The Shape of Braille Upon Your Lips

 

I.

This weekend we made dairy free ice cream by hand (Hands. Many of them. Perhaps more specifically: Fists.) This was a childlike first for me: I had never made any kind of ice cream by hand before. 

Nighttime and dinner and iced tea and breakfast and daylight and forests and wary legs.

So much good food made by loving hands.

(pause) 

Something I've been enjoying as of late is the feel of my body when there is no expectation to be anything other than what and who I am at any given moment. It is such a full-bodied relaxation. The space between my shoulder blades is pet by an invisible hand into a relaxed oblivion. 

I can't get enough of it. 

I used to hear people talk about "creating a feeling of abundance" and I never knew what the fuck they were talking about. 

I think that I am beginning (rather, continuing) to. 

 

II.

A conversation this weekend elicited the externalization of something I've thought of often for a number of years, now. An appreciation of a particular aspect of language and language acquisition. Something related to what I think of as linguistic ghosts:

In my observation and experience, I've noticed that our first languages can remain as ghosts in second and third (and on...) languages that we use as we learn them. And these ghosts can sometimes teach us many things. Like any ghosts, they can show us angles into life that we may not have otherwise seen.

Go with me, here.  

As an illustration of what a linguistic ghost might look like could include: When I was first starting to learn Spanish- and sometimes even still- if I'm aiming to express, let's say, that someone is two and a half years old, I may resort back to English structure and say Ella tiene dos y medio años (coming from the English description of age in the order of 'two and a half years') instead of Ella tiene dos años y medio. In this same vein, I'll often hear Spanish speakers learning English say She is two years and a half (instead of English's 'two and a half years') which fits with Spanish language structure. In both cases, while we may be using a language other than our first language, the ghost of our first language is pulling our new language into a familiar (and sometimes technically inaccurate) form. 

One of the linguistic ghosts that I have thought of often, and that came up this weekend, has to do with the English phrase of What's wrong? being asked with a concerned look upon the speaker's face to a person who seems upset. What I've noticed over the years is that many native Spanish speakers who are communicating in English may say What happened? (something that fits more with Spanish language structure) with a concerned look on their face in the context of someone seeming upset. 

I've thought about this particular linguistic ghost so many times over the years because I think it's fucking brilliant: Direct and genius and generous in its inquiry. So much so that I'd like to see What's wrong? replaced with What happened?, frankly. 

The question of What's wrong? pushes an assumptive framing that can create so many sites of breakdown in communication. A person can be upset or have emotions without something being wrong, afterall. What I've noticed within myself is that when I am upset, a person asking me What's wrong? causes a break in communication, somehow: A mental stutter. My mind tries to figure out if something is decidedly wrong. Is something wrong, or am I simply just feeling? Instead of expressing what I am experiencing, I feel the need to respond to some unasked for, external framework asserting that something is wrong and, in the process of that, communication can start to crumple up and shut down. 

In contrast, when I am upset and someone asks me What happened? a true, uninhibited and pure response is elicited from me. Easily and almost automatically. 

So, YES.  

What happened? 

A friend of mine looks sad? : What happened?  

A loved one looks angry? : What happened? 

A stranger looks wistful and has tears in their eyes? : What happened?

 

I love this question 

and 

I love the linguistic ghosts that glide from one language to another and back again to teach me something more 

about myself 

and the world at large.

 

 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

[image: Johannes Plenio]

Car Culture and the Lines of a Tailored Suit: Passenger Princes and the Bratty Boy Behind the Wheel

The rain on my car is a baptism.

                                 -- From that one movie. You know the one. 

These past few days have had a calm within me. Externally, there have been storms for some around me. Asks for emergency Zoom calls; texts for last minute tarot reads. This kind of thing doesn't happen often but, when it does, it just feels good to be able to have and offer the capacity to hold and take on some of the weight of it. The timing feels serendipitous and for that, I am grateful. It has been sunny for several days now, but it has been raining hard in other realms.

This weekend will be a housewarming party: The house filled with family and love and laughter-  with or without a functioning barbecue. 

* 

Lastly, because I don't know the order in which to put it, I learned earlier this week that a loved one's sibling died by suicide. 

[This loved one is of so many years. Years of letter-writing, romance, friendship, clues. The first blueprint of something true. Their father helped me figure out how to buy my first new-for-me vehicle. Their sister the first child aside from my niece I had bought a present for back then.] 

So I am here: Showered and quiet, contemplating the complexity of these kinds of deaths. They churn the stomach, the mind and the heart in a way that is distinct from other kinds of deaths. In their immediate shadow, there are never exact words to say and, perhaps, it is better that way. 

Memorial Day, indeed.  

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.  

[image: Jing Wen for Vogue UK, March 2018  Mert & Marcus]

What Spines Are Made Of

Tonight I watched A Friend of Dorothy (2025; 21 minutes) by Lee Knight. It is always incredible to me to experience the level of emotion that can be elicited within the span of a short film. I mean think about it: What do you tend to experience in 21 minutes?  I've had a predictable commute in the amount of time. 

The moment a character in the film drops a book and it is a copy of the play Bent by Martin Sherman, I started crying. To be followed up by a brief glimpse of a copy of The Inheritance by Matthew López. Theater and loving friendships and gayness and books and companionship and even the familiarity and spark of Miriam Margolyes' eyes.  No wonder it was nominated for like 18 different awards. It made me think fondly of the time I spent swiping copies of plays from the drama library, unprovoked, across campus from my library. 

This week has been a particularly social one. I'm enjoying the intentional building of community, and learning the importance of presence once again. There has been the gangly-legged movements of new alliances alongside catching myself a rainstorm of times admiring the weathered pages of friendships long-standing and well-loved.  

 

 

Be well; be loved,

 

k.  

[image: enrico bet]
 

Into the Mirror

Last night, I escaped a mosquito of a day in order to catch a dance performance with Jess. The performance was based on the Czech surrealist film Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966) that K and I watched together cozied up on her couch at some point in the last few years. The performance was able to catch the mania of the film: The all-teeth-showing excitement for bright ideas and improv and pretend.  Two women in somewhat translucent, somewhat identical nightgowns in electric magenta and aquatic turquoise. Rubber knives, broken lamps, and a royal blue chainsaw that I couldn’t tell was real or a toy served as temporary props. I enjoyed the vibrant colors of the set, the packed-but-small-number of the audience members, and the use of giant masks (orange; blue) on two dream-like characters (slugs?) that would float onto the stage from time to time.

 

The stage had a white, reflective covering on it. I spent a decent portion of the performance trying to watch it purely from the floor reflection back up the dancers’ legs. I liked the experience of it so much more than I would have had it been on a run-of-the-mill stage. The white, reflective flooring so much better than painted black or fake wood. 

 

(pause) 

 

Reflection, as a theme, has been strong this week- the stage floor of the performance being another, singular ripple of it. Three days ago, a flirtatious text inquired if I had a preference of reflective surfaces in sex: Mirrors or reflections on the glass of windows and such. In truth, I have never given it much thought. Perhaps because I can’t see much without my glasses on or contacts in. Perhaps because that has never particularly interested me. Is this a type of preference that everyone had at the ready? I asked one friend, yesterday. He said no. 

 

In the Megan Milks book I am reading, Mega Milk, they describe a particular apartment they live(d) in as having seven full-length mirrors lined up on a wall, with two additional full-length mirrors on another wall.  I imagined it doing that thing where the mirrors reflect within each other at certain angles and lead into infinity. I tried to imagine if that infinity would feel disturbing in a living space, or meditative. Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.

In thinking of that familiar mirror-to-mirror infinity that we have all seen at some point in our lives (funhouses; dressing rooms), I thought about how it feels to behold (both in one’s body and in one’s mind). At times, it is simply a temporary wonder. At other times, the reflections can cause a person to lose perspective on what they are seeing and even on whom they are seeing: Is it, indeed, a separate person who is doing those movements - or is it simply the person themself that is doing the things in the mirror that they desperately want to stop? How hypnotic it can be if we are not connected to our own actions. How easy it can be to convince ourselves that the arm and connected hand holding the proverbial knife is not our own.

That aspect of a mirrored infinity, too, has been part of the reflection theme that has been echoing this week. Through performance, literature, curious and welcome text messages, and through odd, confused communiques shot out of the blue, the question emerges: 

 

When does the arm in the mirror belong to you, and when are you convinced that it belongs to someone else? 

 

Be careful as you move, Dear One, and gentle as you assess: 

 

Any maiming, no matter your illusions, will always and only 

 

fall upon you. 

 

 

Be well; be loved; be gentle with all that rocks within,

 

K.

 

Notes:

 

-Full disclosure: I did not enjoy the film Daisies. I found it annoying and asked K if we could stop watching it about a quarter of the way through. She seemed to have been waiting for the green light on that one and clicked the film off immediately.

-While looking into the infinity mirror effect after writing this piece, I came across the fact that the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt wrote his composition Spiegel im Spiegel ("Mirror in the Mirror") as a musical reflection on the infinity mirror effect. I had no idea. It makes all the sense in the world to me now, and it is a piece I have listened to (and been torn apart by) hundreds of times. To save you searching, I will link a beautiful version of it  here.

 

(Image: A still from the film Daisies that has a mirror in it.This scene, if I recall correctly, is a snippet from a dinner party or restaurant that the two women crash and take over. It may be the one scene I did truly enjoy.)

All That Protects You: The Fingers You Place Upon Your Eyes and the Dagger You Keep With You Hoping You Will Find it in Time

Good morning. It is a new/different thing for me to stumble across the keyboard, pre-9:30am. 

I am currently typing this from underneath a pile of blankets, the blue-gray softest fleece one closest to my body. The window, which is about five feet away from me, is open.  Outside, the crows are talking shit, there is the hum of a distant airplane, and a periodic gush of ice cold wind pushes my curtains towards me. 

My dream life has been so active, lately.  Each time I go to settle down into sleep, I get preemptively tired knowing that more adventures or terrors are about to begin. When I close my eyes, I feel hesitant. Uncertain. Like when someone tells you to close your eyes for a surprise, but you really don't trust them.

 

be well, be loved,

 

k. 

 

(image: Two photos from Alexander McQueen's Fall/Winter 1998/99 show entitled Joan. The show was inspired by Joan of Arc and the Romanov Family. The theme was clothes that look like armour and clothes as armour. Images are from 29secrets.)

 

I Could Clean Up Good For You (1800s Remix)

 

If I could tell you, I would.

Yesterday, while sitting in a hospital for eleven and a half hours for a reason having little to do with me, I read a book on Jewish meditation by Aryeh Kaplan that was given to me easily a year and a half ago. 

It takes a while to get back to oneself. To go within. To go without. To recognize the feeling of the texture of the walls within ourselves, but also to fall forward into a dimension unknown.

I'm thinking a lot about the things that bring me back to myself. But also how my self is shifting.

Something between listening to piano of the late 1800s and Tommy Richman's Million Dollar Baby. 

be well; be loved,

k.

 

[image: Nicolas Régnier, Saint Sebastian tended by the Holy Irene and her Servant (1626-1630)]

The Sound of the Bell

 

And I'm a lioness when it comes to you

If they say a word, it'll be the last mistake they get a chance to make.

                   -- Forgetters; Too Small to Fail

One of the things I have a problem with is being overprotective of my friends. 

Not in the parental "Don't do that! It's not safe!" type way, but in the way that inclines one, immediately, to remove the fucking face of anyone who hurts or messes with their friends. Even when it is completely unasked for and said friend, arguably, does not need protecting. 

Is it a bad trait?

My inclination is to say that it is. The polite me says that advocacy is listening to what a person has explicitly stated needing, and then moving toward that goal. To do otherwise is to lack boundaries, meet fire with fire, to - perhaps- be a brute.

I get away with it more because of looking like a thin white lady. I always have. When a guy in high school sent a girl friend of his to beat me up, I pushed past her to go at him.  When a girl in middle school was picking on a friend of mine that was half her size (and still taller than me…), I stole my brother’s rings, wrapped masking tape around the base of them so that they would fit on my fingers, and walked directly up to her with my ringed fist hidden behind my back and told her to pick on someone her own fucking size. (It was such a corny thing to say. I had obviously gotten it from some after school television special. It did, however, work.) When I got into a fight in elementary school with some girl who was being a jerk, we grabbed each other’s forearms and dug our nails into each other. Then I kneed her in the box and she went down. Game over.

As I moved into adulthood, I recognized the legality of such an approach and moved my crosshairs elsewhere. It didn’t take much, really. I hung out with 99% men and apprenticed by watching their covert-yet-scary-as-shit threats of sliding into a person’s car when they weren’t there, cutting their seat belts, and leaving. I know that women get a bad rap of being cunning and malicious, but I will tell you first hand that you know nothing of the inner world of men like I do. The only difference, anecdotally,  is that they don’t tend to talk about it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve gotten all four of my tires slashed at once before. I’ve had people put up fliers with a list of names of people who should kill themselves (My name was on it. What can I say? We were organizing something women-centered on the cusp of the 2000s. What did you think was going to happen?)  If I deserved it seems debatable, but I would never play entirely innocent.  I know what I’ve been up to.

But is it a bad trait?

Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes when I’m here, sitting in the proverbial penalty box with a proverbial split lip, I’d say it’s worth it. Sometimes I overstep, and that is obviously not cool. So I sit in the penalty box and wipe my lip with the back of my hand: In part to rid the blood; in part to hide the smirk of satisfaction in knowing that that motherfucker will not mess with my friend again.



Be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Colin Farrell on the set of Alexander in 2004)

The Rose Between the Lion's Teeth

I’ve been thinking of tenderness as of late. The stories we hide within ourselves, and the love we extend to other people.

It takes a particular person to manage the balance between necessary brutality and necessary gentleness. Rare are the people who are able to be as brutal as fuck with one hand, while cradling the head of a grieving friend with the other. There are so many factors involved.

I’ve been thinking about how we are getting through our days - protests or not - knowing that there are people being murdered by the hundreds every day. How to navigate ones day when connecting with the compassion for the entire family of even one murdered member of their group.

Don’t numb out or turn your head.

There is so much at stake with every piece of it.

How does one balance compassion with overwhelm, action with stunned shock. We must keep moving, but we must stay connected as well.

What is the humanity mathematics of all of this?  How to look a stranger in the eyes as we walk by and offer compassion while our own worlds may be falling apart.

It’s what has been stuck within my head these days. This human ballerina leaping delicately on the edge of a circular and spinning blade.



be well; be loved.

k.


image credit: Miu Miu SS23- Shot by Teaghan Rohan & directed by Paris Mumpower

The Struggles That Are Worth It, and the Ones We Leave Behind

The other night, I read the description of the back of a person’s hands looking like "crumpled waxed paper" in a book I was reading.  It made me think of my mother.

I haven’t remembered the faces of my parents since I was a teenager. Only their hands. My father’s dull gold wedding ring, and the dark hairs sprouting out from below his knuckles.

(pause)

This season has been one of excavation.

The house is gone (not gone, but not “ours”), and there was only one box I chose to send to myself. I always imagined that I would fill boxes. But there was nothing remaining of me, and my parents had largely been strangers. 

In the end, it was a standard sized, singular moving box. 

Unjustifiably large. 

Its contents wobbling heavily back and forth within it.



be well; be loved,

k.


(photo: Head Lock, Luke Smalley, 1998)
(description of the back of a person’s hand is not an exact quote because I’m too lazy to look it up, but was from Rabbi Lawrence Kushner’s book, Kabbalah: A Love Story)

Of Sight and Sound in Fragments

 

Sometimes, lists are the only way to communicate. 

A Morse Code of sorts when one is too bogged down or overwhelmed to jewel together words in order to create a beautiful sentence to lay across your collarbone.  

A list as of late would include:

-You with your penchant for the Midwest, your 1950s barbershop hair and wild eyes.

-The spike of a stiletto shattering your classic Christmas bulbs: Solid red, solid green, solid blue - their silver innards spread across a hardwood floor and the satisfying crunch under my shoe.

-My hand upon my mother's chest in my hometown. The waterlogged nugget of sponge I placed into your mouth. The sandpaper grit on which your tongue would stick.  My aim and learned accuracy of getting the morphine exactly and slowly upon those furthest molars: A slow steady short distance down that throat that produced every word I have ever heard you speak.

 

 

(pause)

 

It would also include the observation: It is rare that one hears the sound of a firecracker and hears only a singular pop. 

 

 (pause)

 

 

I have been reading about the art of Sophie Calle (thank you, E.), and thinking about the concept not of "love at first sight", but of the "love at last sight" that Walter Benjamin references in his book Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism. 

 

Love at last sight.  

Tell me of the people and times it makes you think of.

be well; be loved,

k.

Meanwhile We Shall Express Our Darker Purpose, or, Can You Feel It Through the Glove?

Time and treasure have been unfolding. What and who holds me these days are constant: A well-worn and wooden boat creaking and continuing in the sea against the strength of its slams.

Reality, recently, has been a constant recycling of the first scene in King Lear. 

I was born last and was not able to do the dance required of me to be viewed as a child worthy of the crown they are insulted I have no interest in. 

It is not borne of malice nor resentment.  

Simply a love heftily anchored somewhere between the lands of honesty and sadness.

I love your majesty according to my bond - nor more nor less. 

Save the opulence for my older sisters, right?  

The jewels of our father with wash'd eyes. 

 (pause)

The tides have been interesting as of late. 

That which is sent out to sea; that which washes ashore.

There are those we will let go of forever, surfacing only and reluctantly in our strangest dreams.

Then there are those we are forever tied to - only to resurface as if the strangest dream has been conjured 

right in front of our waking-life eyes.  

be well; be loved,

k.

(via summerbummr Tumblr)

(title: taken from King Lear "Meantime, we shall express our darker purpose")

 

 

The Reason I Remember the Name of the Food of a Cat I Don't Feed

I tried to stay upright for the same number of hours I had felt my heart hurt today. Not in the bad way. But  perhaps in the good.

 

 

Simple meets complex

Over-thinker meets oblivious.

You who listens to love songs, and me who listens to metal.

Me who has the blankets in a mountain, and you who tucks all corners in.

Hand holder meets too-PTSD'ed-out-for-most-PDA.

One of the things I love about you is the way that many of the feelings that you have must be documented, written, and pondered while listening to music. 

I know that particular feelings will be soaked in while in the bathtub of your apartment while your cat barges in, walks the edge of the tub, and almost falls in.

In Smurf terms: When I first met you, I was afraid you were Vanity Smurf. Now I realize you are Poet Smurf, described as "very sensitive and artistic...he spends most of his time wandering in nature to improvise poems about it, and sometimes has trouble finding verses that rhyme. He usually manages to do it through some accident." I don't really know how much more fitting you can get. 

What I love about you is that you are so clear to me. 

I know that when you are angry and hurt, you put your sunglasses on even if they are unnecessary.

I know that if I go to take a picture of you, you will start with your "cool kid with no emotions" face, but you will hear me snickering from behind the camera and, eventually, your lips will spill into the widest grin. (That is the picture that I take.)

I know that you get a sense of safety out of knowing that your cat is okay.

I know the reason you fought so hard to keep him was a form of self-love.

 

So there you are

in your bathtub tonight.

Wrapped inside its porceline arms

while your crooked cat circles you 

like a wobbling

shaky 

shark.

k.

(image: luli sanchez)

Will You Find Me on Your Way Out?

Today I feel the un-seasonal sting of a slight sunburn upon my arms. 

(Sometimes, we are caught off guard.)

I was in a bookstore today in a town I am not from, but that I've been in once before in my lifetime. I notice the curation of certain, small bookstores. I appreciate the stores that, in their limited space, stock good literature as opposed to seventeen copies of the book that will/should sell. I appreciate being able to find new authors- magical enough to entice me. 

I've been thinking of you breathing into my hands. 

I've been thinking of the slender-voiced singers whose songs I avoid in order not to be overcome with emotion. 

My emotions have been more of an on/off switch as off late. 

If you ever get a chance to read all of Nabokov, do it. His descriptions are so tailored they will make the heft of all of your clothes fall to the floor immediately by slicing one, simple, stitch.

 

k.

image via rawforms Tumblr

But Will You Look Over the Brink With Me?

I watched a documentary on Yves Saint Laurent, recently. But also on the seven dancers that made up the most famous and infamous troupe of Madonna's dancers circa Blonde Ambition aka "the ones who were in the Truth or Dare film". It included the remaining six of the seven. 

Thank you to those who are patient with me when I slip away to get lost in documents and stories to take me away for a bit. 

Today I received an email from the school I received a master's degree from two years ago. They are offering a make up in person graduation if we are inclined to go. Cap and gown and diploma. It's not really my style, but I like the idea of also going to New York while I'm out there, and I think I would like the novelty of feeling like I am walking in a time capsule.

 

                                                                                                                be well; be loved,

 

                                                                                                                                        k. 

Studying Your Pinstripes as a Means of Understanding

Yesterday was incredibly sweet. I was picked up in a Lexus that was previously owned by a Hollywood star and, although I won't mention what person, I will mention that I have been questioning their choice of Lexus ever since I got into the car.  

But I digress. 

The 45 minute drive was comfortable and beautiful in its sights and company. The meal we had when we arrived at the secret destination was outstanding. The temperature was the exact level of sunny and cool that you can hope for. 

This morning, I am slowly waking up. Although I have been out and about and getting things done, I've still been slow in moving and speed.

(pause)

One of the tenderest gestures to me is someone stroking my hair.  

It can take years to work up to this with someone. 

People who were punched in the face by a guardian understand this. 

Other people will just think you're uptight.

k.

(image: Hye Park by Nathaniel Goldberg for Vogue Italia, December 2005)

The Reason Feral Cats Trust Me, or, The Stir Inside One's Memory

This morning I woke up and walked to the wide mirror that hangs in my bedroom and drew three large hearts across it in black Sharpie. 

[Thank you to A. for that trick:  It used to freak me out when you would write messages to me on our bathroom mirror. Even though I had seen how you erased it a million times, I was convinced I wouldn't have the same ability.  I am grateful that I took the leap and realized that I have the same magic.]

It is the beginning of my favorite month. My mind is occupied by muses: past and present. How many paintings and codes and poems were written. How many countries have I been in (and not been in) as they were passed.  

This month always quickens my heart and blurs my timelines.

If I love you, I will take the most gorgeous photograph of you that you've ever seen. 

Because I know how to look at you. 

Even when you don't know what to do with your hands, and are looking down at the table.

*

Charlamange tha God was in my dream last night, and I wanted you to read his book.  I'm not sure which one, though.  Probably both of them.  His particular type of wisdom and brattiness is the exact kind that brings me both inspiration and joy. Humility. A yearn toward perseverance. A promise of integrity, even though it may be thrown out the window from time to time. If you need something to read, seek both of his books out. (I'm not including the We've Got Answers compilation, although that was good as well.) But do yourself the favor and listen to him read it.

*

Lately, I have been working in more contexts where there are at least five languages going on at the same time. I find so much comfort in them. In these environments, more people (percentage-wise) are so patient, so open, so accommodating, and so honoring of difference and needs. 

It's the contexts that only have two languages where people are impatient dicks.  

Although, let me be clear and make no mistake:  

It is the English-speaking people that are the demanding, clock-watching, entitled assholes. 

 

 

be well; be loved,

 

k.

(Image by: Alex Russell Flint, Olivia sitting)