I wake with the sun. The air is as sweet as it ever gets in Brooklyn; the early morning, as gentle and warm. My permakitten creeps next to me on our fire escape and together we study the city, so pretty while it sleeps. And yet. I keep thinking about how easily sweet the air was in the country. How my sheets and nightclothes felt and smelled when I’d dried them in the sun rather than the laundromat. How I’d slept. Continue Reading →
I keep flashing on this quote from Thoreau’s The Maine Woods and then on this painting by Egon Schiele, and marveling over the splendid catastrophe that is human intimacy. I think it is because I bought wild mushrooms today at the greenmarket, and as I sautéed them with sherry and olive oil and shallots and thyme, I was struck by their great mystery. What hyperobjects fungi are, even in containment. And I thought of how everything wonderful and terrible about sex–that loud secret, that subcutaneous clamor–can only be viewed through this lens as well. I considered all this, and I considered the mystery of the bodies that I crave, and then I folded the mushrooms into a pretty risotto and poured myself a glass of wine. Middle age answers few questions but grants us the dignity of detachment. Sometimes.
I came back to NYC today with a tiny hole in my heart. It was a great three days out of time in Cape Cod, especially since so far this year I know more about what’s not working–what has ended, what needs to end–than what I can safely count on, even in myself. I needed to step out of the flow of life and focus on the elements- sand, sun, salt–and that is what we did. Continue Reading →
I wake with the sun. The air is as sweet as it ever gets in Brooklyn; the early morning, as gentle and warm. My permakitten creeps next to me on our fire escape and together we study the city, so pretty while it sleeps. And yet. I keep thinking about how easily sweet the air was in the country. How my sheets and nightclothes felt and smelled when I’d dried them in the sun rather than the laundromat. How I’d slept. Continue Reading →
I came back to NYC today with a tiny hole in my heart. It was a great three days out of time in Cape Cod, especially since so far this year I know more about what’s not working–what has ended, what needs to end–than what I can safely count on, even in myself. I needed to step out of the flow of life and focus on the elements- sand, sun, salt–and that is what we did. Continue Reading →