blizzard

it's a simple this, a
sleepy little town
somewhere in north carolina,
somewhere under the
pounds of snow, melting
into ice, fingers
playing hooky from
our gloves under coats;
an unexpected this, a
this that can make the
breastbone warp a little, make
it feel wrapped in worn
wool and warmed between
paper-thin walls...
a this that shows
the cracks in the
foundation, but
doesn't itch to be healed
or plead to be saved; it's
getting lost and leaving
light behind, blazing
trails and burning snow
behind us, border to
border, palm
to palm, minute by
minute, taking the
bus to town and
leaving the luggage in
motels, the only
weight, some
change in our pockets.

k.

360 degrees

another year.

another one? how are these days sifting through my fingers like sand through the pinch? when did minutes become milliseconds?

it's been over a year, here in the city. well, brooklyn. MY city. manhattan is what i see from the bridge, what i walk through to get to work, where i perform... brooklyn has been a much kinder friend to me. don't get me wrong... the first time i coached a student in the city, so close to broadway i could smell the desperation in the background dancer's sweat, i realized how much i had dreamt of that moment. how every step of every city i have devoured has led me here, and how one day, i will have my loft drenched in sunlight from massive windows and brick walls.

one day, manhattan, i will come for you. but right now, i'm having an affair with brooklyn, and you will just have to wait.

that's right. you will just have to wait. it feels good to say that and not have it be said to you. to wake up and know that all these decisions are mine and mine alone. i don't have the time to waste on waiting around.

my twenty-eighth birthday was yesterday, and i'm looking ahead with wide eyes and and open palms.

i will grab your hand when i want to. you will wait for me, now.

k.

heady

drop the ropes, VIP
you see,
the bulbs, they flash,
and blind,
and tease; you
pull the cord,
the vest inflates, the
smiles, how they
cooperate.
this world is fake,
and trite, and
true,
and though i'll never
get to you and your
bulldog smile, your
gilded eyes, these
diamond-dripping
fingertips,
at least you'll have
security
that you were never
meant for me, and
barrel on, barrel through,
cause i guess
neither was i meant
for you.

k.

i guess it's over

hate it as much as i
love it
ren ren ren
jesus, does it break my ribs
but jesus does it make me
elated
just to see you smile
i hate it
but i love it
and i hate that.

k.

the top three

i had one of the top three craziest nights of boyfriend drama i have ever had in my life on saturday night. now, to be fair to my definition of my "top three", i must explain that more or less, my top three are equal to each other in certain ways, and are filed exclusively to topic headings like, "top three best chick flicks" and "top three favorite salts". i have a plethora on the hard drive in my brain, so even though some might seem similar, they are quite contained to the individual headings.

my "top three craziest nights of boyfriend drama" in the past, however, has usually just been exclusive to MY current boyfriends. saturday night actually didn't have anything to do with my boyfriend, because i don't have one anymore. i have an ex-boyfriend, and he did add to the drama, but only after i could go through two of my girlfriend's boyfriend drama first. so technically, saturday night should be filed under "top three craziest nights of drama from men i don't want to sleep or argue with and from a man who didn't quite try hard enough but still made me feel bad about breaking up with him".

i think i'm going to rename that file "topthree_ex/altboyfriend_drama.exe" in my mental processor. i can save some memory room for things i should actually think about.

it began at work, which puts me in a bad mood immediately because for some odd reason, people still want to drink frozen kiwi margaritas and mojitos, even though it's a windy 42 degrees outside. this is the season for mulled cider and hot toddies, both of which i can make. but what would make less sense in cold weather than to have a hot drink? so i spend seven hours at the service bar cranking out what looks like cocktails for the beach party upstairs and re-stocking everything the waif of a bartender couldn't reach or lift from the morning shift. i clean all of the sticky, margarita stained countertops and steel from the frozen machines until the bleach stings my skin, and count my drawer, near crying at having to put all of the money back into the drop bag.

i could never be a banker. i would be so, so depressed all the time.

anyway, as i'm regretfully zipping the bank bag, i get a phone call from my dear friend erin asking me to guess who just showed up at her doorstep?!? now, i'm not really one for these kind of games, because in actuality, it could be absolutely anyone, from barack obama to a psychotic ex-con who wants to draw you after he does an eight-ball of coke.

guess which one happened to me?

so i guessed her ex-boyfriend, because he's been doing that lately. she had found out he made out with some other chick (actually, she found out from me) and she told him she wanted to take some time away from him. in fact, the night before he had shown up at her doorstep and threw a bag of bacon at her, screaming, "i got you bacon instead of flowers cause i know how much you love bacon but you're a complete and total bitch!!!"

so, i'm no expert on this type of thing, cause i can't even seem to hold down a decent, responsible, and stable relationship. but i'm pretty sure playing faceball with a bag of fried pork is not the way to go when it comes to proving your love and sensitivity.

actually, it was our good friend rachel, who is dating one of erin and my (now) exes best friends. and she's drunk. and pissed off at all three of them. sighing, i hailed a cab and went to erin's apartment. i knew in the back of my mind that nothing good was about to become of this night, and sadly, i was exactly right.

macri park, 12:45 am.
we walk in, get three shots of jack and three buds. go outside to smoke cigarettes and bitch about manginas. a guy tries to sly his way into conversation (which is dumb, buddy, cause if you hear a woman say, "god, men are such PUSSIES!!!" you would think you may want to find another group of girls to hit on), and promptly gets shot down by rachel, who by this time is having a resurgence of her previously waning drunkenness, and the two begin to bicker. we all go back inside and proceed to do another shot of jack and finish our beers, and when i come out of the bathroom afterwards, rachel and the dumbass are in another heated argument. i tell the guy to stop being a dick and let it go, and we all leave, arm in arm.

barcade, 1:27 am.
i realize it is 1:27 am because i look down and remark, "holy shit! it's 1:27 am! it feels like ten o'clock!" three more shots and two more beers later, we are sitting at a table and making fun of a guy who is sitting with us but is so engrossed in his text conversation he doesn't realize we're even there, much less making fun of him. his friend comes over, and they actually are decent guys who can hold a decent conversation. erin tells me to go call her (now ex) boyfriend. i say no, that's probably a bad idea, seeing that he just told her she should date me because we spend so much time together anyway. finally i relent, and it was a bad idea. now her (ex) boyfriend is mad at me and her, and she gets upset and goes to the bathroom to call him. i get another shot of whiskey.

barcade, 2:30 am.
i literally can't believe it's only been an hour since we walked into barcade. erin's in the bathroom crying, rachel is bitching drunkenly about her boyfriend, and my whiskey is gone again. erin hysterically comes back from the bathroom saying that he broke up with her and i call a time out for a cigarette. hail a cab for rachel, tell her to go back to meet jason at their apartment in greenpointe. hold erin's hair back as she pukes on the sidewalk. get a call from rachel's boyfriend screaming at me that i did something to his girlfriend, they got in a fight, and now she's roaming the streets of greenpointe drunk. says i was the last one that rachel saw which is why they got in an argument (which actually, isn't true, because technically he was the last one rachel saw and he provoked her earlier which is why she was pissed in the first place, but, hah, technicalities i guess). says he will break my kneecaps if i don't get my ass to greenpointe and help him look for her. i hang up on him. i get a phone call from my ex saying he's dealing with the same shit with the other two guys. says he would like to see me, if i would want to. i say i will call him if it seems plausible.

lorimer st, 3:50 am.
i finally manage to get erin's face dry, and convince her it's best she not go to huckleberry bar, where the exes are, but instead go home and get some sleep. once she's safely inside her apartment, i call my ex.

huckleberry bar, 4:10 am.
see everyone on the street. tell erin's ex he should reconsider giving up on the relationship, that she truly loves him. he responds in slurs, he is currently shitfaced. tell them i just got threatened with kneecap death, my ex calls rachael's ex, she picks up, says that everything is fine. i take his phone, go inside the closed bar to get the last drink of the night (which turns out, i only had enough time to take a sip of considering what was about to happen), make a u-turn to use the restroom.

the bathroom of huckleberry bar, 4:17 am.
as i'm getting off the ex's phone, i try to exit out of the phone call and instead got into the text inbox, showing conversations mostly from me, but one caught my eye at the bottom. on closer evaluation of what was about to happen, i guess maybe i shouldn't have read his shit, but then again, maybe he should have erased all of it. some people just don't know how to cover their tracks. i end up reading several different text messages from several different girls, which left me with steam coming out of my ears.
not because he hooked up with another chick, and not even for not coming clean about hooking up with another chick when i know for a fact that they did more than just "kiss on the couch". please. this ain't my first rodeo, honey.
i'm angry because about ten days before, he found out that while we were broken up, i had a drunken one-night stand, with someone i don't talk to or care about, because some guy paid attention to me and complimented me and made me feel worth it, which didn't happen all that much while the ex and i were together. so yeah, i had a disposable night of confidence, and washed my hands of it in the morning.
sometimes, the best way to get over someone, is to get under someone else. we've all been there.
but don't you dare berate me for it, and walk around on this golden pedestal, when you've been doing the SAME EXACT THING, even if it's not physical. don't form actual relationships with these girls and get mad at me for one night of carnal flamboyancy. that doesn't set well with me, especially when i apologize for something i don't think i need to apologize about.

the bar at huckleberry bar, 4:20 am.
i take a small sip of my jack daniels, and sit for one second before turning to him and directly asking about some girl's name i saw on the messages. he immediately freezes up, and i shake my head and tell him i'm leaving. pick up my purse and walk down the stairs, only to realize the gate has been locked over the door.

service doorway, apt. building next to huckleberry bar, 4:30 am.
for the last ten minutes i have been trying to get past the ex, and i'm currently screaming at him at the bottom of the stairs to let me go. finally he does, and in a last ditch effort tries to follow me down the street, but i don't turn around.
i was done for the night. i couldn't take any more stupid guy bullshit drama. i just wanted to be home.

my apt, 4:47 am.
get into the doorway and throw my things down. grab a glass of water and take a hit off the bowl. laugh to myself about everything that just happened, and realized why i didn't want to be in a relationship in the first place, because i end up caring too much about the relationship and not enough about my own sanity. it's five o'clock in the morning and i'm so hopped up on adrenaline my brain might actually explode if i tried to go to bed. which means when i finally do go to bed, it will be pointless because i'm not going to end up sleeping well, i will probably sleep in until three, and be completely unproductive and angry at myself. it's a vicious cycle and i hate doing it.

so i didn't. i ended up going to house of yes, where there was a dance party going on with all my friends. i danced it out until 7 and went home exhausted and much, much happier.

so that was my crazy drama night. i'm not wanting to ever add to this list agin, which means i may be single for the rest of my life, but at least i'll be sane. i have no desire to cater to someone's needs like that, while i lose my own. and i may sound bitter, but i'd like to think that actually equates to wisdom in these situations.

it also kind of sound like i'm jaded, too, but i think i'll just stick with calling it wisdom. it sounds much more eloquent and graceful that way.

k.

...and i got the t-shirt to prove it

you know what's not fair?

this last couple months. this last couple months can suck a giant cock, cause i've had to be the bad guy, like, all the time.

"i'm sorry, but i won't be able to pay rent til the middle of the month. AGAIN."

"well, i think we need to take time off from eachother."

"what's that? oh, you're not hiring?"

"mom, i need to borrow some money so i can pay rent. i know, i'm sorry, i know..."

"so what if i slept with someone else? we were on a BREAK!!!"

"sorry, i can't teach class, i have to work the day shift so i can get a metro card."

and so on, and so forth.

when 2010 hit, i told myself, "this is it. this is going to be MY year. i can feel it."

and on day one, on the first fucking day of 2010, buying pastrami in my deli, i was slapped with a clusterfuck of an omen. a tattooed archangel, a beautiful monster, a shiny black diamond, mr tennessee... whatever cliche i want to use, he was standing there on the FIRST FUCKING DAY OF THE YEAR.

are you kidding me? in brooklyn? a month after i could go a day without thinking about his burning paper words and stupid sage green eyes? two weeks after the birthday i spent alone? one the first fucking day of MY year?

pity party, table for 1.

now, it hasn't all been a bust. i've had good days, i've actually had great days, where i feel successful and i book gigs and i teach class and laugh with my best friends. but fuck, man. some of this shit just seems so fucking unfair.

un·fair   
[uhn-fair]
–adjective
1.
not fair; not conforming to approved standards, as of justice, honesty, or ethics: an unfair law; an unfair wage policy.
2.
disproportionate; undue; beyond what is proper or fitting: an unfair share.

hm. beyond what is proper or fitting. not conforming to approved standards. disproportionate. looking at these definitions, it actually seems that my definition of unfair may be too personal to compare to someone else's. if something is so particular to our own standards, then how, really, can it exist?

is it fair that mr tennessee told me he didn't feel about me how he made it out to be? no. but i've been on that side too, and i guess it wasn't very fair of me.

is it fair i lost my job because one of the old staff members came back from chicago? no. but i quit a job four months later after only two weeks with the company because my schedule wasn't working out, and they were the loose end just like me at the other place.

is it fair that my ex enjoys fucking my close friends? no. but it wasn't very fair of me to expect him to grow up at the same rate that i was when we were together, which in turn pushed him to people closer to his age.

fair and unfair only exist to who's being affected. and i guess i've said, "but that's so unfair!!!" more times than i've liked to admit, which is in its own right, unfair. some people will never see eye to eye on their perceptions of fair, and therefore, will never agree on what could be considered "right" or "just".

am i doomed to constantly questioning my morality? to trying to defend my ideas of what i think is right? why can't people just agree with me? we'll form a socialist community of my mind. SCOMM. has a sweet little ring to it.

"We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens."
~Chuck Palahniuk

i'm not special because of what i think is right or fair or just or bad... everyone has their own ideas of what's unfair, and it's becoming more and more clear that "unfair" seems a lot more like an excuse to pity ourselves rather than evaluate which direction we can go to make what happened better.

life's shit, and then we die. might as well fuck the unfair and rise to the occasion.

k.

death in the front line

our armies advance, they
do not know
the meaning of
"death in the front line", and
even if they did,
they wouldn't care...
me, up on my
high
horse, gun in it's
holster and knife in
my hand, me
with my shiny medallions
and generals' stars, me
with my hardened heart
and weathered, leather
skin; i
yell to the front line
CHARGE
and they do,
and you,
with your small words
and buttonless vest, you
with your blue-eyed
vacancy and penniless
pockets, you
die by the front lines hands,
trampled by the charge
of a general's chance,
killed by a war
of worlds and circumstance;
and i, in my
fancy blues and
sly smile, i
mask my disappointment
behind the glint
of a blood-soaked sword.
i guess your death
prevents you seeing
my award.

k.

2nd star revelations

okay, it's fall.

my one year anniversary has come and gone, my hair has been dyed three different colors, i've failed two relationships swimmingly, and drunk myself into a stupor more than i would like to admit.

i have relished the beautiful nyc days in the sun and jumped in puddles in the soaked-to-the-bone rainstorms; have and been wooed by those more financially stable than i; experienced the loss of friendships and the gain of people promising to be more faithful than the ones fading into the years.

when i went to san francisco, i experienced a turbulence i had never before tasted. dad's cancer, loading and unloading a moving truck filled to the brim with my shit, adultery, and rocky finances. i swore it was going to get better. then, i shook off atlanta and took on boston, which was a lesson on how things could become even more intense, and to the realization that conservative men really like me for some reason (that's what i get for working right next to harvard, i guess). on to new york... new york.

new york has tied together some of the loose ends... not financially, as i'm struggling every day... but ends that i made into other things, ends that i put up on pedestals. the city has forced some of my projections into translucency... and even though that's a really scary thing, at least i know the truth from my fantasy, which can be relatively thick, like a fog in my brain.

never judge a book by it's cover.
things are NEVER what they seem.
value someone's intelligence over anything. for better or for worse, you will learn exactly what they can be capable of.

i need to listen to these little stars behind my ear more often. and after a year here, in a hardened city with a beautiful, sunlit skyline... they have weaved their little lessons into my life with every heartbreak, every job loss, and every let-down that has introduced itself to me.

sure, i still think about the man who cracked my ribs apart with a couple sentences, the friend who gave me up for a pipe-dream romance, and the boss who fired me over the phone.

but i'm still here. i'm still doing something. i'm still landing jobs and dancing and laughing and loving.

fall is here and soon it will be gone, and i'll get to play in the snow and go ice skating in central park with nat. and i'll still be smiling, even if it doesn't seem like there's anything to smile about.

things are NEVER what they seem. :)

k.

to the brim

perfect fit

i could make a dress
a robe fit for a prince
i could clothe a continent
but i can't sew a stitch

i can paint my face
and stand very very still
its not very practical
but it still pays the bills

i can't change my name
but i could be your type
i can dance and win at games
like backgammon and life

i used to be the smart one
sharp as a tack
funny how that skipping years ahead
has held me back

i used to be the bright one
top in my class
funny what they give you when you
just learn how to ask

i can write a song
but i cant sing in key
i can play piano
but i never learned to read

i can't trap a mouse
but i can pet a cat
no i'm really serious!
i'm really very good at that

i can't fix a car
but i can fix a flat
i could fix alot of things
but i'd rather not get into that

i used to be the bright one
smart as a whip
funny how you slip so far when
teachers dont keep track of it

i used to be the tight one
the perfect fit
funny how those compliments can
make you feel so full of it

i can shuffle cut and deal
but i can't draw a hand
i can't draw a lot of things
i hope you understand
i'm not exceptionally shy
but i've never had a man
that i could look straight in the eye
and tell my secret plans

i can take a vow
and i can wear a ring
and i can make you promises but
they won't mean a thing

can't you do it for me, i'll pay you well
fuck i'll pay you anything if you could end this

can't you just fix it for me, it's gone berserk...
fuck i'll give you anything if
you can make the damn thing work

can't you just fix it for me, ill pay you well,
fuck ill pay you anything
if you can end this
hello, i love you will you tell me your name?
hello, i'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same?


white doll cabaret. music and story by the dresden dolls. fall, 2011. <3

the art of defense

when i was freshly twenty-one, living on my own for the first time in atlanta, i made a giant mistake.

i called my father for father's day.

normally, father's day is set in place by the creators of all the holidays in america, hallmark, to be a day that dad's can revel in their dadness. "look at how my sons have grown... big and strong and tough..."; "i may not have had a rulebook, but i sure did raise some good kids..."; etc.

"i hope you have a great father's day dad... how are you playing today? mmhm. yup. what's that? um, well, i'm serving at a restaurant downtown. yes, i'm dancing too. no, it's paid performances, unpaid rehearsals. well... well, no, i hadn't really - but i don't want to get - dad. dad, i don't need to - can we not do this right - ???"

a wish for a happy father's day went downhill fast. effect... me on my couch, in tears, listening to him tell me that my whole love for ballet as a career was a sham, and how i would never make enough money to survive in the real world.

and here i am, surviving, and writing about that memory.

i share a peculiar relationship with my father. we are two ducks in a pond, siskel (rip buddy) and ebert, martha stewart and robert morvillo. if god existed, he would have pulled a rib from my father and made me out of it. he's a writer, and a bullshitter, and an athlete. a damn fine lookin man, as well.

but even though there are so many similarities, we have a grand canyon in between us, one that will forever separate us from ever seeing eye to eye on lots of different topics, however insignificant or controversial they may be.

my father gave up being an artist to do "the right thing", which in the seventies, translated into marrying a beautiful woman, having babies, buying a house, and owning your own business. because if you didn't have any or all of those things, you obviously were not a contribution to society and don't deserve to be a part of it.

growing up, i was expected to basically be a stepford child; things are perfect! life is good! i love my family! sort of phrases. but my alcoholic father, my miserable, jobless mother, my socially retarded older brother and me, the "let's fake a smile even though i haven't eaten for three days" child made a portrait of things to come. dad came home drunk for most of my life and fell asleep on the couch. mom sipped her wine and stayed tight-lipped when he berated us for nothing in particular. brother retreated to his room like a beaten puppy and immersed himself in sci-fi adventure books. and what was i to do but starve myself and hope for the day i could leave the whole trainwreck of a family for a clean slate. all the while, we posed pretty for pictures and said our please and thank-you's like proper, well-adjusted functional families do.

my father's pension for scotch fueled his harbored anger he never knew how to release, and verbally punched our guts for years. i thought i hated him for years, because i didn't understand why he was so angry at us for everything.

maybe he was angry that marty was a scholar and not an athlete.
maybe he was angry that his daughter didn't like golf and country clubs.
maybe he was angry that he gave up on his dreams to provide for a family he wasn't really ready for.

the cocktail just got stronger with all of the alchemy.

when i was kicked out at 24, tattooed, pierced, raven-haired... i told them i wasn't going to do it anymore. the pretty bobble head smiles; the acting; the lies. i didn't want to put my energy into something that just kept on letting me down. my family wasn't familial; it was just a portrait of what we were supposed to be.

and yes, for many years, i blamed him. i took out my frustrations on myself. control what you eat, punish yourself for who you are. ink your body, dye your hair. put steel rods through your skin, drink, fuck, and fight. and the day came when we all had had enough. so they kicked me out, and i didn't see them for half a year.

i'm not innocent in this, so don't misconstrue it as me being a victim. i pushed buttons, i sneaked out, i smoked cigarettes on my balcony and pot in my car. maybe i was trying to get them to see that the idea of who i was to them was not the manifestation of who i really was. i don't know. i do know that as an adult now, i have taken my past and grew a garden. the mistakes i made when i was young, whilst repeated in older years, have guided me through decisions i've made as an adult.

my father is a good man. he worked hard for his family and provided for us even if it was like pulling teeth from a donkey without anesthesia. and i recognize that. the providing part, i mean. had he not, i wouldn't be writing this from a computer i bought with money i earned dancing to prove to him that i could make it as a dancer and an artist.

the whole point is, we butted heads because he saw himself in me, and he was scared i would fuck up my life with my parallel vices. understandable worries. bad way to remedy them, but understandable nonetheless.

i will forever be my father's daughter, and i'm proud of it. he may never realize how much he influenced me, and that's alright. sometimes, i think it's better that way, so we can still have the same broken relationship we've always had.

it makes for good writing, and even better memories.

k.

crying wolf

"for everything i
gave up, i
was angry and resentful..."
your words, yours,
which hang heavy, a
mouthful of nails, lips
lined in silver
as the rainclouds
passed over your tongue
and into my mind; worried...
no, you
gave me up,
no one twisted your
wrists, and
called me with words
drenched in apathy,
cancerous cysts...
you walked into my
corner store, smiled
at me in the eyes,
and stole my advice.
here's your cake;
he's your cake,
he's your calories,
he's the hands you
let down with a kiss
that day on the couch.
the tears that streaked
your cheeks
a couple tuesdays ago
are slick with confidence,
now, shiny with
this naive hope
that next time, oh, next time,
there will be a
next time.

that was your
next time.

k.

151 days

i guess it
affected, you.
and that sucks,
that i have to
presume...
five months is
151 days; not
half a year, exactly.
but it's too long
for you to do
so little, so
politely.
i seem shallow, so
transparent, so
selfish.
but it's because
i can't keep reading
the dust jacket
for the next 151 days and
beyond it...
if i can't turn the pages
and i can't turn back clocks
i have to turn back
to me, lost
in music and movement and
more,
more,
more.
i need more.
open palms,
willing eyes, to
turn
letterstowordstosentences
to paragraphs about you and me.

so for now, i guess
i'll wait
and dance and
try to smile.

for the best.


i'm disappointed. it sucks having to come to conclusions and make grown-up decisions. this has most recently translated into me losing friends.

when we're young all we want to do is be an adult. and we scoff at our elders who tell us to enjoy our youth and not try to push the hands.

i always respected it when they said it, figuring they knew what they were giving up upon gaining the numbers to drink legally and fuck whoever you want.

taxes. disrespect. complicated relationships. bills. bills. bills. std's. groceries. dating. hair appointments. chasing dreams. making a living. a compulsive addiction to leather boots.

these things all blow! and they're all why "experience" equals "knowledge" to me. when did this road get so bumpy?

le sigh. chin up, buttercup. the decision was already made up.

k.

residue

tossed aside.

a sopping wet towel on my bar, wrung out seventeen thousand times just to mop up some other wall street hag's disgusting kiwi flavored frozen margarita.

a bill on my nightstand, behind my lamp collecting dust because i know if i pay it i can't afford to pay my landlord rent.

strips from the photobooth lodged in the the back of my journal, eulogies to my many failed relationships.

the paintbrush on my floor, because even though you would think it couldn't take more than six months to paint a bathroom roughly the size of a coffin, it has, because it seems subliminally i don't really mind painter's tape as a decorative procedure.

the yoga mat on the floor of the kitchen. maybe by looking at it, natalie and i can claim yes, it has been used, so recently that we don't even move it because, why put something away if you use it that much?

i have become so accustomed to my style of hoarding that it just seems normal to find a nice, neat place for something that i may use in the near future; as if putting it away would somehow usurp it's existence. that's not true, of course, as those fuckers from american express have so relentlessly reminded me over the past year. but it seems that by moving something to the side makes it less real, less able to interfere with your everyday life.

and of course, there are always those times that we put that sweater that grandma knitted for christmas away for so long, that upon finding it, understand that we have no use for it anymore. until that damn "awful christmas sweater" party comes along and you have to go out and buy one from a vintage store, only to repeat the cycle all over again. i mean, it was a lousy seven dollars, but shit, that can buy a shot of jack daniels and a pbr at happy hour down the road from me. wasted. on the sweater, i mean.

on the opposite of that though, are the first edition coins a great-grandfather left you in his will, which, upon recovery, turn out to be worth four hundred dollars and fifty-eight cents. i never knew you, gramps, but you have definitely contributed to my full-sleeve tattoo. i know you'd be so proud.

when i was dating the kid, i was head over heels impossibly corrupted in love with him. granted, i had just come from a relationship with mooseface that was so holy the pope could have used it to masturbate into. i wanted something pure, and quiet, and simple. something my heart would recognize. something that was so grounded it was covered in dirt.

and so it was. i breathed him for several months. six, to be exact. i was to leave the day after valentines' to teach in san francisco. everything was as planned. i took the train to the airport, got on the plain, flew seven hours to cali, and went to my hotel room. all with no word. after calling his roommate and finding out his phone wasn't broken and that he wasn't dead in the gutter, i was bludgeoned with the realization that, he just wasn't really that into me.

i had been used. and tossed aside, limp as a noodle and less aware than anna nicole smith, well, ever.

me, used? no. there had to be a reason. there had to be something i did... something he did? wait, did i even do anything to deserve this? think, now... think. i bought him dinner, drove to his house almost an hour away from me, gave him a killer photojournal for valentines... no. there was nothing i did wrong.

so what did i do wrong?

we patched things up, just to come unsewed several more times, and eventually, fell apart into shreds. we were the favorite jeans that fit so well to begin, but the seams on the legs just start to unravel, and fray. we were the great pair of boots whose heels are bore down to the concrete underfoot. the white shirt you fatally wore to the red wine tasting.

but when it comes down to it... i was a way to make someone feel really good about themself. which, really, is quite flattering, but at the end, it eats away at you.

and it's not just lovers. we do it to friends, we do it to family, and we do it to people we work with... unfortunately, at this point of the world, after all of the stories over the years of divide and conquer... some of the best kingdoms have come out of this betrayal. and although i would love to be able to say, "well, keep your eyes open and it won't happen to you..."

i can't.

i thought that after years of dealing with this from the kid and assorted other lovers and friends, i would be able to tell if someone wasn't who they were telling me. i was all hyped up on me for being so good at "reading" people. right. it's only been a year since last i experienced it and i'm still walled up in my chest, protecting the one thing that i've always wanted to be someone else's.

but that's a different story, a different novel, i will have to cover sometime else. i don't feel like moving those mountains tonight. ugh.

i guess we really don't have a choice. we have a chance. the choice comes after the pitcher makes their move, and i'll be damned anymore if i decide to wait on the side of the bar anymore to mop up someone else's mess.

k.

30,000 leaugues above the sea

I dream about water almost every night.

It's always turbulent, although I never realize it until I wake.

And when I do come out of my silvery water dream world, I have a sinking understanding that water, as beautiful and flowing and calming as it is, can drown even the most powerful of swimmers.

K.

10 THINGS THAT MAKE ME WISH I HAD A WELL-PAYING JOB

ten. raising my children in a castle.



nine. driving this to work.



eight. commissioning a statue of myself and placing it in the harbor next to this old thing.



seven. the ability to buy my own islands in the shape of my name.



six. being able to go to space. this guy did it, and he looks mildly retarded.




five. buying a boat that looks like an eel and is bigger than most common people's homes and naming him oculus yachticus.




four. being able to call a renovated firehouse (with an ACTUAL FIREMAN'S POLE located in your study) "home".




three. fucking private jets, man. private. jets.



two. finally being able to release my brand-new number one single. and all it took was paying people to make me sound completely different than what i already sound like.



one. at last!!! getting around to landing a deal for my new york times bestselling book. fueled by patchy psuedo-wisdom and written by someone else.

the yesterdays

running in puddles
shoes slipping off toes,
nowhere to go but
small alleys between
buildings to catch
our breath, skin
wet from the
outside in;
smiles splashed across
faces that make spaces
for teeth to grin...
it's days like this
i like to live in.

k.

t-minus 12 days to brooklyn bowl

for my upcoming show, i have decided to create several different pairs of pasties to sell, alongside of some of the leather eyepatches i have been designing over the last couple of months. alongside dead bunny tank dresses, bunny thongs, and bunny ears.

i started today. i got a good chunk of it done... eight shirts, and a pair of custom white bunny tassel pasties. normally, tassels are not a problem for me, because i mainly use a silk or sequin-spandex blend to cover them. this time around, however, i decided to hand-spiral the sequin seam, which is what i could easily compare to trying to grout a simultaneous string of legos to a bathtub the size of an areola with grout made of molten lead, making sure never to touch the shower curtain which actually is hung from the ceiling of the tub. did i mention that you have to rotate the tub by hand and not lay the legos down individually?

royal. pain. in the ass.

especially since after getting the first one all the way sequined, even over the ears (which happened to be too small the first time around so i had to enlarge the pattern and cut four more out), i realized i had gone seaming side up on the string of sequins, which made the pasties look more like a thanksgiving macaroni project from the second grade than a sexy pair of doo-daddles for burlesque dancing.

damn you, marijuana.

rip, rip, rip... sequins off, cut a new circle from the birkin, slice it, layer it, glue it, and string it. burn my fingertips from hot glue. brush away the sticky spider-web filaments of the glue from the sequins, and try to get it off my knuckles in return. snip, overlap, glue, repeat.

whilst letting the glue dry, i was silk screening t-shirts from a screen that josh created for me. i did better than i thought i would, cause as my life goes, i can fuck up even the simplest of things. but what's nice about it is that even though it's not like a hot press with perfect cut letters and symbols... it represents something i do very well, which is make something imperfect into an entirely new fashion statement. i think that's what it's all about, no matter fake plastic flower from your mother's kitchen arrangement or a busted up key chain into an earring. i think you should be able to wear anything from any room in your house, just so long as you rock the shit out of it.

so, after about three and a half hours of back and forth between silk screening tank dresses and burning the shit out of my fingers, i got most of what i needed to do finished and planning on moving ahead with the rest of costumes this weekend. by next week i figure i'll have everything done except accessories and props which will be a breeze.

oh, by the way. does anyone know anyone who has downs on a shotgun? like, a rifle? no bullets, you can flip the cartridge out (it is a cartridge, right???)... i need one stat.

but honestly, it was nice to get lost in the creation. and the sole fact that i was working around all of my friends from the House of Yes... they are all so inspiring and uplifting (and hoarders... they have everything under the sun all over the house and on the second floor in Make Fun... special thanks to kae for the trim and josh for the silk screen 101).

lately i've been thinking about the past year, as it's my first anniversary in the city on the date of my first produced show at brooklyn bowl. i moved here with such a different picture in my mind, from who i'd be in love with to what i would accomplish that could make me proud. i unwound a seam of sequins grouted in dried glue and tried them again, only to realize the embellishments were too small for the final outcome, so i chucked it and started from scratch.

i watched the paint stains of love bleed into the ribbed fabric of this year; tried to helplessly blot them out... which yes, made them fade, but unfortunately could never bleach the color from the fibers in a million years of laundry cycles. i hung the finished dress to dry the fumes, inevitably going back to it to check if the color would still rub off on my skin.

on this one year anniversary, i will have accomplished the first thing on my bucket list for new york, which was to have created something big and beautiful and doing so within one year of being here. it may not be broadway, baby... but i have a couple years. who knows what can be attained in a couple more?

k.

stuck on repeat

oh.

*crack*

oh.

every time i think of that conversation, my ribs break, one by one, to the marrow underneath.

every time. shards of smooth ivory armor drifting down lazy rivers in veins. miniature spurs that stick in my muscles, chip into precious, pulsating organs.

you have made it harder for me to breathe, which confuses the shit out of me because so long ago it was you who taught me how... well. we all get things twisted sometimes, i guess.

what webs we do weave, eh?

k.

status says: lame

swept clean, i
am? with
one click, one easy
tap of a key,
there's no more me...
so easy to do.
easy like you,
and your little friends,
too.
so follow in
those footsteps,
make impressions
in that sticky,
southern mud...
your feet fit well
no matter earth or
mouth, so
let those feathers
swell
with pride so
undeserved.
click.
goodbye.
not seen, nor
heard.

k.

columbus

talk, talk, talk.

it's all just words,
don't you see?
this old, ancient
dichotomy
of ruins brought
back from the dead.

walk
and love
(i guess)
and hold hands and shut
your eyes,
blind eyes, to
every
thing else.

and at the end
of the world,
when you find out
it's *gasp*
NOT FLAT
all of a sudden
it has changed.

change,
change,
change.
ah, but of course.
on par;
on course;

it has changed,
and words have
left me
*once again*
...
...
...

to begin.

k.

rags to riches

this singsong this, about
"everlasting love",
a cinderella pretty
cleaning the dishes
and dishing about
forever, and ever;
infinity, you say?
what a lifetime
that is to
just wash away
this armor i cleaned
so bright,
just for you;
well.
maybe it didn't fit
so right.
maybe the color
was dull and
didn't match your curtains.
oh, cinderella,
i guess that's it,
the slipper is
done for, it
didn't fit...
and back you are,
among pumpkins,
(which will someday
be used for pies, but
ssshhh, don't let on)
singing a song
i've heard before,
so many times,
i guess i don't
like it, anymore.
so clean until
the beads of sweat
taste salty, in your
mouth. cause
then, at least, you'll
know your fairy tale
(or, part of it)
came true.
which, personally, i
think is the
bluest of blue.

k.

... is believing

it's funny how you can miss a person so much, someone who is a friend, or a lover, or yourself... when you actually realize how long it's been since you've seen them.

i missed alot of people tonight, some who aren't here, some who were right in front of me, and one in particular that i see every day.

just because you cover something up, doesn't mean that someone else doesn't see right through the blanket.

it's good verse to apply to everything, and everyone, in your life.

k.

two birds in the pot is better than one... or something like that

this certainly has been an interesting couple of days. i feel like things can be so backwards sometimes that drastic measures have to be taken for them to be set straight.

i don't like for my friends to be made fools of. not that anybody does, but i've come to realize that when faced with the dilemma to shut up or stick up for a friend in a situation where you may be looked upon as ridiculous, shut up is the route traveled.

i can't say i have stopped caring about what others think of me. i think we all do. i think that's human. but i've gotten to a point in my life where i have built concrete ideals of what it is i believe, and when it comes to those things in conflict, i will defend them without a care of what someone else thinks.

i can deal with someone thinking i'm an idiot for standing up for something or someone i love. especially when i see that others around them aren't doing it. especially when the one person who is supposed to have your back doesn't, because they want to look cool. it doesn't take but one person to offer a hand of protection.

that's issue number one. issue number two is that of liars.

to the you who is concerned: i know what you have been telling people about me, and i thought you were smarter and more respectful than that. one day, everything that you have said that was an extension of or blatant expulsion of the truth will come back and hit you in the head, and you will realize the lies you told to save face will only make you look worse on the boomerang back around.

and it's going to happen very soon. not by my hand... i've been out of your life for a while. but trust me. this is not going to be pretty when it all comes to a head. i am watching this be destroyed from the inside out, and soon the foundation is going to fall.

and i'm not sorry, because you deserve it, although i thought for such a long time that you were never capable of this type of fabrication.

ex-relationships are weird. on one hand, it makes sense to be friends, until that blows up in your face. but when you cut the ties clean at the end of everything, it ends up coming back to you in the form of acrid lies that have been chipping silently away at your character without you ever knowing.

either way, you're fucked.

k.

throwing stones

deplorable, despicable me.

look in the fucking mirror.

at least i have
the decency to
stick up for someone i love.

what's your excuse?

my words may hurt you.
but that's because
what i say is true.

i don't paint the picture
that i'm better.
you prove that you're worse,
but you don't like
to read about it.

and one day, if
you keep reading, you just
might
see
that apologies, well,
they're necessary.

fool.

k.

grapefruit

rip the flesh
down to the juice,
a ragged pink pit
of sour-sweet blood.
eaten alive, and
silent still as the
glint
of steel hacks in...
bite soft skin
and lick sugary lips,
drain the orb
of fluid, all
so swollen hearts
can have their fill.
eat it clean, an
empty shell, so
tomorrow the kill
can begin
again.

k.

besides me

slow,
slow
slow to start...
away and missing
the lovely
commercials that add
the minutes
to hours
that make hours
the ones that count.
it's been half
a day
and in a way
it's felt like months
been spent.

k.

bad for the environment

why would you step into someone's old clothes, especially when they don't fit you all that well, and make you look like you have no sense of style?

i've never understood the appeal of recycling relationships. bottles, i can understand. you get a 10 cent return AND you're helping the environment? totally makes sense - makes everyone happy. you can even buy a pack of gum when you return 5 bottles. so add fresh breath to that list of pro's and you have got yourself a great deal there, bud.

but relationships? no, thanks. once it's done, it should be left to die. now, this is learned from my experiences, so i am voluntarily admitting my stupidity here. this fact therefore pushes me out of hypocrisy and into the realm of wisdom. or at least i like to think that.

moving on. right before i moved to new york, i had a long chat with a good friend of mine whom i hadn't talked to for a good couple months. we caught up, had some good laughs, and she told me about her ever-changing love life that i couldn't keep up with even when we talked on a weekly basis when i lived in atlanta. over the course of two hours while i packed my things, she told me about how she had been dating someone she had dated years back, her manager from the restaurant she used to work at in high school. she told me about how he had cheated on her then, and they had lost touch over the years after she broke up and moved on from north georgia to atlanta. she happened to run into him one night at the restaurant he owned, they caught up, went out on a date, and became involved in a relationship again. there was a snag in the romance though... he was on the mend from a breakup with his live-in girlfriend of something ludicrous, like ten years or so. yet he still wanted to start something with my friend, to the point where he gave her the keys to his house and basically was leaning towards moving in together.

until she woke up one day to realize he had yet to get the keys back from his ex, and they met face to face with my friend in a pair of his boxer shorts. talk about the awkward star in the room. she wanted to break up with him then, he convinced her otherwise, only for her to find out a couple weeks later that he had been courting a much younger server at his restaurant. she was disappointed that it didn't work out, and i shared in her disappointment, although i can't say i didn't see it coming. not only did this guy have a history of cheating on her already, but my friend didn't exactly hold her heart in a cage. it was in fact the opposite; she was rather loose with the L-word. prior to the dude i was just talking about, she dated another winner - a funemployed, freeloading, twenty-five year old father who moved in with her after, like, one week or something under ten days.

i mean, really? i guess we have to all have one freeloading boyfriend. i had mine... it was the kid. don't get me wrong... we had a wonderful relationship, and i saw that his good qualities outweighed the bad. well, at first. but eventually, it began to upset me that i was never taken out on dates, because the money he got from the drum lessons he gave at the studio i taught at was pretty much just enough to put gas in his car and wendy's value meals in his stomach. and even though we never fought (which is mainly because i am so laid back and he is so non-confrontational), he also omitted things from conversation... like the fact that he slept with a high-school senior when he told me it was 'boys night', or that while i was in san fran he slept with his ex-girlfriend who i can't stand. and he omitted things like i was his girlfriend from his friends. they would ask me constantly if the kid and i were dating. saying, "yeah, for two and a half years now," is a little embarrassing. it kind of makes me seem like i'm so desperate to call someone my boyfriend, that he goes around saying, "oh, yeah. she says that. i let her do it so she builds some self-esteem."

dick. it's just so fucking dick of him. i think i stuck around for so long because i saw what he had the potential to do in his life; he was big-hearted and talented, and intelligent, albeit the lack of formal education. so we dated for three years, and he basically moved in with me to my first and second apartments. mind you, he moved in. he did not pay rent though he stayed with me almost every night. he was my freeloading boyfriend. i didn't think that my friend could possibly stand to recycle a relationship like that. and i especially didn't think she would recycle not only the relationship, but the relationship with the kid none-the-less.

and not mention one damn thing about the fact that they had been fucking for a little while before we had the two hour long conversation that day. and let me find out on facebook the very next day.

this is a woman who listened to me for hours go on and on about the kid while she cut and dyed my hair. listened to me purge all the things he did to hurt me, how i thought he was an idiot for not wanting me, and about how i had started to become uninterested in retaining a relationship that felt so one-sided. she agreed with me when i would bash on him for some of the stupid shit he did, and give me a hug on the way out the door (looking fabulous,though... this bitch knows how to cut up and dye for reals), telling me to call her so we can get together for some drinks.

this is a woman who had every opportunity to avoid all of those bad things in a relationship, who could not only predict that this dude would not be a good boyfriend, but who could also confirm that he would not be a good boyfriend... and she threw it all out the window.

he moved in to her apartment, things went downhill, and they broke up while living together, which, as i know, is very awkward as well. what else is there to do other than to say, "i told you so."

:)

which is just a snittier way to say, "recycle." when you recycle things, you reuse them, for better or for worse. i think that with age and experience, we find better and better material to recycle, because we know more and more things about the world that can help us distinguish the good from the bad. there's this famous diner in (i think) nashville, that has fried their food in the same grease since the fifties. you are eating your grandparent's sock-hop grease. it may taste good at first... but after a few hours in the digestive system there is bound to be some mutated cancer cells in your bowels.

when something doesn't work, i think it's okay to step back and look at why, and then move on. revisiting it only lends you the headache of having to go through it all the same way again. insanity: doing something over and over and expecting it to yeild different results.

but, let's face it. we're all a little insane at sometime or the other. we just want to be careful about who it affects in turn.

verses versus verses

pitting words against words doesn't work with me,
it only really makes me angry.
and if you had any sense of integrity,
you'd simply just leave it be.

i can rhyme too.
my words were not about you.

k.

exorcism

out of anything in my life i have ever feared, ghosts have not been in the top ten. i was petrified of wolves for a good decade due to the evil disney interpretation of one in my old bedtime story, donald cries wolf.

it was totally rational that i thought a pack of these lived under my bed and in my toilet, waiting to devour me with their demonic wolf-teeth and utterly soulless yellow eyes. i don't know how disney got away with ruining most nights of sleep for me until the fifth grade, but someone is going to pay for it. one day i will train a pack of wolves to kill their families while the animators watch. try and get a decent night's sleep after cleaning up your daughter's entrails.

i am also irrationally scared of large crowds of people, and i have potent fears about somehow being trapped in a circus warehouse with killer clowns. ghosts were really the least of my worries, especially since they can't really do anything to you. they just kind of hang around and move your oven mitts from one side of the kitchen to the other in a creepy and random fashion. sure, i guess if they really want to get dirty they can possess your body, but really, what's the worst they're going to do? make you act ridiculous in public places? i do enough of that on my own with too many shots of jack daniels. people would just think i was drunk again.

more than anything, i think that ghosts just ultimately make me sad for the ghosts, cause they're hanging out somewhere they don't know anybody and they refuse to go away. it's pathetic, really, and though i wouldn't say it to their face (if i could see their face, cause from what movies make it seem like is that they're invisible), i think they could kind of tell from my body language.

but what about ghosts that aren't really dead yet? like memories that just refuse to die for reasons i can't understand and want to make a machine to erase them (somebody please get on this whole spotless mind thing, stat). those are ghosts, too, and quite frankly, a memory of something alive that is just not letting go is a whole lot more pathetic than someone who just can't seem to shake the dust off the life that has already expired.

it's high time some things just die in the water, and quit hanging out where they're not welcome. i have way too many distractions as is. i don't need to think about things that i hate to love.

k.

writer's block

i wake up and think,
today's going to be different.

today's going to be the one
that changes it all.

and yes, it's different
from the one before. but
not entirely.

it's not as hot.
it's a little sunnier.
it's friday.

the prefixes are not
changing the outcome, though.
like i'm stuck in a sentence
that uses different words
to describe the same thing.

what is it
that i'm waiting for?
for the next big show?
the next five digit paycheck?
the next i love you?

The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
~Henry Miller

hm.

k.

cut to fade

without days
like this, the
ones that pass in
golden frames and
sunshine in eyes, how
could anyone ever
write a decent poem?
the rest of the ugly
ones fade a little,
the hours that
-unfortunately-
have been burned into
us, like a
brand on a cow.
but today, oh, today;
gives me hope
that there are others
like it, somewhere.
the leaves are greener,
the breeze cooler,
and my smile, brighter.
and the money,
the boys,
the everything that fences me in...
it fades, and
stops making such
incoherent babble.
today, i
make sense.

k.

picnic talk

walk in my shoes
for long enough
and you'll burn
out, this
massive black hole
of self-depricative
ants...
walk one by one
by onebyonebyonebyone
and bite your toes,
little by little,
bit by bit,
so when everything's over
you get to see
and scratch
and feel and know
just how your skin
gets infected.
i could yell
i could scream
but it makes you
move not one inch,
as it's NOT MY LIFE
anymore.
no one cares.
not you.
not the ants,
not a single soul.
let's go marching
one by one,
hurrah,
hurrah.
the first will be
the same as
the last.

k.

selfish girl

Watch the walls,
These cells
Are bonded and stronger
Than I thought, what
Tiny viscous armour
They do wear.
Fight the feeling,
Build defenses, so
The loss
won't be so bad.
Pretend.
Smile loud and
Long, be
Just that strong...
Crack a joke,
Crinkle your nose,
Laugh out loud
When you're not
Alone...
Cause one day your
Bones won't feel
As heavy, your skull,
Not as crushed in,
Your stomach not
As nauseous, and
Your skin won't
Burn like wildfire.
Push through.
Push through.
This is all
For you.

K.

chasing pavements

hot days drenched
in latent love,
the beats slow
and melt, like
crayolas on a frying pan.
yours is grey
and mine is red, a
'trip the lights fantastic'
blob of awesome.
day to night, the
pavement burns but
still feels so good
to walk on,
together.

k.

serendipitous movement

i have spent almost my entire life barreling into dance headfirst. when i was the tender age of three, my mother enrolled me in creative movement and tap classes at her aerobics studio because i had too much energy to pay attention to anything other than things that were shiny or that i could chase, like dogs or bugs. i was accident prone and mischievous, which is not really a good combination with the frilly dresses my mother preferred me to wear to daycare. inevitably, once i found the glory that is pants, i pretty much gave them up for good so that i could hang upside down on the monkey bars without anybody seeing my days of the week panties.

so when dance was introduced to me as a toddler, the leotards were of great appeal as a form of clothing, because they didn't show anything except for the pudgy tummies of me and my classmates. dance became one of the great joys of my childhood... i always looked forward to my classes because unlike school, i didn't have to read and write and learn math. it was an hour out of my day that i could listen to music and run around pretending i was a princess. and soon after, when i started classes that were more deft in the ballet language, it was the first time i was praised for my abilities in anything; at school i was easily distracted and often berated for my lack of interest in all subjects besides art class, which evidently was only there because the teachers wanted to have a smoke break away from babysitting snotnose little kids.

i was the first in my class to be put on pointe, at eleven. my teacher would point out my feet to other students as what they should desire in ballet. i was given special solos and eventually, cast in company roles by the time i reached trainee status at fifteen. the harder i worked, the more i was rewarded by both my body and my artistic directors, and soon ballet was the only thing i realized i was good enough at to make a career out of. and though i was always jealous of my older brother for his immense capacity for intellectualism, i knew that ballet was going to be my golden ticket to gaining appreciation from my parents and those who would come to see me. my first step in this was getting contracted into a ballet company in atlanta the year i graduated college. it was a principal contract at 21, and i knew this was the start to many great things to come.

i was only half right. in february of my first year with the company i was rear-ended at 70 mph, totaling my car and moving my spinal column in my pelvic cavity, causing severe nerve pain and limiting the mobility of my lower back and legs. my flexibility was cut in half on my right side, and i would have bouts of partial blindness in my right eye if i would move certain ways. i went to sports medicine therapists and spine doctors and with each consultation i lost more and more hope in ever returning to the stage in the condition i had left it. at most, with therapy and possibly surgery, the doctors were telling me that i could only get back to about 80 percent of what i was before the accident.

i had spent my entire life working towards something that was taken away from me in a millisecond. i became severely depressed and began having identity issues... if i wasn't a ballet dancer, who was i? it had defined me my entire life; it was as natural to me as walking. thus began my journey to figure out who i was without the great umbrella of dance shrouding over me.

i began teaching more and producing my own works of choreography. i picked up my old 84 minolta and started taking pictures again, capturing the moments i thought were beautiful. i wrote more, any time i could. i drank more and allowed myself to loosen the strings a little bit on my life. took other classes besides ballet, like hip-hop and lyrical, and actually found out i really liked those forms of dance. i began dancing burlesque and enjoyed the freedom and campiness of the shows. i moved to san francisco, went on tour for five months, moved to boston, and moved to new york. i opened myself up to the options of one day having my own design company for the little bobbles i like to make, like eyepatches and pasties. i let myself grow into someone that wasn't defined by past, instead, becoming someone who is shaped by the present.

in other words, instead of growing interlocked in an art i had studied my entire life, i allowed the passion for the art i loved so dearly influence the person who had been shielded by it to unlock and open up to new ideas and experiences.

just recently i found an old friend of mine on facebook, a girl i danced with for about seven years when i was training. she was always the most promising one in class, the student that was blessed with the body and talent for ballet. when she graduated, she decided to take a job with the new york city ballet, one of the most prestigious companies in the world. i had found out that three years after she took the job, she quit ballet. she ended up going to school and after she gained her degrees, auditioned for the pennsylvania ballet, which is now where she dances. i asked her why she didn't continue on with nycb, and she responded brilliantly.

"i didn't know who i was anymore. basically, i became this sheep, this number... and i needed a break to find my own identity. so i went to ithaca and got a degree, and a year later, decided i was ready to dance again, as my own person with my own style. i wanted to know who i was after someone else defining me for so many years."

lovely. and i think it was the same for me, albeit the fact that my break was not a break i actually thought i needed. however, looking back, i see that it was. i gave myself time to figure out what i really loved, and not just what i was really good at. and i may not be rich and i may not be that well-known for my work, but it just makes me realize further that there are so many cool things to come, ballet or not.

my definition is mine. and that's fucking awesome.

k.

10 THINGS THAT ARE HORRIBLE ABOUT BEING LINDSAY LOHAN

TEN. bad music.



NINE. methface.



EIGHT. the inability to make a good movie. or even make a bad movie look okay on the movie poster.




SEVEN. being able to google "lindsay lohan drunk photos" and have over 25 pages of links to pictures of you bombed out of your mind. my favorite: lindsay lohan drunk (i.e. her normal state)

http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/gallery/lindsay-lohan-drunk/

SIX. having this trainwreck as your mother-slash-enabler. ugh.




FIVE. having a younger sister that wants to be just like you, even though you are a coke-and-famewhore out of work actress who spends money on shit you don't need, never wear, and can't afford. you're fucking fifteen. put on a normal size dress and take off those hooker heels, lindsay-in-training...


"ALI, ON BIG SISTER LINDSAY: "I grew up watching Lindsay, and it made me want to do what she does. Just the whole vibe. Being there, being on camera, or onstage, with everybody listening to you…it's so cool when people look up to you. I've already been asked for my autograph, and it's just a really good feeling to have."

FOUR. being genetically related to michael lohan, tied with himself in first place as the world's biggest douche and most horrible excuse for a father in the history of the world, up in the rankings with other bad excuses for humans such as bill o'reilly, kanye west, and biff tannen from back to the future. you're awful, michael lohan. go kill yourself for the sake of the rest of the population.



THREE. becoming a lesbian only to date a woman who looks like a nineteen year old boy. samantha ronson, really? i mean, really. couldn't you have gone lipstick, lindsay?



TWO. being compared to a pill-popping home-wrecking actress who overdosed before the age of forty. i love myself some marilyn, but her downward spiral is eerily parallel to lindsanity's.



ONE. being lindsay lohan.

my summer is here again

oh, so happy,
this little smile
inside my chest, this
light, this
new small sprig of
something sweet, and
growing, day by day
by day by day...
i want to walk through
rose gardens laughing
and lay on the grass
blanketed by breeze,
squint up at you
with sun in my eyes,
and breathe in
your skin, freckled
and smooth like
cookie cream filling.
these days of late
have been my
reason why.


lately i've been so happy it hurts at times. i'm bursting at my seams and tearing at my sheets...

thank you,
thank you,
thank you.

k.

wow.

i wish i could play an instrument. all i got are my dang feets.

k.

a little lesson in biology

"A relationship, I think, is like a shark, you know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark." -Woody Allen

it's true. wikipedia says so...

Unlike bony fish, sharks do not have gas-filled swim bladders for buoyancy. Instead, sharks rely on a large liver, filled with oil that contains squalene and the fact that cartilage is about half as dense as bone.[13] The liver constitutes up to 30% of their body mass.[16] The liver's effectiveness is limited, so sharks employ dynamic lift to maintain depth and then sink when they stop swimming. Sand tiger sharks are also known to store air in their stomachs, using the stomach as a swim bladder. Most sharks need to constantly swim in order to breathe and cannot sleep very long, if at all, or they will sink.
Like other fish, sharks extract oxygen from seawater as it passes over their gills. Unlike other fish, shark gill slits are not covered, but lie in a row behind the head. A modified slit called a spiracle lies just behind the eye; the spiracle assists water intake during respiration and plays a major role in bottom dwelling sharks. Spiracles are reduced or missing in active pelagic sharks.[11] While the shark is moving, water passes through the mouth and over the gills in a process known as "ram ventilation". While at rest, most sharks pump water over their gills to ensure a constant supply of oxygenated water. A small number of species have lost the ability to pump water through their gills and must swim without rest. These species are obligate ram ventilators and would presumably asphyxiate if unable to move.

and so there is too a likeness with love...

Biological models of love tend to see it as a mammalian drive, similar to hunger or thirst.[9] Psychology sees love as more of a social and cultural phenomenon. There are probably elements of truth in both views. Certainly love is influenced by hormones (such as oxytocin), neurotrophins (such as NGF), and pheromones, and how people think and behave in love is influenced by their conceptions of love. The conventional view in biology is that there are two major drives in love: sexual attraction and attachment. Attachment between adults is presumed to work on the same principles that lead an infant to become attached to its mother. The traditional psychological view sees love as being a combination of companionate love and passionate love. Passionate love is intense longing, and is often accompanied by physiological arousal (shortness of breath, rapid heart rate); companionate love is affection and a feeling of intimacy not accompanied by physiological arousal.
Studies have shown that brain scans of those infatuated by love display a resemblance to those with a mental illness. Love creates activity in the same area of the brain where hunger, thirst, and drug cravings create activity. New love, therefore, could possibly be more physical than emotional. Over time, this reaction to love mellows, and different areas of the brain are activated, primarily ones involving long-term commitments.
There is evidence in a variety of species that the hormones oxytocin and vasopressin are involved in the bonding process, and in other forms of prosocial and reproductive behavior. Both chemicals facilitate pair bonding and maternal behavior in experiments on laboratory animals. In humans, there is evidence that oxytocin and vasopressin are released during labor and breastfeeding, and that these events are associated with maternal bonding. According to one model, social isolation leads to stress, which is associated with activity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and the release of cortisol. Positive social interaction is associated with increased oxytocin. This leads to bonding, which is also associated with higher levels of oxytocin and vasopressin, and reduced stress and stress-related hormones.[15]
Oxytocin is associated with higher levels of trust in laboratory studies on humans. It has been called the "cuddle chemical" for its role in facilitating trust and attachment.[16] In the reward centers of the limbic system, the neurotransmitter, dopamine may interact with oxytocin and further increase the likelihood of bonding. One team of researchers has argued that oxytocin only plays a secondary role in affiliation, and that endogenous opiates play the central role. According to this model, affiliation is a function of the brain systems underlying reward and memory formation.[17]

and this last tidbit also plays a role in sexual endeavors, which links the two others together:

In biology, anaerobic respiration is a way for an organism to produce usable energy without the involvement of oxygen; it is respiration without oxygen.

so. for a shark to breathe, it must move forward using ram ventilation. for a relationship to survive, it must move forward and develop bonding attributes, which include the stimulation of oxytocin and vasopressin, neurotrophins, and pheromones which increases the chance of stimulation through sexual attraction, which inevitably leads to sex, in which we could assume that anaerobic respiration occurs during physical exchanges.

so. it looks like we have a dead shark on our hands, alright?

let it wash up on shore and get eaten by the gulls already. sheesh.

k.

le lit est avec moi

this was my first night in my brand-new bed. and it was lovely. the mattress itself isn't so much comfortable that say, firm... but it's a bed nonetheless and it's way more comfortable than trying to fit my lanky ass on a couch that is five inches longer than my torso. or, sleeping on a bed of coats on the floor, which i should compare to sleeping on a bed of coats on the floor.

either way, you're sleeping on a bed of coats on the floor, and it will never even come close to say, a sleeping bag, or even just a simple yoga mat. you may as well just sleep on the floor. cause perpetually, that's what you are doing anyway.

so i'm laying here, on my firm (but not coats) mattress, relishing the fact that my room, for the first time in new york city, actually resembles a room. not a place where we can store our empty boxes and loose books; not a large litterbox of clothes that my cats can piss on; not a cold resemblance of a mistake i made that lost a good friend...

it's a room, and it's mine, and i finally feel like i have somewhat of a home.

home is a funny thing. i've lived here, in this apartment in brooklyn, for eight months now. and this is the first time in almost a year that i can step back and get a good look at the quilt that is slowly starting to come together to keep me warm. it's not there all the way, and my feet still kind of hang out the bottom, but it's getting there, and by winter that quilt will hopefully cover the entire length of my body and still have room for one more.

the two years of my life have been me moving around, in atlanta, on tour, in boston, and now here; and with all the disarray it feels good to have something i can call my own. not a place that i moved into cause i had no other place to go. all of this is mine, and a sanctuary that i don't have to share if i don't want to.

yeah, there's some kinks to work out. i'm painting a mural to go over my bed, moving the artwork from there into the kitchen, and getting frames for the creepy dance posters my brother got me for christmas a couple years back. i still need a dresser that won't look like one out of a salvador dali painting and i probably would like to invest in a bookshelf and some paint for the walls.

but no matter how you dress it, it's still mine, and i don't feel as lost as i have during the last couple months.

way to go, me.

k.

sunday to monday

i want more of this, the days that are going by sandwiched in sheets and breeze, slivers of sunlight on my skin in the birth of this spring two-thousand-ten; i haven't been this light for weeks...
months...
years?
it occurred to me yesterday, what kind of thanks are in order. i feel like something has broken inside me, in a really beautiful, really clean way inside me. not like when you break a bone or lacerate the skin, the painful moment when you realize someone doesn't love you the way you love them...
i felt as if there has been a crack in the wall, and a streaks of light are pouring through from the other side; golden and gilded and greedy to fight their way to open air.
i feel new.
i feel good.
i feel safe.

thank you, for doing that for me. i really like it.

k.

ok go(odbye)

"You know you can't keep lettin' it get you down
And you can't keep draggin' that dead weight around.
If there ain't all that much to lug around,
Better run like hell when you hit the ground."

alright, already,
the horse is beaten to
a bloody pulp, it's
organs are strewn
across the floor like mulch
and thanks for saying, even
though i knew, it's time,
it's time to forget
about you and
your simple smile, your
inked on skin, your eyes
i wanted to go swimming in,
your art, your hands, your
curt-ish voice,
a vice, the ropes so
hard to fray, now just
leave, just go away, and
let me be, let me start
again, cause again
is what i look better in.
okay, goodbye, we've
had enough, you're gone,
i'm done, no
need to try
anymore.
ok go, feet out
the door.

k.

the lyrics meant so much

so clear today, a
picture-perfect painting
on my skin... the
high noon sun is
an hour early
but welcome just the same.
the breeze is
just in time to
clear my cluttered
mind, shake
the dust off the
paintings and fill
the space with the sound
of dancing leaves
above my head.
my breath comes easy,
my hearts beats slower,
and finally,
finally, these
tribulations move over
making way for
a smile, making way for
this stolen silence,
making way for sanity
to merge in to my space.
the possibilities seem endless
in the coming days of
dusk and summer.

k.

character, shmaracter...

there are days that i barely recognize the past. then there are days like this, when everything seems to sit on top of my chest.

sometimes i feel like there's not enough air around me to breathe. or that i have forgotten how. and my heart starts palpitating and i think about everything that has gone wrong and everything that could go awry so easily. i get shaky and scared and nervous and laden in regrets i would never normally identify with.

but after a couple minutes of re-teaching myself the process of filling my lungs, i calm down and force myself to remember that today is going to pass, like all the others, and the losses that i have had in my life have happened for reasons that i will come to learn later.

i guess i have to remind myself that it's all about the wait. that patience is considered a virtue for good reason, because it's hard. instant gratification is simply a good lottery ticket that leaves you with money-hungry "friends" and "relatives", and a bushel full of taxes at the end of the year.

good things will come. it's hard to wait it out, but at least i'm keeping busy with dance and work. one day i'll understand why people come and go like the wind. nothing is forever besides death, and i'm not ready for that yet. so until then i guess i'll just keep waiting.

besides, success wouldn't be as delicious if everything was super easy. even still, life's lesson's kinda suck sometimes.

listening to a song in the car

Once upon a time,
I was falling in love,
But now I'm only falling apart.

Turn around bright eyes, turn around.

So pretty.

K.

10 THINGS THAT I WISH I WOULD HAVE INVENTED OR AT LEAST GOTTEN CREDIT FOR INSTEAD OF THESE JERKOFFS

ten. does this dude think he looks better on this bike than i do? please.




nine. icarus ain't got nuthin on these sonsabitches.




eight. post-it notes. it's almost too easy, and this guy makes them look 100% less sexy.




seven. even though it's a mini-trampoline, which were all the rage in the eighties for exercise, this dude doesn't look like he understands the meaning of the word AND hasn't been out of his basement since the eighties due to D&D.




six. what is this? ice fishing for rednecks? at least get a girl in a bikini and a trash can full of pbr's.



five. let me get this straight. this unattractive housewife got millions of dollars for inventing a collapsible wagon?? i thought of that shit in the THIRD GRADE, bitch. i just didn't know what a copyright was. damn it.



four. A FLYING CAR?!?!? why did the russians get these cool points??? i mean, look at how many fly ass stewardess bitches they got!!!



three. its a homemade submarine. this guy is either the most brilliant asian man to date, or the dumbest. i'm not sure if i would trust a vehicle i made not to drown me eighty leagues under the sea.



two. does anybody else think it's strange that humans invent so many bike apparatuses? just sayin.



one. ummm... if i could be famous for anything... these would be it. love, love, love.