Archive | Cat Lady Matters

The Grinchiest Paragraph

I accept that my problems are not anyone else’s problems. I also accept that, when my going gets tough, I have zero bandwidth for your business-as-usual requests for my (free) psychic take on your love life or astrology or spirit guides; your mass-printed holiday cards featuring kid pictures I already dutifully liked on social media; your relationships that would’ve ended years ago if you didn’t fear being alone or broke; your family dramas that don’t come close to a good year in my storyline; your preaching-to-the-choir in lieu of real political action; your housecleaner-stole-my ring “holiday stresses” while the world is hand-basketing to hell. Maybe next year I’ll summon a fuck, but not now, not while you don’t notice the person you’re petitioning also is tackling heavy shit even if she’s keeping it together. For the rest of this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad 2016, I’ll be watching Deneuve not give a fuck in “A Christmas Tale,” the best anti-holiday film ever made. You’re on your own, kid.

Mourning Becomes Electra

I wake, I send light to Aleppo, Standing Rock, every community under attack, every heart I’ve failed or has failed my own. I make a list of which representatives to call about what, and I pray for the Electoral College to step the fuck up and for my higher spirit to guide me to clarity and compassion. Then I tell my permakitten she is beautiful and kind and, in her rapid blinks, feel her telling me the same. I make a second list–which onerous personal tasks I must complete; what buttons must be sewn, what bills must be paid–and scan headlines with baited breath. Then, only then, do I make my coffee. This is the world narrowed through my door since November 9.

The Church of Unseen Children

I became an adult at age 6, when I first realized no one would dry my tears but me. What happened that day is a story I may tell another time, but my point here is that there is something very ancient and very tragic about the child who weeps without hope of comfort. In short, they are no longer a child, but an adult who carries the world’s weight on shoulders too small to sustain it. Continue Reading →

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