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The Space We Still Share

April 6, 2020 in City Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Etiquette Matters, Spirit Matters

Friends, we are all struggling no matter where we are. But I’m having a hard time with tone-deafness.

For the people in less-afflicted areas, I’m glad for your nature communion. Sorry you’re tiring of TV offerings and snack options and that your trip was cancelled. Mildly amused by memes about how your hygiene and health routines are suffering. Even glad for those who are embracing this time as an opportunity for “radical self care.”* But speaking as a New Yorker I can’t walk a block without stumbling over a homespun sidewalk memorial for a neighbor who was just felled or an ambulance whisking someone else away.

So many people I know are sick, people I love and admire in my immediate world. It all hurts, even the deaths of the people you didn’t especially care for. And then of course there’s the terror of your personal welfare. The fear of the many unemployed. The fear of our deplorably unprotected essential workers. Most New Yorkers have no safe outdoor space whatsoever and for those of us who don’t have a second home or family we can run to, what is happening in real time is unfathomable. Because for many of us there is no other place.

Either we were raised here or this city welcomed us outcasts and it was here that we finally found a home. We loved that we were all crowded together–in it together–even when we complained, and now that has been ripped from us though we’re still all crowded in the same place. Only now it’s not “crowded.” It’s “caged.” And I’m relatively lucky as a New Yorker. I have enough food in my fridge, savings to get me through a few more months, framily support.

I am not saying anyone should feel guilty, it’s a useless emotion. I am saying we should be careful about what we put out there. Especially while so many of us are sick and dying and grieving and losing everything we thought shored us.

Don’t abstract this trauma. Don’t expect “good vibes only” when some of us legitimately feel a roaring black hole of loss and rage and fear. Don’t expect us to be available for business as usual while our entire worlds are tumbling down around our heads.

I send love and I feel yours too. But we are all going to have to take it up a notch in terms of how we compassionately and consciously hear and tell our stories–me included. A new etiquette is required–a new social contract for these no-contact times–and we’re just going to have to fumble our way through. Patience is the new praxis.

All Around These Troubled Waters

February 28, 2020 in Age Matters, Art Matters, Astro Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Etiquette Matters, Feminist Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

I am sitting in the dining area at Fairway—a sort of greenhouse overlooking the Red Hook harbor—and I am trying not to cry. Correction: I am crying, but quietly, the way grown New Yorkers process very private emotions in the very public spaces where we spend most of our days.

I am feeling like yesterday’s lunch, which is ironic because I just polished off an enormous breakfast.

All around me waves are rising like Joni’s cold blue steel. It makes me feel held, these busy waters mirroring Joni. It also makes me feel lonely because only the world at large, strangers to whom I feel close, hold me right now.

This is Pisces season at its hardest.

Which is true, but also a cop-out, because this is just a hard time all around. This is Democrats-feasting-on-each-other-while-evil-oligarch-runs-us-into-the-ground time. This is virus time, frighteningly warm-winter time.

February’s last gasp is brutal. So is that of patriarchy.

And, yeah, I’m talking about the white supremacist capitalistic cockocratic dinosaurs poisoning our government, environment, media, fun. This is the longest dying gasp in history, and it’s killing us all.

All around my sorrow swims fury in these gloriously choppy waters. A fury on behalf of menopausal, perimenopausal, reproductive-age–damn it, all people who identify in any way as women. Also a fury toward the women who’ve swallowed so much shit they now feed it to others.

The fury I feel every time Warren’s “electability” is debated by the same couchside demographers who look the other way as her white male contenders scowl, browbeat, lie, fumigate, generally behave unlikeably. Just the body language of the debates makes me apoplectic. (It also rings more than a few bells in my professional life.)

The fury I felt last month when the architect next door fixed my armoire for a pound of flesh– swigging my wine for two hours while complaining about the wife he’d just left, bragging about the blue pills he takes to fuck women half our age. (It goes without saying his very decent ex is our age.)

Waggling his eyebrows as he said, “You must have been hot when you were young.” Continue Reading →

Pro Love Platform, Sure

February 14, 2020 in Book Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Etiquette Matters, Ruby Intuition, Sabboytical

Because I am mildly evil, I have stationed myself in the corner booth of my coffee shop so I can watch all the couples straggle in today, stooping under the immense pressure V Day exerts on hipster Williamsburg relationships. “Do we act above this? Do we embrace the traditions but, like, in a meta way? Do I find out if s/he/they likes me as more than a hookup?” Then there are older, more-established couples (read: smugmarrieds) whose grimly set mouths and shoulders betray their trepidation around this Hallmark holiday–you know, “Is this year he is hopelessly disappointed by my lack of a gesture though we assured each other we didn’t care about hearts and candy? Is this the year she is hopelessly disappointed by me in general?” Sure, this should just be a day celebrating love of all kinds but everyone knows the kind of expectations that get attached to anything that marries capitalism and romance. The tension in the air is so deliciously high as people order their americanos that I scarcely need caffeine at all! But seriously folks: I send love on this WTF day because, well, why in tarnation not?
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Seeking love insight during these topsy-turvy times? Book a reading, dolls.

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