Archive | Country Matters

Beyoncé Blows Out Our Backs

It’s been a minute since I posted on this platform and now I’m doing it when everyone is out and about or fast asleep. But I just took Renaissance, Beyoncé’s first full-length LP since 2016’s Lemonade, out for a five-mile, post-readings walk and am here to say that not liking it is a form of anti-populist–nay, anti-popular kids!–sour-pussism akin to not liking screwball dames in the 1940s; Singin’ in the Rain and rock ‘n’ roll backbeats in the 1950s; the Beatles, the Stones and Stax Records in the 1960s; Steinem, Scorsese, and SNL in the 1970s; the Boston Celtics, MJ, and Eddie Murphy in the 1980s; and the Chicago Bulls and Nirvana after Nevermind hit #1 on the Billboard Charts in the 1990s.

Okay, I don’t really expect everyone to toe this aesthetic line, but I do contend that even in this day and age, some things are popular because they are just so freaking good they’re undeniable. To me, that’s Beyonce and this just-what-the-doctor-ordered album. It’s full of her usual Virgo virtousity— full-throttle throaty thotty vocals, brillllllliant syncopation, and a wholly earned homage to the ancestors –with a new splash of real sex, not studio-engineered sex. As in: somebody is blowing out her back besides ho-hum Jay-Z and I’m here to ride that train.

As in: The hardest working broad in show business just released a liberationist album and it’s the trumpet we swans needed.

Every track is iconic in the most utopian application of that term and every one nods to a different big bang. “Cuff It” alone has already been played by this witch at least 100 times, “Cozy” is the ultimate runway anthem for we over-40 thrivalists, and don’t get me started on the “Break My Soul” remixes she’s been releasing all week. Last night she dropped the best one yet–a “Queens” remix reworking Madonna’s “Vogue” that calls out all the r&b goddesses as her very own sister-sirens. By the time she purred “Jilly from Philly, I love you boo,” I was bawling on my stoop. B. holds space for everyone who tries their best, and that sort of generosity is infectious.

In general I’m digging life so much that I haven’t been finding the time to say much about it. But this album encapsulates that vibe so well–a yes-the-sky-is-falling-down-but-that-doesn’t-mean-we-can’t-show-up-for-each-other-then-boogie-our-brains–out—that I had to sing it from the rooftops after dancing it naked. Because yes.

In my intuitive readings, city walks, beach adventures, and even social media feeds I’m witnessing this Leo Season as more break-through than break-down. Glass ceilings and glass houses are shattering everywhere–especially in the realms of intimacy, creativity, travel, and the domestic and erotic arts–and pleasure principle is riding principal with a sexy school-marm riding crop.

Summer 2022, y’all. Who knew?

She Speaks, but Still Has Nothing Nice to Say

I really feel like typing out why my fella and I broke up this time. So here it is. He and I were at his studio when he started flirting hard with his young female pretty assistant right in front of me. I let it go–male egos are male egos (boring but true), and him preening for female attention is no new story. Then he introduced me to her as his cousin. I said, “oh, cousin?” As in: “You fuck all your cousins?” In fact, we are cousins–third removed, nothing to the British Royals, and sometimes I think it’s funny when he announces it. But there was no earthly reason to introduce me this way to this other lady except to preserve the appearance of his romantic viability. “Also confidante,” he clarified. I picked up my purse and left.

I waited a day to ensure I’d cooled down before giving him a chance to redeem himself. I have a long history of loving this man, and wanted to express my hurt with a heart open enough that it would give him space to meet me halfway. Instead he bore down, said my feelings were bullshit (literally used that word), and that I was gaslighting him and being low-level, un-self-aware, insecure, and (this is rich) not respecting his professional dynamics and women in the workplace. There was so much I could have said, so much Machiavellian manipulation to unpack, but instead to my chagrin I began weeping, not because I thought he was right but because I knew right then we had to be done–that I had to stop making myself vulnerable to this self-serving emotional arsonist. He told me to leave, and began working on an accounting spreadsheet on his computer until I did, sobbing and stumbling.

Sometimes I feel the language of trauma is overused–that what passes for trauma in this day and age was business as usual throughout the history of humankind. But that exchange exemplified how you can be abusive without raising a hand once.

Anyway, two days later he texted that he was sorry I was so upset and a bunch of other actual gaslighting malarkey. I’d written a 2,000-word letter (“You have sacrificed me to the altar of your ego for the last time”) but merely read it to the river before ritualistically burning it. To him I wrote two words: We’re good.

In general it’s been quite a week even for this decade of overwhelm. War overseas worsening, fascism surging everywhere, and a huge shooting in the Brooklyn subways, 22 injured, not to mention a big tax bill coinciding with a weird drought in my practice. The latter I can only chalk up to the blockages in my own field–no energy source anywhere, just drains. I will say this: My back continues to heal, which suggests I am learning to support myself no matter what the circumstances. Good thing, too.

For just once when there was a NYC disaster, I’d love my Boston-based parents to ensure I was ok. They didn’t check that I was ok on 9/11/01 (I wasn’t; two friends were killed, including my boyfriend’s sister) and they still haven’t checked on my status since the subway shooting. I thank all who did check in, and in fact am fine and so are my people, but we’re also fearful and sad and angry. NYC really feels scarier as the hatred and chaos liberated by Trump and covid (and late-stage capitalism) keep spreading in a place where so many different people from so many different walks of life share space, usually beautifully.

I know it’s unseemly to put up such a self-pitying post at age 51 but lately I haven’t been saying anything since I haven’t had anything nice to say. Honestly though? Fuck nice. I value kindness but the hegemony of niceness mostly exists to reinforce a problematic status quo. My clan’s silence distills their pathology perfectly in a culture that upholds the biological bond above all else, and my choice of love object indicates I’m still working through that legacy. My chosen family—including you—is spectacular, and for that I’ll always be grateful. More than that, I am grateful for every impetus to expand my own compassion, healing, and insight. But boy o boy Massholia can really be a state of mind.

*message me if you want to read the letter. I just may post it as a matter of record.

Here’s Looking at You, 2022

I’ve never put much stock in the changing of the Christian calendar, but these days I appreciate all opportunities to reevaluate and reboot. To that end, I wanted to share the story of this image. First I saw it in a bookstore, then a friend sent it as a postcard to me, then I began to see the same phrase spray-painted around the city. First I read it as sort of Rodney Dangerfield bit. You know—“What’s a guy gotta do to get some love?” Then, a depressive cry— “Where is the love in this forsaken world?!” Finally, as the phrase kept showing up, I recognized it as a clue in a mystical scavenger hunt.

For I’ve had my fair share of hard times, and in my personal life it’s sometimes made me hard on myself and others. Even a little cynical for a professional intuitive. But as this phrase “where is the love?” appeared to me again, again, again, I realized it wasn’t asking me to ignore the grief, manipulation, greed, injustice I saw in the world. It was simply inviting me to also look for the love. To recognize the transpersonal compassion that is as elemental as gravity. The kindness that stubbornly flourishes like a weed in a sidewalk crack.

The more I looked for this love, the more I saw it—in the parks, in a stray cat’s trust, in the generosity of a child, in a friend’s patience with my vanities, in the movies I reviewed, in the river’s steady flow, even in the most annoying behavior of strangers and loved ones. Certainly I saw it in the enormous kindness you showed when my back injury immobilized me so thoroughly. And the more I was able to see this love, the more I was able to serve it.

Most of us have never before lived through such a period of instability and uncertainly. We have no idea what will happen next nor how it will end. But I do know that when we privilege love as a labor, an economy, a value, and as a guiding force, a utopia is as likely an outcome as a dystopia. Yes, even now. So I invite you to joining me in answering: Where is the love? Today my answer is: You, in your grace, resourcefulness, gorgeous imperfections.

May you shine in the light of this new year.

To chart your 2022, book an intuitive reading. I’m here when you need me.

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