Fountainhead

If I could tell you anything, I would tell you everything.  It sounds grandiose, I know, but it is as true as the colors of the flecks that are hidden deep within your eyes. 

I see them, you know.

I could draw them for you.  

It would embarrass as much as it would flatter you. 

The other evening, I was walking down the street of a small town I'm not too familiar with.  There was slight ice and the smell of frozen grass.  I wondered what it must have been like for you as a child growing up amidst apple orchards with such rotten parents.

k.
(image via cucarachaa tumblr)

Do You Believe in Magic?

It is cold, tonight. Peppermint tea and sweaters aren't cutting it. The hum of fluorescents only amplify this fact in a space as large and open as a warehouse.

I've been thinking of Chaya as of late.  Missing her. I want to get all zen about everything and act like we are all part of the same energy, Chaya isn't actually gone, she was never here, blah blah blah, but I just can't. I miss our conversations. I miss the hilarity. I miss the red lipstick and red knee highs. I miss the fact that we were two loud and laddish lady boys who took chances and risks that we knew we would always be blamed for.  Why not do what the fuck we want when we are going to be woman hated for it anyway?  Why not do what the fuck we want when we are going to be man undermined in it anyway?

And so we did.

And that is one of the spaces I miss her in. The black lace lingerie of one forever perceived as the mistress.  The other woman.  The harlot. The unmarried artist.  The untrustable. The brilliant. The naive. The tomboy. The adventurer.  The maniac.  The psycho.  The obsessive. The spontaneous. The shining. The counselor. The sprite. The bad ass.  The intimidating. The entire. The uncatchable. The untethered. The elusive. The vaporous. The gone.

I love you. In red motorcycle pants. In gold fingernail polish. In the aisles of thrift stores. In the tea room in that seedy spa we would find ourselves at from time to time.

I know you are all around, but, I just need you to know that here, tonight, sitting at this desk and typing out what will never really end, that, I love you.

I love you.



k.

(image: Yohji Yamamoto A/W2009 via
witches sabbath tumblr)

Black Lace Upon Obsidian

I have been wearing a purple-gray lipstick named Smoked Purple, as of late. I find it fits most of my moods and situations, currently.

This morning and into this early evening has been a bit of misadventure mixed with really good food. So, in all, there isn't too much to complain about.  If anything, I have learned quite a bit more about GPS tracking.

(pause)

A few days ago, I was presented with a ring in your typical ring presentation type box. The kind that makes the ring look like it is sitting upon a pillowed cloud.  It is black as opposed to diamonds and glitz, but, would I have it any other way? Brutality and the inscription within its band is what matters.  Love for the dark at heart.

It, of course, has nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with liberation.

Let the games and thorns of self-promise, begin.


k.


(Image via thedeathofcool 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)

Cloak and Dagger Vacations

Tonight I am
black cherry and chocolate
out of town and
en route to
the forest.

Make no mistake

There will be no
falling tents and wet hair

We will be
fireplaces and cabins
tarot cards and the

quick
snap
click

of struck matches


k.

(image: Rosalind Russell via Amortentia tumblr )

The Seven of Cups, Tonight

Early this year, you came to visit me. We had a small number of hours before you would be on a plane heading to my hometown. You would walk on the same ground in the same museum I went to as a child on a field trip. You would go there and let the art absorb you. You would go there with a friend I had sent you to whom I've known since I was 16. You in the state I grew up in.  You who would be loved and taken care of by the people who love me.

(pause)

I took a picture of our shoes next to each other that night before you left: My gold foil kitten heels and your tan hide cowboy boots. 

Unknown to me, before you left in the morning, you stuffed a bundle of three sweaters into my closet.  Later that day, from more than half way across the nation you would text me and say that you couldn't fit them in your suitcase so you were leaving them with me for safe keeping.

I kept them for you.

In a tidy stack in my bedroom closet that was, otherwise, a mess.

(pause)

The night that I found out that you were dead I came home, took one of the sweaters out of my closet, wrapped it around myself and cried myself to sleep.

There are so many things to tell you.

Like how that night a few weeks ago, within the window of when you died, I was dreaming.  And how, while I was dreaming, I could feel you behind me. You, and another person, although I wasn't sure who it was. You were behind me and I was looking at a rural highway with a field of straw-like grass behind it. There were cops everywhere, but barely any street lamps.  Just the dark illuminated by the headlights of cop cars and multiple spinning red and blue. I didn't know what I was looking at, then. I kept staring and straining my eyes to see what it was that I was looking at, because I was standing too far away.  What was it that had happened?  Why were there so many police cars, and why was it so dark?  I turned my head gentle-but-reluctant to my shoulder.  I wondered why it was  that I could feel you behind me, but had not seen you yet.

I didn't know then what it was that I was looking at in my dream.  What was happening, or what would happen, a handful of states away.

I wouldn't know for another two days when Z called me from Prague and we tried to piece together why you were missing.

(pause)

I haven't been able to write here since I found out.

This is a medium that we shared.

I won't be able to look at the letters you've sent me, or the trinkets you've mailed me, or think- too hard or too much- on anything having to do with you too directly quite yet.

But I know you are around.

I listened to your last voicemail the other day.  The one from a few days before you died.

You announced who you were calling and who you were (as we both always did; as if we wouldn't know) and then said:

"I'm calling to sing you a song. It goes like this:

Do you believe in magic? That's all of the song I remember. I'll talk to you soon."




k.

(photo: A photo of the actual scene. It is identical from the vantage point, details and distance of what I was watching while I slept the night that you left this world in the form you were in. I awoke from this dream just before 2am that night. It was just before 4am where you were. The call to the police would come in at 4:30am.)

Don't Hunt Me While I'm Waiting: A Gentleman's Guide to Slowing Your Roll

Putting two and two and four together.

In my dreams, I have been adding 18 and 15 together to get 33.

That number of trinities.

It's ridiculous that my mind can do that while I'm sleeping.

Math is not my strong suit.

I have 120 days to press my tongue upon the backs of my teeth.

"Don't forget about me!" you said.

I responded by saying

"That's ridiculous."

(pause)


People come on strong these days.

Hurried and expectant.

They sense a gap in my attention, and they flock to it not as birds, but as fruit flies.

Swarm.

Just because I have a pause in my time spent does not mean it is an invitation.

Surely you must know by now that I am a gentleman with a mission.

I may meet you one night for a drink

to show you my leather gloves

or to gather some information that you have

but I will keep my jacket buttoned

until I want to take it off

and I will snap your neck

if you pressure me.






be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Christian Louboutin for Bibhu Mohapatra Fall 2016)
(last two lines are inspired by/a variation of a line written by lecoledesfemmes on instagram)

How You Touch Me Three Days Before Arriving

If I could tell you everything, I surely would.

(pause)

Recently,  have been researching the character of Pierrot. There are so many places in music and theater and film and art that he shows up. Slight variations, but always recognizable. The interpretations are astounding. Pierrot is a character I had never been aware of but once named- I recall seeing him everywhere.

The image, here, is Aubrey Beardsley's piece entitled The Death of Pierrot.  Pierrot is there, on the far left, dead or dying in the bed. The skullcap upon his head is nodded fowards, as are the ruffles about his collar and wrists. His pale white face and delicate hands.

(pause)


There is a taste in my mouth of a human craving. I know you will be away for a bit.  The closing of these chapters are exciting.  Our meetings - of handed off envelopes and of tongues at night- are electric. The pieces of you that you find boring or too classic are exactly those I enjoy diving deeper into.  The best lessons are those that are explored alone, only to return together and improve them.

I will see you soon, or I will see you in roughly six months from now. The ghost of your spirit is upon me when there are hardly city lights at night and so, to some degree, it makes no difference.

Пока ; Пока as they say.

be well; be loved,

k.

Magic Horse

Life has been a beautiful capsule as of late.

I have felt loved. Supported. Stimulated. Desired. Effective.

All of these are good things.

Reading and pleasures of the body are in the same category for me, so I can't percentage them out for you.

I can just say that I have been incredibly satisfied as of late. 

(pause)

I like the flirtations that continue to exist because of who we are.

The phone calls that I get come to me from within the thick dark that only exists behind theater curtains. I enjoy the mismatched image of theater make up smeared upon the bright display of a cellphone screen pressed against an ear, a cheekbone, a bit of mouth.

You are from another era, that is certain.

So am I.

I find it funny to have you extend your white gloved hand,
an offer to lead me into the dark,
and have it met with the black smooth leather

of mine. 




k.

(image: Phil Leonard's Flickr via redfoxintheart tumblr)