Kat Asharya

The 90s are back!!! At least, that’s what everyone says, and about 80% of this blog is devoted to that assertion. Of course, most people generally mean stuff like grunge fashion, bands, riot grrrl and copious usage of Revlon’s “Coffee Bean” lipcolor. But it’s actually super-interesting now, I think, to re-examine the cultural impact of a lot of the activism of the decade, including the AIDS activism that flourished at the time. NYU’s “Gran Fury: Read My Lips” is going up tomorrow, a perfect art afternoon for anyone with an interest in visual culture, politics and yep, the 90s.

Gran Fury was a major part of the AIDS awareness movement, especially as the “propaganda” wing of legendary activist group ACT UP. A collective of artists, filmmakers and other visual types — including my former prof and mentor, director Tom Kalin! Shout out to Tom! — they first got famous for their incendiary, subversive posters, using the strategies of mass media and advertising to spread a message of tolerance, knowledge and anti-bigotry, all in an attempt to demystify and derail the prejudice and ignorance surrounding AIDS and HIV that came out of the 80s. Their work wasn’t obtuse or complicated, but still managed to touch upon the complexities of issues without flattening them. They, along with efforts of other major AIDS activist organizations, turned what many initially regarded as a marginal health concern into a major political issue that intersected queer and gay rights, public health, corporate greed, political indifference, sexuality and other taboos. It made AIDS an issue for everyone and took down a lot of homophobia at the same time.

Seeing their stuff now, the cheekiness, wit and stylishness of their work remains striking, and they managed to combine a provocative, even scathing level of observation with a clear, unambiguous urgency that many political campaigns fail to harness these days. (I keep thinking of those really confused “I am African” adverts from a few years ago. Problematic, no?) It’s worth examining the political legacy of activist groups in the 90s now, especially in light of what’s happening with the Occupy movement. I suspect there’s something about the wit, intelligence and simplicity of Gran Fury’s approach that it could crib a few notes from. It’s a great thought experiment to imagine what the collective would do now in the age of Tumblr, Twitter and other viral social media mechanisms.

Anyway, the show is up at NYU’s 80WSE Galleries from January 31 (the opening is tomorrow from 6-8pm!) to March 17, 2012. I wish that I could say Gran Fury’s message isn’t needed anymore and HIV is a relic of the past, but it’s not. HIV still ravages the Global South (especially in Asia and Africa), medicines to help manage the condition are still expensive, and sadly, complacency has set in for a new generation in the developed world: people under 30 face the greatest risk of infection now. From 2006 to 2009, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the HIV incidence rate for Americans between 13 and 29 years old increased by about 21%. Most of the new HIV infections reported in America now involve people under 30. Also, if rates of infections keep at their current levels worldwide, women infected with HIV may soon outnumber men with HIV, a huge shift historically. The message is still relevant, dudes: SAFER SEX SAVES LIVES!

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Have you ever seen it? It’s about a little girl (Eliza Dushku!) who idolizes her teenage neighbor Sherry (Juliette Lewis!) and becomes infatuated with Sherry and her boyfriend Rick (C. Thomas Howell!). It’s based on an Alice McDermott novel – I read the book a very long time ago and I remember it being wonderful too, albeit far less sweet and dreamy than the movie. That Night the movie’s kinda like a pop song, and there’s great pop songs in it, like “Dream Baby” by Roy Orbison. I think about the movie a lot when I’m working on the story I’m writing for my UCLA class with my amazing teacher, and will probably end up hugely ripping it off (in a loving and righteous sort of way).

That Night‘s not on Netflix but you can rent it on the Amazon Instant Video thing, and you really should, this weekend. Here’s some more screencaps:

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I made a mixtape/Spotify playlist for the new year; it’s got Ol’ Dirty Bastard and The Bangles and Blood Brothers and CeCe Peniston and Siouxsie and the Banshees and Sleigh Bells and it’ll make you breathe fire, in a loving way.

You should all make playlists for your new year too and then give them to us (in the comments or at liz@nogoodforme.com).

(dragon pic stolen from here)

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It’s David Lynch’s birthday! The director of Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and of course “Twin Peaks” turns 66 today! Of course, I could tell you to watch his movies and stuff — they all generally deserve multiple viewings because of their haunting beauty and sheer audacious crazy — but surely there’s a more NOGOODFORME kind of way to honor such a beautiful genius, no? Anyway: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAVID LYNCH! Thank you for making such transcendent movies! Here’s how I’m gonna celebrate your birthday!

DANCE DREAMILY AT YOUR FAVORITE DINER

David Lynch’s films generally have fantastic uses of music — he’s a real genius with film sound (I wrote a whole paper on it, ages ago!) Film sound often functions as a movie’s subconscious, and his films are a particularly riveting combination of ethereal darkness and oddly buoyant pop charm. (I even dug the heavy industrial vibe of Lost Highway! Nine Inch Nails!) What would “Twin Peaks” be without the spooky sounds of Julee Cruise and Angelo Badalamenti?

This is Julee Cruise singing “Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart” on the BBC in 1989! Oh my god, the back-up singers’ dresses!

HAVE A HARROWING MOMENT OR TWO

The juxtaposition of surfaces of innocence with a teaming underbelly of moral corruption and surreal nightmares is really the crux of what makes Lynch such a genius as a filmmaker. That scary moment of the thing behind the diner in Mulholland Drive, the frighteningly debasing of nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens in Blue Velvet or BOB (he still scares me!) — those are the most memorable moments of a Lynch movie, whether you like them or not. You can’t have light without dark, so do a little dance with your inner demon. Otherwise it will lurk in the back of your proverbial diner or at the food of your bed, waiting to SCARE YOU TO DEATH. BOB!!!

GET A HOLD OF THE SECRET DIARY OF LAURA PALMER

Did anyone else read this when it came out? I remember reading it, passing it around with friends, all of us going, “OH MY GOD THIS BOOK IS SO DIRTY!” It was great fun. It actually works really well as a standalone work, and pulls you into the whole “Twin Peaks” mystery so beautifully. I wish I could find my copy for it somewhere!

WEAR SADDLE SHOES AND PLAID SKIRTS, OR PINK LYCRA AND HEAVY EYEBROWS, OR A SNAKESKIN JACKET

I truly never appreciated the genius costuming of “Twin Peaks” until I worked in film as a wardrobe designer — the combination of 50s-esque schoolgirl silhouettes with Northwest fabrics, colors and textures was truly inspired. My favorite was always Audrey, who had a way with plaid tweed skirts, tight sweaters and dark lipstick:

But I actually think the best fashion film in terms of Lynch’s canon is Wild at Heart. Sailor and Lulu! Proto-True Romance, no? Pink lycra! Snakeskin jacket! Isabella Rossellini’s eyebrows! Wowza!

FOLLOW AGENT DALE COOPER’S ADVICE FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

“Every day, once a day, give yourself a present.”

So said TV’s most perfect man ever. Follow his advice: it’s guaranteed to make your life happy and amazing!

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1. Go to Venice and drink moon milk! Probably the one made from raw almonds and banana walnut water.

2. God, just read The Marriage Plot every goddamn chance I get. And probably listen to “Blood” by The Middle East about a trillion times and wish I had a chorus of small children to sing the last two minutes. It’s the song at the end of Crazy, Stupid, Love., which I watched on the red-eye home for Christmas and it was the first time I’d ever seen Ryan Gosling in a movie. I get why everyone likes him now! It’s cuz he’s really good-looking and talented and charming.

3. Learn how to use the sparkly hot-pink Urban Decay eyeliner I got in the mail the other day.

4. Finish the thing I’m writing for the next installment of the Let It Be Beautiful zines. It’s “I Wanna Be Your Man” and it’s about using the Rolling Stones for spiritual transcendence and romantic fulfillment.

5. Do my homework! I have homework now. I’m taking a writing class at UCLA and Francesca Lia Block is my teacher. I had my first class last Tuesday and my homework is to write the first paragraph of my novel.

6. Also I will go to dance class. It’s at Heartbeat House. We do ballet to Rihanna and I love it.

7. Eat more dried hibiscus flowers. My housemate brought some home from the grocery store last night. They’re beautiful and they taste like Fruit Roll-Ups.

8. Get me some sequined shorts and then wear them to this thing I’m gonna do next Sunday which I’ll tell you about later. It’s a performance of sorts and I haven’t performed onstage since my last dance recital, in 1994. I wore sequins then so I’ll wear sequins now, but I won’t wear a french braid. Anyway I like these, from Halston Heritage and Shakuhachi:

9. Go to a bar and karaoke a Rolling Stones song, preferably their version of “I Wanna Be Your Man.” Or “Stray Cat Blues,” if a dude sings it with me. In general, I’m trying to do things that “nurture my Leo moon” (i.e., my inner showoff/ham), in preparation for the thing I’m referring to in #8. Suggestions very welcome!

10. I wanna work on getting good at Rolling Stonesy insults. The other night at an ice cream shop I listened to “Ride On, Baby” for the first time in years and got all giddy at the part toward the end when Mick sings, “By the time you’re 30, gonna look 65.” So mean! So good! I will also work on manifesting a t-shirt that says “I Need The Stones to Keep Me Happy,” like this t-shirt, but way better-looking and more like something a woman would wear.

(The pic of Keith and Gram Parsons came from this website. All the rest of the Rolling Stones picks were lifted from rollingstoned.tumblr.com. And the hibiscus flower photo lives here.)

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i. On Christmas Eve I drank the cutest beer! It’s called Baby Tree and it’s from a brewery named Pretty Things, which is based in my one-time home city of Somerville, Massachusetts. According to the brewery, Baby Tree “is a real tree [that's] filled with waving, happy babies, some of whom may or may not resemble Mikheil Gorbachev.” Pretty Things also has a beer called Fluffy White Rabbits, and another called Confounded Mr. Sisyphus. So yay for whimsy and alcohol.

ii. I meant to tell you this sooner, but here’s a playlist of my 7 fave songs of ’11. Also: FLASH BANG GRENADA.

iii. I’m taking a writing class at UCLA and it starts next week and my instructor is someone you just might know and love. I picked UCLA because my two California dads (him and him) both dropped out of there.

iv. Speaking of Jim Morrison, the other night I had a “Doors double feature” in which I watched When You’re Strange (that documentary narrated by Johnny Depp) and the Doors movie by Oliver Stone. This is my favorite part of the documentary:

And the Oliver Stone movie is still dumb but kinda fun. Val Kilmer’s a wow. My friend has a joke about how “That’s another Thanksgiving you’ve ruined, Jim Morrison!” (as spoken by Meg Ryan) is probably the greatest piece of dialogue in cinematic history. And there are so many pretty shots of L.A., such as these two:

(P.S. Definitely the funniest thing I’ve done so far this week is tweet the sentence “Teenage death girls want my dick not my words” with the hashtag #doorsproblems. COMEDY GOLD, dudes.)

v. The reason all I ever do is watch Doors movies and listen to Doors songs and make Doors jokes is I’m writing a short story about a girl who’s obsessed with Jim Morrison. It’s called “Baby’s in Black,” and it’s for the next installment of the zines that Laura Jane Faulds and I are making for our Beatles book project.

vi. Oh yeah: zines! Back in December our lovely friend Anabela made gorgeous post about Let It Be Beautiful, which was the best early birthday treat evs. And then Miss Moss posted about the project too, and it was so sweet to see our zines near this adorable birthday cake that looks like an owl.

vii. Rock and Roll Tedium is my new favorite Tumblr and I’ll probably submit my story about the time KRS-One was behind me in line at a Whole Foods in the Valley, buying flaxseed oil. Or the time I saw Andre 3000 at the mall.

viii. Another great Tumblr is the NOGOODFORME Tumblr. Follow us! We look like this:

ix. I had a New Year’s party and it was zebra-themed, since (according to shamanicjourney.com) zebras represent balance, agility, uniqueness, power, and sureness of path – all of which seem like good things to invite into 2012. All night long I wore zebra ears, which I bought at Party City for $3. I’d like to wear zebra ears more often, I think. Here’s me wearing zebra ears and smoking a noisemaker, plus some Actual Zebras:

x. Hi I love food!!! Exciting restaurant experiences so far this year: going to Inn of the Seventh Ray for the first time and eating a duck bacon omelette and drinking good red wine and getting waited on by a very dashing German dude with great hair and a cool scarf, all of which helped me mitigate the sadness of that beautiful Eleanor Friedberger song; sharing profiteroles and ice cream with Cathy the other night at Cafe Stella; breakfasting on wood-oven-roasted eggs and grilled bread at Little Dom’s on Sunday morning; and how last Wednesday the bartender at Barbrix put a birthday candle in a cinnamon donut as a belated bday treat for moi.

(P.S. Sage isn’t my favorite restaurant, not even close, but I think they’re brilliant for introducing me to the concept of putting coconut milk in your coffee. Try it; it’s so yum and feels wildly extravagant and wicked health-nutty at the very same time.)

xi. Now for my next birthday I would like many twisted ceramic figurines by Jessica Stoller:

xii. Finally, I love this video of Vinny from Jersey Shore and a bunch of little kids performing a tightly choreographed dance routine to “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People. I wish I had found it right when he posted it, so that it could have been in my life for 142 days already.

Happy new year, guys! xoxo

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Let’s just get down to it: I’ve big-upped Envirosax before, and I still love them. (I use my bags by them all the time; I have one for every bag — I know, bags for your bag! Ha ha! — and they make me happy when I take them out!) Anyway, they have a nice sale going on right now: if you spend $50 at their site, you’ll get 50% off with the code GREEN2012, which you can enter in the discount code box, until January 11. Buy for friends! Buy for family! Buy for every purse you own so you don’t ever not have one! (I know, ridiculous, but you gotta do what you gotta do for no excuses!) And of course, they’re a real pleasure to look at. Like these organic linen ones, which are really lovely and elegant but still interesting, although if you have ornithophobia, perhaps not:

These just make my eyes happy when I look upon them! Not-so-sneaky brightness! Bicycle prints! Quasi-Scandi-style lovebirds! (Sorry, ornithophobes!)

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy! xo

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It’s the middle of winter, and suddenly the whole neon thing happening makes sense to me. Everything is muted and grey now, which I normally like — but day after day of it can be a drag, which is why it’s nice to have the fashion equivalent of a lightbox. Head-to-toe neon is a little overwhelming for me, but a bit of bright color here and there works. I’m fondest of neon bracelets; it’s nice to look down at your wrists and see a pop of color, although lately I like layering a neon yellow-green tank underneath my usual neutral sweaters, which has been nice becaue it’s like, Oooh, sneaky brightness! And even if you don’t want to wear neon, isn’t it nice just to look at pictures of bright, happy jewelry on the Internet? Like, pow! Neon! NEON!

l-r: Charlotte Russe; It’s Me Mary; Odisya

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1. This is my buddy Emily Richmond, playing guitar on my couch. Emily’s sailing around the world, all by herself, on a beautiful boat named Bobbie. Right now she’s on her way from Pago Pago to Papua New Guinea and she’s got a Kickstarter going to help raise the dough she needs to take care of some major Bobbie repairs and continue her journey. Emily’s Kickstarter ends tomorrow at 8:59 p.m. Pacific standard time, and at press time she’s got $3,915 to go. Go here to back her project and get fun rewards like sailor tattoos and neon sunglasses or even a message in a bottle (!).

2. This is a little book I made, called A Hard Day’s Night. Emily Richmond is a very important character in the story, right from the first sentence. She’s kind of like my Jiminy Cricket, a “moral compass” if you will, but in a really chill and non-judgy sort of way. Anyway, if you back Emily’s Kickstarter, I’ll send you a complimentary copy of A Hard Day’s Night. And if you back Emily’s Kickstarter and link to her Kickstarter page on your Twitter/blog/Tumblr, I’ll throw in a copy of my zine Like Dreamers Do too. (Email me about how to make all this happen.)

3. This is a playlist of songs that remind me of Emily, because Emily loves them or because they sound like the ocean or because they’re about surfing (Emily and I used to go surfing together). Listen to these songs over and over and over and just let the music crack your heart (and your wallet!) wide, wide open.

4. This is Emily Richmond’s dog Sailor, aka Red Dog. I took this picture one night two autumns ago when Emily and I ate mediocre Vietnamese food at some restaurant in Venice and then got tall boys of Tecate and went for a moonlit walk on the beach and talked about dudes. If I can’t “kickstart your heart” with bromantic proclamations and good music and books, then I guess I’ll just have to play the cute-dog-pic card. So there, I did it. Who could resist a face like this?

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Ah, it’s so beautiful out, and so very hard to sit at a computer! Seriously, sunshine streaming through the window, crisp wind blowing the scent of trees and flowers into my room, and generally happiness vibes happening in life…the last thing I want to do is blog! But I wanted to share some things that have been rocking my little corner of the world recently…

CHANEL RESORT 2013

I like Chanel perfume and makeup, but their clothes? Not so much. I’d rather have a pair of Frye boots over a Chanel jacket (or even a bag!) any time of day. They’re beautifully made, but not quite my taste. But I recently saw pictures of the resort collection and just fell head over heels for the cyber-Marie Antoinette vibe. Look! Okay, those tennis shoes are ugly — they were heinous in the 90s, and they are spacky now — but the frocks are bonbons, for sure.

A GREAT RESTAURANT IN A PRETTY MIDWESTERN TOWN

Galena, Illinois is one of those cute small towns with a little shopping district, lots of resorts and loads of bed-and-breakfasts. I went as a child a few times, but only recently paid it a visit as an adult. The nice thing about being not-a-child, of course, is that you can drink and roam around without parents, and therefore go to nice restaurants! Last weekend I had a deelish steak salad at One Eleven Main. If for some reason you find yourself in that corner of Illinois, I recommend: fresh ingredients, local farm-supporting, all that good stuff. And delicious food!

Galena’s good for more than eating and shopping: there are lots of riding centers around, and great resorts for skiing and golfing, if you are into that kind of thing. It’s a super-pretty place!

MY SUMMER JAMS MIX

This short ‘n sweet playlist is heavy on the dance-y pop, featuring mostly ladies with sassy attitudes. It’s kind of a loose, mellow, playful set of tunes that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Rock dudes would be allergic to this, I suppose, but who has more fun during the summer: rock dudes or cute girls? Precisely.

Here’s the track listing! For those who are non-Flashy web types or those who don’t want to wade through an 8tracks mix, I streamed a few tracks here for you.

CULTS, Most Wanted
Lana Del Rey, “National Anthem”
Gwen Stefani, “The Sweet Escape”
SANTIGOLD, Pirate in the Water
Nelly Furtado, “Promiscuous”
NICKI MINAJ, Va Va Voom
La Roux, “Finally My Saviour”
Ellie Goulding, “Salt Skin”
Julia Tepper, “Cold Wind”
Madonna, “The Look of Love”

What are some of your sunny-day jams? I need more!

One of my favorite roles in life is doting aunt. In service of this, one day my sister and I took our niece and nephews to a playground. It was the first crisply sunny day we had had in a very long time, and we all romped on the slides, swings and various contraptions as the wind blew around us and the sunlight warmed the slightly wet, thawing ground. The little ones are really some of my most favorite people in the world, and I try to be a big part of their life now, while they are little.

After awhile, I couldn’t resist, and hopped onto the weird whirly thing myself. This is what it looked like:

That’s how I wanted spring to feel: like twirling endlessly under a blue sky. And it has, very much so. This was a small moment, but it began what has become an auspicious season. So that’s now my first step to any new epoch of a life: find a small experience that bestows on you the feelings you most want to feel, and then feel them as big and bold and glorious as you can.

Some people come to moments of decision and shifts in consciousness after near-death experiences or piercing experiences of beauty. Me, I decided to change my life after cleaning out my closet one summer four years ago. Not as picturesque or cinematic as I’d like life to be, I admit, but everything good happening in my life right now has its roots in deciding to clean out my overstuffed, overflowing Manhattan closet.

+++++

I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to clean it out, because, after all, it wasn’t a very big closet. Plus, it was the only closet I had. Yet I had failed to tend to it during my first three relentlessly grueling years of grad school. I let things pile up, stuffed clothes in nooks and crannies, stored luggage within luggage, and generally crammed with everything that didn’t quite fit in my life, on my body, or with my identity into the space. It was just a mess, one I barely paid attention to because I was too busy paying attention to other things.

But then those other things became less pressing. Classes ended in my program, and so did the intensively focused work pace. The semester ended in May, and through most of June I slept deeply. I went home for a long vacation, where I slept some more. It was the life equivalent of a deep, deep breath. When I came back to New York in July, I walked into my apartment, opened the door of my closet to put my luggage away and realized, Wow, I should really clean this up. This is a freaking mess.

+++++

Being ever the optimist, I thought cleaning out my closet would take hours, maybe a long afternoon. It didn’t. It took weeks. Embarrassing, but true. It wasn’t even that I had a hoarder’s store of things, since my closet was pretty tiny, after all. It took so long because I was constantly paralyzed throughout the whole process. I started with putting things into the piles that everyone tells you to make when sorting out clothes: Keep, Discard, Fix. But I found that sorting itself was an agonizing process. I would pick up something, stare at it for a moment, get sucked into a vortex of reverie and, lo and behold, ten minutes passed. What do I keep? Why do I want to keep it? Do I want to get rid of it? Can’t this work for me still? How can I get this to work? I just didn’t know sometimes. It was agonizing. I started on a warm July afternoon, and by the time midnight rolled around, I was still freaking sorting.

What was going on here? I felt like a crazy person. I felt like my possessions had possessed me, and not the other way around. I looked down at the Discard pile at my feet — at clothes that didn’t fit me, that didn’t work for me for one reason or another — and I realized I had moved these items many, many times over, bouncing them between Keep, Fix and Discard. Why was this so hard?

I picked up the items in the Discard pile. There wasn’t a lot, but what was there was quite nice. They were things that felt slightly insane to let go of. Things I had spent money on. Things that I had bought for certain dream scenarios. Things that were just beautiful and lovely in their own right, that I found pleasurable to look at and touch. I picked up a beautiful Ann Demeulemeester dress I had a hard time placing in the Discard pile: it had been particularly to let go of. It was a red silk dress, really lovely to behold and yet I never wore it. Why? It was gorgeous. My fingers lingering over the fine material’s softness, admiring the rich hue, the lovely drape — I was so tempted, once again, to place it back into the Keep pile. But then I stopped myself because suddenly — in a flash — I finally realized I was holding much more than an Ann Demeulemeester dress.

I was holding guilt.

I looked at the Discard pile, and it was like I was suddenly staring at the physical embodiment of guilt. Of shame, of waste, of failed or foolish dreams, of self-delusions. Of projects or resolutions or whims I never followed through on. No wonder it took forever. Try handling the physical embodiment of a few years’ worth of unexamined life and see if you can do it within three hours.

I could’ve just stuffed everything back, stuffed it all in a trash bag or back in my closet. Instead, something in me twisted and clicked: I swore to myself that I would never get into this situation again, one where I was paralyzed by my possessions. I swore that even if I got rid of everything in my Discard pile, I’d recoup its value in self-knowledge and enlightenment. It wouldn’t be just a bunch of stuff I’d try to resell or get rid of, only to fall into the same patterns that got me into the mess to begin with. I was going to fucking learn something from this.

And so I did. Little did I know, I would embark on a much larger inquiry, not only into the usual avenues of style and fashion, but one that touched on where I wanted to be in life, how I wanted to live, what kind of person I had been and wanted to be — and what I wanted to become. And those conversations led to other, connected conversations about money, about love, about all the things flourishing in my life right now. My life has radically changed from that summer after grad school, and it began when I opened my closet.

The opening to “Melancholia,” i.e. the only Lars Von Trier film I can unabashedly love and the most beautiful movie ever made about the ending of the world. Also love the beautiful Wagner overture, which pretty much makes the whole sequence:

I also love this cover of “She’s Lost Control” by Spoek Mathambo. Darkwave township tech from Johannesburg. I hear people call this Afro-goth; I don’t care what it’s called, and the video is stunning, riveting even. I could write a whole thesis on the collision of iconographies happening visually and textually here. In 2001, I might have, but now I’d rather just listen and enjoy.

The story “Kashtanka” by Anton Chekhov. It’s about a dog who loses his way. I WANT A DOG NAMED KASHTANKA! Also, what took me so long to read Chekhov’s short stories? I am so slow sometimes!

My only bourgeois dream is to own a house, and in about a year or two, this will come true! I’ve started looking now, figuring it will take me that long to figure out how I want to spend a buttload of hard-earned savings; right now I want a farmhouse, because I want room for horses later. But I may just settle for a townhouse or something, really.

I am playing guitar lately, taking lessons all proper-like. I go to class with an acoustic, but my heart’s with my Telecaster.

This Nicki Minaj song. The first half of this record, i.e. the hip-hop half = kind of genius. And I love how she namechecks Hot Topic, it always makes me giggle a little.

Overall, life is full of such goodness: I’ve been working on a new novel and I am so happy that I don’t want to be on a computer so much! I want to be living and loving! I hope you’ve been happy this spring so far, all lovely blossoms and fresh air. Outside my window I have butterflies, hummingbirds and cardinals. I wake up and open the blinds and the cardinals sit in their nests and cock their heads at me, and I swear, it is the best start to my day (after a cup of coffee.) I wonder if they know me now. That is my goal this spring: to make friends with birds and share the sunshine. xo k.

I’m sitting at a table near an open window, and there are lilac bushes just starting to bloom outside them, ripening to a darker purple in the sunlight. Everything smells so lovely and fragile, and the wind is murmuring.

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The tricky thing is that the areas of life that feel expansive and full of growth and insight for me right now — love and money — are not ones that I’m inclined to write about publicly, for obvious reasons. I really don’t want my love life or the state of my financies to be cached on Google, you know? (This isn’t helped by my day job, which makes me paranoid about how information on the Internet and on phones gets used against people all the time!) Yet I always like to share what I’ve been learning in a space like this. Must figure that puzzle out; as an online-writing veteran of many, many years, I wrestle now with exactly what I want to do with something like this, and how much energy I can put into it without sacrificing my longer, offline projects.

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In the meanwhile, I’ll just tell you that I am really in love with the California Star Jasmine fragrance from Pacifica, which I picked up this past weekend. I love the smell of jasmine but hate often how sickly-sweet it can be rendered, but this one smells fresh and green and slightly sharp but sunny. The whole site is 20% off, so if you’re inclined…

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Also: I have a piece up at Joan’s Digest, an online feminist film journal. I wrote about a really lovely, fantastic film called Goodbye First Love, directed by Mia Hansen-Love, and I think many of you would love this movie! I wrote specifically about the role of costuming in the film, but the film’s larger themes of self-reliance and vocation in terms of women’s coming-of-age is so beautiful and resonant. See it if you can.

I’m going to try something different, and be a little less precious about what I write here for a bit. Write a little more, don’t worry so much about the packaging or “building a platform,” and just get that feeling of a dash into what goes here. As in, I’m dashing off a sweet missive, a love note, out the door.

1.

I have thought a lot about outgrowing cities, because I never anticipated what it would feel like. Someone asked me recently how I knew I was ready to leave NYC; she’s mulling an escape of her own. I paused, let a weight shift in my heart, and then said, “How I fill my well is different now; I don’t need so much from the outside world.” What I need now are sunsets, quiets, conversations about families and people’s children and hobbies and daily lives, a wide horizon, a horse, a walk by the river.

2.

Around me the trees are budding ferociously, and there is an unseasonal warmth. Temperatures are in the 80s, and the wind today was whipping through the winds. You feel the heat sink into your limbs, which are still barely thawed out from the winter.

3.

The melody of a certain voice.

I had a strange dream last night. I tell you this because I know a lot of people hate reading about dreams. If you do, you can just skip to the end, but it won’t make much sense.

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In my dream, I was making a movie, which is something that I haven’t done in awhile. The movie was this: I would bring my camera to a significant room in my life, either set up a tripod or have someone hold the camera, and then I’d film myself standing in the center of the room, spinning.

As I spun, I would begin corralling all the feelings and thoughts I ever had in the room, much like how a tornado sucks up the air around it. The thoughts and feelings would concentrate into my chest; it was like re-experiencing what happened in that room in fast-motion and hyper-speed. And then as I stopped spinning, the feelings would ebb away, and I was left feeling much space and light inside of me.

I put the footage together into a film of me spinning around in rooms, complete with a voiceover of what had happened in the room and what I had gotten from it. I showed the film at a screening, and it was called, no joke, “My Life.”

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(I should also mention that the “significant rooms” in my dream had no bearing on my real life. They were rooms like the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, or a tea room in the Dorchester Hotel in London. Weird, right?)

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I woke up this morning after the dream feeling really light and unburdened, so I decided it was my subconscious doing some spring cleaning. This isn’t entirely out of context with what is going on in my real life; I had a big gasp of a realization earlier this week, a significant shift in something related to my past. But it wasn’t until my dream where I felt I truly let something go.

How do you clean out your subconscious for spring? What emotional burdens and baggage are you cleaning out now?

(Just as I write this, it’s clear and sunny out, and the day should hit 60 degrees in the afternoon. It will be beautiful!)

Happy Leap Day! How nice to get an extra day in the year. I’m using mine to be utterly corny and take a leap — here are a few paragraphs from my novel.

I was too dumbstruck by the skaters to notice who they were right away. But, squinting more closely at the bigger, broader skater, I saw Viv was right. “It is Jim Dietz!” I whispered back, surprised. Jim Dietz had been the equivalent of a heavy metal power ballad at our school, semi-famous for his maroon Camaro and a lethal combination of bad temper and good looks. Viv had a crush on him when we were freshmen. But he got suspended pulling a knife on a kid in the cafeteria two years ago, and then was sent to his dad’s house in Wisconsin. No one had heard of or from him since. And now he’d come back, and become a skater. He had gotten much bigger and grown his hair out, but it was him.

“He’s amazing,” Viv noted, admiration in her voice as we watched him. She was right: he had incredible strength and power. Jim attacked every movement with a forward intensity, as if he wanted to smash himself into something and take glee in the rubble, like a human hurricane on concrete. He had a heft that belied the fearsome speed he got on the board, able to explode into astonishing flips and spins in mid-air.

Then there was the other skater, the one no one knew at all. He was less flamboyant in style, but once you started watching him, you couldn’t help but stare. Next to Jim’s massive bulk, he was taller and lankier, with dark hair and pale skin. A network of tattoos covered him, snaking all over his sinewy arms and shoulders. He had a different skating style from Jim, imbuing everything with a kind of offhand grace and intricacy. The way he moved wasn’t exactly feline, but it had an animal-like, instinctive quality. He could do half-cabs like they were nothing, one after the other. He could do all kinds of flips and grinds, dashed off like an afterthought. He could soar up into the air with ease, getting incredible air off the simplest of railings. He nailed the hardest skate tricks ever, the most complex combinations, and he did it like it was the easiest thing in the world.

I watched them for a bit, admiring the show like everyone else. But feeling my own board clutched against my chest, I remembered what I had set out to do tonight — and realized that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Nothing anyone did tonight would compare. It was this bittersweet feeling: seeing the most beautiful skating of my life, and realizing how janky my own efforts would seem in comparison to it.

I tugged at Viv’s arm, motioning for us to go. “Aren’t you going to go up?” she whispered, looking confused. I could tell she didn’t want to go.

I only shook my head. “Let’s go.” I took one last look at the two skaters, soaring high in the air in a way I could never hope to touch, and then turned and made my way back to the edge of the park where I belonged.

It is called, at the moment, LOVE AND CONCRETE, and it tells the story of Lily, a skateboarder who falls in love with a mysterious, gifted skater she meets on the scene. But he’s a werewolf, and of course, hijinks ensue. Okay, not hijinks! I jest — it’s a paranormal romance, for God’s sake! But there is illicit swimming in ponds, moshing with skinheads, animal sacrifices, skinned elbows and a secret lurking in the woods. If you’ve ever been giddy with a crush-turned-true-love, you know what my book feels like. If you’ve ever cowered in fear in the middle of the woods at night as you overhear the crunch of breaking bone and flesh against metal — well, you also know what my book feels like, too.

I also started a Tumblr for my book, collecting all the images I’ve been squirreling away since I started the novel. And I must say, it is super, super-hot, with loads of gorgeous wolf pics, skater pics, and the occasional snapshot of alt-rock heroines. Visit it: xoloveandconcrete.tumbr.com. I also started two Pinterest boards, one of just skaters, one of everything else. You can also check out my dream home Pinterest board while you’re there. Or the one of my wardrobe. Those are kind of dorky, but well, there you go!

Last week, after a few promising days of tenuous warmth and lovely sunshine, we got hit with an evening snowstorm. I woke up to pillowy piles of snow outside, branches of trees weighed down by ice. Just as I was starting to get used to the idea of spring!

Interestingly, the last gasp of winter echoed my own internal landscape. I had made some decisions, some of them major ones, the kind that shape your next few years. “A next few years” used to be vague and promising to me in their openness. Now they have an urgency to them; I want time to have a shape, and to matter.

Maybe it’s this urgency now that makes me double-think, rethink, tunnel back around, doubt — to want to go back to what I know instead of plow ahead to the wide-open unknown. But you know, snow melts, time goes forward, and so do you, one step at a time.