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Tesseracts and Tree Nymphs

May 5, 2018 in Astro Matters, Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Quoth the Raving, Spirit Matters, Weather Matters

Up before the sun so I can properly greet her when she arrives. Settled on a screened-in country porch with coffee, permakitten and I sniffing that sweet, sweet air. Grateful, so grateful. The birds singing a song so true I don’t want to interrupt but am feeling Joni strongly today. (Is she close to slipping away entirely? is she simply the goddess of early morning melody?) Ladies of the Canyon is added to their symphony and then–

Grace doing her yoga mistress poses–she’s got those down–me reaching toward that peach and pink horizon, hands in the air, toes in the wet grass.

It’s still Taurus season, and I’m upstate at A’s as of yesterday.  I needed to be put in my place by wood nymphs, birds, big blue sky.

It got hot so fast this week in New York. In general, my favorite city has never been keen on interstices. Fur hats one day, bare shoulders the next–tempers rising, horns honking. So it was that the glorious kerfuffle of a NYC summer boiled over in the course of one day. Continue Reading →

Land-locked Mermaid

April 26, 2018 in Astro Matters, Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Quoth the Raving, Spirit Matters, Weather Matters

Yesterday could only be described as a bad day. Nothing terrible happened, but dread won the race–I couldn’t see the forest so couldn’t write the trees.

Writing a book is different from writing the short pieces that have been my professional mainstay. Every piece needs to fit into a bigger puzzle and some days I can’t tell if something is too jagged or too smooth to lock into anything else. Yesterday was like that, and also it was raining. At first the best I could do was eat a lot of buttered popcorn and watch old movies. This was not going to pay the bills but it did remind me how my last career happened. Continue Reading →

A Place So Hard To Find

April 19, 2018 in Book Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Film Matters, Music Matters

Last night at Westchester’s Emelin Theater, I lectured on RBG, a new documentary about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It was beyond reassuring to discuss this well-mannered, succinct, intellectually rigorous, even-handed, courageous, tenacious, and scrupulous woman. Even more reassuring to watch scenes of her working out vigorously with a trainer at age 85.

We need the Justice to live to a biblical age—200, even 250. Maybe clone herself too. But right now, she’s still a key cog in the U.S. government, the ultimate antidote to  this political climate of hot air, hot heads, (not) hot messes. As I zoomed back into the city, the traffic a mere trickle at that hour, I looked at the spiny diamonds of the city skyline and just grinned.

It’s still ours.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The world–especially the United–is still going to hell in a handbasket. But I am starting to think my prediction that Trump and his cronies will exit the White House in cuffs will be realized. Better yet, every day I continue to work on a book I’ve wanted to write for decades. Today I already have penned 1,600 words, and now am swilling an extraordinary spicy turkey sandwich and a post-work glass of vino. On my speakers Marc Dorsy is crooning: “Somewhere in life there’s a joy to be/Between the hope and reality.”  I feel the extraordinary solidarity of my girlfriends far and near, foremothers alive and dead, and Miss Grace, sitting pretty on my legs. O, if money didn’t exist, I’d be the happiest 47-year-old in all the land.

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