even steven

they don't really know what they
are doing


forgot all the things you said
to help them understand

the sun will shine again
your honey will love you
through anything

and when you put on your uniform
and go to work

all will even out
like cream stirred into
coffee

#katyamills

slush piles

a storm of emotion

anticipation of victory

all the colors of all the territories

condensed into one

powerful narrative

delivered to all the major publishing 

houses only to face resolute

defeat

#katyamills

tailor. precinct 11

far and wide 

the old man was called upon

his number had come up!

he arrived carrying the suit he wore 

on his wedding day 1975

knocked on the thick oak door 

the office of aptitude 4 

deconstructing and reauthoring identities 

tailored to your desired 

specifications

#katyamills

exist.ential

I've been writing this piece called Trouble '99 since late spring of last year. I read it in its entirety a couple weeks ago and found it several shades darker than i expected. Which corresponds to one of my three beta readers' critique. Writing is not unlike painting. You add layers until you find an image that best represents what you wish to portray. Yet with fiction you wanna let it be its own honest creation, which is often outside what you intended. Mixing conscious and unconscious elements. Let it be what it is. My characters may have fallen into a hopeless situation as they walk through the pages, but there is always hope. I think my work is often threatened by an existential mood. I have wrestled in my heart with this since I was a child, one day in the backyard when the limit on life first struck me. So words naturally come out of me that reflect that disappointment. Implicit in my sadness, is how much i love life and all its intricacies. How badly I wish to live on!

ATE234

wednesday again

I took off my glasses so I could see you clearly. Out from under our shared history. Outside of cultural narratives and bias. Free from all rumor and gossip and media glaze...i loved what I saw.

effacing the place

Such a prodigious commentary rolled out of a disconnected narrative. All the ghosts of old mama Bell had to glom together as operators, pulling and pushing their wires into that old electronic wall. All the calls incoming got patched through, and where hello meets goodbye, a patch could efface the English language, in any such redirection, the power of the women at the wall, operators, any which way. And blue came across the neurons and fired them off like static and clung to the statement preceding. Contradictions were contradicted and life would go on this way through the world wars, and endless series of splicing and bringing people together through a wire. Afflicted with afflictions, some operators were, and found peace only after the in betweens of their shifts and smoke long breaks twirled away. Nobody always knew nothing could turn into something when a push met a pull and were patched away from blue to gray. There were often a few kids meanwhile caught like in spiderwebs, tied up in an apron by a hem.

'operators at the hem' by K

GRAND THEFT LIFE 1.14.2

restructuring your work

A couple of days ago, I found a way back into my book, maybe the new moon on the 4th of June gave me an opening. I took it. I'm still not out of the woods, but I have a lead. I never give up hope; with writing, you can always find a way. The book is written in first person, with tense varying from past to present. I have been dreaming about switching up narrators, alternating chapter to chapter, yet I really love coming from the voice and perspective of my female lead, my heroine, and a change would be risky. This is serial fiction, after all, and one should expect consistency across books. Still, a slight departure from the first two books - in voice or person - could be pulled off, I thought, so long as the plot and characters held together. I've been dreaming about this for months (and not on purpose), and I found a compromise. I started interspersing the main narrative - chapters rounding out at 2,000 words each - with slices of 3rd person narrative about 500 words each. The body is therefore still under the auspice of Ame, for protection of what I have established (in the first two books), and guidance. Yet I am letting in light of special circumstances, subchapters pertaining to Kell, describing her experience simultaneous to and interwoven with the plot. I was thrilled to have envisioned this, and I believe it's rather unusual for an author to switch back and forth from first and third person. But it seems to be working so far and it's an intuitive hit. Let's see now if i can pull it off!

Maze 2:5:1 -- storytelling

Book Two

Chapter 5

Part 1

In the last episode 2:4:3 nothing much happens, Ame talks a bit more about the boarding house and the people who live there, and preferring crazy eights to sex. 

Maze 2:4:3 -- storytelling

Book Two

Chapter 4

Part 3

In the last episode 2:4:2 Ame and Maze head up to the room and run into a 'Malafide'. One of bad faith. Black is introduced. More about the Delux kind. And a Fischer Price security detail. And a silver snake, wrapped around a finger.

not a color exactly. a hue

I found myself in a color, in a hue. We were driving away from it all. I gave him the keys to my car. He knew a place far down the river where we could get close to the water and sit in the shade. The river looked blue from above, and green when you came close. But it was neither of those. I had been in a room with friends, earlier, on a sunday morning. I drank decaf coffee and listened and began to smile. Not everyone had a story to share. I find great comfort in a spacious meeting hall, where you can say what you need to say and nobody will talk over you. Where you can say nothing and still be seen. Faraway, sitting on a riverbank, was the same. I lost myself in a color, in a hue. I wouldn't call it green. I wouldn't call it blue.

silently carried by water. (a creative nonfiction)

I suck up air and float down the river on my back. I cannot hear anything cause the water is over my ears and I like it, I cannot see anything with the sun in my eyes and fish gather beneath me for shade. A feather floats by, and another. A long time ago she was my age, my mother, now I am hers and I have no children at all, almost six feet tall. The snowy egret is fishing on the far shore and soon it will be fall and the salmon will swim the other way, the friends will stop on their way to Lake Tahoe. From Lake Tahoe. We will have coffee cause that's what you do without kids, drink coffee and talk about something; life may not pull you along so you push it. Push it into passages push it into song. Give it to anyone else to find meaning... to make meaning... and then? That's your children, there. You give them to the world or they go out alone, people see you in them, they see you; they reflect you and you, you are proud of them; very sad if they fail, god forbid if they die. I suck up air so I can float down the river on my back with the feathers. We are soft, we are moving, absorbing all that we can, trying to stay on the surface, yet always we fall deep... to find meaning... to make meaning. Push into song and pulled into words into narrative. Drinking coffee cause that's what you do, not six feet tall, no children, none at all nearing fall. Snowy egrets and passage of time. Fish in the shade, sun in the eyes... silently carried by water.

numbered. in the modern age of numb

I am sure my days are numbered in fact I number them myself. I already killed off something in me today, for my left index fingernail is too long but even if it weren't the scar tissue from the recent wound along its side, too tight, pulling the tip of the nail down to the keys so when I type this nail hits the key before the finger the print can strike. I have a situation causing me pain and the pain won't go away.  I am half the age of the modern lifespan and there is someone shouting out there in the early morning night. To all these things am I unaccustomed and therefore wanting to wish away.  Neither wanting nor wishing is made to be... so I light the fuse and watch the perfectionism blow, and shield my screen from all the gore. I know it's Sunday morning but now I have found some peace, after the killing, and even the delta breeze has fallen to its knees and settled down, dear god, thank you for any small favor in this time of ticking technological convenience, in our modern age of numb. I am sure my days are numbered. In fact I still number them myself. And no new system, platform, application, automation, no hard or software, is gonna take that away.  - KatYa

weighing the heart against it all

My heart I had to weigh and it came out so many oz. I weighed the same amount of plant matter and tossed the matter into the same amount of water brought to boil. I had to do something about us and what else could I do? on a whim, but so are some of the most brilliant works of art recorded in one session, and so I went on while listening to jazz I went on and on, and in my kitchen tossed the plant matter I had procured from the yard and that means earth, into the pot of boiling water, and I saw and froze in my mind the sight of the vapors coming off the water tickling the undersides of the very seche very very very dry crop borne of the drought, and the expansion began as the water gave life to the earth, and the earth gave substance to the water.

And there were those who got out of bed quickly, those who hit snooze, hundreds of thousands who rolled off their partners, hundreds of thousands who did not, who flew solo, and some would see the sun and many would not, and every minute was a new dawn depending on where you were in location to the sun.

And there was my heart beating contra to the jazz keeping time to many miles away... you.

where sound was frozen

There were cold nights in Boston, passing by the Tower Records and the Berklee School of music, over the Turnpike bundled up against the snow and harbor breeze. The snow would turn to ice and become crunchy underfoot, and dirty. Street vendors pushing carts with pretzels and hot dogs and coffee sometimes. I was always on the outside, finding myself excluded from notice, and I was always on the inside, immersed in my art, placing my feelings on paper, curious about the life. Outside of the storefront cast light, in the parks and alleys and coves of huddled homelessness, out by the swan boats the snow was blue and the fountainheads underwater under ice, where even sound was frozen. I knew then and there, in the stillness, I was chosen.

a voice from the locked away place never to be accessed again. collected like ink into my pen

 i am now like a universe, elliptical and spinning, knocking over furniture, ending and beginning, smoking and sinning... i died to become only more who i am, i really died so i could be somebody, like a reduction of a simmer off a pan, buried with a spade, they threw flowers down upon me, above me where i layed, they left flowers on my stone, teardrops by my grave... and i still am, if only they knew i am alive now like a universe, elliptical and spinning, knocking over tombstones, ending and beginning, smoking and sinning... here comes the dawn, all i ever was to you is gone, and it's sad in different ways, we are going through the phases manifold, younger now i'm old and doing what i'm told and it's tiresome getting weary i will have to move along, sing another song, try to hit the high note and hold it very long... my sadness is unlike yours but it's sorrow just the same, and i love who i am and that will never change, i love the hell outta you, out of the cocoon so we can look up to the moon and see things clearly once again, when we were best friends... dear god the memory, if i linger it will kill me, kill me where i stand, on a high rise, rising, in Shanghai or Hong Kong or Dubai or Chicago or Mumbai or LA or NYC or Vancouver or Helsinki or Madrid or Firenze or Berlin or Amsterdam or London or Hamburg or Paris or Brussels or Vienna or Rome or Athens or Moscow or Prague or Warsaw or Dublin or Saigon or Toronto or Monte Carlo or Santiago or Copenhagen or Port au Prince.

may we never suffer the way we suffered then

all the experience has collected like ink into my pen, i can work it out on the pages, you and me, my friend, while the pot of oats now boils over, cascading down the sides, puts the fire out, and now in darkness hides. then we give it to someone who needs it. i hope you feel the same. fumbling with the keys to unlock the deepest mystery... never again. abstract and untouchable. that's okay. you are a little more like me. in fact i know you are, because of what we went through you are always with me, i am more like you, thank you for the lonely nights, gone! searching for something and finding something else. and loving that, too. now we know what we needed was not what we thought, not what we wanted! we may not have a key. let's leave it there, locked away forever. i think so. i think so... i am now like a universe, elliptical and spinning, knocking over furniture, ending and beginning, smoking and sinning. i think so.

the living dream phase

I really hope to see you randomly in the streets, to meet you there in the sun or the shade, the rain or the glade, by the fence or the tree, the lamppost or newsstand, you and me once again have a chance at a life, a stopping of time. I am only fortunate because I believe myself fortunate, and it would be a great misfortune if I did not. I only love you by showing my love to you, but who says you cannot show your love in a thought or a prayer? Life gets more confusing and then I stop thinking, let something else take over, less abstract and more concrete (perhaps right under our feet), there need be no confusion so long as if or when the moment arrives on the tangent of our lives on the streets of this city, we see one another in that random beautiful way and connect in that semi comfortable way of matching up against the small changes in our separate and recent fortunes, and what I can do at that time, if that time were to arrive, is turn my attention and presence to you completely, perhaps with a smile - definitive in the eyes - and listen when you speak and not interrupt and not let the magic dissipate by any technological device in my possession (calling to us like they will), but rather undivide my attention toward you and if the chance arises for a handshake or a hug, choose the latter, for who on this dying earth does not wish for the physical rapport? - some great reassurance in a small gesture - and though we may go on our ways off the tangent back on queue, and though I may depart without any certainty I will see you, I can thank you for your time in one of many different ways, and show clearly how I care, burning through the haze... the living dream phase.

Third of August

There's smoke particulate in the air from all the fires out here in California, 47,000 acres are burning just north of here, up in Lake County, and things get hazy when the fire is burning inside me. I pray and am thankful when it all clears, and the sky never seemed so blue, the conscience so clear even birds will fly through.

trolley by K

All those nice things anyone ever did for me also shaped my character, not just the things that I have done. Someone sees you struggling and stops what they are doing, to help. Someone's presence. To let you know you aren't alone. Someone's reassuring smile.

I may not be the best at anything. I might not even compete, by choice, hell. But I am more than likely to be there for you when you are down and alone. And when you get your strength back, I will let you go. What a blessing you were for me. Without you, my fire might have burnt me to the ground.

confessions after a blue moon

Cali state fair by Katya

I ran the fields and I was considered dangerous for a time, twenty-nine years ago, and what a great feeling to be a wild one, the one who ran right past you and left you standing cold. I confess I am not very feminine in the traditional sense. How difficult a word to employ anymore. Let me unemploy it then, for every girl and boy.


I am still in heart a wild one, the one who loves the heart of the storm and cherishes the sound of sirens, yes, the one who  hastens to my death sometimes, Thanatos, keep my blood refreshed! Now I am in love with the life, again, like I was back then, when only the good died young and I wanted so bad to be good. Now I am having the adverse reaction to TV. Now I am restless in the sleep. Now I am pursuing the dream. Now I am indifferent. Now I am free.