Navigation

Archive | Astro Matters

‘Angels in America’ Saves Us All

March 29, 2018 in Astro Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Reviews, Sabboytical, Theater Matters

Yesterday I did a full Angels in America immersion–10 hours in Midtown for Parts 1 and 2. I scored cheapo tickets on TDF.com and into the Neil Simon Theater I smuggled water, sliced apples, nuts, whiskey, and lavender water in case my neighbors had hygiene challenges. (They didn’t, but because they were tuna sandwich smugglers, the lavender water proved useful anyway.) Outside the theater the city was cloudy and cold and Mercury Retrogradey. Which is to say: there was nowhere I’d rather have been.

Put simply, it was the best theatrical experience of my life—timeless and timely, emboldened and emboldening, transcendent and holy fractured. The staging–neon boxes and steampunk lanterns and ladders sliding up and down, side to side– was extraordinary. Ditto for the performances—Nathan Lane, raw and raging and hilarious, was the best anyone’s ever seen, and even Andrew Garfield’s look-Ma-I’m-playing-gaaaaaay conceit was not appalling once he found his rage. And get this: every straight male role was played by a middle-aged lady wearing a doggedly bad wig!

But all that pales in contrast to the powerful joy of hearing Tony Kushner’s words uttered live for the first time. I honestly believe he is this greatest country’s finest voice. Even in a too-many-cooks-in-a-kitchen mess like “Lincoln,” through his cadences course everything–salt and blood and cum, stone and silt and copper. The sweat and tears of our country and our heavens, basically. As when I saw Hamilton, I felt connected to the groundlings taking in Shakespeare while he was still alive. Connected to all of time.

Yes, Mrs. Lincoln, everything, and I do mean everything, was vibrant and devastating in equal measures. By the time I walked out, my legs barely worked anymore, so it was a good thing I could fly with the play’s 1980s Jewish Mormon homosexual lady angel wings. As I soared, the Eustacia Vye phrase I’ve whispered since I was a teenager flashed like another sign on Broadway: “Send me great love from somewhere, else I shall die.” That great love never did show up for me in the mommy-daddy, one-on-one incarnation I expected. But in New York’s museums, galleries, kitchens, caverns, sidewalks, subways, and, o fuck, stages–all those “melting pots that never melted”–I feel it all the time. I guarantee you everyone in attendance at this play feels it too: great art, great truth-yes, great, great love. It comes in such finely feathered forms.

Mercury Retrograde’s Wrinkle in Time

March 27, 2018 in Age Matters, Astro Matters, Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Ruby Intuition

My mother’s mother was not a cozy person. This was to be expected, for no one in my family was cozy. I did not understand I was the type of person who clamored for coziness until I was much older, and by then I’d acquired so many sharp edges that scarcely anyone wished to be cozy with me. This, I believe, is how cat ladies are bred, not born, although I prefer to refer myself as a cat woman. Perhaps this is what happened to my grandmother, as well. Certainly she shared an army-buddy solidarity with her cat Calico that the rest of us never experienced with her.

I’m not sure if I longed for my grandmother’s love or simply to be my grandmother. Alice May, as her few remaining peers called her, was the only true adult in my family, and I duly deferred to her. More than that, I revered her, though at age 11 I already towered over her. Somehow her diminutive stature only made her seem more powerful, as if she were as wise and as peculiarly packaged as Yoda himself. Come to think of it, with her big blue eyes and large, gnarled hands and sunken mouth (Alice May’s dentures never quite fit), she looked like Yoda overall. To the Star Wars-obsessed child I was, the effect was amazing, if utterly subliminal.

As evidenced above, I have finally begun working on my book again. This makes sense, for Mercury Retrograde is an ideal time to revisit long-simmering projects. (The negative aspects of Mercury Retrograde in Aries have been fully documented on this blog lately.) Stay posted, dear Sirenaders, and feel free to cheer me on; I could use your good wind. Feel free to request my cheering in the form of a Ruby Intuition session as well, for Mercury Retrograde is an ideal time to tune into the divine intelligence of the universe, and I love reading for people during these times.

Mars and Me Enraged

March 25, 2018 in Age Matters, Astro Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Sabboytical

I just came home from a bad night a bad week a bad year so far, who am I kidding? Stopped at the bar at the corner before I came back because I had no booze in the house and it seemed wise to take the edge off all the pistons misfiring–the fight I had tonight, the hot-hot-hot flamenco to which I bore witness, the revelation that my burning love for someone had been a tiny subplot in his burning love for someone else. So yes tequila tequila before entering my house. (Don’t want to scare Grace.) Continue Reading →

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