jackie raze one of my new favourite people. she is beautifully herself, and she has a beautiful self to be. she's also one of the only people i've ever known who loves "northern exposure" as much as i do. 130718 ... raze i feel like i've known her for fifteen years. we've known one another for exactly one month. it's strange. but in a good way. an "i kind of forgot what this was like" way. 130731 ... raze it was just a summer_thing. and it was barely even that. now it isn't anything. shows what i know. 130813 ... raze i was wrong about being wrong. that's a thing you can be, right? so it still is a thing. it's just changing, into whatever it's going to be. as things do. 130821 ... raze the two of these i've known both ultimately did the same thing, in different ways. maybe it's name_discrimination, but i don't think i care to know a third. 140524 ... kerry used to be i was the noticeable one, the noise-maker. bossy, bossy! with a mouth full of crooked teeth and lies, concocting stories about all the animals i had at home to show you. i told you i had a giraffe at home and you believed me. we were only six then, and you still give me shit about it. i just wanted to impress you. i wanted to know your life. we’d try to stay awake at night listening for cat fights: mr kitty vs the White Cat. mr kitty was a russian blue and that’s why i didn’t know for most of my life how allergic i am to cats. he had a little nick in one ear, the work of the White Cat, and his eyes were lime green. he was so serene, self-possessed. i remember usually finding him sleeping on your bed, never under it. he moved slowly unless circumstances demanded otherwise. and you still have that quilt—that winter i visited you in crown heights and i slept with it in the room where the radiator clanked randomly throughout the night. afternoons in the woods by the creek, palms and knees stained by georgia red clay, long-legged spiders skating on the water, we made up stories we became other people, lived other lives we found possum skulls still with all the teeth and i took them to class i thought we were real tough we jumped on the trampoline barefoot, double-bouncing each other, surrounded by trees and kudzu be careful not too careful or we’d play break the egg: one of us curled into a ball and the other jumped and jumped until the “egg” cracked and sometimes we’d just lie there looking up at the tree branches you were very skinny and you laughed all the time especially when you were uncomfortable i never did that but now i do your grandpa lived in liverpool. he gave you a liverpool FC scarf that you wore to soccer practice and i was jealous also jealous of your parents’ house full of totems and icons and fabrics from other countries, mostly the philippines where your dad saw ghosts in the forest and caught octopus in the ocean where he learned how to break a coconut and eat the meat fresh i think something happened to my head college hit and we both changed and all of a sudden i was the quiet one and you were the pianist-painter with a mane of shiny black hair and you had no clue, really no clue whatsoever, how beautiful you were. i went to say goodbye to you when you were packing up the truck to move to brooklyn, and i had already gone to california and come back, so what right did i have to be so almost-- hurt? we said goodbye, several hugs squeezed so tight, both teary (you’ve always been a crier) and once i’d run out of anything to say besides please don’t go, i retreated to my little white nissan parked across the street and put my face in my hands and sobbed. years later you confessed you saw that. with most people i’d be embarrassed. in really bad really dark spots when too much time has passed since we’ve spoken i used to become afraid that you were leaving, i had done something maybe just depressed you to your limit, and i was petrified and wanted to reach out but somehow couldn’t-- i know how we talk to each other about other people i’m pretty sure with me “it’s different” but i would doubt that sometimes i would’ve dumped my boyfriend to make sure just in case but i feel calmer now and somewhat ashamed i needed proof of your love. and now, some time (maybe more time than i’d like) will pass until i have a tickle in my brain saying i need to call you and eventually i look at my phone you are already calling me i am different with you, i cackle like a happy witch you wake up a part of myself i thought was dead you tell me something brutal and tragic and i guffaw, not at you, not because i lack empathy--on the contrary it is my disbelief at this world that punches the breath out of me and it sounds like laughter i tell you i’m sorry, it’s not funny it’s just-- you say i know, i know. what else can you do? and i can hear your smirk but we both know it isn’t funny at all not at all 211111 ... raze i like how this blathe started out as me saying a few bite-sized things that didn't really amount to much, and then you came along and bent it into something beautiful and true about the kind of friendship that will live as long as you do, and probably longer than that. blather is magic. your words are too. 211119 ... kerry thanks so much, raze. you're right, blather is magic! i love it when people piggyback on blathes. or seeing blathes twist and transform as people add to them. 211121 ... kerry i called you asking for your help. you said you were feeling blue. i said tell me, tell me. you did. you asked what do i need, and i said it. afterwards i felt weightless, held. when we were kids i didn’t know about your anger, your ambivalence, i didn’t know how insecure you were for being so skinny and i didn’t know how ashamed your mother was of her limp or that she grew up in queens, about the darkness of her father’s skin, that “passing” is so important to her. i had no idea that if you or your sister tried to talk about race, she left the room. i didn’t know because i never asked. i guess i thought you’d tell me, because i told you everything. i’m not sure if it was a matter of me being unobservant or of you changing like we all change. i’ve changed so much over the past 28 years. i want to say it’s the latter, because i’ve still never been so close to anyone. not even danny. i’ve wondered if i offer you as much as i ask, but i know you–when you’ve had enough, it’s over, probably for good. on the phone i said just talk, talk about anything, i don’t care. you did, and you said you loved me. 211231 what's it to you? who go blather from