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‘It’s a Sin’: AIDS as Generation Black Hole

March 1, 2021 in Age Matters, City Matters, Past Matters, Queer Matters, Reviews, TV Matters

I inhaled the HBO Max/Channel 4 AIDS dramatic mini-series It’s a Sin in one day and am still thinking about it.

As someone who was in ACT UP and moved to the West Village in the early 90s, AIDS is never off my radar. I’ll never forget my beautiful young friends who seemed like ghosts even before they died. I’ll never forget equating sex with death even before I lost my virginity.

The London-set series has charisma to spare–hip-strutting, head-strong boys; head-spinning montages; spot-on 80s and 90s set and costume design; catchphrases! But it spares no soundtrack cliches nor no 90s-era micro-aggression: witness its centralization of white characters; the lack of sex life for the sole female protagonist, who seems to exist solely to caretake men.

I resist the critique that It’s a Sin fast-forwards too quickly, though. While I was still in my teens, the transition from carefree club life and wanton fucking to hospitals, funerals, and activism took place in the blink of an eye. Gender/sexual harassment/trauma was so widespread it was background noise–something you white-knuckled through if you wanted an apartment, job, not to get beat to a pulp. Believe me. As someone who has often called out aberrant behavior—who confronted the landlord who stuck his tongue down my throat, who refused to work for the newspaper editor who licked his lips while asking if I had a boyfriend–my career and livelihood suffered mightily.

Gen X is too hard on Z/millennials, but we resent younger people’s assumption that we’re oblivious to trauma. My generation of queers just was swamped with too much macro-aggression–mass extinction and existential horror–to tackle micro. Oh how this show captures that giddy ghastly time.

Astro PSA: Full Moon in Virgo

February 27, 2021 in Astro Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

Clear out your schedule—at least emotionally—because today’s full moon takes place in Virgo. Often misunderstood as obsessive and controlling, Virgo is really about Divine Mother energy—purification, healing, and service. Coupled with Venus and Sun in Pisces (the other big healer of the Zodiac) and that no-joke Uranus-Saturn square invoking systemic changes, this is an ideal time to purify through trauma release techniques, meditation, prayer—and holistic cleaning products, if you’ve got them. Drink warm lemon water. Clear out a cabinet. Make a list of ways to practically demonstrate care. And take a a big, voluptuous bath. You may feel unusually antsy or experience a resurgence of plaguing physical and emotional symptoms over the next weeks, but rest assured it’s just a detox. The key is to go gently and methodically. It’s the Virgo way.
To clear obstacles and paths, book a reading .

Behind the Veil: On Fate and Free Will

February 19, 2021 in Astro Matters, Essays, Etiquette Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

Since I resumed my Ruby Intuition practice last week, I have been reminded of “the Future as Santa Claus” phenomenon. This is what I call a tendency to regard the future as both inevitable and preferable—an un-moveable entity that rescues us from our less than optimal realities. It’s an understandable tendency, especially during a time as inhospitable as the last 12 months. Everyone wants to know when and if something is definitely going to happen: Am I going to leave my apartment or job? Am I going to get married? Am I going to proper? Will I and my loved ones be healthy? These are wonderfully human questions. But the real answer, always, is: Maybe. As in: Nothing is 100 percent fated. As in: There’s no underestimating the shaggy, unpredictable, beautiful power of human free will.

You may ask: So why bother getting a reading? And that too is a wonderful question. My answer is that I can offer a Whether Report—the spiritual equivalent of whether you need an umbrella or extra sunblock on a given day. I can perceive what past, present, and future factors are entering and departing your life—-and offer tools to facilitate your best response. What I cannot tell for sure is how fully you will choose to meet these moments. That pesky “human free will” part is actually the most exquisite part of being alive.

I like to think of our experiences on this earth as spiritual GPS. Each of us is on a karmic highway (the Aretha Franklin song never written) and always has a choice about how to navigate it. Yes, there are certain lessons and blessings our souls sign on to encounter. But how we respond to them builds out our actual paths. If we resist these experiences–this flow, if you will–the Universe is just going to guide us into another version of them until we grow accordingly. Annoying, sure. But also: loving. It’s like a parent who plays ball with us every day until we finally learn to catch.

This is why we keep having versions of the same trauma until we heal the initial trauma (often in childhood). It’s also why we have the initial trauma, although I would never suggest that such pain is your fault or your doing. Instead, I’ve come to believe that everything that happens to us is an opportunity to feel the support and love of the Universe even when it is not giving us everything we want or like. Especially then, actually.

Yes, I have been gifted with a longer glimpse of the human timeline than most people. Most times I perceive key figures and facts of your past, present and immediate future even when I don’t wish to. I also have a strong sense of your physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges and strengths before I meet you. And, yes, if pushed, I can usually predict how things are going to go–but that’s because I am good at assessing how ready you and your loved ones are to self-reckon and self-actualize. Rest assured there’s no judgment either way. And that’s not what you really need.

The true joy and satisfaction of your life is contingent upon your meeting the Universe halfway–and the only person who can write that piece of the story is You. How I can serve is by holding a mirror to your best self so you may connect to that person through every curve life throws you.

I am honored to hold your hand when your youngest self is running the show and needs to be soothed by the long-term perspective that your daily self cannot provide. I am honored to tell you everything I see in the past, present, and future that I believe will serve your growth and happiness. But the greatest way I can serve you as an intuitive is by highlighting your highest, most heavenly form and the tools that help you embody that person in your daily life. That’s not just being supported by a divine energy. That’s living as part of a divine energy—and what is more beautiful that that?

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