All my Secrets
Saturday, September 14, 2024
I AM A COLLEGE GRADUATE!
[4/24/24]
I am in class it's my second to last class session ever of my life. That's so dope for me personally. Fiona and I had the genius idea of getting dr*nk all day. We took shots in the swim locker room and then me and Jane had our best workout ever. They were playing the most lit music and I was cross faded doing squats and planks and such thinking to myself 'THIS is portland's hottest nightclub right now'
We also have a running list going of what activities we should do during the first week of summer after we graduate (in literally one week and 3 days wtf??) and here are some of the highlights from that list: go to the enchanted forest on shrooms, kate teaches sophia and fiona how to swim, go to coffin club (fiona's goth debut), kate shaves legs, go on a hike to a waterfall, make popsicles out of buzzballz, and practice/master the art of whistling (namely the infamous 'wolf whistle').
I am beyond excited.
I always get really really pumped and delusional about summer, and I have since I was like 10 years old and I don't think I'll ever stop. I love getting my hopes up and then let down. It's the season of my birthday, I make pintrest boards of what energy I want to experience and it's all so romanticized and grounded in nothing but delusion. Expectations do nothing but get me excited and latched onto an ideal that is impossible to obtain.
Speaking of cyclical ups and downs, I recently coined a term for a lifestyle pattern/choice of mine. I present to you... drum roll... the kate milne dash and crash. Basically I push myself to insane limits and do super long packed days until I literally cannot take it any more and then I crash, harrrrd. As I'm writing this now (5/6/24), I just graduated. It happened guys!! A ton of my family members (15+) came to portland to see me graduate and we had a little family reunion of sorts. It was so fun, and so overwhelming, a whirlwind weekend that left me feeling like a shell of a person all day yesterday. We ate tamale boy and cubo de cuba, drove around in the rain and had a fun time at my house. It was so nice because Oli stayed with me in my room while the rest of my fam stayed at the blue bird inn, a boarding house type place that is super quaint. So I got extra time with her which was so special. I told her I hope we get to live in the same place again, I hate only seeing her a couple times a year. I got my electronic diploma sent to my email, and my name looks so cool in the fancy cursive used on things like that.
My birthday is in July, and it's part of why I get such high hopes for summers. This year I'm planning on doing a jersey shore themed party, I want to party like it's 2008 and have a horrible fake tan to match. Last year me and eric combined our celebrations, and our ages, and had a conjoined 43rd birthday party. This year we would be turning 45 how sweet :,)
I'm in a coffee shop and listening to the baristas chat about one of their high school girlfriends who had a horse named coco. Maybe it was cocoa. Makes me want to watch strawberry shortcake again, because my dad used to tell me and oli a story about a horse race on the beach where strawberry races against her friends, and one of the horses names was cocoa, as decided by my dad. I really want to have access to horses this summer. I think I'll try to find a place to volunteer/work at as a barnhand, and see if I can sneak some riding time out of it. That worked really well for me when I volunteered once a week at the hippotherapy place in gresham a couple years ago, I just gotta find someplace to do it at. I searched a while ago and found a stable on Sauvie island that looked super dope, maybe I'll call them.
Pony babie circa 2021 |
This is the barn kitty I think his name was baxter.. barns always have cats it's another perk |
Mt. Shasta (i think) |
Getting ready in the parking lot.. |
Gorgeous grin |
Celebratory knee slide in my cleared out room (I was packing right up until when people started arriving) |
Supportive high five for moving all my shit out |
Songs about Seventeen
An ode to songs called "seventeen" and to my best friend Ella who showed me that every song about being 17 is the best song ever.
seventeen by sharon van etten
I'm in the passenger seat and it's a Friday night. We have nothing better to do so me and my friends are going for a drive, one of thousands of such drives we’d take over the course of our restless high school years. We wind up the hills on dark backroads, windows down, our off-key voices leaving a trace of us among the quiet trees lining the asphalt, fleeting and headstrong, at once loud and self-concious.
I get goosebumps when Sharon Van Etten sings "I used to be seventeen. Now you're just like me... I see you so uncomfortably alone. I wish I could show you how much you've grown." Her voice floods the car with emotion and I tear up. Her words tease and comfort me like an older sister’s, and I think about what it's like to be seventeen, feeling like you're at the bottom of a mountain looking up, the oldest and wisest you've ever been but understanding that when you look back it will all feel so far away, so juvenile.
seventeen by peach pit
"Back at Patrick park/We stood in the dark. In my beer-stained mind, I said/'Please won't you be mine?'"
It's the eve of my seventeenth birthday and I'm laying on my back in a square patch of grass. Paul is laying next to me and we’re probably talking about something stupid. Paul was my summer fling two summers in a row, back when I thought I was bi and needed to prove to myself that yes, I could like a guy, and yes, he could like me back. He was loaded, his family exclusively drove white Porsches, and he was a weird dude but very handsome. We met in physics class, junior year, and awkwardly made out from time to time.
Under the yellow orange glow from the street lights, midnight creeps closer, and I get more and more giddy about aging up from sweet sixteen to a flirty, mysterious seventeen. It seems like such a big deal, and driving Paul back to his place as the clock struck midnight (past my curfew) I felt very adult. He runs inside and comes back out with a gift for me, Lorde's Pure Heroine on vinyl. I just about cry. My all time favorite album; Lorde infused those songs with wisdom and depth of emotion little girls attain at fourteen and men might eventually achieve if they do acid enough times. We kiss and I drive home, a grinning seventeen year old with a new prized possession.
seventeen by ladytron
I'm with my best friends and we’re walking to a party we aren't really invited to. I'm almost shaking with anxiety about socializing where I’m not welcome, nowhere near grown into myself, wearing clothes I hate because I can't bear to not fit in, even though I know the yoga pants and crop top don't look right on my over six foot frame. Walking the mile to the party along a busy road at rush hour, I can feel the eyes of every passing car driver on our backs like mosquito bites. Then they start honking. It's a fast road, each honker whizzing by and anonymous, and we four are stoic sitting ducks, refusing to walk faster or act like it bothers us.
"They only want you when you're seventeen, when you're twenty one, you're no fun." And it's true, most of the times I've been cat called were when I was a teenager; it's funny how now that I could legally be into that kind of thing, the honks have halted. Something about teenhood, looking vulnerable, and walking places lends itself to overconfident drivers and shouted quips through an open window.
We didn't make it into the party—they had a fucking guest list and a bouncer—and a hidden part of me was so relieved that we didn't have to go in, that we could just watch tv and lick our rejection inflicted wounds. Walking back home we took side streets, strolling in peace, seventeen and laughing with years ahead of us to throw our own parties.
Sunday, June 16, 2024
May to June
This is the second year in a row where May to June has been the most jarring, flip flop, 180 switch ever. Last year I was coming back from Australia, had no car, no job, no girlfriend. Then by June, all of those were opposite. This May, I graduated from LC, moved out of my old place, started a job, visited home, and felt generally very uprooted and frazzled. Now it's mid June, and I've started a second job, moved into my new apartment with Teeks and Laszlo, got a hair cut and my septum redone (and high nostril studs removed), and feel better, I think.
It's exciting to explore a new part of town, and settle into new routines. I got something off my chest that had been stressing me out for months, and deleted instagram again. I went for a run one day after work at the county building and wrote some unhinged single lines of discordant poetry in my notes app. It was so nice outside, and I sat and watched people play softball and kick ball in the park. I got really in my feelings, which was needed. I need to find new modes of catharsis, now that I'm an adult in the world (scream).
Here are some things I've seen recently:
👾 The largest protected freshwater wetland within an American city... it was the Smith and Bybee wetlands, which I stumbled upon when I took a wrong turn off the highway coming home from my piercing appointment in Vancouver. I got my board out and skated for a while, I want to come back with a canoe or something like that.
me and my trick board (i have 3 now >.< determined to get good this summer) |
👾 A little bunny lost on a biking overpass over the highway... I was riding a nike bike home from Roadside (where I had a furious public journaling sesh and a good sob while texting with ella and then a recovery drink with Qwynci) when I crossed over the I5 on a bridge for walking and biking when I looked down and saw what I thought was a rat running alongside next to me. I almost swerved and fell out of fright but then I realized it was a small brown cottontail, who was lost and looking over the edge trying to find it's way home to the burrow (probably? or the bunny clerb) and I screeched to a halt and watched worridly as it eventually found it's way back to solid land. Thank god. I don't think my psyche could've survived watching a young bun accidentally jump off an overpass omfg.
👾 A little girl with a bright pink cast on her leg... she looked like the same age as I was when I broke my left leg (first grade) and got a bright pink cast and a wheelchair. That's how I learned my lefts and rights, I just look down and remember which one of my legs had a cast on it. Real shit.
👾 A gorgeous classic car and a Tesla truck in the same day... I don't know what kind of old car it was but it was red and white and a convertible and sexyyyy. Cars used to look so nice and sturdy. I saw a tesla truck later that day and I think it was the first one I had ever seen in Portland. It was sooo ugly but also looked sturdy I guess. How do people see out of those??
👾 Water reflecting off of rocks as I waited for the shrooms to kick in... they never did. I kept staring at different things around me while we were at High Rocks to swim and waiting for them to look weird or different. I stared at a huge American flag in the distance, and it looked like it was blowing and rippling in slow motion. But I think that was normal flag behavior. I stared at water reflecting off the rocks for so long, and it was beautiful. But the shrooms never hit.
gorgeous reflections were going on in this region here |
I hope the rest of June is good and fun and I keep feeling more settled and real. I have a bunch of events happening around town saved in my calendar, and I am excited to go and meet new people hopefully.
BRAT GREEN! and a poem.
It's everywhere. It's everything to me.
How did charli know this is my favorite color? Or
that I have to watch spring breakers annually? That troye and shygirl are my second and third faves, after her... wow
"We've been talking for months, but never in the same room. And now I wanna approach ya, but we've been keeping this a secret. And you're surrounded by friends and I'm just wondering what they know. I wish you'd talk talk wish you'd talk talk wish you'd just talk to me!!!!" - Talk talk
"Bad tattoos on leather tanned skin, Jesus Christ on a plastic sign, fall in love again and again, winding roads doing manual drive." - Everything is romantic
Greyhound to my Left and a Couple Kissing to my Right
by frznstrwbrries
Feeling stupid young and horny this summer
With coke in my new nose piercing and my
Office job and staring out the window.
What the fuck am I doing??
Please god could I just
Chill out &&& enjoy the moment?
Look at those
Dust bunnies in the dog park,
Adults playing kickball,
Strangers enjoying each other's company.
Hang up some fly traps,
See if that works.
I chose 6 of my figurines to worship
They represent things like
Happiness, greed, etc.
Give them names and backstories
Forcing spirituality and prayer cuz
I don’t think anyone should feel so empty,
Empty like sparking lighters and travel shampoo bottles.
That thing I need again
It’s right over my shoulder,
Isn't it?
Turn turn turn desperate and dizzy and disilusioned.
I keep moving so my own shadow won’t catch up to me.
I don’t know how to talk to my mom,
I want the air to feel like home again.
Perfect atmospheric pressure
Sky so Truman show blue,
Except it is today and I’m still not satisfied.
Bottomless greed that’s what I feel
More guilt more!!!! More more more!
Eat me out like Jell-O shots,
Oxygen tank thrown in the fire pit.
California poppies and a summer salad,
I won't feed myself,
It’s all about self sabotage, control, feeling guilty.
You told me you wanted to kiss me
I said I’ll think about it.
Tears fall like nothing it doesn’t take much
Someone told me...
I forgot.
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Spring Break: Writing Retreat
"Having a crush and vaping are the most fun things a human could do probably." - Claire Williams
Helllloooo readerzzz IT'S APRIL BITCH!
I'm back in Portland(ia) after my favorite holiday ever: spring break. Peak escapism from school, I get to go home and walk dogs (Luna, Spencer, Roxy, no particular order), sleep in my childhood bedroom and drink coffees. I wrote a lot of my thesis which was really good because I was having really bad writers block. Block is broken!!! I turned in my first draft this week it was a HEAEVY PACKET of me saying the same thing over and over. Now for the editing... alas let's talk about something fun.
Luna!!! my princess |
Dog walking fit yes yes |
Charli xcx night at the Holocene was so much fun and it was the night before I left for home. My plan was to just stay up after partying and then get to the airport around 4 am for my 6 am flight... in fact I fell asleep immediately when I got home at 3 and woke up at 5:10... against all odds I made it to the airport at like 5:46 and made it to my gate at 5:53 and as I sprinted up to the gate they were like 'Katharine?' and I was like *out of breath and sweating* 'yes' and then she was like 'I'm going to rebook you to the next flight' and I was like 'ugh' but then I just chilled in the airport and had computer time. Fun fact about me is that the airport is one of my favorite places to hang out I just sit and scroll and walk around and wash my hands it's my perfect eneclosure. Sometimes at SFO when I was a kid there'd be some pigeons that would find their way into the airport and I'd watch on in horror as they used the waterfountain like a bird bath and be looking around like 'is anyone else seeing this shit??'
For the purpose of this exact blog post I actually looked up a bunch of variations of 'pigeons in sfo early 2000s how' because I swear on my life that I saw multiple birds multiple times just chilling inside the airport terminal but there's like nothing about it online and now I think I was either have super insane hallucinations or false memories or I created my own mandela effect situation. If you've ever seen birds that weren't supposed to be there in the aiport PLEASE comment to let me know I'm not alone.
So back to the topic of spring break, Spring Breakers is one of my favorite movies of all time. It was in my top 3 for years, which included, no particular order: Spring Breakers, American Honey, and Stick It. I mean obviously I was onllllly interested in the plots of these movies (read: young lesbian perv). I like to rewatch those 3 movies at least once a year, to keep me on track. In touch with my roots and whatnot. Part of my continual effort to stay true to meself. Now, as an older lesbian perv, my top 3 is Bottoms, Love Lies Bleeding, and American Honey (she persisted!!)
I just watched a youtube interview with Sasha Lane about American Honey and while I already knew that she was cast because the director saw her out and about and thought 'I need her' (which would also be my thought process verbatim), apparently she was on a beach during spring break when she was spotted. mind bllown life is so beautiful and interconnected SCREAM
You can watch for yourself if you'd like >.< <-- here
When I go home for breaks I like to do my usual at home activities. I drove to the beach on a whim after dropping my mom off at the airport (same one that once had those maybe real maybe fake pigeon spottings), my favorite beach in Half Moon Bay. The one I can drive to with my eyes closed, no map, the one that's by my favorite sandwhich shop.
I got my sandwhich (turkey, sprouts, swiss, everything on it) and a bottle of coke drove it over and sat on a bench and squinted into the sun and the wind and listened to the waves and scowled at the ice plants (invasive species in Cali if you didn't know)
Blufftop coastal park |
Soooo pretty I can't |
I walked along the shore on the hard part of the sand and made up songs and sang them to myself and watched those little bird with legs as fast as lightning run up and down by the surf, I wanted to film an ASMR video on the beach but after filming one clip my phone died and I was FORCED against my WILL to live in the moment. UGHHHHH (just kidding it was fine and nice)
I left feeling windswept and rejuvenated and full of life and I drove back home along skyline, the winding road at the very top of the range of hills separating the bay from the sea. To my right I could see the pacific ocean in all her glory and to my left was the whole bay area spread out beneath me. I blasted Chappell Roan's album 'The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess' over and over and it was amazing.
That album is so important to me right now, it's upbeat and so gay and is my theme music at this time. She is my Olivia Rodrigo, don't know how else to describe it.
Anyways, I hope you are having such a good spring, I hope you're awakening in whatever way makes sense, and getting soo so excited for summer!!!1!
Kiss kiss
Kate
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Four Loko Summer
Here's the thing. I'm in the mood to reinvent myself. The season is changing, it was sunny for three days straight for the first time in like 5 months and the birds are chirping. My closet is finally back in working condition, after the Great Pipe Bursting back in January, I airbnb and couch hopped for like 5 weeks and then moved back into my room with an unfinished closet. All my clothes and dressers were stuffed into my room and it was ... garbage pit like, to say the least. So now my room is spacious and orderly again, and I realized my mysterious wet patch of carpet (don't ask) had been growing in my absence and so I jerry rigged a fan to my bookshelf and turned the dehumidifier on high and whaddayaknow, that cleared up in a couple days. Also, I am single now. It's a long story and sad but beautiful story and it's all peace and love and grief. Lol. I shant overshare cuz it makes me so upset and I'm leaning into letting myself feel sad... but it's awkward cuz letting yourself feel sad makes you FEEL SAD and I want to FEEL GOOD please god let me feel good. Please.
But I am determined to actually feel things (good things ideally but beggars can't be choosers) for the rest of this semester, my last semester of college!!!! and be present and meditate and go for walks outside and talk to myself and wash my face every day. Basicallllly I have to get to know myself again. The last couple months I would book my days so busy I didn't have time to do anything important (like make meals or take a piss) and then whenever I had an uncomfortable thought or feeling I would just... scroll it away (thanks a lot, Instagram). I don't have insta right now and I feel like my brain is waking up again. It's been good. I am proud of myself.
Looking forward, however, I am getting really excited to be a loose cannon this summer. I was looking through some stories I had saved from two summers ago and found these striking flicks.
In thee hot tub, we jumped the fence |
Story draft, after a couple of four loko beverages, looking visibly ill and mischievious |
While I think Four Loko is objectively nasty and the production and sale of it should be halted worldwide,
it is the spirit of the Four Loko that I hope to embody. Crazy, free, sweet, dangerous, etc.
I NEED THESE SO BAD!!!! |
And then I'll make a headpiece, probably gonna be a blue dragon to match my D&D character. Me and Edie want to make fur suits (or at least components of them for a partial suit) by hand and we're gonna document the process. It's gonna be awesome.
Tidbits
Here are some scraps, poems, pictures, the detritus at the bottom of my purse :p
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11/23/23 It's thanksgiving, it's a Thursday. I'm in the bedroom in my grandma's house that she's lived in since 1969 a...
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Here's the thing. I'm in the mood to reinvent myself. The season is changing, it was sunny for three days straight for the first tim...
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"Having a crush and vaping are the most fun things a human could do probably." - Claire Williams Helllloooo readerzzz IT'S AP...