Your Fingers Taste Like Peaches

I don't know if you watch Atlanta or not, but you should. It's pretty brilliant- especially the second season. It makes me a tiny bit irrationally "home"sick for when I used to live there. References to Little Five Points, Decatur, DeKalb County, all of it.

It reminds me of my mentor CJ (I'll never forget the rides in her red Nissan truck) and all of the things I learned from her that stick with me to this day.  It reminds me of the Freaknik pirate radio station that introduced me to a song that is burned into my brain to this day.  It reminds me of babies doing the Bankhead Bounce and it reminds me of how fucking contagious that dance was. It reminds me of the woman that used to run the domestic violence support group who had done five years for killing her husband and how much I admired how she forked out the truth. It reminds me of Rhonda and how I wonder how she's doing now after cracking me up for so long while we dated. It reminds me of the earring of two intersecting women's symbols that I found of hers in my bed. (That lesbian symbol used to haunt the fuck out of me. Tattoos, earrings...you  name it. Like some Indigo Girls Poltergeist or some shit.) It reminds me of hot boiled peanuts and the afternoons Diane and I would be out in the shed sorting clothes and laughing until we couldn't breathe.  It reminds me that, no matter what it's like now, I always thought that MARTA was a pretty solid transportation system. But that, my friends, was coming from the Detroit metro area.

Here's a simple interaction between two characters from the show that touched me:


person one (sarcastically):  I love how you send all of your important mail to my house.

person two: Yeah. That's love. I trust you.

person one: (smiles and laughs)



be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Txema Yeste via hotparade tumblr)

Pouring Imagination: On White Supremacy and Reading

I've been reading a book of essays that has me thinking about aspects of fiction that I've never thought about. In one of the essays, the author (Neil Gaiman) talks about how fiction builds the capacity for empathy.  That when one is watching television or a film, they are watching things happen to people. While in fiction, on the other hand, one is seeing things first hand through the eyes of another: A person, a place, an environment and a world that the reader has created in their own mind though the words of the author. He asserts that there is something fundamentally different about this experience, and that it aids in building empathy.

It makes sense to me. I'll have to think on this more.

It gets complicated when one thinks of imagination and what informs it. (White supremacy, capitalism, etc.) Even with books that quite clearly describe a character, a person will imagine them how they choose. (Here, I'm thinking of all of that backlash against the first Hunger Games film when a character described as having dark skin was portrayed by a black actress. So many of the white readers were hellbent on erasure. They acted surprised and/or mad and/or disappointed that this character was portrayed by a black actress.) And so, if reading builds the capacity for empathy, does it still only build capacity for empathy with the limits of what and who a person can or will imagine? 

What is it that white readers, in particular, can do to develop an empathy that is not white centered? 

Who is taught and who one chooses to read is never an innocent thing.  It is the reason I stopped reading cis, heterosexual, U.S.-born, middle and upper class white men when I was in high school.  There are times I stick my toes into their stories, but even with these men I choose men who write literature that has been stigmatized at times. (Here I'm thinking of the four Stephen King books I have ever read.)  I can't bring myself to read the bullshit parade of cis, straight, white U.S. dudes (who are usually alcoholics and BORRR-RINNNNG as they recount their adventures) because I feel like it's rotting my brain.  Their stories are the stories imposed on fucking everyone. If you're choking and saying things like "But some of them are really good writers!", I say, "Who fucking cares? I'm tired of hearing them."

I made a decision a long time ago in my reading that corresponds to everything else:  That the closer you get to listening to, hearing, reading, believing and supporting poor, non-U.S. born, non-English-as-a-first-language, disabled, transwomen of color, the closer you are going to get to understanding what the fuck is going on in this country and in this world. And this has a direct impact on imagination, on empathy, and following, on the world itself.

It may be a soapbox that I'm on. I don't care.  Rather, it's precisely because I do care:  The next time you reach for the book of a cis, straight, temporarily able bodied U.S. born white guy, do yourself, your imagination, your brain and the world a favor and pick something else.


k.


[Take a three minutes to read this bad ass and enjoyable bit having to do with art and artists by Teresita Fernandez,  here. ]

(image from Street Etiquette's mood board)

The Lamb That I Lay Upon; The Lions That Surround Me

The weather is the kind that makes you not bother to close the windows, to pull the blinds closed, or to put pants on.

There is a second wave of energy that happens close to 9 o'clock at night.  Perhaps closer to 10.

There's been an electricity going through me as of late.

Of ideas, of goals, of archival footage.

I've been letting my hair down. Letting it spill around my shoulders.

I've been doing this with what I slide into these days, as well.

This morning, while sitting in class, I was at peace.

When I am sitting in class, listening to a lecture I could swear was tailored just for me, I am entirely content.

There are no people trying to cough their insecurities out onto me.

What I've noticed is that some people are so quick to try and shoot other people down. If they hear that you are in school, they will interrogate what it is that you study and try and shoot holes in your aims.  If they hear that you know languages, they will try and tell you that you'll never learn it, or that that they were going to learn it but went for a better aim, instead.

It's such an odd reaction.

To try and take the glow away from someone who is excited about something.

To try and discourage someone who is doing something to better themselves and their minds.

I am not looking to gain knowledge so that I can slap everyone in the face with it.

I simply enjoy learning.

And I do think that it is important.

I do think that learning (in life, on a shop floor, in a classroom, from your grandmother, from an overheard conversation on the bus...) matters and has an impact on how we can treat each other in this world, and how we can create changes.

I enjoy learning. 

Histories, stories, movements, struggles, languages, skills, tactics, compassion. 

I'm not aspiring towards a job that will make me want to kill myself

or kill other people.

And I know that, sometimes, the fact that I'm not aspiring towards that kind of life pisses people off.

I'm not sure why.

But it does.

The only thing I am certain of

is that I am not the one that they are mad at. 

(pause)

Be well; be loved; don't let anyone steal your glow.

The trick to becoming good at anything

is to just keep doing it.



k.

(image: via camilleas tumblr)

Water Finds Its Level

This morning is black spray paint on fingertips and palms. I smell faintly of chemicals and denim.  It is raining outside, but the drops are fat; satisfying. 

Inside and warm, now. Getting shit done.  Let me tell you that if  you ever feel uninspired, find people of your caliber. No, fuck that. People who are of your caliber and some. None of these folks blaming everyone for their mean parents, hard lives, and disappointments. 

Accountability is hot, folks.

How much can you own without flinching?

I can own every bit of things and then some, and will maintain eye contact with you the whole time doing it.

Can you?

Perfect.

Let's go continue to put our energies and passions into something that matters.


be well; be loved,

k.

(title: quoted, specifically, from Rupaul)
(image: Untitled, 1960s, Akira Sato via Secretcinema1 Tumblr)

Thee Eternal

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