Archive | Country Matters
A Few Notes on Middle Age and Sex
I don’t mind middle age, but I mind everyone’s archaic attitudes about it, especially when it comes to attractiveness.
The truth—rarely uttered, but unavoidably true—is that we are young for a far shorter time than we are not, and almost without exception we are assholes during this very fleeting period.
Which is all to say: I refuse to smile when told, “Wow, you don’t look 50,” as if it’s the ultimate compliment. I refuse to play nice when I’m called a cougar for snogging a 25-year-old. And I really refuse to make self-deprecating jokes about my age the way others do, perhaps because they have children so are inured to insults about their age. America so fetishizes youth—to our peril, since the result is a bunch of maskless bozos who insist on civil liberties without civic responsibility—that it licenses a toxic desexualization of the not-young, especially of women. Put simply, I reject the rejection. Continue Reading →
Tarot Lesson: The Hermit Card
In every one of my readings over the last week, I have drawn the Hermit. Typically this card is met by a scowl or a sigh from clients, and I understand why. Just its name evokes an enforced period of isolation, even a banishment—a feeling that’s all too familiar by Month 6 of Quarantime. But while few want the Hermit in the position of, say, future love, it generally receives as unfair a rap as Virgo, the sign it represents.
Really, both represent the divine inner teacher. Yes, to connect to such an energy we must withdraw from quotidian life—but only so we can activate our unique wisdom, the voice we can’t hear until all other chatter and clatter subsides. I believe the reason this card has been so prevalent is that the world has finally slowed down enough for us to hear and heed our highest selves, what some call the soul. Thus we are finally drawing on timeless resources that were not valued in our pre-Covid culture—namely, patience, wisdom (rather than wits), and universal compassion. So while my clients groan, I smile. And then I explain. Slowly….
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