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Dispatch from the Bench

June 22, 2019 in City Matters, Etiquette Matters, Spirit Matters

I love best the people who love what is unlike themselves.* I love the small woman being tugged down the street by her huge wilderbeest of a dog, the two men walking hand-in-hand whom you wouldn’t have placed in the same multiverse, the mother embracing her anomaly of a child. Always the friendships of Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart, Mark Twain and Helen Keller, Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell. That Marilyn loved Ella, that Joni loved Prince and Prince loved Joni, that everyone loves the glorious alien Tilda Swinton.

I love those who love who others are, rather than how they reflect themselves. I love the love that says I see your spark and am honored to keep it ignited. Like may seek like, but love in its purest form seeks no mirror and carries no conditions. It simply shines.

*Does this mean such people are unlike me? I’m ill-prepared for such a philosophical conundrum except to say I love everyone from the periphery of the madding crowd.

Teach Me Tonight (NSFW, O My)

May 20, 2019 in Age Matters, Essays, Etiquette Matters, Feminist Matters, Music Matters, Queer Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

I’ve been trying to figure out who to sleep with next–really, who to be attracted to. As if we have control in that department.

I always tell my Ruby Intuition clients the best you can hope for is a version 2.0 of what’s erotically imprinted on you. I’ve seen those relationships borne out of someone stubbornly trying Not to Date Mom or Dad and, boy o boy, the no-sex vibe is stronger than Prince’s pheromones are even now.

Strong.

As usual, my shrink has useful advice. She says, “The minute you get that Child feeling, get out.” She means that when I get that desperate, pay-attention-to-me-daddy! feeling around a paramour, I should cut it off. Because once again I have fallen for a charismatic narcissist who would rather drown me in their black hole than make our dynamics about anything other than their ego. Continue Reading →

Skinny and Number-Sixed: 2019 Orthorexia

May 18, 2019 in Age Matters, Book Matters, Essays, Etiquette Matters, Feminist Matters, Style Matters

Recently I was in a room of women who did not eat carbohydrates.

I am exaggerating, of course. I am sure they occasionally ate things like sprouted quinoa in bowls filled with other expensive elements meant to extend their lives by weeks or even months.

That is, if they didn’t choke on their own bile first.

Because these women were unhappy. They were rich women and they were white women and they were women my age. I kept having to remind myself they were my age, because they looked both older and younger than me. Their skin radiated a glow that mine only achieves about an hour after I work out–but really it was a sort of florescent, dangerous glow that spoke of misplaced determination. Their hair also spoke of that determination. It was very actively Not Grey, but not with the generic beige which less clever or moneyed women slap on grey hair. No, their hair was like a trip to the Grand Canyon or South Dakota’s Badlands–compelling flowing layers ranging from gold to burnt sienna–waves of sediment, not sea. Continue Reading →

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