Magic hour in green.
I cannot pretend returning to NYC after my upstate tenure has been easy. Not because of the weather, which, for the most part, has been ridiculously lovely–the sort of halcyon temperatures we New Yorkers associate with mid-September. With September 11, not to put too fine a point on it.
Certainly the existential dread connected to the events of that day is not helping. Like so many long-time New Yorkers, my personal relationship to September 11 only deepens the horror of how it irrevocably changed this city and country forever. Every year, just as the weather gets gloriously crisp and clear, sadness creeps in before I remember why.
But I think this dread is about something more.
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It took a good four days of being in the country for me to lose the bad bruja vibes that had been short-circuiting my car and relationships all summer. (Both Daisy and Grace registered the bad vibes, the former landing in the vet hospital.) Only on the fifth day did Columbia County’s big, big green smooth me out.
Green, not coincidentally, being the color of my grandmother’s heart.
I’ve been thinking about Alice May a lot lately. My mother’s mother, her birthday was last month. She crowns my book–the whole last section is about her, about how the regret she expressed in her last days catapulted me into my true life.
Green was Alice’s absolute favorite color. She said that it was the color of life and love. Only when I began taking my work as an intuitive seriously did I learn that green was considered the color of the fourth chakra–the heart chakra.
As was so often the case, my grandmother’s leonine instincts were spot-on. It was she who, in the 1950s, determined that her sons were not dumb but dyslexic, a disorder that was far less recognized than it is today. It was she who understood that I had to get the hell out of dodge if I were to live the life I was meant to live. The life she’d once wanted for herself.
So I left home upon high school graduation, and with the exception of a few months after my first year of college, never spent another night under my parent’s roof. Never felt like I was anyone’s child again.
But then again, I’ve never felt safe. Never have, possibly never will. Continue Reading →
