Choosing What Matters, or, All Roads Lead to Here

What I've learned over the years is that sometimes people show you how love should be simply by being themselves.

So much light has been shed upon chapters that I never realized were dark simply by having light to compare them to.

(pause)


In the photograph, you are wearing my sweater.  It is greenish-yellow and your eyes are beautiful. Your hand is on your heart, and you are looking directly at the camera.

"I was imagining looking at you", she said.

There is a difference between a picture being taken for you
specifically
and one being taken for social media.

It will always and only be
a matter
of the important difference

between photographers.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image: by Jamie Noise via lickerishdreams tumblr)

The Beauty of Vision

The universe is gorgeous in what it grants you when you are on the right path.

Things the size of a paper cut.

Things the size of the sky at night.


be well; be loved,

k.

(image: Boris Eldagsen via untrustyou tumblr)

The Other Night When You Asked Her and I if We Were Going to Sleep Together and I Said "I Hope So"

The past week has involved the police, the coroner's office, a body bag, fourteen long hours that should never have had to happen, strange timing, a thump in the night, a play, a hotel, and the sad story of the bag of soil bought to cover up the blood of the dead man that was in my backyard.

This week will involve (something of a) double date, trust, sounds that I miss, and a funeral.

Be well and be loved this week and always:

What unfolds within a 48 hour period can be more than you bargained for on either end of the spectrum

and will probably involve an excess of both.

k.

(image: Jonathan Pivovar)

Smart Mouths: Snow Day Edition

A guy walked by and said
Get a room
and I said
I know, right? You want to get us one?

We were standing downtown
in a snowstorm
kissing

our fingers burning
and noses freezing

we were blocking the door to a restaurant.

when a straight couple had to walk around us
she stopped kissing me
just long enough to tell them


It's good for you to be around this




be well; be loved,

k.


(image: Barney Kulok, Untitled studio wall, 2009 via lecollecteur tumblr)

Charmers Move Slowly

As a general statement, for the record:

I am WAY the fuck out of my league

and I am totally into it.




be well; be loved,

k.
(image Larry Woodmann ph via giampixxx tumblr)

Blushless Matters

Today I read the play Bent, by Martin Sherman, recommended by my recent and well trained eye in such matters. It was, perhaps, the most perfect play for her to recommend, and yet, *damn*.  How is it that a play can have one of the hottest descriptions of a moment of resistance and energy and connection and sex all at once, yet also be so entirely gutting? [I had to look deeper into the lineage of storm troopers in Nazi Germany. I found what it was that I was missing.]

Act II Scene II.

Act II Scene II.

(pause)

Can you feel me touching your face when you wake up in the morning?

I know I am not there, but, if you hold very still, you will feel me.


be well; be loved,

k.
 (image via untrustyou tumblr)

Sex and the Red Room of Not Settling

So grateful that I didn't have to go into work today.

Instead, it has been coffee and baths and slow cooked meals and homework and reflecting on the last 72 hours of magic. I am so grateful and I am so excited for more of it as it unfolds.

(interlude)

Dear What I Wouldn't Settle For,

Your beautiful smile and teeth and eyebrows recede into the past. Sadly, steadily, truthfully.

While they evaporate, I hear this clip of this song over and over again and it makes me think of you:

You can bring a bullet
bring a sword 
bring a morgue

but you can't bring the truth to me

(interlude over)


Here is to the best kind of honesty:

To the magic of the mind, heart, body and everything in between.

The view from here is breathtaking
and all who share it with me are
in fact

what creates the view in the first place.




be well; be loved,

k.

(lyrics: Kendrick Lamar from All the Stars)
(image: William Eggleston via lecollecteur tumblr)

Conjure, and, The Gutter of Your Pages

This seahorse gets Hedwig.

What's killing me is that it is less than one week from that last post re: Hedwig and, between then and now,  while out of town for work, I met this random queer woman who teaches and produces theatre.  We exchanged numbers and chatted a bit through text as I was trying to get a feel for where she lands on the theatre spectrum. (I'm always going to be political theatre over musical fluff, but recognize 100% the glorious overlap that can and does happen...) We chatted Brecht (YESSSS) and Sondheim (she knows all of him, I only know the obvious three...) and, unrelated,  how Emma Goldman shows up as a character in a lot of plays.

Before I fell asleep, I sent her that same link I posted and said:  

No matter what your feelings are on musical movies and musical musicals, the complexity of this moment and this version of the song will always get to me.

When I woke up, I saw she had responded:

Oh honey. Makes me cry every time I hear it. Saw it on Broadway. Changed my life. This song...oh my heart. (heart and broken heart emoji)

Fuck yes.

It looks like I have a new and beautiful and bad ass friend in my life.  I'm so grateful for how the universe looks out for me and just drops these theatre geniuses into my life (this is not the first nor the last time this will happen- Hi Taigé, David, Sadie, etc... out of nowhere.)  It is deeply appreciated, and I can't even begin to explain how much it matters.

(pause)

In other, unrelated news:

Bibliomancy and the tattoos on the fingers of the woman who told me she has been curious about me for years.

Both make me blush with superstition and knowing.


be well; be loved,

k.

P.S. What's written as the caption in this post by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez about fear is pretty fucking bomb. You can read it here.  Fear leads us into courage. Sometimes it's not telling us to retreat, it's telling us to leap.  Let's do this.

(image: A seahorse. Look into the connection between seahorses and the trans community and/or why parts of the trans community use a lot of seahorse imagery and you'll totally get why this seahorse gets Hedwig.)

When You've Got No Other Choice, You Know You Can Follow My Voice

Turning points are always so informative about who you are and what you value.

We've all had them.

Think back to a turning point for yourself.  A moment that made you make a change, or something that shifted how you felt about some thing or some one or some situation in your life.

What was it that happened that made it shift so completely?

Can you recall how time slowed down a bit as you realized what you absolutely had to do?

(pause)

Not too long ago but also long ago, I went to go see a live/play version of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

It's a play that has impacted more or less 90% of all queer and trans people I have ever known and, thus, also impacted me profoundly when I saw it for the first time ages ago.  During the more recent show, there was this queer boy sitting behind me and to my left.  We laughed and yelled and cheered for the exact same things while no one else did. (It was opening night.  There were a lot of funders of the theater there, season ticket holders and other people who just didn't get it.)

I recall after the show, going to share one of the songs with the person I had gone to the show with -  someone I had been dating, but was technically broken up with at the time.

Long story short:  She got mad and impatient and exploded. How she interacted with me that night after Hedwig made something shift for me.  It was something of the stark contrast in the meanness of her behavior with the incredible beauty of the story of that show.

What was I doing hanging out with someone who not only didn't get/have interest in the musical Hedwig and the genius of John Cameron Mitchell but, on top of and separate from that, was seemingly fine with speaking to the people she loves with such unkind words in such an explosive way?

It wasn't the first or second time it had happened. I was still getting to know her, but had seen her talk to people she loves in really cruel ways. Then she did it to me. It was why I had broken up with her. This was one of those attempts at friendship or a blurry date or, something that an aching heart tends to do. But that night things shifted for me.

After her outburst, she left in her car.  I sat in mine and listened to various versions of Wicked Little Town. Something had changed for me. It felt positive. Sad. Beautiful. Hard. Loving.  Much like the story I was listening to being sung, or the tale I had just seen on stage.

Love, no matter how it's struggling, would never be fine with those kinds of actions and words. I could love a person in their entirety, but I still - unapologetically and clearly- knew I deserved more than that.

Integrity matters in both words and actions.

['Cause love's such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of 
Caring about ourselves]

Needless to say: I made some decisions, set some boundaries, and that night of Hedwig would serve as the last time I would interact with her in person.

(pause)

The universe, in its strange and funny way, put me in a gloriously queer context about a week later.  Drag queens and community organizers and djs and dogs. A femmey butch queer man with so much knowledge and incredible taste in/about music and I began chatting. I liked what he had to say. I liked his attitude, his friendliness, his style and what he was involved with.  We kept chatting. Exchanged music recommendations. We kept chatting and chatting and...

He pushed up his sleeves.  I stared.  "I love your tattoo. From Hedwig, right?" (I already knew the answer).

He said yes, paused, and added, "You know, part of why I have this tattoo because it's a way to know pretty immediately if someone is awesome or not.  Awesome people recognize it and, as soon as they do, I already know that they are incredible people."

Word.

(pause)


There will always be something to be said about people who understand the pain, love, tenderness, beauty, loss, gain, terribleness, forgiveness, vulnerability and complexity of this moment:

(From the movie musical) : God, watch their eye contact and exchange


Here is to the necessary turning points and glory of musicals-as-church-yet-of-course-one-of-the-main-characters-last-names-is-Gnosis.


Keep loving out there- yourselves and others. Keep celebrating every piece of the complexity of your beauty - inside and out.


be well; be loved,

k.

P.S. Tonight RENT LIVE will be shown with Valentina as my favorite character !
P.S.S. A general reminder I received today: We need each other to heal. Bam

(image: one of nine zillion drawings related to The Origin of Love from Hedwig found on the internet.)
(italicized words: Lyrics from Under Pressure written by yet another beautiful gender maniac)