Necessary Rings of Hell

Things feel irresistibly and measuredly new.


The worked-for type of new.


The kind that makes you feel comfortable and proud all at once.


Muscles that ache feel triumphant in their throbbing.

(pause)


This weekend there were unfoldings that were both unexpected and relieving.

It is a profound feeling to feel not just not alone, but connected in an undeniable way.

Blood is thicker than water may be bullshit in a lot of contexts, but in some, it proves to be slyly undeniable.


(pause)

My jawline is defining itself these days.  A rounding of the face has been squaring off to show diligence or gender.

As with everything, the answers emerge from the shadows.  Contours and new directions are no exception.


Be well, be loved, be evocative in the shadows you play within and create.


-k.

(image via neveriaa tumblr)

Slipping Masks and Thirst of Tasks: Tales of Summertime

There's a type of lipstick that I wear from time to time that feels thick in a good way. My lips are already full, and, when I wear this particular lipstick, my lips feel borderline obscene.

I'm okay with that.

Today is one of those days that I don it.

(pause)

I've started reading The Phantom of the Opera.

In high school, every long haired theater boy (the few straight ones- the ones with long hair, scabs on their elbows, and the perpetual but faint shadow of a mustache) wore a Phantom of the Opera shirt. Admittedly and regrettably, this may have been why I avoided having anything to do with it.

Recently, however, I have been doing research into various types of masks and their histories.  Not surprisingly, the famous mask of Erik from Phantom keeps coming up. 

Three chapters into it, I can't believe I waited so long to read it. Ballet, a ghost, a theater, a mystery, and notes written in an almost indecipherable scrawl of red ink:  All of the elements necessary for me to fall in love. 

Some of the descriptions leave me faint but excited in their detail.  One young ballerina is described as having a tip-tilted nose. Incredible. The allure of all the happens behind the theater curtain prevails:

Raoul had to stop before the inrush of the little troop of ballet-girls who blocked the passage which he was trying to enter.  More than one chaffing phrase darted from little made-up lips, to which he did not reply...


Yes, please. 

It may be summertime,  but even nights lined with abandoned iced tea glasses and their wilted lemons are due their fair share of French haute hauntings and dramatic divas.

Be well; be loved,






k.

(image: Hollis Johnson via untrustyou 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)

Cloak(s) and Dagger(s)

I've been reading the words of Colette today, Earthly Paradise. A treat handed to me by the most favored of hands, these days. I am preparing for the next week, which will include the shadowed and curled arm of the forest, water, light, dirt, books, eight wonderful creatures, and time. 

[Admittedly, I've made believable excuses as to where I will be to some. "A cabin." "Some friends." Things of this nature. For now, I need only to focus on what lies ahead, as opposed to describing and explaining something that hasn't occurred yet.  For me, somehow, it risks the syringing of magic from its veins.  No. No, indeed. Stories are better told afterwards, after all, are they not?]

I am sprawled upon my bedroom floor, at present.  There is the vibration of a jackhammer plummeting away outside in my hip bones through the floor. Construction and destruction is everywhere these days. How pleasant it is to feel the movements of building in such a tangible, savorable way. The body as a frame to absorb.

For now:  Lips glossed. Hair brushed and surrounding my shoulders. The scent of a perfumed oil hints that a stranger has slipped into the room behind me. One can only hope.

Here is to the depth of the scent of what's to come.

It's time to go, now. The quickening of my pulse is the only timepiece necessary.

k.

(image: via Vaspour Tumblr)

For the Love of the Day: A Brief Update

A few months back, late March I would say, something happened that changed my life in such a positive way that I'm not sure I can fully explain it.

I've been trying to rearrange and find the words for it, but I can't quite yet. Only one person, the person I see almost every day, knows for now.

In any case, just know that- in general- everything is good. 

That I'm waking up, much like today, with excitement in my veins and a smile in my heart that is, well, visceral.

More soon.

k.

He Can't Keep His Wild Eyes On the Road: Springtime Ettiquette and DIY Spreader Bars

I've been wearing corsets, recently. The only kind I tend to wear: Steel boned and secret ones.  The kind I put on under t-shirts simply because I like the way they feel.

Tight and slightly uncomfortable; reassuring in their compression.

It is well past Spring, although it is just getting warm here.

You can feel the tension in the air. Hold it in your hands, and between your legs.  Strangers, usually timid, are more brazen these days. They will blurt out that they like your mouth, or will slip you their card with eager fingers and an expression that lets you know such a gesture goes against their usual motions.

It's an intriguing time of year.

It always is.

Such a collective dropping of masks and restraint.

Always slightly out of step it is no wonder that I find myself basking in the hidden fist of a corset these days.

I've never been one to let the weather dictate my reserve, I suppose.

It is only fitting that as the world blooms,

I am perfecting the art of swiveling up into a bud, once again.



k.  

(image Masquerade Ball Shadow Silhouette Venice Carnival via Doctor escozor tumblr)
(the title, of course, had to have a splice up of a Taylor Swift lyric.)

Two Can Play at This Game But Only One, Of Course, Shall Win.

Last night, at quarter after midnight, a large, tattooed man began pounding on my door with such violent punctuation that the entire frame shook.

I should say that I do not know this man.

I've never met him.

But I know that he owns the kind of truck one would need a stepladder to get into.  It is black with tinted windows and is the kind of truck that is always spotless and shining.  The first time I saw it, I criticized myself for thinking "That looks like a  douchebag's truck" - although I admit it was more in critique of the mixed feelings I've always had about the term 'douchebag', and less about the stereotyping of this particular type of truck's owners.

The door frame was moving in and out and in again in rhythm with every pound of the door.  I'm not stupid, I remember thinking,  I'm not going to unlock the fucking door.

The thing about these moments, when you are caught at such a late hour in a t-shirt and panties lit only by the flickering of the image of the program you are watching, is that the abruptness of the first pound on the door is that much more unnerving.  Much more vulnerable than if you were clothed, on the street, in broad daylight and saw it coming.  In moments like these,  you get a taste of iron in your mouth in anticipation of the blood that will fill it after you are punched in the face by an angry stranger.  Your heart drops straight to your asshole and burns there while you formulate a plan to get away.

I should say that what he was about to yell at me about, or rather, the problem that he had with me, was valid. 

It is valid. 

I'm still not going to unlock the door.

Quick thinking in moments like these, while your body refuses to move is a bit difficult, but you manage.  Until one day, you don't.  Fortunate for me, yesterday wasn't the day that I didn't manage.

The person who opened the door to stop the pounding was not me.

The person who opened the door was smart enough to hold the door at an angle that would give the impression of open-but-guarded-because-it-is, afterall-after-midnight, but also cut his field of vision off from seeing me, there, planning.

Even with my heart pounding, I felt fleetingly victorious that I, physically, did not have to hide:  I lay there on the couch.  And while I pressed back into the couch with my spine, I also lifted my chin into the air to prove, to myself, that I was not hiding.

He may find me soon, but by then he will be too late.


k.  

Thee Eternal

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Wishes On the Wall: A Passing (of Time)

It's night time.

I just parked next to a semi truck in the far reaches of a parking lot of a motel just outside of my hometown and, as I'm walking up the slightly rotton wood staircase that leads to the second and only other floor, I am carrying a bundle of photographs of my dead friend.


(pause)

Eddie's hands. The cuts and callouses all over them. The sunburnt face. The momentary blush of shame of not knowing "the right word for" what he was trying to express. You know the exact fucking words for what you want to express. The rip in his boots that exposes the dirty padding of it. The lull a few years back in construction, and how it meant that he would be the one to care for her when James needed to work and her kids needed to get to school.

(pause)

I met up with my recently-dead friend's brother in a motel.

There were two beds. There were five lights. There were the floral, slippery, nylon-type comforters found in such motels covering the beds. We sat on the beds like chairs, and faced each other.  There wasn't enough room to sit down like you're supposed to.

He went through photographs of her, still wet and sticking together from when the firemen had come in to drench his burning room. (How is it that things like this happen so closely together?  Your family's small house begins to burn down and, a week later, your sister is dead.)  He told me the story of each of them.  Paused only to peel them apart from each other.

(pause)

Later that night, I dropped him off at the long term temporary colonial-style apartment complex that his family is staying in while workers repair their burnt up house. It was dark in the lot of complexes. Dirty miniatures of The White House all lined up in a row.

It was watching Eddie fumble for his keys in the dim light outside of this unfamiliar waiting home that it finally hit.

Something about imagining his mother, forever reading romance-novels from behind her seventies, half-tinted glasses sitting on the couch behind the door of this temporary home.

Something about imagining his father, his short temper and stocky self- always in dress pants (unstained, but not pressed) for the reason that every man of his class wore them.  Proving something. Hiding something. Habit. Some men will never have hair past a close cut, and it will never be about style as much about an evasion of judgement.  But that, too, will be hidden. In language of diligence, and of jobs.

(pause)

Let me tell you about how my bones shift when I am home.

Let me tell you how the things I have hidden in the past ten years come to bare themselves when I hear the familiar angles of the local pronunciations; when I see the things I try and hide and want nothing more

than to covet them.



--k.

(Title is a slight reference to the snippet of a lyric from Wish Fulfillment, by Sonic Youth. Listen to it if you can. It sets the feeling for this post, or, has at least informed it. Listen, here: It's my favorite shot of you: You look so pretty - your eyes were true )
(image: Frida J via Untrustyou Tumblr)