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Aries Season Is Growing Season

Here in New York, this weekend’s weather promises to be cool and rainy—growing weather, my grandmother would have called it. These sort of weekends are ideal for the deep-root work that liberates us to bloom like the most fragrant peonies, the loveliest lilacs. In Aries Season, intuitive readings are led by our littlest selves— the parts of us who must be re-integrated into our daily lives if we’re to activate the practical magic that is our birthright. Some of these parts aren’t easy but it’s my honor as an intuitive to reflect how endearing they also are.

All nature is absolutely beautiful art and so are we.

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Just Deserts Are Best Eaten With Fangs

This is a story of just deserts and middle age and I am not necessarily endorsing the role I play.

Just now I ran into a guy who was a real thorn in my side pre-Pandemic. He lives next door in what I call Melrose Place, an apartment building mostly populated by young, Italian-born guys who work at the cafe on the first floor. The man in question is actually three weeks older than me, though before the Plague it wasn’t evident from his demeanor.

He had recently left his wife, also our age, because–and this is a direct quote–“she did not make him feel like a man.” This man’s wife made most of the money in their relationship from her excellent art direction and so, upon leaving her, he had been serving espressos next door along with all the other cute boys because, yes, I regret to inform you that this man was quite cute. Handsome, actually, in that mournful, big-nosed, big-pawed way of some Italian men. In fact, I confess that when this man first began to serve coffee next door I found him undeniably attractive. Given my parentage, it is not surprising that I confuse intense self-pity for intense soulfulness in a certain sort of good-looking person. Continue Reading →

The Gorgeous Weirdness of Easter

Easter is a weird holiday for me, as it no doubt is for many others. Growing up in Greater Boston with an aetheist Jewish father and a shiksa mother, the only people who thought I was Jewish were the gentiles. With the exception of my clan, the Jews of our town lived up on West Newton Hill–on the other side of the train tracks from my house; the right side, if you want the full metaphor. With my blond hair and messy small house I no more felt I belonged on the Hill than in my Irish-Italian neighborhood, known locally as the Lake.

During bar mitzvah season and the high holidays I was left out; on CCD Tuesdays (the Catholic kids’ equivalent of Sunday School) I was equally left out. But the worst was Easter, when Jews were blatantly maligned by the local priests, some of whom were later outed as pedophiles in the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation.

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