Be Yourself, or, Salt at the Door For The Night Hags

What I've got is that art ignites art.  This is more true than ever, at present.  There is art that, absolutely and without question, actually has a visceral impact on my body. My heart beats quicker, the ideas start storming, I can feel a hot warmth in my throat and upon my chest. 

Tonight things have been good. Really good. So good that you find yourself slightly sunburnt and sitting on a stoop talking about shit that matters. So good that you're up at midnight eating chocolate cake with one of your favorite people in the world and talking about how your heart can't stop beating so fast from the consistency of sound and image brilliance you both just witnessed.

(pause)

I've been thinking a lot about love and how much it means to mean when people can call each other out and neither of us is too big of a baby to own it.  I love it.  A while and a step back, there were too many people in my life that were too soft for my liking. Too soft to be able to find their legs and stand for what was right or aimed for. Too soft to hear someone tell them Look, man. You're smart, but you gotta act right and stop acting like people owe you shit for your parents being dickheads.  Things like that.

Anyway.  That's in the past now.

Now, it's nice. Talking with people secure enough to love themselves and other people.  Making phone calls to Madrid because why the fuck not? Getting packages from London because sweetness, I'm here for you.  Writing letters to Chicago because, of course I am.

Life can be hilarious in the number of doors it will slam in your face.

Good thing I've always climbed in through the windows.


k.


P.S. I've been listening to Charlamagne tha God's book (the audio version that he narrates), and I am currently living for it on multiple, multiple levels.

(image: Chaim Soutine Red gladiolis, 1910 via lecollecteur tumblr)

Bodies That Live

Taking a break from studying.

Here's the thing:  This course has taught me that I am a smart ass armchair scientist. Reading all of these studies makes me suspicious of things they didn't control for in order to factor out.  For example, I just finished reading three studies having to do with menopause where cis women were studied longitudinally to see if menopause and its supposed symptoms were universal.  Turns out, it's not, and varies quite a bit both from what societal myths say and among ethnic and cultural groups.  So, for an example, Japanese American women in the study reported the lowest rate of hot flashes during pre, early peri, late peri and post menopause points in life.  In the same study, Caucasian women reported the highest rate of irritability across all four of the points studied.  And when I saw this, I was like, well, yeah, probably because the majority of cis white women have been around heterosexual cis white men most of their lives since birth and most of those dudes are annoying as fuck: No surprise after 44-55 years of that shit they have had it.

Needless to say: Scientific study is not exactly my field, but I'm enjoying all that I am learning nonetheless. It's been a challenge- and an exciting one- to back up and learn (or relearn or unlearn as the case may be) all of the information about hormones and bodies and cells and intersexuality and all of these things that start to get at the root of the human body and systems of oppression all within a medical industrial complex built in a gross and shit-tastic capitalist system.

That's all I've got for right now. I need to get back to these readings. It's been a fulfilling and long day.  It feels good to be loved and supported: By magic, by knowledge, by loved ones, and by the nighttime that is about to fall upon us.

sweet dreams and sweet studies: whatever and of whomever they may be.


k.

(image: whitewit.ch tumblr)

Baudelaire's Perfume: The Art of Waiting; The Depth of Disguise

This morning is 9 AM pizza and coffee.

I am currently awaiting a meeting that I have been both anticipating and fearing since about 4 PM on Friday.  These ambush meetings are the worst, at times.  Hopefully they will involve an element of the best.  Only time (90 minutes and counting) will tell.

While I wait, I listen to the sounds of planes overhead.  I learn the creaks and pounds of an apartment I do not live in, empty but for me, my coffee, my nerves.

(I pause to turn on a lamp.  There's no need to behave like an actual intruder. I have been invited here, after all.)

Last night I went to temporarily replace the scarf I left at a dear friend's house who lives 61.8 miles away.  It won't actually replace the scarf, but will act as a soft and decent stand in for the next few weeks.

(pause)

I know that you read me as the responsible one in this. That my mystery is all in your head.  That everyone's excitement and quixotic tales are in the past. That's not the case with me.  I know you sense this, and I know it turns your stomach into an apple'd, acidic mess.

I hide my undoings well.  I wash and obscure the scent of these tales off of my arms, my neck, my chest before entering the room. You compliment the spice of my cologne.  And when our eyes meet, you dare yourself to read as much of me as you can, through them.



be well; be loved,

k.

(photo via trashy princes tumblr)

Dancing Upon the Lips of the Awe-Stuck, or, How to Play Upon an Open Mouth

The evenings have been jeweled as of late.  Wide, see-through-blue skies looming over the petals of royal purple, delicate pinks, blossoming whites.  Such an alluring perfume that spreads just as the evening unfurls into night.

There has been a strange sorcery as of late.  Conjuring up the jawlines and perfectly scarred hands of those I miss, in the flesh. Something with this global warming nightmare has given us a second spring.  The messages that are slipped between (and among) us leaves the tips of my neurons peaked. Such a delicious depth beyond the usual curiosity.

Take in the expanse of these evening skies. Let their wide-spread and rubied hands lure you into the dark of night. Surely you will catch the glints of the diamonds scattered across that velvet as you descend.

By the time you hit whatever ground there is
if there is
the iron taste in your mouth will tell you
that it was all

worth it.



-k.

(image: Archie Savage, 1942, photographed by Carl Van Vechten)

Unseen Salve, or, The Feeling in Your Eyes When You Can't Look at Something/Someone, Directly

Every weekday morning, there is a woman who sings hymns on the packed bus of my morning commute. 

She is already singing when I get on the bus, and she steadily continues for the thirty plus minutes of the ride- one song ending only to be replaced by another, seamlessly.

She is not particularly loud or soft of voice.

No one ever tells her to shut up or to keep it down.

In fact, on a bus in which a person is standing or sitting on every inch of its metal and rubber, barely a word is spoken while she sings. The automated bus voice, that doesn't know any better, announces the next stop, and is the only one who speaks above her.

I have never seen the woman who sings. 

The bus is so packed that all I know is the general direction in which the singing is coming from.

And although there have been times that I have put earphones on to drown her out, there have also been times that her songs have helped me along.

Almost brought me to tears, somehow, a few times.

A strange part of the process of waking up- of being delivered from the vulnerability of sleep, into the quickness and starkness of reality.

A part of the beginning of the day with a reflection on something larger than that- even if I am  filtering out the more blatant of the religious blah blah blah.

In any case,

it is Saturday morning. 

I won't be on that bus today.

I am certain that she will not be, either.

And as I'm pulling myself out of a pile of blankets for the second time today, I find myself appreciating her.

Appreciating the presence of this voice that floats above and beyond the mass of us sardine'd into the rumbling tube of the bus.

Quiet, on our morning commute.

There is a beauty in almost missing a voice coming from a person you have never actually seen. 

A voice that offers and is

at times

annoying,

but never enough

to be asked to stop.



be well; be loved

k.

(image: Sacred and Profane Love, Giovanni Baglione, 1602.)