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Finish Lines: Double Toil, Trouble, Entendre

February 7, 2020 in Art Matters, Astro Matters, Book Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Etiquette Matters, Feminist Matters, Spirit Matters

Cute Cat’s Curls

Where to start, where to start?

It hasn’t been that long since I blogged, but it’s been a while since I deposited the kind of long, rambling essay that I feel inclined to deposit right now. Consider yourself warned.

The universe is encouraging me to do so. For one thing, I hiked all the way into the West Village to write the thank-yous I so desperately need—and want!—to write, only to discover I’d remembered everything but the beautiful notecards I’d purchased for this purpose. It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here at Oslo West, with my long-lost friend, barista Cat, who has new curls—or maybe curls she just let off the leash. Either way, they’re fetching.

So far it’s been that kind of year: everything off the leash. Exhibit A: our democracy. Correction: Our former democracy.

Anyway, all of the West Village is fetching, sometimes I forget. Once upon a time I lived here with the Architect, and as much as it’s changed it’s also the same: the oddest mix of brittle and cozy, bohemian and haughty. Continue Reading →

Swans of the Concrete Jungle

July 19, 2019 in Age Matters, Art Matters, City Matters, Style Matters

Money’s dear this year, which sounds like a Dorothy Parker stanza but is one of the myriad reasons I’m lucky to live in NYC—a miraculous place to live on the cheap if you’re resourceful. Yesterday with ten bucks in my pocket I ferried ($2.50) to the Metropolitan Museum—both Mets!—for one buckarino (1$) and entered an alternate dimension mostly pink and 100 percent fabulous: Camp:Notes on Fashion at 5th Avenue and Mrinalini Mukherjee’s Phenomenal Nature at the Breur; then the Chris Ofili show at David Swirner (free) and the nutty gallery that is Madison Ave designer window displays and designer rich-lady faces (free, at least for me).

Altogether it was a rarified world of wedding cake townhouses and mermaids with big cocks and tin-foil goddesses and licentious, lichen-ous trees. I even had enough left over for a pretzel with loads of mustard ($2) in Central Park, so lushly green that Edith Wharton would’ve found the terrain familiar. I felt what I always feel when prowling a NYC jungle not my own: joyfully restored, gratefully inspired.

An Earl and a Countess

March 30, 2019 in Art Matters, Essays, Film Matters, Music Matters, Ruby Intuition, Style Matters

Larry Rivers, “Formal Marriage Portrait Of Earl And Camilla McGrath.”

I’ve been reading a ton about Earl McGrath, the ultimate mid-20th-century arts-world mover and shaker– the only thorn who ever truly pierced Eve Babitz‘s side. Besties with Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol, the godfather of Harrison Ford’s kids, pals with Jasper Johns and Aretha Franklin and Babs and you name it, Jesus (probably Jesus too), he presided over everyone’s parlor, curating the best be-ins and the slyest jokes. Continue Reading →

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