Archive | Ruby Intuition

The Longest Sentence, the Creature Comforts

Five Ruby Intuition readings today and now I’m sprawled in a grateful slump across my divan with a certain permakitten’s limbs akimbo, watching Soderbergh’s sunshine noir The Limey while mawing my favorite secret single meal– a blue bowl of fettuccine with home-made mint-ramp-basil-parsley pesto, zest lemon, and greenmarket pea shoots, romaine, and spinach with melted mozzarella, grated parmesan, and fancy Fairway tuna shared, of course, with Grace.

Do not ask me why the bowl has to be blue but my delight plummets when it is not. And tonight I require creature-comfort delight because I’m not feeling great. A member of my family died this week, I’m making big changes behind the curtain I rarely draw back on this platform, and my body is registering all these shifts. Complaining, if you want to know the truth.

So I’m just taking it easy, basking in Terrence Stamp’s cockney rhyming slang and my pregnantladypalate. And of course the sweet soft stripes of Grace’s supermodel paws. The sky is steel, the wind too. Even Soderbergh’s Stamp is melancholy steel. But here in this moment my familiar and I are happily ensconced if not exactly happy.

And thus kicks off what promises to be one of the most oddbot Memorial Day Weekends ever. Not unpleasant, I’m guessing. Just: oddbot. Fitting for a middle-aged medium poised at the beginning of the end.

Also the end of the beginning.

Astro PSA: Moon in Gemini

Did you hear? Tomorrow at 9:36 am EST, we’ll be graced by a new moon in Chatty Cathy Gemini. Since the Sun and Venus is also in this sign, cue communication galore. Gemini can seem ungrounded but that’s only because, governed by Mercury, she’s all about delivery systems. Rest assured that, while the moon is trining retrograded Saturn, she’s as grounded as can be; a trine is a happy, productive connection between two planets and Saturn aims to stabilize us above all else. Still, expect tons of extra information in all areas of life. While most of us are sheltering in place, this can be dizzying but also super-fun. Think pranks, wordplay, new ideas, and declarations of love and ambition. So take a little time between now and tomorrow morning to list what you most want to express–and to whom. I guarantee this new moon will facilitate the most delightful exchanges!

To schedule a reading for yourself or a loved one, book here.

My Corner of the Sky Inside

It was a beautiful morning full of the bittersweet longing that defines middle-age, regardless of whether you’re coupled up, family’d up, quarantined up. I woke before the sun, made strong French-press coffee with cream, finished reading my detective novel before springing into the day. Maneuvered mini-car Minerva over the bridge to pretty-pretty John Lindsay park from which I walked miles and miles up the Manhattan side of the East River–steering clear of the runners (oy vey), nodding at all my fellow masked travelers. On a patch of waterfront grass as far from the madding crowd as you can find on a NYC morning, I flopped down to pray and meditate and swan in soft unkempt sun. Only a particularly curious squirrel crept up, and she kept a respectful distance as I pulled down my mask and breathed in big big air. By then it was 9 am so I cruised over to the Tompkins Square greenmarket to fetch gorgeous spring produce (strawberries! ramps! mint! pea shoots!) and mediocre peonies (even mediocre peonies are peonies) before scooting home, Roberta Flack pouring out of the speakers. Back home I baked skillet cornbread and pickled watermelon radishes while jabbering on the phone with a friend about a disappointing love.

From a corner permakitten watched through greenly slitted eyes–judging my backsliding as only a feline can judge.

Now it’s midday and I’m already worn out and at loose ends. That’s not pandemic. That’s the sadness that finds us in all the places quotidian pleasures can’t reach. You know: those corners we just don’t feel held. Come mid-life, only the foolish believe those corners fully disappear.

So, dear ones, no nonchurchy church this afternoon. This is a day for reception rather than inception–for rest rather than rigor and wonder even when you can’t wander. Mary Oliver wrote: “My job is loving the world.” It’s all of our jobs, really. Love up your corner of the sky today. I suspect I’m poised for a three-hour nap and a to-go tequila cocktail. Then next Sunday (5/24) we’ll Sky-Inside together. Mark those calendars: (5/24) at 1pm on Rubyintuitionbk IG Live.

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