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New York City Balance

September 21, 2015 in Age Matters, City Matters

I had to laugh at myself tonight. I was coming back from a screening, and was in this great, gentle mood. I’d taken a big leap of faith in the morning and had received such lovely support for it that by the time the movie outstripped my expectations, I was floating on Cloud Nine. On the train home from Midtown, I beamed at everyone, then got off a stop early to savor the cool, sweet quiet of my neighborhood.

Really, the word for how I was feeling was beatific.

Just as I was rounding the corner to my building, ready to write about all this good will, two twentysomething girls tripped by in clattery, clunky heels, nearly knocking me over though the street was otherwise empty. They were screeching so loudly that I instantly forgot my love for humanity. Visions of Alternate Universe Lisa being rudely awakened by their blather danced before my eyes. Continue Reading →

So Here’s This Bird

September 2, 2015 in City Matters, Essays, Past Matters, Weather Matters

My godmother M., from whom I take one of my names and most of my subversion, used to tell the best stories, usually about her run-ins with people whom she considered “dolts.” First she’d settle in at our kitchen table, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet beneath her. Next she’d light a cigarette and take a long, theatrical drag while shaking out her thick black wig and eyeballing my mother, who’d quit smoking but still luxuriated in the secondhand smoke. Then, only then, would M. start her stories. Invariably they’d begin like this: So here’s this bird…

Today I have a story that begins exactly the same way. I’ll tell it like M. would. Pretend this pen I’m puffing on is a cigarette.

So here’s this bird, and she’s spoiling for a fight. I can tell right off the bat, and honest to Godfrey, I can tell I might give it to her. I’ve been feeling off all day, partly because of the indecency of this New York weather. Partly because I have worries that have just about hit the boiling point. Continue Reading →

Emotionally in Poughkeepsie

August 24, 2015 in City Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

I woke up this morning with the Impending Doom feeling. One of the ugliest aspects of being an intuitive is the ability to register in your body that something bad is coming which you can’t prevent. Often, I can’t even tell what it is. I just feel a terrible anxiety, prolonged and prelonged, that I never can write off as being “just in my head.” Case in point: In the days leading up to September 11, 2001, my nerves were so frayed I suddenly moved upstate rather than into the Manhattan apartment I’d been planning to take over from a friend. When watching the Twin Towers collapse from Poughkeepsie, I in no way felt vindicated, just a dull relief that my profound dis-ease now had a face.

All summer I’ve been getting what an ex used to call “ID” (as if uttering the phrase aloud gave it too much power), and all summer hits have duly arrived—upheaval that I may someday regard as necessary, even helpful, but right now experience as wrenching. This morning I got that cruddy feeling again. It may stem from something as simple as a lack of a vacation or (less simply) the approaching anniversary of September 11, but I suspect greater tempests are afoot. In the interim, I wish my gut instincts weren’t so uncomfortably literal.

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