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Free Ophelia

November 11, 2015 in Age Matters, Feminist Matters, Film Matters

Yesterday I took an enormous step. It was the sort of step that instantly broke lifelong patterns but left no footprint visible to the world at large—the sort that is the hardest aspect of real (not chronological) adulthood. To celebrate, I did not drink a vat of cocktails or inhale a box of chocolates. (I’ve been unsweetened since February.) Rather, I ate a kale salad and attended a critics’ screening of “Hunger Games: Mockingbird—Part 2,” which proved far more pleasurable than its overly punctuated title.

In general, this farrago of earnest vegetables and YA female bad-assery is typical of the tweeny old lady I have become—as if I now embody the full spectrum of Ophelia Syndrome-free womanhood. The remaining question, not to put too fine a point on it, is fucking. That is, how to resurrect—or simply insurrect—my sexuality among the rubble of projections, pits, and pedestals that first bombard women in pre-pubescence. I do not have an answer yet. But to my immense surprise, I finally feel that I belong to myself. Here at the shores of what our culture declares Sad-Lady Spinsterville I have found Wonder Woman’s elusive Amazonia, and lo! it is liberating, if also confounding. This transition from objecthood to sweet subjectivity is the biggest step of all, and I’m even glad there’s not a map. There is, however, a manual, and it’s cracking me up, with every attendant pun.

Get This Party Started Right

November 3, 2015 in Age Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Essays, Spirit Matters

Lately Mondays kill me, they really do. It’s a terrible feeling, especially as I’ve never been this sort of person before. When I graduated college I swore two things: That I would find an occupation that didn’t require a separate wardrobe—“beware of all enterprises that require new clothes!”—and that I wouldn’t be a 9-5 Working Josephina.

Two decades later, I still wear whatever I please and I still work very off hours. On the rare occasions that I am forced to ride a rush-hour train I feel dismay of the “oh, the humanity!” variety. Aside from washing my clothes at the laundromat, nothing makes me feel so much like my life has failed to meet my expectations. Continue Reading →

Hello to All That

October 7, 2015 in Age Matters, City Matters, Essays, Past Matters, Snapshot, Spirit Matters

Last weekend I went to Philadelphia for the first time in nearly twenty years. Just writing that sentence fills me with awe. Apparently when you live long enough, you become your own personal time machine.

It was a good visit if discombulating, especially since I made the trek without my dearly departed auto Sadie. I went to college on Philadelphia’s Main Line and, though I grew fond enough of the city, I never liked my alma mater or Pennsylvania overall. Over the years I stopped going back, venturing instead to other parts of the world on the occasions that I left Brooklyn.

This time I took Amtrak, which I enjoyed once I adjusted to the lack of privacy. It reduced the travel to a glamorous ninety minutes door to door, and afforded me the luxury of intermittently dozing and ogling the scenery. But something about going without my wheels to the place where I began my adulthood felt stark. Every time I turned a corner, I expected to run into stricken nineteen-year-old Lisa, bristling with unharnessed hormones and newly discovered anger and fear. It was a pleasure to offer that ghost assurances that I’d become some of what she’d hoped to be. It was a pleasure to catch up with friends over gorgeous meals and music.

On the way back to New York, my train was halted, and it reminded me of my move to Brooklyn from Pennsylvania decades before. If you have short pockets and all the patience in the world, you can take commuter rails the entire way between the two cities. It’s something I did constantly in the summer after college, when I’d perched in a professor’s house and shuttled to NYC for job interviews. Continue Reading →

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