Navigation

Archive | Country Matters

They Shoot Jewish Witches, Don’t They?

October 28, 2017 in Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Essays

Last night I had dinner at a Truro restaurant, and encountered the particular strain of New England xenophobia that inspired me to leave the region decades before.

It annoys me that I feel compelled to report on what occurred. Soon I must jump back into my ADHD life in New York, and expending precious writing time on this topic feels like a microcosm of how our predator-in-chief siphons our energy by making it all about his ugly heart rather than the huge issues he should be managing. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? The hatred lurking everywhere in American life is leaping to the surface because it’s been endorsed at the top.

So here’s what happened. I had had an almost perfect day before that dinner. By 1 pm, I had written 3,000 words of a book section that had been giving me trouble. Then I’d headed over to the Provincelands, an extraordinary stretch of the Cape Cod National Seashore comprised of dunes and forests and ancient, still-inhabited shacks. I walked for miles in this extrarrestrial territory—all sand mountains, barreling blue sky, trees stubbornly growing sideways. I was dressed how I most like to dress—a loose skirt and trenchcoat, barefoot and pigtailed—and could not stop smiling. It was the first bright day all week, and I was fucking happy. Continue Reading →

Scene from a Hermitage

October 19, 2017 in Cat Lady Matters, Country Matters, Spirit Matters

There was a time when all my blog posts were about quietly shuffling in my kitchen, stirring something on the stove while permakitten Grace wove in between my legs and the city blinked right outside my window. Then my life exploded along with the country, and an urgency replaced any peace I harbored. Truro has restored my calm. I had a mediocre writing day and was late to both sunrise and sunset. But I caught the last vestiges of both, and the glory of autumnal Cape Cod held me like a beloved child. Tonight I am cooking with ingredients gathered from farmstands and my finely feathered city: lamb and lentil stew with kale, cilantro, cumin, and hot-hot sauce swiped from Modern Pilgrim’s prodigious collection. I’m sipping red wine while Stevie croons so sweet and the stars are blinking brighter than NYC. I know where I am if not where I’m going, and will sleep and eat and drink so well. For now, this is enough.

Sam Beckett Says

October 9, 2017 in Book Matters, Country Matters, Spirit Matters, Weather Matters

Last week I had the book-writing equivalent of a healing crisis, an occupational hazard when you’re writing about your childhood, maybe. Essentially I wrote my way into some unhappy revelations, then got so sick and unmoored that I dipped back into a romance that was a dangerous dissociation the first time around. It was a total “what’s it all about, Alfie” moment, no doubt triggered in part by the fact that I was actually getting somewhere. The only way I could coax myself into working again was to write some present-set essays, two of which I’ve shared here. But I must honor this memoir that’s been roiling in me for years, especially as I’ve removed myself from the flow of my regular life to so so. Far from here old white men are choking us on what’s left of their power, and the country is on holiday for what rightly would be a genocide remembrance day. Right around me, soft rain is falling, and the woods are hushed by the downpour. Grace, who never approves of my slacking off, is pacing like a schoolmarm who doesn’t know what else can be done with her unruly subject. I flash again on that Beckett phrase, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on,” and write to you.

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