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Permissions Denied, Pigeons Assigned

January 2, 2020 in Age Matters, Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Church Matters, City Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

Piccione, this morning you left your house without a bra?

This was yesterday, when everyone had begun drifting back from wherever people go when they leave NYC over the holidays. I was nursing an americano, waiting for some friends visiting from out of town.

For a full week, the coffee shop next door—the ones run by the wily Italians—had been closed. In fact, the whole neighborhood had been closed because all of the planet had been magically out of time.

I’d gotten a lot done.

But, I am sorry to report, my unconscious also had erected one last roadblock before this wretched, wonderful year could draw to a close.

This roadblock was a doozy.

It began a few days before Christmas, when my Macbook Pro’s operating system began devouring itself, which impacted everything connected to my Apple ID across all my devices, everything that required–and o the irony is rich if not sweet–permissions.

Essentially, I was being denied access to my own identity. At first I was only blocked from features that were convenient but unessential: Apple calendars, reminders, and notes that I accessed across all my devices. Then passwords stored in my iCloud keychain began to disappear, which is when I realized that all these years I’d thought I was being smart and responsible by using Apple-suggested passwords, I was really being stupid as a heart attack. Because these passwords were so complex that I had no way to resuscitate them using anything as pedestrian as, say, human memory. Continue Reading →

The Shining Path of One’s Own Words

December 27, 2019 in Age Matters, Book Matters, City Matters, Essays, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

Space Crone: Holiday Edition

“No more equivocating,” said Jennifer when I left her office yesterday. She almost didn’t need to say it aloud except, of course, she did.

Since my back returned to seminormal—since the last great road block of the Year of 12 Novembers was finally removed—I have been doing my very best to finish this book.

Or should I say: this fucking book.

For two and a half years, this bildungsrosman has been my constant companion. My greatest dream, my greatest albatross, my  frenemy. I’ve gone broke, I’ve broken my body, I’ve broken my heart.

A few times, actually.

And still the first draft isn’t done.

The funny thing is, I’m looking forward to editing this behemoth. I always say that I write like a pagan and edit like a Jew, and though it’s a suspiciously catchy phrase, it’s also true. Mostly. But I haven’t been writing this book like a pagan. I’ve been writing it like a flat-out witch-—channeling people I purposefully haven’t seen in years, conjuring  the past in the present, re-experiencing everything in the most messed-up method writer sort of way.

It’s worn me down to a nub. Really, I’m a nub of a space crone.

But though I’ve been conspicuously silent here over the last few weeks, it hasn’t been a terrible holiday season. Oh, I’ve made some mistakes–whoever thinks you automatically get smarter as you age really isn’t getting smarter—but nothing permanently damning.

I actually like the holidays—the parties, pine, sense of being outside of linear time. Most years I plan local adventures—old films on big screens and trips to the mermaid woods. But this season has been different because I’ve understood that for my sanity and fundamental survival I must complete a first draft by my personal new year, which is January 19 (my birthday).

Thus during the day I’ve written written written and at night have climbed into a kairos of my devise–a front-room tesseract in reds and purples, birds and candles, offline music and books and film. I’ve turned the pages of Gamache (my favorite sad-eyed and soul-deep Canadian detective) and dropped the plainchant of Nina and monks on the turntable and turned on to A Christmas Tale, Armand Deplechin’s neurotic, erotic paean to love lost and barely found.

Its deep skepticism of blood bonds and Deneuve’s red-lipped what-the-fuckery hitting the spot something fierce.

My sense is I can pull off this deadline if I stop whatever equivocating I’m still doing and accept the loneliness completion will bring. No more misbegotten love affairs, no more ill-advised distractions, no electricity period save true friends of my heart and the shine of these words as they appear one after another on this path into a wickedly enchanted forest. (Reading for people also is connecting me to that collective divine.) So in the wake of winter solstice and solar eclipse, I’m asking my greatest ally

here, where she’ll be held most accountable—

and I’m asking because god knows she doesn’t like to be told anything–

Well. I’m asking myself to stop equivocating.

From my Mary-loving Jewish pagan hearth, I send all the love in my heart to light these longest nights. We are all, each of us, blessed, and it has been an honor to bask in your shine.

No sleep til draft 1 is done, kittens. See you on the other side!

The Oyster of Your Desire

December 12, 2019 in Age Matters, Book Matters, Queer Matters, Quoth the Raving

It’s been a full lunar cycle since my love affair ended, and after our initial rupture we parted with more peace and kindness than I’ve experienced in any other breakup. I chalk this up to the fact that we were grownups when we found each other, and that it was mostly circumstances that pulled us part. Still, I miss her—voice, mouth, hands, pulse at her throat. Her extraordinary perception and reception.

Her brine.

I often copy out quotes I admire, not just to study them but as a postcard to a Lisa I may someday meet again. Today my computer opened to these words by Amy Bloom, a writer who has helped me understand that what I most crave is what the world tells us is nothing to know, let alone desire.

It’s been seventeen years since we were together and I can still smell her own scent, salt and cucumber. Under our breasts and in the creases, we smelled like fresh-baked bread in the mornings. We slept naked as babies, breasts and bellies rolling toward each other, our legs entwined like climbing roses. We used to say, we’re not beauties, because it was impossible to tell the truth. In bed, we were beauties. We were goddesses. We were the little girls we’d never been: loved, saucy, delighted, and delightful.

The first thing I knew in this world was that I was alone and unseen. Then I knew I was not. You are not just my port in the storm, which is what middle-aged women are supposed to be looking for. You are the dark and sparkling sea and the salt, drying tight on my skin, under a bright, bleaching sun. You are the school of minnows we walk through. You are the small fishing boat, the prow so faded you can hardly tell it’s blue. You are the violet skies, rain spattering the sand until it’s almost mud, and you are the light to come.

I don’t believe in coincidences, but even now I believe in love. The ache comes all at once, a rush of want and wonder, and it subsides slower, nothing like the sea.
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Vintage 1960s photographs, artist unknown.

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