The Grey-Green of Abandoned Ships

 

I did not grow up with the sea.  It is something I am drawn to. Bodies of water in general, perhaps, but there is something specific about the depth and vastness of the ocean. I do not claim to understand it- even in its basics. But the way I am drawn to it- an apparition pulled by a dull golden thread towards it's foamy crashing- is unmistakeable, unexplained, and haunting.

The first time I became aware of it's pull was during cancer.  

It was almost always at night. Unable to sleep, I would walk up and down the streets of my neighborhood. I recall always feeling like I should be wearing some kind of flowing, scary-as-shit nightgown roaming the pavement at such ungodly hours. But I never did, and the streets and the images of waves in my head were never enough.  I would, almost always, climb into my truck and drive down to the ocean stand-in of a nearby lake. Craving salt upon my skin but settling for a puddle underneath the massive arch of a black skeleton bridge, I would sit on a rotting and damp log and stare out and into the water. 

The waves. The moon's lightening bolt reflection upon it's surface. I would think about the vague pieces of information I could recall about the moon and the waves and our bodies and the strange, glimmering fishing line that connects the three. 

In the rocking of the waves, something calmed.  In the soaked and entire cold, something numb began to feel.  Watching waves curl and turn and push and disappear, two questions emerged each time I was in the presence of water. 

Salted. Unsalted.  

Among currents and undertows, swellings and dissipations, the same two questions would spill then recede from the horizon to the dark wet rocks under my feet, and back again. 

What is it that makes us loveable? 

What is it that makes us survive?

(photo credit: englishteacups tumblr)

Jawlines and Fingertips

Peter (A Young English Girl) by Romaine Brooks

My niece once told me she looked up to me because I didn't care what anybody thought of me.  It threw me off guard but, I have to say, I took it as a profound compliment both in content and source.

Perhaps, here, one may expect a crumbling story about how in reality, I care deeply and cry often and in private about these things.

I can't offer that.

However, I've been realizing and feeling lately what she was picking up on, as she was not the first, nor the last, person to say this to me.

Obviously, it is not because I'm cool or evolved. Perhaps less obviously, it is because I am too enmeshed in my unfortified social skills and following perception to understand why people give a fuck about certain things. Or why they strive for certain things.  Social expectations, I guess.

I do try, mind you. I just never get to the point of understanding.

Not always a black sheep, just simply and obviously out of step.

The trade off and the other side of this, of course, is that the things that no one seems to care about are the things I care about so delicately.  Which may explain why most of the time I feel and dress like a lad plucked out of another point in history who's been dropped into the current year and thus feel like a total weirdo.

But I digress.


In any case, I will tell you this: 

Things have felt stoic and serious; lighthearted and perfect as of late. 

It is an incredible combination, and I am enjoying every curve of this glove of time and people quite fitted to my skin and bones.

And in this time of incense and tie wear, zippers and creased pants, shared hair pomade and propositions, I will continue to toss my glass towards everyone stomping about in their crumbling castles of judgement and feigned betrayals and say, with limp wrist and intonation: 


I just don't give a shit.






Be well; be loved.

k.
(image: Found at my favorite, Yvonne Constance Tumblr)

Puppies and Wolves: The Art of Roughhousing Without Accidental Homicide

A few weeks ago, I was in the passenger seat of a car at a red light making out with the driver. As we kissed, I could feel nervous glances being stolen towards the traffic light. Lips touching but worried. Red became green and the car rolled seamlessly forward.

A few days ago, I was in the passenger seat of another car at a red light making out with a different driver.  This time, there was no concern for the light, or for the traffic behind us. When I opened my eyes, green shown, and the taillights of the car in front of us was roughly a block away.

I've been thinking a lot about desire and class and inhibitions or lack there of.

(pause)

The past few months have been good.
Growing.
Pushing me to do what is right and what feels good in the way that happens when you invest.
Sweat.
Tear muscles.
Build things.
Lean toward tender over any other pseudo-emotion that is more or less just being a dick.
That kind of thing.

Today I'll leave you with this quote from an everyday person. Because it's what matters, and what has changed me, in that way that everyday interactions and eavesdroppings tend to.



"I've been through some things. But I stay positive because I don't give a fuck."

- lady I was eavesdropping on at a cafe eight days ago

k.

 (image from: Blackmilk Tumblr)
***********
A few nights ago, I went to see Afsaneh Najmabadi speak about transexuality and same-sex desire in contemporary Iran.  It was academic as all get out, yet she made it accessible, humorous, and relevant.  You should check her out if you haven't. You can read about the book she was talking about, here.

May the Ghost That Haunts Me Have the Voice of Chelsea Wolfe

(written slightly before midnight on December 31st.  A New Years Eve party curling in the living room, me in my bedroom packing to leave the country early the next morning.)

I've been thinking of love and light and the true beauty of one's heart, again.  It's larger than the moment.  Deeper. It's strange to watch things as they go by.

I know the difference between what I can and can't do/control/invest in/change. 

Somehow, lately, I just don't give a fuck.

I will enjoy what I enjoy and will continue to enjoy it.

(pause)

Here is to a year of pressing my heels to the ground when need be, and letting them fall backwards when that is what is called for, as well.

Here is to respect of privacy, of beauty, of love.  Here is to the slight fear that I will evaporate. These things happen.

This year, I will aim to be unafraid, to let glass shatter, mistakes be made, grounding to happen.  Stupidity will be considered, as will the whistling sound that escapes from between the precious teeth of particular ladyish lads and ladly ladies who sing to me.

(pause)

There are, indeed, different points:  It is up to us to connect them.

Be well and be loved.  Wait for noone until it is worth it.

Your heart will unfurl

and this is how you will know.







(image source: Blackmilk Tumblr)

Fuck That Shit, Little Nightingale: Let Me Show You What Love Is.

Coffee in hand: pressed, sweetened and delivered by hands that should surely be in the business of hand modelling.

Fever Ray* is playing loudly in the other room (the bathroom, technically, so that all audience members may enjoy it).  A copy of Morrissey's autobiography, a gift from a thoughtful boy, sits on the end of my deep blue comforter, his iconic tipped chin taunting me to pick it up.

Things are beautiful and blooming slowly as they should be.  I picture a rose opening, slowed to a speed that would require a full year to reveal it's glory.  Simultaneously, and quite in contrast to what I am experiencing,  I keep thinking of Wilde's story of  The Nightingale and the Rose.  If you've never read it, and have a slow day today because of the holiday, check it out.  It's brief, beautiful, horrible, and has something to accept or reject within it. Give it a read.

(pause)

Here's the deal, folks:

When you want something, go get it.  However it can happen, and especially if it requires some lovingly sneaky and/or diy tactics.

I can never express the power of simply being around people who treat you like the kingqueen (Yes, the combination of the two words:  Minus the connotation of empire; plus all of the connotation of luxurious costumery) that you are.


be well; be loved

k.

*****

*=Fever Ray is the solo project of the woman from The Knife.  I've been into it again, lately.  Here's the track that just finished- although all of it is pleasing. Fever Ray-Triangle Walks

Candlelight From Within Red Glass (The Time Capsule of Memory)

8:04 pm; In my favorite cavernous bar. Elton John's Your Song just came on over the speakers playing here, and with it, the most vivid imagery of the last two minutes of a few hour long drive from long ago.

Pulling up after an endlessly curled and narrow path supposedly for cars, to reveal a driveway.

Moss. Forest. Deep green black parted to reveal a strange and crooked beautiful castle disguised with white paint, doilies, VHS tapes and antiquated cookbooks.

The beginning of a weekend that is engraved in my mind for beautiful and horrid reasons, both equal in their weight.

I bled so much those months. Every time you would do something awful, I would start to bleed.

Somehow it makes sense that the entire weekend the pulse of a hounded rabbit haunted my throat, relieved in syrup, intermittently, with the deepest slow of meditation. 

Do you know that when you left that night, and came back thinking I had stayed because I wanted you it was, in truth, because upon your slamming of the door, it began again. I ran to the bathroom because I could feel the blood coming. And it kept me there. It filled the white porcelain of your bowl. So thick of crimson against it's ivory hands.  

It's all so sad, now. The carpet of that castle looked like dried blood, and it would be roughly a month until you decide to slit the throat-down-to-the-gut of that memory.  Looking back, I can see all of the soaked walls. How could I not see it then?

Light within red glass: A light glowing from inside this body of blood.  As if my entire body wanted you away from me. I never told you that the bleeding started the day that I met you.

Oh, it has nothing to do with hindsight. It has everything to do with the truth hidden in plain view.  The jewels hidden in the closet as false as anything I held in my hands those few nights.

How strange it is that our bodies know more than anything we can think or feel. The bleeding stopped the night that I left you. 

But that weekend the pizza was warm and somehow, within that, there was still a love that existed- malnourished and acidic as it may have been.

All feral animals begin to trust by virtue of food.

I am no exception.



(link, here, to Elton John's Your Song)

I hope you don't mind
that I put down in words
How wonderful life is
while you're in the world.



**

Title: Catholicism
Image: Closer
Non-Fiction Source of Inspiration: Steve Stern's The Memory Box of Pinochet, historical trilogy
It is my father's birthday tonight.  This, too, comes as no surprise or lack of inspiration. 

Hymn of Disappearance

Libraries are churches.  They are tornado shelters.  They are not-quite fallout bunkers.

When I am scared, panicked, or lacking in the faith required to continue, it is where I find myself.  In any country, in any city, in any language.  The feeling is distinct from that of bookstores: There is no selling happening, here.   It is sharing, loaning, borrowing.  Questions are created with three times the speed as they are answered.  My pulse quickens at how much information and beauty exits under one roof. There are posters encouraging people to read, and to learn.  The phrase "life long learner", "the people's university",  and "right to privacy" are common place.

As a child, I would dive into my curiosities with nothing more than a slight blush as I nabbed a title from its place in the Dewey System.

Ghosts, the occult, dreams in the 100s. Religion in the 200s. The arts in the 700s. Literature, poetry and theater live in the 800s. Nothing else mattered to me, although I was vaguely aware that technology was in the 600s.

100, 200, 700, 800.

Over the years, these numbers have served as my emergency contact information.  They have replaced the memorized phone number of parents and neighbors. They have stood in for crisis lines, prayer circles, and the emergency pull chains one finds dangling from the ceiling of hospital-room bathrooms.

In times of distress, I look for the icon for LIBRARY (block person reading a book), walk directly into their doors, and stand in front of these very ranges of numbers.  In doing so, I know that something will salve me.

Change my mind.

Distract me.

Engage me.

Intrigue me enough to shake what is haunting me, or to give me lesson enough simply to understand it's beauty.



-k.

Heaven Rolling Off the Top of an Eyelash

4 AM in a warehouse very far from home. It's cold and my eyes have that insanely-late-or-insanely-early feeling of strain and sandpaper. Yet I am excited. Cold, my fingers burn a bit, but excited.

One of the things I love about my job are moments like these. Being forced out of bed at ungodly hours to travel to an yet unseen destination and end up flirting with the shop steward dyke with bleached tips. Swoon. I will always have a thing for Teamsters.

Lately, I've been shedding a particular type of inhibition that has always vexed me. While I have always been a sucker for adventure and for taking chances, there are areas in my life I tend to play it OSHA level safe. Regulating and over thinking. Padding and keeping away from open flames. It has to do with brains and intellectual vampire-ism. At times I get shy persuing someone's brains and insight because people tend to read it as sexual interest when it is not. (Certainly, both elements may be present, but here I'm referring to intellectual or life skill interest only). Over time, I've become much more conservative with my leaps towards learning from people who specialize in something I'm interested in- although it is my preferred way of learning- because of their misreading of what my passion is about.

Nothing feels sadder to me than someone going from telling me about their knowledge and insight to trying to make a pass at me. I feel betrayed, somehow. Like when someone tells you they love literature, and then you find out that they don't even read much- they only said it because they thought it would make you like them.



--k.


(title: you know, like when a raindrop hits your top eyelashes and they keep it from going into your eye.)

Cut the Conversation, Just Open Your Mouth

"If she had ordered me to throw myself down then, I would have done it! If she had said it only as a joke, said it with contempt, spitting on me-- even then I would have jumped!"

 -F. Dostoyevsky, The Gambler

It's opening time. The scent of dry cedar is mixed with just-below-frozen air. I've been obsessive as of late, and it has been as enjoyable as warm wax upon a wrist.  Fyodor and his dirty knees: How can I help myself? Ever since I came across that tiny book that was part of a mini library of classics, I can't stop reading him.

Am I the only one that reads Dostoyevsky like the big, glorious bottom that he was?

About a year and four months ago, I listened to Dostoyevsky's tale, The Gambler, as an unabridged audio book.  I ended up recording a change purse of excerpts from the narration. They were such deep displays of submissive desire.  It was incredible, really.  Yet not entirely surprising.   

It's Polina, it's all Polina! Maybe there would be no schoolboy pranks if it weren't for her. Who knows? Maybe I'm doing it all out of despair (however stupid it is to reason this way). And I don't understand, I don't understand what's so good about her! Good looking she is, though. Yes, it seems she's good looking. Others lose their minds over her, too. She's tall and trim, only very thin.  Seems to me you could tie her in a knot or bend her double.  The print of her foot is narrow and long.  Tormenting. Precisely tormenting. Her hair has a reddish tint. Her eyes, a real cat's. But how proud and arrogant she can look with them.  

Four months ago, when I'd just entered their service, she had a long and heated conversation with De Griers one evening in the drawing room. And she looked at him in such a way that later, when I went to my room to go to bed, I imagined that she had given him a slap- given it a moment before- then stood in front of him and looked at him.

That evening, I fell in love with her.

(pause)


I mean, come on.

And how gorgeous to describe someone by the quality of their footprint: That a footprint could be, and is, tormenting.

Incredible.

I close my eyes and tilt my head back.

(longer pause)

Sometimes, when people ask what, exactly, a bottom is, it seems so hard to explain.  And yet, this inexplicable leaning that a person may have has the instant ability to quicken a pulse and smudge want so deeply across a face.

Bottoms amaze me all the time. No matter what it looks like from an outside or constructed eye, it will always be the bottom that has the actual power in the relationship.  Tops would be nothing without their bottoms, and bottoms will forever blow my mind with what they want to, and will, do. 

"Well, yes, yes, to be enslaved to you is a pleasure.  There is, there is pleasure in the ultimate degree of humiliation and insignificance!" I went on raving.  "Devil knows,  maybe there is in the knout*, too, when the knout comes down on your back and tears the flesh to pieces..."

(longer pause)

I let my chin drop back to center space, and open my eyes slowly, and take in the room.

Oh, surely this says nothing of me or of Fyodor.

Only that I would like, very much, to be lost in a forest with him.  Simply to see what would transpire.

 

Beauty and pleasure to you on this first night of December,

-k.

***********

*=A knout is a multi-tailed whip that was, as I've read, used in Russia to flog criminals.

All images: Calyx tumblr
Title: Lyric from Fascination Street/The Cure
 All italicized text:  The Gambler.  This is a particular translation of the text. The exact passages, shown here, have quite different translations in other versions.  So strange to think that in the other translations, I would have barely anything to connect to.  I will cover my eyes and pretend that this is the most exact one.