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Astro PSA: Venus Retrograde Rage

October 6, 2018 in Astro Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Spirit Matters, Style Matters

For two days I dreamed that I caught a man in the act of stealing my wallet, phone, and keys—my identity, essentially— and that he was arrested and forced to return my possessions. These were triumphant, and triumphantly bald, dreams. Last night I dreamed someone stole my wallet—a pleasing, lemony yellow—and replaced it with a neon-green fannypack, neon green being one of the few shades I will never, ever embrace though I do in fact own such a horror. (It’s handy.) In the second part of the dream, I found a pair of denim jeans that elegantly nipped in my waist and made my ass a buttercup dream. I laid them aside for a pair of 90-style mom jeans that made my ass an endlessly flat expanse of Midwestern mall terrain.

Which is to say that, yes, Venus finally went retrograde yesterday. I’ve been whining about its shadow since early September, but only now is the planet really moving backward.  Lasting unofficially until the end of the year (officially it goes direct November 16), the retrograde is taking place in Scorpio, which imparts lessons about old wounds and hidden meanings, and Libra, which is ruled by Venus and thus a hot mess when mommy takes a breather. Continue Reading →

I’m Healing as Fast as I Can (Neon Sadness)

October 1, 2018 in Age Matters, City Matters, Essays, Queer Matters

The phrase had been blinking in my head all day like a neon sign. I saw it as I woke, it kept flashing as I wrote.

I think, I think, that you carry heartbreak until it carries you.

Don’t get me wrong. I worked on my book today as promised–1300 words, thank you very much. B even says they pass muster. Then I had therapy–can we say it simply ran its course? But when I came up for air, I felt sad knowing the Legend was back in the neighborhood and we no longer were in contact. Until this week we could just pretend we were just in different places, on different schedules.

Not different frequencies.

Just as I was starting to feel really rudderless, K pinged for coffee, so we met up and ran into a friend and then another and another, and the conversation kept bobbing along, one thread into another like that last luxuriant day of school in Dazed and Confused.

K is a legend in his own right. Continue Reading →

Enraged and Awake (Born in Flames)

September 28, 2018 in Country Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Spirit Matters

Yesterday’s senate hearings were like September 11. I was talking to people I hadn’t heard from in decades just to make sure we were all okay. A lot of us weren’t. I tried to focus on sending love and light to everyone as traumatized as I was.

To everyone who been hindered professionally by sexist men and preyed upon by male sexual predators. To everyone who had been manterrupted or mansplained. Who had been sexually assaulted or harassed. To everyone on whom the burden of proof had landed on us when they were already experiencing PTSD.

We were watching all this happen to a woman in real time and we wanted her to be ok–to achieve her goals not only because of what’s at stake in the Supreme Court, the body of law that dictates what happens to female bodies, but because our related wounds remain so profoundly unhealed.

How systemic is male privilege? How deeply is sexual assault built into our dating culture? How much denial are men in when they are perpetrators? Enough so that my most serious abuser was posting pious, good-liberal pablum about believing CBF as if he himself did not exhibit this sort of violence. And, of course, getting lots of atta-boys for his efforts. Continue Reading →

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