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When Time and I Collide

January 31, 2016 in Astro Matters, City Matters, Essays, Music Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

With my Sunday supper bubbling in the oven, I guess it’s time to call it: I crashed into walls the entire weekend. Yesterday I wrote and read and forgot everything I remembered. On the way to dinner, I ran into two different friends and couldn’t recall their names or even how I knew them. Today I went to Meg to fetch a pair of pants I’d specially ordered and realized they simply weren’t for me. I ran for the ferry only to arrive as it was pulling away from the dock. I left my bag at the 1st Avenue L stop, and dashed back from Brooklyn just in time to catch two guys rifling through it across the platform. “Gentlemen!” I called across the divide. “Do you mind watching my bag until I can get back to your side?” They pointedly looked away when I arrived in front of them, red-faced and panting with my hand outstretched, but handed it over.

It didn’t matter, any of it. I got home in time to make the lasagna I’d planned. I eventually remembered who my friends were. And my bag still contained the purple scarf I made the winter I couldn’t stop knitting, the long fingerless gloves that make me feel like Jo March, the notes from today’s session with brilliant astrologer and general wise lady Virginia Bell. Continue Reading →

Watching You, Watching Me

January 27, 2016 in Art Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

I woke with this painting by Egon Schiele in my mind’s eye, and as the morning has progressed I keep flashing on it. I’m not sure why, except that in this image lurks the conscious vulnerability that I need in order to move forward in every area of my life. This woman is subject. She is object. She is cagy. She is direct. She is erotic. She is uninviting. She is masculine. She is feminine. She is strong. She is susceptible. She is ugly. She is beautiful. She is tired. And she is engaged. January 2016 is turning out to be a bracingly interstitial month, one that calls for patron saints who aren’t pure so much as they are powerful. This violet-and-crimson-tipped sour puss just about fits the bill.

The Arithmetic of Snow

January 23, 2016 in Astro Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Essays, Feminist Matters, Ruby Intuition, Weather Matters

Here on the East Coast we are in the midst of a good old-fashioned blizzard. I’m not sure if that’s the official word but the snow has been coming down for 15 hours; the sidewalk, stoops and street outside my apartment are covered in two feet of snow; and everything and everybody has been cancelled. That’s a blizzard even to this Masshole. (I’ve lived in Brooklyn for 23 years but once a Masshole, always a Masshole.)

I’m been the queen of preparation this round. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about living alone, it’s that gender coding is an ill-advised luxury; when you have to cook, shovel, clean, and fix everything from hems to technology to radiators yourself, it’s a bad call to get the vapors or cry caveman. Bundled in a wearable sleeping bag, face mask, and two scarves, it’s impossible to tell whether someone is a man, woman, non-binary gender person, or a “Revenant” bear, anyway.

So yesterday after reading distressing weather reports, I headed over to Red Hook Fairway, where I bought enough food to stock my refrigerator and freezer for two weeks (which is how long it’ll probably be before I’m able to safely drive Minerva again). I bought wonderful things: thick pork chops, lamb, dried apricots, pistachios and pecans, crushed tomatoes, ricotta, extra virgin olive oil, thick Greek yogurt, a roasted chicken, challah bread, a jug of organic cream, rosemary, mint, kale, and copperhead salmon. My enthusiasm was only mildly hampered by the fact that, even at 9 am, the store was clotted by Park Slopers who didn’t feel it appropriate to reign in their free-spirited children as the rest of us tripped over them. Continue Reading →

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