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Vegans Need Not Apply

November 19, 2019 in Age Matters, Etiquette Matters, Past Matters, Queer Matters

My personal ad, posted October 4, 2019

My grandmother Alice was an exceptional woman. Though she received very little formal education she was an autodidact par excellence and well-versed on topics ranging from train engineering to transcendentalism. But what I loved most about her was her great equanimity. Though she lived most of her life in an especially intolerant corner of Massachusetts and died in the Reagan 1980s, she was brilliantly open-hearted when it came to matters of race, sexuality, religion, gender, class. Her only true bias was against Presbytarians, whom, for whatever reason, she found ridiculous. When I’d ask about that, she’d shrug. “Everyone has a bias,” she’d say, “and that’s mine.” Well, I’ll be super super honest. When it come to dating, my only true bias is against vegans. As far as I’m concerned, a romantic connection that works on many levels is so rare that it’s ridiculous to rule anyone out on the basis of gender or age (within the realm of decency) or race or class or physical type.* But I will never date a vegan again. Life is too short to maw impossible burgers when there’s sirloin to be had.
*I have my preferences, but that’s for a different post.

The Blue, Blue Bridge of Twelve Novembers

November 18, 2019 in Age Matters, Book Matters, City Matters, Essays, Etiquette Matters, Queer Matters, Spirit Matters

blue tears, white hat

I carry so much loneliness that sometimes I forget this is not how everyone moves through this thing called life.

I carry so much loneliness that sometimes I forget it’s there at all.

Then something comes along to amplify that loneliness–to sharpen it so acutely that it stops my breath and squeezes my heart–and I simply can’t bear it by myself.

That’s how this last month has felt. First because I was in so much immobilizing pain that it prevented me from doing many things myself.

And so I reached out to people I assumed were cross with me only to discover I’d read their momentary frustration as something far more damming. I reached out to people with whom I’d been out of touch for years only to discover a great sympatico between us still. I reached out to people I hadn’t known well until my need, primal and pure, deepened our connection. And I reached out to people whose hearts I steadily hold but had kept afar while I malingered on this bridge called my book.

Thus warmth flowed and it helped.

And then I opened a channel with a woman I’d admired online for months—a woman beautiful and butch and kind-hearted and quick-witted. And, lucky me, warmth flowed from her too and we found ourselves moving from friendship to something far more molten and engulfing.

And that helped a lot. Continue Reading →

This Side of the Snow, This Side of the Haze

November 15, 2019 in Age Matters, Book Matters, City Matters, Essays, Past Matters, Quoth the Raving, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

All stories end in death if you want to tell the truth.–David Simon

I’m afraid of endings, always have been. I am not alone in this fear, of course; many of us fear endings. Not just death but departures, demises, denouements–the invariable deflation of crossing a finish line. But my fear is acute, to the point that I privately view success as dangerous, possibly even fatal, because it will end life as I know it. (Glamourously underachieving is pretty core to my current existence.)

I’ve had so much time to acknowledge this fear since last month’s hunter’s full moon, which was the night my back went out. A catalog of the reasons why it did: loose joints; a rigorous, not entirely mindful exercise practice; shame about my middle-aged midriff; the 10-year anniversary of an acute neck and back injury.

All those contributing factors are real. But if there weren’t a deeper reason, I think I’d be better by now. After all, my list of treatments reads like a 1970s self-help saga: I’ve done acupuncture, astrological readings, Alexander Technique, reiki, physical therapy, and so many herbs and homeopathics. (I”m not really a painkiller girl except for the occasional whiskey.) I’ve meditated, prayed, danced under the light of the (next) full moon. And it’s all helped. Continue Reading →

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