Archive | Age Matters

The Radiance of Pain

Before Now After (Mama, Mummy and Mamma)--Njideka Akunyili Crosby“We’re all just walking each other home.” It’s a phrase that’s been ringing in my ears lately. I don’t remember who said it. I could Google the answer, but I like not knowing, as if the phrase were as common as “sly as a fox” or “out of the frying pan, into the fire.”

I wish it were.

What’s made me remember these words is the pain I’ve witnessed this year. I don’t normally discuss my clientele because I would not be a very trustworthy intuitive if I did. Some colleagues do, of course–usually when they count celebrities among them–but while I understand the impulse and hope everyone is being discussed with their consent, I feel I must adhere to very clear ethics because intuitive work is not regulated though it entails such fragile, precious material–namely, souls. Continue Reading →

Divine Extradition

yom kippurA friend once told me she walked in the woods every day because the woods were her church, and why wouldn’t you pray every day when your church was so beautiful? Today I spent Yom Kippur in such a church–a temple, really–and really did find prayer and fasting and atonement so much easier. Guided by lower and upper case grace, I walked the paths of my friend’s beautiful land–pink, amber, ochre, grey. I prayed to my ancestors for forgiveness for how I failed their line, asked G-d to help me be a better vessel in the second half of my life, talked aloud to the highest spirits of those with whom I am blocked. Light-headed and clear-hearted, that’s how I felt when the sun disappeared again. Good. G’mar Tov, beautiful people. You are my temple.

NSA Brujas and Magic Pixie Dream Men

manic pixie dream fellowNot so long ago, a man I fancied very much hurt my feelings through the grave sin of casual disregard, and I found myself trying not to cry at the exact moment I’d thought I’d be slathering on lipstick. I was crumpled on my bed next to a very pretty dress laid out in anticipation of him taking it off; it was blue and green and generally of a form and function I’d known he would admire. Though I never explicitly buy an article of clothing for one man’s eyes, I’d been happy about the prospect of this dress barreling past his defenses. I should have known better. Recently I’d had a dream in which this manic pixie dream man had been idling beneath a neon sign flashing the words DISASTER THROUGH AMBIVALENCE. That’s more supertext than subtext–neither ambivalent nor ambiguous–but what can I say? Hope is the thing without feathers, or so Emily Dickinson and Woody Allen might have said had they put their heads together. (Perish the thought.) Continue Reading →

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