If you’re feeling the way you normally do one minute before your period starts, or-for the menstrually un-endowed–the way you might after swilling a bottle of wine and watching tiny puppies hug tiny kittens right after listening to Trump’s State of the Union—then you are right on course. Because Pisces is all about feeling every feeling at once—feeling the entire universe at once—and this full moon, also known as the Corn Moon, is here for a big-kahuna emotional release. Happily, it’s happening in Virgo season, which can ground you as even as you collapse into a pile of tears, snot, and (if we’re lucky) more delightful bodily fluids. Even better? This full moon is happy to banish all that stands between you and your creative manifestation. Questions to ask: “Where do I land on the idealism-pragmatism spectrum, and how should I adjust that? How can I reshape my victim mentality (which we’ve all got in some area of our life) into compassion for myself and others?” Sounds like a lot of tasks? Well, babies, this full moon is going to be a lot anyway so you may as well lean in with some Virgo hard work. Just remember: Any ritual tonight should begin with an agreement to open to the loving energies that flow within and around you.
Archive | Spirit Matters
Redgrave as Metaphor
What happens when a materialist film critic has an anxiety dream:
Shoes—shoes lost, shoes gained, shoes lost. I’ve lost my own and don’t have another pair with which to safely exit this terrible claustrophobic party thrown by a celeb hostess in a gentrified section of Brooklyn. Others (the hostess’s assistant!) keep stealing my original pair, bringing me five more pairs that are impeccably beautiful and whisking them away as soon I get ensnared in another vapid starfucker conversation. We’re talking perfectly soft and shined loafers and boots by Prada, Miu Miu, Marc Jacobs, Louboutin—God, labels seem so pre-Covid. I find myself longing for such refined empty luxury.
Vanessa Redgrave—even longer and blonder and more displeased than she seems on screen—turns out to be the hostess. Grand-dame sociopathy masquerading as cool calm collection. She sweeps and droops around, getting drunker and drunker on perfectly rendered martinis–lemon not olive–as her guests wax and wane. At one point there are people crammed into every corner of her too-white house. Someone does the math and declares it 2012 guests, which is a 1:1 ratio for every square inch of the living room. White furniture white rugs white walls white chandeliers. Her house is hoarder-stuffed but with the most beautiful things: Chagall paintings and Brancusi sculptures and 70s Dior so it’s hard to register the same disdain as if it were plastic angels from Home Shopping Club. More a mixture of envy and disgust and judgment that I meta-judge within myself. I feel as if I’m a poor kid in Newton again. I’m stuck because, oy, no shoes so end up sleeping on a very white couch, my red lipstick leaving a crime scene on a cushion. Continue Reading →
Flaneuzy Days of Yore
I woke thinking about what I miss most about pre-Covid life. Every week it’s different but today I miss my old summer practice of slipping into movie theaters on Monday mornings to see the newest releases in delicious cool quiet surrounded only by other (cheap) cinephiles. I’d pay for one show, then sneak into another and then another and another before finally emerging into the still-sweltering early evening. Falling into step with all the other New Yorkers making their way to dinner and drinks and drama and doldrums–first by foot across town and then by ferry across the river and then again by foot up the Williamsburg hill. Floating in a blur of the films I’d just seen and the film of all the strangers with whom I was moving, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, all of us beautiful in our sweaty sullen noisy throng, framed by the rising steam and NYC skyline. O my god I miss the ordinary-extraordinary physical intimacy of anonymous city life.