Archive | Age Matters

The Trauma of Healing Trauma

There’s a Patton Oswalt tweet making the rounds: This whole country is about to be Tom Hanks in the last scene of Captain Phillips.

For those who didn’t see it, Hanks plays a ship captain who ably protects his crew and passengers from Somalian pirates only to fall apart when they are finally safe. The movie is meh–even problematic in part–but Hanks’ breakdown is so thoroughly affecting that it validates the film’s overall existence. More than that, it haunts you. It isn’t just Hank’s extraordinary acting. It is the emotional accuracy. Continue Reading →

Fifty Is the New Fifty

space crone already, who am I kidding?

I turn 50 next Tuesday and though normally I’m proud of my age, I’m dreading this birthday. I keep having humiliating dreams that I’m a backup dancer for Beyoncé until she finds out my age. Or that I am an assistant for Tracee Ellis Ross until she learns we’re contemporaries. Or that–I shit you not–my adult sons Eric and Donald Jr Trump give me a back-breaking purse of chain mail and human skin to celebrate the occasion. Bone-chilling stuff.

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Nimby Noel

This is a grinchy post about my neighbors. In this post, I am the grinch, for my across-the-hall neighbors are cheerful, well-intentioned 20somethings who are wildly in love, living their best life, and never anything but polite and helpful. They have carried out my garbage and carried up groceries and even taken my bulky air conditioners out of the window while my back has been in arrears. I am grateful to them, and have made sure they know. Unfortunately, they are also the loudest freaking neighbors I have ever had. Not to speak in terms of demographics, but he was born in Italy and she was born in Israel and those are two of the loudest human populations ever ever ever.*

These two talk loudly, move loudly, listen to music and television loudly, and have sex loudly (and authentically, thank god; there’s little worse than audibly faked pleasure). Would you believe they even eat loudly? Yes, you read that right. Through the wall we share I actually have heard them chew and swallow. Even permakitten Grace was startled, then appalled. And o my: I cannot tell you many times I have been jarred awake by peals of delighted laughter or the sounds of elephants bowling, aka them walking.

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