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My Queendom for Your Ragu

May 18, 2020 in Age Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Food Matters, Queer Matters

All day long my downstairs neighbor–a 78-year-old woman from Campania–has been cooking an indescribably delicious-smelling tomato sauce. Mikey and Paulie, my Muppet critic pals from the coffee shop, call this woman one of the “black stockings” of our East Williamsburg neighborhood where they have lived since birth. By this they mean she is one of the older Italian (not Italian-American) women who scream at their philandering husbands all day, every day, in between cooking delicious-smelling tomato sauces and attending Mass not once a week but twice a day. On this point my Muppet critic friends are right as they so often are.

(The only times they are wrong is when they insist on my need for a bicycle, I mean a man. Yes I am the fish in this equation.)

It makes me laugh to see my downstairs neighbor all demure in the hallway, given that those daily fights with her philandering husband are so loud my intuition clients can hear them in our Zoom sessions. I reported him when he made moves on me, so she refuses to share her delicious cooking even when there is not a raging pandemic. Long ago I accepted this as fair exchange for not having to play nice with a sex offender, but today that sauce is torturing me. All I want is to sit at someone else’s table and eat a big bowl of home-cooked pasta and cheese and tomato sauce that magically appears in front of me. I want gnocchi, lasagna, ravioli, penne, fettuccine. Marinara, ragu, puttanesca, carbonara. Focaccia. Broccoli rabe. Arugula. Spicy olives. Polenta. Arancini di riso. I want to wash it all down with a big glass of red. And I do not want to wash the damn dishes.

Essentially I want an Italian mother–or an Italian wife.

My Corner of the Sky Inside

May 17, 2020 in Age Matters, Cat Lady Matters, Church Matters, City Matters, Quoth the Raving, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

It was a beautiful morning full of the bittersweet longing that defines middle-age, regardless of whether you’re coupled up, family’d up, quarantined up. I woke before the sun, made strong French-press coffee with cream, finished reading my detective novel before springing into the day. Maneuvered mini-car Minerva over the bridge to pretty-pretty John Lindsay park from which I walked miles and miles up the Manhattan side of the East River–steering clear of the runners (oy vey), nodding at all my fellow masked travelers. On a patch of waterfront grass as far from the madding crowd as you can find on a NYC morning, I flopped down to pray and meditate and swan in soft unkempt sun. Only a particularly curious squirrel crept up, and she kept a respectful distance as I pulled down my mask and breathed in big big air. By then it was 9 am so I cruised over to the Tompkins Square greenmarket to fetch gorgeous spring produce (strawberries! ramps! mint! pea shoots!) and mediocre peonies (even mediocre peonies are peonies) before scooting home, Roberta Flack pouring out of the speakers. Back home I baked skillet cornbread and pickled watermelon radishes while jabbering on the phone with a friend about a disappointing love.

From a corner permakitten watched through greenly slitted eyes–judging my backsliding as only a feline can judge.

Now it’s midday and I’m already worn out and at loose ends. That’s not pandemic. That’s the sadness that finds us in all the places quotidian pleasures can’t reach. You know: those corners we just don’t feel held. Come mid-life, only the foolish believe those corners fully disappear.

So, dear ones, no nonchurchy church this afternoon. This is a day for reception rather than inception–for rest rather than rigor and wonder even when you can’t wander. Mary Oliver wrote: “My job is loving the world.” It’s all of our jobs, really. Love up your corner of the sky today. I suspect I’m poised for a three-hour nap and a to-go tequila cocktail. Then next Sunday (5/24) we’ll Sky-Inside together. Mark those calendars: (5/24) at 1pm on Rubyintuitionbk IG Live.

Of Sinkholes and Safety Nets

May 6, 2020 in Age Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

Today I was officially approved for Medicaid. I have no shame about it; am just grateful it’s an option. Next year I turn 50 and though I have great faith in my ability to heal through alternative healing modalities I know that if have a health catastrophe it’ll be helpful to have a safety net of some sort.

If I’m being honest it’s been 10 years since I’ve been insured-that’s the time that’s elapsed since I’ve held a salaried job. Since then I’ve I’ve been unwilling to pony up a hefty percentage of my monthly nut for such a broken system. I don’t like bureaucracy. I don’t like western medicine and its incredibly limited scope and solutions. I don’t like hierarchal bullshit of any sort, especially as applied to areas of vulnerability.

When I was in my 20s I underwent a significant health crisis. My lifelong eating disorder had become so protracted that by the time I’d addressed the psychological underpinnings of the disease I’d developed severe autoimmune and digestive disorders. Down to 85 pounds, I’d sustained significant cardiovascular damage and a stomach that no longer produced hydrochloric acid, which meant I couldn’t metabolize nutrition.

Then as now I was un-insured but in the mid-’90s you still could see a doctor if you were willing to pay out-of-pocket. So I ran through the minimal savings I’d accrued as a labor organizer to get shuffled from shitty doctor to shitty doctor–undergoing expensive torture-chamber tests (pro tip: never get a endoscopy without getting knocked out first), and getting prescribed boatloads of medication that severely compounded my issues.

Eventually I took matters in my own hands, cast a spell to manifest the right health allies, and began to work with an osteopath and naturopath who were more effective healers of chronic illness than any western medical specialist I’ve encountered. From this experience I realized that only I fully knew my body and its capabilities. This is a lesson we are never taught, as the displacement of our inner resources–the dissociation from our strengths and self-love–is crucial to capitalist culture. Continue Reading →

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