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Gauchos Make the Heart Grow Gladder

April 2, 2016 in Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Feminist Matters, Past Matters, Style Matters

Yesterday I read something that described this run of weather we’ve been having in New York as “sprintertime.” It’s an inelegant phrase but accurate just the same: Cold rains, colder winds, and then bright, emotionally distant sunshine. If it suits me fine just now it’s because I’m in the midst of a run of work that’s equally inhospitable. Add in taxes and death–so predictable!–and I’ve become a dreary Dora.

What’s kept me going besides my permakitten joyously galloping around the apartment (she adores these big breezes) is what’s kept me going for an embarrassing swath of my life: the promise of fashion. As a person who works and lives alone and has been trying in recent years to date fewer fuckwits, I do not have as many opportunities for gorgeous dresses as I once did. Most days I wear a caftan until I have to duck out for supplies or a screening. But I study clothes the way my friends with gardens study seed catalogues. Wearable art, candy for the body, uniforms for other, more glamorous lives: As an admirer of beauty not to mention spies, I’ve been fascinated by fashion my whole life. Continue Reading →

A Few Notes from the Psychic Underground

March 29, 2016 in Film Matters, Past Matters, Quoth the Raving, Ruby Intuition, Theater Matters

Generally speaking, I don’t tell anyone I meet in person that I am an intuitive. I may talk about it more than I used to—I have an intuitive practice, after all—but I find that owning up to this skill means I have to contend with everyone’s feelings and theories about psychic phenomena, not to mention allow them to feel superior to me. Often people begin to testify about their own experiences that defy regular logic, as if they are throwing me a bone or sharing a dirty secret. Sometimes they actually ask, “If you’re so psychic, what am I thinking right now?” I try to be patient, I really do. But though these people may not mean any harm, what they are discussing in essence is whether I am full of shit and whether the very concept of psychic phenomena is also full of shit. Believe me or don’t, I want to say. It gives me more of an edge if you don’t. Continue Reading →

Hexed and Hacked

March 13, 2016 in Essays, Past Matters, Quoth the Raving, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

Screen Shot 2016-03-13 at 10.02.54 PMIt started with a pair of heels clicking down the hallway of a dream.

I have a great grandmother I’ve never discussed here. She is a family legend and, like most family legends, a family shadow. She and I were never alive at the same time but she looks out for me like no one in my line but my mother’s mother Alice May, who died when I was 18.

This great-grandmother’s name was Rubenfire, which I learned long after I named my now-deceased kitty Ruby. Growing up I was only told that she was a very cruel woman who’d made a small fortune selling rags. Later I learned she was brave, charismatic, and resourceful, and that when she’d arrived here from Poland as a non-English-speaking teen, she’d done the only thing she could to support her children upon discovering her husband had started a new family in Brooklyn: She turned tricks, and eventually became a successful brothel owner in the Salem area of Massachusetts. Continue Reading →

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