Archive | City Matters

Venus in All Her Inglory

It’s only Wednesday and already I consider this week a bust. Normally I would dismiss that attitude as the worst kind of negativity but there just have been so many hurt feelings and misunderstandings all around. I chalk it up to the shadow of Venus retrograde, which lasts three months, only takes place every few years, and governs unresolved mishegos in areas of relationships, money, and all things aesthetic. Expect old family conflicts to resurface, ex lovers to show up, long-simmering fights with partners to rear their ugly heads. Not to mention awkward haircuts, zits out of nowhere, and–o my–nothing in the closet. Goddess knows that’s all been true in my life lately.

Yesterday I found a favorite pair of earrings that had been long misplaced. I wore them all around town like a proud peacock and then promptly lost one on my walk from the gym to the L train. I combed 14th street three times in my search for it and, while doing so, ran into work colleagues. Naturally I was clad in sweaty spandex shorts, greasy pigtails, and a cut-up tee shirt announcing in neon yellow letters: I LOVE GERMAN GIRLS. I looked so professional I could cry. It goes without saying that the earring never turned up. On my way home I walked by some new graffiti that was so VR it made me smile though I felt for the artist’s angst. See above.

My advice, Sirenaders: take an extra deep breath before leaving the house and opening your trap, make no drastic changes to your appearance, home or relationships, and escape as soon as possible to the sea. Friday I’m heading to the relatively pristine waters of Long Beach, where I plan to smile a big oystery smile and offer a mermaid song of submission.La de da….

Curtains

It’s been a beautiful spacey day–another long moon void of course in the midst of Mercury retrograde/full-moon mania–and every time I’ve tried to toe or even walk a straight line, I’ve accidentally veered in a different direction. I reviewed a movie opening next rather than this week; I poured coffee rather than water on my fire escape garden. Finally, I tuned in and dropped out: got phenomenally acupunked (which may be the ideal moon void activity); bought the last of the season’s pink peonies at the deli; settled by the window with a thick, musty novel, and took in the neighborhood birds and kids tweet-tweet-tweeting in the street, the old-soul breezes sailing in with the night. Even June can be sweetly melancholy on the right afternoon.

How Not to Make Friends

A One-Act Play.
Scene: Crowded New York City subway hurtling midtown.
Characters: Me, wearing dirty bun and caftan, reading Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. My seat mate, a female stranger roughly my age, clad in yoga gear and shiny blond hair.
Seatmate (looks down at my book, sniffs.) “I don’t like Carey Mulligan.”
Me (not looking up): “You’re in luck. She doesn’t star in the book.”
–fin–

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