good to your heart, be good to your feelings.

IT PAYS OFF.

In every imaginable way, and in a thousand even beyond that.

(Also, be good to your pets.)

[Side note: If you have a cat and it irrationally loves me let me just be honest in saying that your cat is, more than likely, my familiar. People tend to think that shit was left back in Midieval and Early Modern times, but bitch let me be real: It's 2019 and whether I love your cat or if I don't like your cat at all and it stares at me/follows me around like Jodi Foster's stalker, it's because it's helping me out with some bad ass magic. Make no mistake.]

I'm going to leave you with the song that gets stuck in my head if I ever hear it. (I also think it's fucking hilarious to see Bill Bonds' random ass in a boxing gym in the second one.)

I always remember the look on this woman's face haha

Here it is

You gotta love it.  It also subconsciously probably explains why, in my last entry, I just keep talking about standing up for people. Stand up and tell em you're from... bam!

Be well, be loved,


k.

(image: via boxfullofletters tumbler)

She Says "That's For You", Then the Recording Cuts Off

Currently spread across clean sheets while the tail end of a ton of travel laundry tumbles its way through the dryer.  I've been out of town for the past week. I got home this evening and immediately dove into all of the tasks associated with Sunday nights, but on Wednesday. My suitcase is almost back to empty and can almost be placed back into my closet for the next time I slip out of town with brief trace. My plants have survived, as have I.  It feels good to be home. 

The past three days, in particular, have been filled with a particular type of reflection that feels good.

Other than that, the past week has been filled with good conversations.  Presence. Audio notes from favorite friends.  Laughter. Exhaustion from a good day's work. Tarot. Bleached sheets.  Hotel swimming pools. Tight sweaters. Leg wear.  Heels. Dental floss. Intelligence. Deep sleep. Connection.  Getting into a bit of a confrontation with a Proud Boy that involved me shouldering him. Really, really good vegetarian biscuits and gravy.

I've been around a lot of conversations about sex lately and, following, have been thinking a lot about sex lately.  More so than usual, if that is possible. Thinking about sex that's been had, sex that hasn't been had, and sex that never got to be had. I get enjoyably trapped in my mind sometimes with the topic of sex and, in celebration of this fact, simply take it out via my wardrobe. Sex is so psychological for me. So is gender expression. But it is the fusion of these two things that makes it almost impossible for me to concentrate: All this energy with none of the focus. An exercise in harnessing energy. It's fun to see what comes out of it. So flammable it is.

The remedy, of course, is just as gratifying as the illness, but this time around I want a bit more time to reminisce.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image via stylemasculin-blog tumblr)

Found Objects, or, You Die By Your Own Hand or Kill What You Can't Stand

(to be followed by listening to Die By Your Own Hand by Forgetters; part of title is taken from the lyrics)


A few days ago while walking along the water, I found a small but heavy chest stuck between two sizeable rocks.  The chest was like the ones used in seafood restaurant commercials, or found at the bottom of aquariums, to denote treasure.  Inside of it, wet but still in tact, there was a note and three photographs.

The note read:

I loved you the way someone should have loved you all along.
It will make you hate me.
It is easier to hate me than to hate anyone who should have loved you first, and well. 

The photographs were of a woman and a small child. On the back of one of the photos was written:

I try to know you but it's too late
Some (lady) told you how you're no good
So now you're gonna prove (her) right 

There was a smudge after the last line of the message. A lost word. Lost punctuation. A smear of grime. It was hard to tell. 

I gathered the contents and placed them back into the chest.  I pushed the chest back in between the rocks, careful to leave it angled upon the sharp beach where I found it.  The message was not for me, and I was certain that its contents were sought.




be well; be loved,

k.
(image via pancakebandit tumblr) 
(influence: The Night Accelerates by Forgetters)

The Crinkling Sound of Your DIY'ed Owl Costume's Wings

A good and productive day.

The taste of cinnamon in my mouth, a hunger for potatoes in my stomach, and the crave of a thick lotion from my hands.

I realize that I'm different. But I can still relate to people. They may just be more akin to the lads in The Wolfpack documentary.  

Costumes diy'ed out of cereal boxes and cut up yoga mats?  

Fuck yes, and please. 

Isolation growing up may be horrific, but it also gives you a lot of time to think, and to become resourceful.

 Be well; be loved; find a job where the hiding, costume making and thought juxtapositions continue,


k.

(photo: damaris goddrie by wikkie hermkens for volkskrant magazine via mazzystardust tumblr)

Upon My Arrival, You Shiver: Heat and Cold and Excitement.

Low light in the living room, with one candle burning to supplement it.  The constant gurgle and hum of the aquarium in the corner.

Tonight we made soup, broke bread, wrapped blankets around ourselves, watched brief black and white episodes of directorial perfection.

I am here alone, now.

These nights feel good. Worked for. Earned.

(pause)

In the back of my mind, on the tip of the light point in my mouth just behind my front teeth - the alveolar ridge- where my tongue taps and touches to create sound and meaning and differentiation. These secret, dark places.  This is where you live. Ever present. Ever tempting. Ever lasting.

Frigid. Frantic. Fasting.


(image: Red Party- Virginie Bocaert. via Witches' Sabbath tumblr)

Wait, My Dear: For You Have Dropped the Glove I Just Slapped You With.

The great epochs of our life are where we win the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.


                                                                    --Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, but as discovered/read on the first page of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue by Samuel R. Delany




When I was a child, my father would always walk on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street. When asked why he did, he told me, simply, that it is what gentlemen do.

My child's mind raced to imagine the root of such chivalry:  Perhaps the implication that one would catch the harshest hit of a car spun out of control across the sidewalk was considered gentlemanly.

I liked that.

It was the day I decided that I would become a gentleman.


(pause)


A woman who dresses as a man who dresses as a woman who enjoys fucking and not fucking and literature.

What is the threat of it? What is it that makes people love and hate and love again, only to hate?

I have no idea.

I am pondering the Dandy, and the antiquated lace that lines my heart. Hand written letter above email.  A present in the mail in replace of the splooge of necessity.

I take my time.

In that way, I am old fashioned.

Flamboyance in a slightly timeless manner.

Your mean words will not hurry me, nor will they keep you warm tonight.