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The Other America of ‘Stray Dog’

July 3, 2015 in Country Matters, Film Matters, Reviews

“Stray Dog” is a quietly extraordinary documentary about American life today. Like director Debra Granik’s last feature, the 2010 Oscar-nominated indie “Winter’s Bone,” it is set in a financially challenged rural Missouri community, and its titular character is the appropriately nicknamed Ron “Stray Dog” Hall, a biker and Vietnam veteran who is as grizzled as he is unfailingly open-hearted. When we first meet the pot-bellied sixtysomething, he’s decked out in leather, tattoos, and stars-and-stripes patches, and is smoking and sharing moonshine with his war buddies. That’s about the extent to which he and his clan conform to coastal stereotypes about the Heartland poor, a demographic this film investigates with a plainspoken generosity that mirrors its protagonist. Continue Reading →

Lost…and Found?

June 30, 2015 in City Matters, Past Matters, Spirit Matters

For the first time since September 13, 2001–two days after New York City and I changed forever–I lost my wallet today. The circumstances of the two disappearances were so similar: The losses (or thefts, I’m not sure which) both took place on the L Train between 1st Ave and Williamsburg when I was already emotionally devastated; I even reported them at the same MTA police station. What’s weirder is I’d just replaced my wallet for the first time since I’d replaced the one lost in 2001. Not to mention that my car–which I got on September 6, 2001–has been dying this month and I’ve been gathering the resources to buy a new one.

I’m trying to sort out the significance of these events because I know there’s lemonade in this story, and I’m determined to drink it. (All insights welcome.) For one thing, I tend to view lost possessions as the equivalent of the “death” card in the tarot deck–symbols of upheaval, harbingers of life-defining shifts. So these losses feels especially meaningful, as if I’m shedding a host of identities that no longer apply. For the love of Pete, I literally lost my identity cards. All this jibes with the enormous changes I’ve been courting since my back injury impelled me to seek new levels of healing, communion, insight. Certainly it’s true that, unlike the helpless girl I was 14 years ago, today I played Damsel in Distress to no one–didn’t cry or alert loved ones until I’d cancelled cards, called the bank, gathered my composure. I even had a backup driver’s license and bank card at the ready in my home office. Also new: The cops were much, much hotter than I remembered them.

The Church of Frittatas and Freedom

June 28, 2015 in Cat Lady Matters, Church Matters, Country Matters, Feminist Matters, Food Matters

I got up at 5 am–the monk hour, the high priestess hour–and meditated, Gracie creeping quietly into my lotus position as we breathed in the morning’s sweet, post-rain cool drifting through the open window. Opened to light and sent it down my spine, everywhere I sensed darkness. Then, armed with strong French press coffee and heated cream, I began a new notebook as I have countless times since I was a little girl. So much happened in this last week: so much tsuris, so much joy, so many breakthroughs. I wrote into all of it and began to chart a course about where to go from here. Finally I stood and did what I’ve been doing ever since I became a grownup: I tied on an apron, pulled greenmarket booty out of my refrigerator, and began to cook my way out of the confusion. I diced spring onions, kale, red potatoes, mushrooms; sauteed them with fresh corn and thyme and olive oil in my old cast iron pan. Grated asiago cheese. Beat eggs with sea salt and cracked black pepper. Poured them over the vegetables and slid the mixture into the heated oven. Cleaned my kitchen; sang a little bit and then a lot. (Sorry, neighbors.) When the holy frittata cooled, I sliced a piece onto my favorite vintage plate, climbed on the fire escape, and toasted this Sunday morning with a fork, my quiet cat once again by my side.

This is my life today. It could be worse. It could be better. It will be both at different points in the future just as it has been in the past. But it is fully mine, and I worked hard to ensure this could be so, and I do not forget that. I celebrate that our government now legally upholds same-sex partnership just as I celebrate my right, so new in the history of humankind, to live independently as a woman.  In this moment–as in all moments of true spiritual communion–I am grateful to be grateful.

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