Elegua at My Service
A few weeks ago, the Santería spirit Elegua revealed himself to me by sending an image of himself while whispering “el el el” in my ear. At the time, I was heading downstate on the windy Taconic, and almost drove off the road; as you can see here, he’s quite the hot tomato. Since then, I’ve invited the gatekeeper spirit cautiously into my home, and he’s protected me like an unruly big brother, heading off every toxic male at the pass and setting my altar on fire with a trickster flourish. I like him, I hope he likes me, and I am certainly open to any presence changing energy frequencies, especially when it comes to my intensely charged relationship to men and the cockocracy overall. About time, I say.
Social Change and Sci-Fi: 5 Authors to Heed
Science fiction has always best served those not served by their current reality. Utopias proscribe alternatives to a reality increasingly hostile to many; dystopias highlight destructive elements while we still can change them; and all speculative tales offer metaphors that double as handy tools in the fight for social change. Alas, not all sci-fi advocates for social justice; some only focuses on wish fulfillment, whether it’s consequence-free sex with mega-hotties or a mastery of the fourth dimension (time). But by marshaling imagination and innovation, the best sci-fi authors grant us a better understanding of ourselves, our world, and all the selves and worlds we can be. Is it any wonder that the genre holds the greatest appeal to those of us who in one way or another are labeled “other” or “in-valid” (with a nod to the 1997 film “Gattaca)? With a bona-fide dystopia now serving as reality, it’s time to explore visions of how else we can live. Here’s a primer of five authors that make a great start. Continue Reading →
Green Men and Women
I want to resist wherever resistance is possible, to stay alert to the idiocracy of greed and hatred building in our nation. But I don’t want to let it debilitate me, nor blind me to the beauty that flourishes all around us. On a day like today in NYC, when a cold rain poured down upon our heads and most of Manhattan was held hostage by our new oligarch, it was fine art that I found most healing. This painting by Édouard Vuillard—really, his whole body of work—fills my heart whenever I gaze at it. Olive and pine, lapis and beryl, sea moss and sky marine: these are life colors, Mother Earth colors. Good colors. Some people consider the Jewish Frenchman a mere society painter, but I see him as subverting gentile gentility by casting their machinations in colors they never could’ve imagined, let alone seen. It’s a thin line between dissociation and self-flagellation, and somedays that line is every shade of green.