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Love in the Time of COVID-19

March 15, 2020 in Age Matters, City Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

I had this really beautiful Wednesday where I saw long-lost friends everywhere—some on purpose, some roaming around the neighborhood, even a few from whom I’d been estranged for what reads now as absolutely small potatoes. Case in point: K, the Legend, and I had a perfectly cordial coffee at Oslo–something I couldn’t have imagined three months ago. Three weeks ago.

Overall the vibe was so terrifyingly end-of-the world, like everyone was making peace and exchanging IRL love before the COVID-19 anvil could come down for good. Even the pretty mild sunshine reminded me of the absolutely perfect weather of the morning of 9-11-01, right before the towers fell and people I loved died along with a trust I hadn’t known I’d taken for granted.

By Thursday, the vibe had changed enormously. In crowded grocery and drug store aisles, shoppers anxiously stuffed nonperishables into newly (and ironically) non-plastic bags. Some wore gloves, masks, hunched shoulders. Others stalked about in shorts and tee shirts, plenty of flesh exposed and eyes plenty guarded. By 8:30am lines were endless–snaking around city blocks, up and down stairwells. At Whole Foods I raised my eyebrows at a woman who looked more like me than anyone I’d ever met–long, broad bones; wide slash of a mouth; green eyes defined by bemusement and half-brows. It turned out she also was of Polish descent, only her family had come over in the 1990s, not the 1930s. Continue Reading →

Now We Must Listen

March 3, 2020 in Astro Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters, Weather Matters

Here in the last stretch of Mercury Retrograde, which officially ends March 10, we are mere weeks from Ostara (March 19)–the astrological new year as well as the beginning of spring, glorious spring. During this quiet nascent time, the line between death and life is as blurred as the line between winter and spring. Notice it in the stirring of the air, suddenly fresher, suddenly sweeter; in the quality and length of daylight; and at dusk–magic hour, my favorite hour, when we are held by everything to come as well as what’s come before.

It is as Alexander McCall Smith writes: The voices of the dead—you can hear them still, if you listen hard enough. Late people talking, like children after lights-out: the faint, distant voices of our ancestors.Now is not the time to act. It is the time to listen–to the earth, to the ancestors, to each other. For any true-soul guidance in these dark times.

March into the Future, Bird by Bird

March 1, 2020 in Quoth the Raving, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

I’ve learned that there will always be a next time, and that I will submerge in darkness and misery, but that I won’t stay submerged. And each time something has been learned under the waters; something has been gained; and a new kind of love has grown.—Madeleine L’Engle

Hello March! Sometimes, especially in the dreary last days of winter, my clients want to hear about a future that is magically better than their present. It’s human nature to crave a “Santa Clause.” But the truth is that our lives are a mixture of fate and free will—-the culmination of our choices in the face of factors beyond our control.

And entropy is change, too. To avoid it we must work our problems as we sow seeds and till fields. Sun rises, sun sets, but only when we consciously channel its light do we grow something from our shit. This is practical magic at its core–change we manifest rather than passively await and observe. This is love as a verb. This is the self-reckoning that is the foundation of radical self-care.

How I can help is to divine a path on which you thrive—-marching bravely forward (bird by bird step by step) into a future conjured with the good wind of the universe on your back.

To find a path of your own, get in touch. Art (left-right); Jacob Lawrence, Horace Pippen.

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