Archive | City Matters

Loser Without His Mezuzah

I’m back in Brooklyn. The drive from Boston took all day because A. My car battery died at the start of the trip. B. While waiting for AAA I fell into a corgi puppy time-space continuum.  C. Some dumb gentile caused a 3-car pile-up and 17-mile traffic jam on the Merritt Parkway because he failed to properly secure a Christmas tree on his car roof. (I swear he tied it on with a hair ribbon.) I am now swilling all the wine and Thanksgiving leftovers, and clutching a certain permakitten for dear life. Sidebar: This Yuletide season I am not feeling Jew-ish. I am feeling JewEST. Newly emboldened white supremacists will do that to a semi-Semitic girl. Let there be a mezuzah on every American door post!

Road to Nowhere

I came back to Brooklyn Tuesday night and it’s been terrible. So terrible, in fact, that even as I type this I feel unsure I’ll ever write anything worth reading again. My life force is as drained as I’d feared it would be when I left the wilds of Truro for the metagrid that is New York City–so drained, in fact, that I can’t spare any energy to dress up this fact.

Most of the drive was fine. Once Grace accepted we really were going to leave the place that felt more like home than our home, she capitulated completely and walked into her carrier herself, barely mewed as we drove through Cape Cod foliage and more and more buildings blocked the horizon. Our mutual silence loomed. Continue Reading →

First and Forest

When I first came to Truro, it was only to be for a month. I had put the word out among my extended circle that I was looking to live in rural New England in September, and had rolled my eyes as I’d done so. Who’d be willing to lend me their empty house wily-nily for four weeks?

I had gall.

But as is often the case when change is necessary, that gall paid off. A friend from high school—someone I liked but had never known well—got in touch through Facebook, and next thing I knew Grace and I were hurtling to Truro in a car full of cat food, thin cotton dresses, and platform shoes.

That’s who I was on September 7. Tired eyes, disappointed smiles, trailing glamour like yesterday’s big idea. Grief-stricken about the hateful ignorance validated by the Trussian Oligarchy. Grief-stricken about who I no longer was. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy