The Scent of Menthol and the Opening of Eyes

I am swaddled in fleece blankets on a couch, propped up by two, immaculate pillows.  My toes are cold, although they are in woolen socks. I am not sick.  I am merely taking the day to hide out, to read, to write, and to drink coffee while no less than seven candles burn around me - even though it is just after noon.

My nails are a gold-ish, gun metal color.

My favorite incense (a kind I am able to find from time to time- it comes in an orange and white box and is called Autumn Leaves) is releasing a thin stream of smoke from the corner.

(pause)

This semester has offered thick, yet stress-less (knock on wood) lesson. When I think of the things I have learned in just the past year, I realize how little I knew when starting this endeavor. It is a good feeling. A necessary one.

I have been thinking about love and about solitude these days.  About introversion and connection. About holding hands in cold weather. About the cologne you leave on your sweatshirts for me, and my refusal to wash them until I know another will be coming in order to exchange it.

I've been reading a lot lately. Extracurricular tales of witches and Gods and myths and estranged siblings. Listening, too, to Pod Save the People and to various interviews with various people throughout various points in time. Here's one to watch just because of it. Something about assumptions and lessons and learning Guess My Disability.

This Tuesday will see the case of Aimee Stephens in front of the Supreme Court. It revolves around the question of if it is constitutional to fire someone for being trans. If you aren't familiar with this case, this summary is worth watching. It involves a number of trans celebrities reading the beautifu letter that Aimee wrote to her co-workers when she came out.  You can see it, here: Aimee.

This has implications for everyone.


Keep watching. Even when this world gives you all of the reason to look away.



be well, be loved,

k.

(image: A la Vivian Maier via giampixxx tumblr)

Diving Days Falling Into the Slumber of Sweaters

A fat slice of lemon bobbing in the depths of black tea and ice; sweat sliding down the cylinder of the glass.

Escaping Scientology, white fragility, forensic science and plant science and the training of bloodhounds used together to find dead bodies, Black Lives Matter leaders, disabled gay men and their stories, graphic novel representation of Deafness, the relationship between a father and son when the father is an alcoholic underwater welder, comedy, a graphic novel about the use of they/them pronouns, and a Minnesotan murder mystery.

These are some of the themes and story lines of the books I read this summer, the last of which I ended earlier today.

Yes, there is overlap with the fall as far as I'm concerned: Another year of grad school started last week, but one must savor the final drops of blueberry sweet tea before trading it in for a mug full of something warm.

(pause)

I've been thinking of presence as of late.  And how, when in doubt, your body knows the answer. Try it sometime. Try it now. What is something you have been feeling uncertain about? Something that you overthink when trying to find an answer. Close your eyes. Focus on it. Get real still and then, while silently sitting, feel where the pulls are within your body. Does your heart beat wildly in excitement and hope? Does your stomach drop and you get that pull from the side of your abdomen that says "Stay away from that..."?

It's both strange and beautiful that we have such clear compasses within us if we can just matte the sound. (Here I think of any person who is unfamiliar with how sound changes just after a first and heavy snow.  Promise yourself that you will find out its texture and hum.)

be well; be loved,

k.


P.S. I read the oddest reference to disability that I think I have ever read thus far.  An academic starts out a sentence with "The most extreme disability, death itself, (blah blah blah)".  I don't think I've ever heard death be referenced as a type of disability. As if one would see a dead body and think "Wow. That person has a very extreme disability."

(image: Andre Paul Pinces via untrustyou tumblr)

Have You Felt the Spring in Your Step? Curled Up with Coffee and Our Argyle'd Walk Toward the Fall

I'm awake with the weight of toast, avocados and veggie sausage in my stomach.  A side of sliced up banana coins with cinnamon sprinkled upon them. It feels good to have already been up, driven, gone to the store, made breakfast and held a loving person all before 7:30am.

I've been reading a lot lately.  While this comes as no surprise, it has offered variety in topic and kinship in the company that ends up reading the same books. Haphazard and accidental "book clubs" and the desire to connect within this world that is falling apart. It is, after all, the splitting of the earth that brings us together in hopes to mend it, no? Only time will tell.

More input than output these days and, for the most part, this is how I like this heart-run machine to hum.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Tal Barel via untrustyou tumblr)

You Take Me Back to Where I Belong

Tonight was absolutely lovely. Some of my favorite people and I went to go see Kieślowski's Red. It was beautiful and interwoven and romantic and exactly what was called for on a night with such perfect weather.  I left the theater thinking of ink pens and hand written notes, timing and the panic that landline phones used to spread in the sharp of their ring.

While it has been summer for a long time, tonight was the first night it felt like it.

It's been so long but you're still such a new song to me, baby.  

I can't wait to see you again.

k. 

(image is of robert mitchum from night of the hunter)

The Importance of Being an Anchor, or, The Unnatural Tides of Planned Loss

I sat next to and by the same loved ones I did ten years ago.

This time, the child that was growing in G's body back then stood ten years old and somber.

When R, A, D, T and the two small, tiny-faced children went up to do a cover of Iron and WIne (and Calexico)'s He Lays in the Reins as a familly-and-friend band to do the last tribute to him, it killed me.

One more gift to bring
we may well find you laid;
Like your steed in his reins,
Tangled too tight and too long to fight.

How much pain does a family have to see, and how many friends have to keep from drowning?

When we first saw each other, we said nothing. We just walked toward each other, put our arms around each other, and I held him as strongly as any man could as he sobbed into my shoulder.

Such moments are the gold and the privilege I am blessed with.

There are no words but the sunlight that poured down on us that day amidst the rain and thunder and lightening that made green of the grass sublime.

I am home now.  I arrived at the airport to the beauty waiting for me with a handful of flowers. I know when I need her to, she will hold me as strongly as any woman can and I will sob her into her shoulder.

But such things unravel slowly. Bathing and tending to a death by one's own hand is such an odd and dark blossoming in its opening.

It will be my time to come undone, soon.

But for now, my arms are still wrapped around him in that funeral home from a few days ago. The futile, albeit romantic, gesture of trying to suck venom from the bite of a snake.



be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Ahndraya Parlato via untrustyou tumblr)

Concurrent Truths Within the Guild of Endings

I.

I booked my ticket this week to fly to the same state that I have been to on only three occasions. Once to meet a family of a loved one.  Once to go to the funeral of an incredibly sad murder (not all murders are sad, I suppose). And now, this third time, to attend the funeral of a person who has died by suicide whose body has been delivered there.

Death can be a strange one.

It will always be a particularly gutting one.

Murder and suicide are different.

It makes sense that their survivors are, at times, put together for support.

These deaths are something different.  The scars these deaths deliver are different. Lonely and singular in how each person experiences the ramifications, without a doubt, but there is something more hollow that these deaths unlock.

II.

I am currently in a field with grass as far as the eye can see.  The sun is out.  I have just finished reading a graphic novel called Your Black Friend by Ben Passmore (recommended), and have just made plans to lay and read in the sun in the park on a Friday evening with one of my favorite people in the world. Pizza and a blanket included.

The highlights of this week include being tangled up in bed with my favorite taking turns reading paragraphs to each other in order to learn more about the history of the art of Albert von Keller- laughing and doing deep dives into the odd corners of the occult we have been overlooking.

(pause)

Life is fragile, glorious, and odd.

Hold onto the people you love and who somehow- simultaneously- lift you up and anchor you down.

Those other weights?

Let them go, my love.

Let them go.



Be well; be loved,

k.

(image: painting by Albert von Keller Gisela von Wehner with Daughter Ilka, 1906.)

Light Upon Glass

9:59am on a Thursday morning.  I'm in a towel, hair wet and dripping, sitting on a couch in an apartment that is not mine with the adorable little dogaroo I've come to love snoring a few yards away from me.

This morning at roughly 1:03am marked the end of my semester and the end of my first year of grad school. When I crawled into bed, I was met with kisses, leg straddling, and words of encouragement and pride from the gorgeous gender explosion girl-lad I have been in a relationship with for the past several months.

Today is the seven year anniversary of when I first thought to get her attention in a way that she would remember. ["Foundation for the pound-ation" we exclaim, and laugh ourselves silly.]

You know me.

I'm all about the slowest burn.


A year ago, I was contemplating if I would miss the coffee my last date would make me in the morning.  It seems funny now. I'm dating someone who literally has photographs of her espresso rosettas framed and hanging in multiple cafes around the city.  Let me tell you the dream it is to wake up to her pours and carefully selected mugs at 5:30 in the morning.

(pause)

Today is slow and clean and gorgeous.  It feels good to be supported. It feels good to be loved in a way that has so many chapters and seeds.

I sit here alone and still in a towel, my hair now slightly damp.

I am thirsty. A tall glass of water sits on a table to my right- the light hitting it in an almost blue-white light.  The birds chirp outside- talking shit or talking love.  I'll slide my fingers around the glass and lift it toward the window and drink deep.

For now, I toast the summer.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Pasamanos que se retuercen en La Casa del Fascio, Terragni, via moriras-lejos tumblr)

From Out of the Forest

There are a lot of things I feel grateful for.  This room, that is not mine, lit by a salt lamp and with birds chirping outside of its window is one of them.

At random, some updates:

The last few weeks were held by the strongest, gentlest arms.  I'm not really sure how she did it. It was one of those events in life where, if someone were to ask you what you need or don't need, you'd have no idea how to answer.

A few weeks left to go and this year of grad school will officially come to a close. I have enjoyed and loved this semester, although nothing will ever quite take the place of the first.

This year at the trilingual event, I met people who matter. Sometimes the world blows my mind with where, who and how it places people in your path who will mentor and support you. From grandmas with big hearts, to people who know the ropes you will need to climb and are holding them steady for you as you embark on uncertain excitement.

(pause)

In other news, I have been reading.  More impactfully, I've been into Timbaland posting videos of him completely feeling beats he has made. If you get a chance, head over to his instagram @ timbaland. Look for any video where the still is a close up of his face. It's the best. (Particularly into the April 15th one).

There is more to say. Things that are so much deeper and perhaps obscure but, for now, I just have to scratch the surface.  It has been a while, and the fingers that I feel in this moment are my own.


be well; be loved,

k.

(Into the Trees, April 2019 via secretcinema1 tumblr)

The Beauty of Hands; The Beauty of Hearts

Just before 9am on a Thursday.

This Saturday will be an anniversary. 

Although it is Aries season, the past few months have been that of Taurus. The bull and its silent swagger of loyalty and stubbornness. Protection and patience. Sexuality and intelligence. Gentleness that only a trained eye can recognize beyond its scraping foot.

I feel so lucky.

Loved.

Respected.

Relaxed.



The worlds and dimensions we build are ours. 

I would have it no other way.

(pause)

The other day we played a game. I took out a journal from back when we were first crossing paths- about eight years ago or so. I slid my hand in the book at random and opened it. Upon its page was a mention of her. Strangely and fittingly, the one and only mention of her in all of the pages.

Such things are of magic.  A built magic. A slow, steady, connected magic.

It is not the kind that happens at random. It is not the kind that involves slight of hand.

It is the kind that occurs when our hands are both open and empty- our eyes upon each others.

(pause)

Good things may come to those who wait, but it is those who expect more from the people who love them that will always be lifted to another, necessary, level. The way this love spreads to everyone (friends, neighbors, enemies, strangers) becomes palpable, and it is within this web we are connected and strengthened.

be well, and be loved well,

k.

(image: Guillermo Fornes, Origen. via yvonneconstance tumblr)