I inhaled the HBO Max/Channel 4 AIDS dramatic mini-series It’s a Sin in one day and am still thinking about it.
As someone who was in ACT UP and moved to the West Village in the early 90s, AIDS is never off my radar. I’ll never forget my beautiful young friends who seemed like ghosts even before they died. I’ll never forget equating sex with death even before I lost my virginity.
The London-set series has charisma to spare–hip-strutting, head-strong boys; head-spinning montages; spot-on 80s and 90s set and costume design; catchphrases! But it spares no soundtrack cliches nor no 90s-era micro-aggression: witness its centralization of white characters; the lack of sex life for the sole female protagonist, who seems to exist solely to caretake men.
I resist the critique that It’s a Sin fast-forwards too quickly, though. While I was still in my teens, the transition from carefree club life and wanton fucking to hospitals, funerals, and activism took place in the blink of an eye. Gender/sexual harassment/trauma was so widespread it was background noise–something you white-knuckled through if you wanted an apartment, job, not to get beat to a pulp. Believe me. As someone who has often called out aberrant behavior—who confronted the landlord who stuck his tongue down my throat, who refused to work for the newspaper editor who licked his lips while asking if I had a boyfriend–my career and livelihood suffered mightily.
Gen X is too hard on Z/millennials, but we resent younger people’s assumption that we’re oblivious to trauma. My generation of queers just was swamped with too much macro-aggression–mass extinction and existential horror–to tackle micro. Oh how this show captures that giddy ghastly time.
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute. It’s the title of one of the most fabulous short story collections of all time. (All hail activist and author Grace Paley.). It’s also the perfect tagline for the Uranus-Saturn Square, a powerful event that only occurs every 22 years and is dominating 2021.
Astrological “squares” create tension between two planets, and this one entails karmic taskmaster Saturn in freedom-loving Aquarius and rebel Uranus in solid-citizen Taurus. Translation? Tensions galore between innovation and tradition—between old and new power systems. So if 2020 revealed our personal and public shadows, this square destroys the institutions that uphold them. Continue Reading →
It’s a sleety Sunday in Month 11,202,112,394,493 in the Pandemic, and I am feeling wildly grateful. I wanted to share this because I’ve been plenty open about my struggles over the last few months. So I’ll start with this image of me, noteworthy not only for the big cheesy grin but because I am—wait for it—sitting. You may ask: What’s the big deal about sitting? Indeed, it’s a valid question since all anyone has done for a year is sit. But in fact as readers of this blog may know, my lower back went out so badly last November that I lost my ability to sit. I could write a whole book on the back now, especially about the psychic information locked in its psoas muscle, which I tore and which has supported us long before we relied upon our brains to protect us.
But today I’d just like to thank you.
I am grateful for your patience while I have been unable to do readings. I am grateful for the massive support that you showed me while my own back could not. I am grateful for your herbal tinctures and Chinese medicine and amazing teas and coffees and lipsticks (which, yes, I consider essential) and Tilda Swinton tee shirts (also essential) and Seamless meals and referrals and chore porn and sympathetic ears and advice and referrals and books and gelt and good wishes and vibes. I am grateful for the pod-friends who have cleaned my house and fed Grace and done my laundry and brought me groceries and even changed Gracie’s litter and my sheets.
Your care has healed more than my back.
I am not 100 percent yet but well enough to re-open my schedule and so excited to tune in again on your behalf. Expect some changes as I’ve learned a lot about how better to support your intuition and healing as I’ve expanded my own. More than that, expect a new level of solidarity. It’s finally a new year and I’m so grateful to be able to walk into its light with you.
I inhaled the HBO Max/Channel 4 AIDS dramatic mini-series It’s a Sin in one day and am still thinking about it.
–my career and livelihood suffered mightily.
It’s a sleety Sunday in Month 11,202,112,394,493 in the Pandemic, and I am feeling wildly grateful. I wanted to share this because I’ve been plenty open about my struggles over the last few months. So I’ll start with this image of me, noteworthy not only for the big cheesy grin but because I am—wait for it—sitting. You may ask: What’s the big deal about sitting? Indeed, it’s a valid question since all anyone has done for a year is sit. But in fact as readers of this blog may know, my lower back went out so badly last November that I lost my ability to sit. I could write a whole book on the back now, especially about the psychic information locked in its psoas muscle, which I tore and which has supported us long before we relied upon our brains to protect us.