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Coffee Cockacracy

October 12, 2017 in Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Feminist Matters

I went into the coffee shop this morning to find my usual morning crew–all male, mind you–hashing out the Weinstein revelations. One was calling Meryl Streep “a bitch” for not publicly denouncing Weinstein before (“she had to know!”); another was saying, “hey, men are disgusting; what do you expect?” I thought about where to position myself in the conversation since we normally debate everything. Should I expend precious energy by pointing out the painful hypocrisy of calling a woman a gendered, hateful insult for possibly doing what many, many men in Hollywood might have done as well–namely, not investigate rumors/allegations? Should I point out that the “boys will be boys” argument has been used to rationalize everything from mansplaining to stalking to rape? I grabbed my Americano, said, “Y’all are pathetic” and walked out, feeling nary an inch of remorse. I pray for a time when male entitlement–and this includes shooting your mouth off in public without assessing your audience’s receptivity–is in the rearview mirror.

Massholia Ornithology

September 12, 2017 in Book Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Style Matters

Right before I left for Cape Cod, a girl at my local coffee shop said, “I bet everyone is super laid back there.” I couldn’t help laughing. Growing up in Massachusetts and moving to New York City right after school, I first encountered a laidback person when I visited California at the end of my twenties. “Ooooh,” I remember thinking as I struggled valiantly not to interrupt the slow-talkers and slam into the slow-walkers. “This is laid-back.”

The truth is that native Massholes are impatient, skeptical people who loathe airs and whose only form of pretentiousness is an avowed hatred of pretentiousness. Regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or sexuality, almost everyone in this state dresses terribly, drives even worse, and prides themselves on their frugality and inability to suffer fools. I find it all totally endearing, especially because, since nobody shines you on, the friendships you form are life-long and right as rain.

But the people are hardly laidback. Continue Reading →

Blood in His Tracks (Indigo Grownups)

August 25, 2017 in Age Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Ruby Intuition, Sabboytical, Spirit Matters

I have come to accept my sadness as holy. I don’t mean to fetishize depression. I don’t even think the great grief I experience is depression–it’s situationally appropriate and does not rise up to wall me from my day, duties, you.

But I think of my sadness—this heavy, grave stillness—as holy because it is true and because, after all these years, I am grateful to feel even when it is very, very hard.

As a young empath my daily prayer was to not stop feeling. I worried that I’d grow as numb as most adults, that I’d stop registering the sorrows and struggles and triumphs of bugs, birds, plants, people–of every soul quietly hurtling on its forcefulm fateful path. I felt everything so deeply that it made me cry in fast food restaurants and plastic playgrounds paved over meadows, at birthday parties where the parents didn’t seem happy their kids had been born. Oh, Lisa, she’s so sensitive. That’s what they always say, isn’t it, when we can’t block out the miracles and savagery of everyday life.  Continue Reading →

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