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Permissions Denied, Pigeons Assigned

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 →

Welcome to the Fun House

I woke Friday with the words suspended above my head like a cartoon bubble, like a neon sign:

Yesterday was fun.

Which may not sound like the sort of weighty dispatch I typically unpack here but if you’d had a year like I’ve had–and chances are, you have—then such words are a bolt from on high. Life-changing.

Because this Year of 12 Novembers was simply not fun. But it being December—the season of goofy Sagittarius, no less– I’m finally better. Not perfect, mind you, but by middle-age only fools strive for perfection. Fun on the other hand–

Fun is precious indeed. Continue Reading →

The Church of Aretha and Apple Music

I wake, tears slipping down my face because of yesterday’s disappointment, love lost before it could be found. But also: spinal discs slipping back into place, master healers having manipulated muscle and tissue as I submitted to magic sleep.

I feel better and worse–the human condition, don’t you know.

My heart aches: The sadness of not being held by someone I’d hoped could handle my rawest and shiniest states. Fear about my health and ragged humanity, all our future. Rage about ego, all that ego, run amok. Grace gone when we get afraid.

My heart soars: Hope and her sweet and sundry ways. Coffee, blue divan, the sun’s glorious ascent from my small city window. I turn on music and let the shuffle gods sermonize as I take their holy-holy communion. Continue Reading →

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