Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine

I took these photos in London in February 2020.

People flying out of LAX internationally were greeted with signs warning them not to handle animals if they went to Wuhan, an almost comic understatement of what lie ahead. I think often about how moments in time can be sullied by what's unimaginably to follow, how quickly things can escalate. I hope this isn't one of those times. Staring daggers at the doomsday clock.

I'm a vehement Valentine's Day disliker. No holiday has the right to come in at the tail end of winter like that when everyone's tired, cold, broke, and sick of their families and loved ones. They should put May Day in February instead. Or Easter. Or Boxing Day! Something low stress. February's days are too short, the groundhog always sees his shadow (allegedly! no groundhog would be interviewed for this post) – it's an untrustworthy month that can't even commit to the number of days in it. Throw the whole month out! It also just sucks for me personally – I'm pretty much always single, plus I am unmoved by obligatory gestures and hallmark card sentimentality. The best thing anyone ever did for me on Valentine's Day – the only good thing – was when this guy Zach I was barely seeing scrawled HAPPY VALENTINES in red sharpie on a religious scare pamphlet about the horror of piercings. I love it both ironically and unironically. It says "which piercing hurt the most? Tongue? Yikes! Nose? Yikes! Actually, the piercing that hurts the most is the one that you've probably never thought about. The hole that was pierced through your soul." Thank you Zach. I will always remember you for this, not the time you said "I'm not listening to anything you're saying, I'm too distracted by how good you look." (Need a "where are they now?" expose on Zach, the guy who did one great thing, but it was so great I'm still thinking about it twenty three years later.

Happy Valentines, Heathens.

Love, Kate

(P.S. it's the tenth anniversary of this post)

In heaven everything is fine

 There are a few times in my life only where I’ve been absolutely gutted, not by my own disabilities and limitations (which happens all the time), or the weight of the dumb world (also frequent), but by the emotionality of someone else actually reaching through the cold universe into my coal heart and grabbing it deeply and with pure intention and without mercy.

One was when I was working the door one very late night / early morning at First Avenue in Minneapolis on a weekend dance night, very exhausted by the crowd and by my job overall which taxed my social skills well beyond their limits, exhausted by the time of night where drunks from other clubs were spilling out into mine, people not suited for the place, people who should be in cabs on the way home. This one guy seemed to have had too many, and I was trying to turn him away. He was with a friend. Something was a bit off. What his friend explained was that he wasn’t really that drunk, that most of his state of disassociation and insobriety was the horror of the life event he’d been drinking that night to try and leave out of his mind for a few hours; and the moment I tried to turn him away at the door was when that liquid armor failed him. His mother had been killed by her partner, recently. And he was too new in this shattered world of his to go out and do anything normal, yet, but he’d misunderstood, until I stood before him accusing him of too much comfort booze. I hadn’t known.

We talked for a bit and I’m no miracle worker and nobody could get in a time machine and make the thing not happen. But I am pretty raw by nature, both abrasive and easily harmed, and occasionally a thing in my orbit meets me at that level. This was the thing, someone unlike me, but in a rare state where he was so blitzed with grief he could split time. And I turned out to be what he needed. I was wearing a watch with my artwork on it I’d had custom made, he spotted it, asked me about it, and told me never to give up my art. Took off his watch. As a reminder, gave it to me, for whatever I’d given him – I didn’t even realize I had it in me. Hope, I guess, which he’d left at the last bar. He’d spun through aggression and dissociation and into healing in the blink of an eye.

He and his friend left then, and my manager saw my imminent dysfunction, covered my post, took me upstairs to the office and sat me down with a drink so I could recover from the shock of the whole thing. It was like I’d sucked some of the grief out of him and had to sob it out myself. I’d seen right through someone’s skin. This guy was inside out. Everyone is in there somewhere. But under so many layers usually. So many layers.

I've lost mine, like an asshole, but here's his.

                 *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *

I’ve never had a worse year. I’m in shreds. My career has collapsed, my city is burning, I have no stability, nobody needs me, my dreams are gone. I’m out of gas.

So another gutting moment took me by surprise yesterday at noon when every David Lynch fan in the universe stopped what they were doing to meditate for ten minutes as he’d have done, on what would have been his 79th birthday a few short days after his final trip to the moon. I’d been fully immersed in a Lynch retrospective all weekend and was consumed by grief and awe. I was watching a stream of endless Lynch movies and clips. The stream paused for the meditation. And then when left alone with that in silence, it enveloped me. I sucked all the peace and love vibes from the thousands and thousands of meditating people radiating outward, and ate it up like a black hole.

pill bug

yeah hi.

ok so since I wrote this post, about things closing and how that sucks and I don't know how to appreciate things right or something, two restaurants and a record store within 1/2 mile of my place unexpectedly closed. This is the vibe right now. This is a time of everyone failing despite their best efforts because money is worth pocket lint

who's doing ok? i want to know. landlords? You'll do great when everyone's homeless, you coalhearted toads you.

Meanwhile this weird thing (this thing? this?) surpassed 100k total views. The stats must be a lie, right? nobody's reading this. Anyway we're going back to bartering with goats, alright? if you don't have any goats you'll have to starve. It's goats or nothing.

totally stole this image from the web

If you've read a post or two prior to now you'll know I sieze up under stress like a pillbug

I've had so much free time and I can't get anything done. A friend said to me recently "you already know how to starve. You just have to learn to make art at the same time." This is true. I don't think I'll ever learn though. Destined to live up to about 15% of my potential. 

Tell me some stories of successful people who sat around and picked their nose until they were half a century old. Inspiring! this is what i need. send postcards of Grandma Moses paintings and ..just found a cute "artists who got started VERY late in life" ad forward click bait buzzword listicle (ew, ew) and one of the artists cited wasn't recognized until their 30s. no no no no no. that's not how this works

Grandma Moses and – oh boy man, it's "30 is old" articles all the way down. what the hell gen z/alpha, what, whoever the fuck you are. Is it illegal to write listicles if you can conceive of adulthood? grow up. 

WHO???? find the late bloomers and send me postcards about them. I'm just getting started in life. All those bands I went to see were just candy. I didn't even entertain the idea of being an adult until now. Let me live the rest of my life in peace. jerks.

April Fish Day 2: The Jackassening

 an assortment of photos I found today in an April Fools' Day google image search

(OG Fish Day post here)

ITS DIFFICULT / AND THEN ITS DONE

Weird having lived in one city long enough to see almost all my favorite joints close.

My first heartbreak here was the Nova Express Cafe on Fairfax, and the one that hurt me the most personally, probably, was the C++ 24 hour punk rock coffee shop in Glendale (rules on the wall: "don't come in and be a drunk fool. tip or make coffee at home"). I'm guessing I've mentioned both before but I don't know if I'll bother to check. Another tough loss was the Cat Club on the strip, because André and I had once driven Dee Dee home from there - I had just met him once prior, and I had my one and only heart to heart chat with him on the way to his place. (me: "Dee Dee, why don't you drive?" him: "I don't trust myself not to do something stupid") This is also where the public memorial was for him after his death, and when Arthur Kane walked in, André leaned in and said to me: "that man is a living legend."

Living in a city of constant change as they all are, and especially in the throes of capitalism destroying all our good things, knowing anything could go bankrupt and split at almost any time, it's counterintuitive that I do this thing with a few special places, and that's make a point of visiting them infrequently, so they don't lose their magic (Toi Thai is the pique example of this dumb behavior - I've gone twice in the past six months, but really only because the first of those two was with a friend who passed away not long later, and I couldn't bear that to be my last current memory of the place)

So here's something I still only do at most only once every couple years: sit for an afternoon and read all the notes in the magic chess table at the Alcove cafe. I sincerely hope that place *does* close, and greedily I can purchase that table and take it out of commission and love it forever privately before it fills with self promotion and fuck yous. but for now: it still remains a spot where (mostly) people leave love letters and affirmations and off the cuff well intentioned poetic nonsense.

I sometimes stick a note or two in there myself, and this time I did something I haven't done before: maybe I'm going to hell - a principled documentarian should only observe - but I took a note home. It just really spoke to me.

Some favorites (for the sentiment, the humor, the handwriting, whatever) from this last visit, below. They do obviously get purged every couple years (individual drawers at different times, as they fill beyond usability, probably) and slowly regenerate. Some have dates written on them and these go back to late 2021. A barista told me the owner keeps them all and hangs his favorites in his office. I love that after all these years they don't say anything about it. There's no paper & pen at that table or anything - people discover it on their own, write on and with whatever they can find: napkins, coffee sleeves, notebook pages, lipstick. Either your curiosity leads you there, or it doesn't. And it's not an artsy weirdo hangout. The desserts are pretty good but the Magic Table is the magic (a name many people have given it, possibly independently of each other, over the years).

(good call ditching that apostrophe, Jenna)

depends on what you're using it for?

weird but i dont know if i drew this

before i got to this one

(after)

(ok to live on timid island if you like)

+ cats. duh

(Magic Table product placement)

well, there it is.