Archive | Language Matters

This Is Really Happening

Do you hate when people tell you about their dreams? I don’t. I like hearing about them, and I like sharing mine. In this messed-up world, it’s the only time we talk about the divine unconscious, which is why dreams often offer an ideal entry point to my Ruby Intuition sessions. Goddess knows dreams reveal all.

Last night: A dream of tiny vicerous* teeth embedded in the diamond ring he once gave me; the nightmares always nightmares of other people owning my body because i am pregnant. i did not wish either state, either title. I did not wish to bear young nor be a mother. Nor did I wish to wed nor be a wife. Wife and mother, mother and wife: no thank you. I wished for writer, actor, woman of the world. And i knew by age 20 that it was a fancy of the wealthy–a fancy of the fancy, if you will–to believe that women did not have to choose …men butch people really didn’t but that’s because even in 2018 they were the exception to a golden rule if they made parenting their raison d’être. The miracle was they could choose at all and from an early age i knew my choice but did not own it until I was nearly the age I am as i write this. you are not living up to this calling, whisper the voices as i drift to the surface of consciousness. you must be of service not just nervous….

I wake with dread.

*a word my unconscious manufactured meaning “viciously, viciferously visceral.”

The Church of Carrie and Her Cat

Over the last month I’ve done so many readings in my space that the energy has gotten shall-we-say kerfuffly. (Yes, I made up that word; it’s absolutely necessary.) So after finishing this weekend’s readings I got the hell out of dodge. I fetched my groceries, worked out for the first time in a dog’s age, and took advantage of the pretty sunshine by visiting with various friends in neighborhoods all over the city. Basically I did the grown-up lady version of standing outside pals’ houses and screaming, “CAN ANGIE COME OUT AND PLAY, MRS. ANTONELLIS?” which is how we Boston kids used to arrange play dates back in the un-helicoptered 1970s. Continue Reading →

Use Your Words

Since November 9, I’ve been thinking nonstop about why I so hotly dislike GIFs, emojis–all the visual options that now exist in lieu of words. Essentially, all these visual codes train us to stop articulating ourselves–to rely on limited pre/post-literate symbols for self-expression rather than this handy, deeply nuanced system of symbols we’ve already developed called LANGUAGE. This mutation of expression is dangerous. Really dangerous. For the less we use our power of articulation, the less available it is to us. All muscles atrophy when not regularly deployed, and we are in a national crisis in which all our critical facilities are vital in order to resist fascism; we must be able to describe the beast if we are to defeat it.

To be clear, it’s not that I don’t appreciate the ease of emojis. I even use them sometimes, but I find that curtailing my impulse to do so forces me to be more deliberate about engagement. I tell myself: If you don’t have something real to say, don’t say anything.  Continue Reading →

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