As we move through this first week of a new year and await the results of the pivotal senate races in Georgia and Trump’s last-ditch coup attempt, I’m reminded that even when change feels too slow—or nonexistent!—it’s unfolding as it should.
In fact, change is the only true constant, and what we’re doing is impactful even when we feel isolated, ill, ineffective—thoroughly thoroughly irritated. All we ever have to do is our best, and sometimes all our best entails is breathing in, breathing out. As my teacher, the wonderful beat writer Hettie Jones, used to say: “Are you breathing, are you lucky enough?”
Sometimes breathing is miracle enough.
I don’t think I’d be feeling so sanguine if I hadn’t stumbled upon this exchange after I posted yesterday. Sanguine is actually a terrible pun, for it’s from Only Lovers Left Alive, Jim Jarmusch’s wondrous 2014 meditation on science, art, and time masquerading as a vampire film, of all things. In it, Tilda Swinton counsels depressive spouse Tom Hiddleston, who’s considering offing himself after centuries of ennui:
How can you have lived for so long and still not get it? This self-obsession is a waste of living. It could be spent surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing.
Oh, how this struck a chord. Even at at my lowest, I’m so grateful for so much. For Grace, friends, lovers, teachers, healers, clients. For all the ways you’ve seen and supported me over these hard times. For shelter, sea, sunshine, seasons, happy synchronicities, art–especially art that inspires this gratitude.
We’ll abide, we always do, and in the meantime it’s okay to surrender to this sad stillness. The best part of us knows beautiful change lives behind it. Just: breathe.
The true definition of inspire? To breathe life in.
This is a grinchy post about my neighbors. In this post, I am the grinch, for my across-the-hall neighbors are cheerful, well-intentioned 20somethings who are wildly in love, living their best life, and never anything but polite and helpful. They have carried out my garbage and carried up groceries and even taken my bulky air conditioners out of the window while my back has been in arrears. I am grateful to them, and have made sure they know. Unfortunately, they are also the loudest freaking neighbors I have ever had. Not to speak in terms of demographics, but he was born in Italy and she was born in Israel and those are two of the loudest human populations ever ever ever.*
These two talk loudly, move loudly, listen to music and television loudly, and have sex loudly (and authentically, thank god; there’s little worse than audibly faked pleasure). Would you believe they even eat loudly? Yes, you read that right. Through the wall we share I actually have heard them chew and swallow. Even permakitten Grace was startled, then appalled. And o my: I cannot tell you many times I have been jarred awake by peals of delighted laughter or the sounds of elephants bowling, aka them walking.
I stir from my recent blog slumber to herald’s today’s solar eclipse—taking place on the fifth day of Hanukkah, no less. Hanukkah is the Jewish festival of light in the darkness, of right trumping might against all odds. And solar eclipses occur when a new moon blocks out the sun’s light to reveal our personal energy resources. This solar eclipse in particular is on the South Node of Destiny in Sagittarius, which means something momentous is ending to make room for something even bigger. So it is no coincidence—nothing ever is!—that today the Electoral College officially declared Joseph Biden the new president-elect despite the many, many efforts to steal this election from the American people. And that today Sandra Lindsay, a New York ICU nurse, was the first American outside of a trial to receive the Covid-19 vaccine. Because today is an enormous turning point.
We may have felt all year that we were just stumbling blindly but today shows us that a lit path will materialize so long as we have the faith and courage to move forward in the dark. Truly, today is about the essence of miracles—which, really, are the marriage of willingness and will. So tonight hug whomever you can hug—your loved ones if you’re lucky enough to share space with them, your pets, yourself. And then go to bed as early as you like. Because you know what, babies? We have earned our rest. Love and light to all.
Pictured here: Dr. Michelle Chester administering vaccine to Sandra Lindsay. Photo by Scott Heins for the Office of Governor Cuomo, doctored by yours truly.
As we move through this first week of a new year and await the results of the pivotal senate races in Georgia and Trump’s last-ditch coup attempt, I’m reminded that even when change feels too slow—or nonexistent!—it’s unfolding as it should.
