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Mercury Retrogrades, So Do We

July 7, 2019 in Astro Matters, Cat Lady Matters, City Matters, Food Matters, Spirit Matters

Mercury went retrograde today, and immediately I went off-plan. All set for a quiet night with a fillet of trout and a certain permakitten, I was invited last-minute to the sumptuous Lilia Ristorante and–well, mama didn’t raise no fool.

As we were mawing mint artichokes, my companion said, “Isn’t Mercury always in retrograde?” and I replied that though technically the planet of modernity (communication, travel, multitasking) only goes retrograde every three months, it happens a lot to force us to unplug. In other words, when it starts moving backward, it’s kairos, or soul time, rather than chronos, or linear time.

The usual caveats apply–namely, back everything up and don’t stay attached to business as usual. Also keep cold hard cash around; banks and digital resources may get especially funked up . Since this retrograde is happening mostly in the sign of Cancer during an eclipse season that’s bopping between Cancer and Capricorn (the mom and dad of the zodiac, respectively), the big issue on the table is protection and nurturing–how do we take care of ourselves and others, how can we do better? I’m not talking “radical self-care,” an eye-roller of a term if ever there were one. I’m talking about investing in the crucial collaborations of our lives–releasing past traumas that block us from being fully present with others, embracing present alliances that can transform us into future champions. No one is pretending this month will be status quo, but so long as you take it slow, its long-term effect should be fabulous. Just remember to–wait for it!–go with the flow.

Mercury retrogrades are brilliant for tuning into the cosmos; schedule a Ruby Intuition session this month!

Land of the Phoenix

July 4, 2019 in Country Matters, Spirit Matters

I used to say I loved our country’s central values of social justice and equality, that we just needed to heal our old wounds. But with concentration camps caging children on our stolen, poisoned soil–soil first tilled by people brought here in chains–there’s no faking the funk this year. It’s time to admit America has a broken, bloody core.

Even at its inception, U.S. independence was won for a select few at the great expense of many others. Today, a fascist in the White House celebrates that event by parading for a select few at the great expense of many others. Born under the sign of Cancer, these allegedly United States are functioning like a cancer, with greed, capitalism, and unfounded entitlement destroying basic human rights, not to mention the air we breathe. Fuck firecrackers, I’m thinking pyres.

Notes on Pride, Luck, Lasses with Glasses

June 30, 2019 in City Matters, Essays, Queer Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

It will surprise no one who reads me that after finishing a film lecture upstate today I couldn’t bring myself to rush back to the city for Pride. Not because I don’t love my LGBTQ+ community but because I am incapable of abandoning a quiet green place for a crowded concrete one–at least before saying hi to every tree and bird in a two-mile radius.

So I sat by a lake and thought about luck once again. How unlucky we are to be living in the last few years of an environment that can functionally feed and hydrate and shelter us–or maybe how lucky we are to still have it today, given our abuse. How unlucky we are to be living under an administration that so brutally upholds capitalismcolonialismcockocracy–or maybe how lucky we’re finally forced to confront our country’s core of capitalismcolonialismcockocracy. How unlucky we are that so many queer community members–especially the gender-nonconforming–face mortal danger but how lucky that so many young people feel free to claim their sexuality given that when my generation was coming up, teachers were fired just for being gay.

And then there’s the personal stuff. How just yesterday I’d run into that stranger called my life for the first time in years only a few days after we’d messaged for the first time in years. And how a friend of K’s–a guy who helped me this dreadful spring for no reason except his general kindness–took suddenly, gravely ill.

The list goes on and on and woven into each item is our connecting karma, the Indra’s Net cradling each of us in its spidery, silvery arms.

I meditated on this for a while, sending everybody, and I do mean everybody, bright white light. Then, no joke, a gull came along and took a white bright dump on my blanket. It was the classic luck, schmuck conclusion, and I had to laugh.

But upon standing I saw a pair of glasses in the grass alongside me. Technically the abandoned lenses must have been there all along but of course I only noticed as I was feeling like I’d figured itall out. I only noticed the second pair–a half pair, really–on the curb as I returned to my car.

It’s like James Brown had hurdled back onto the planet in big preacherly robes hollering DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT? DO YOU SEE THE LIGHT? while Jake and Ellwood did sloppy somersaults and a very young Chaka Khan squirmed in ecstasy. Because, YES I SEE THE LIGHT AND THANKS FOR THE CORRECTIVE LENSES but also maybe I’M STILL NOT SEEING EVERYTHING I SHOULD!?

Gods and goddesses, send as many visions as you can.

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