I’m not minding how lazy the sun is this time of year. It gives me an excuse to wake a little less aggressively. This morning, I slept until 6:30—nuts in my book—and only rose then because Grace took matters in her own paws and woke me herself. Lest you think she was mean about it, “waking me” means she settled softly into my chest and patted me softly on the cheek. Continue Reading →
Archive | Music Matters
23rd Street Explosion, Magic Rock Revolver
I was already asleep when news of the explosion hit the wires. Being intuitively conflict-avoidant, a sense of impending doom sent me to Poughkeepsie the day before September 11, 2001; to an Oklahoma campground the week of the 2003 blackout; up the East Williamsburg hill while Hurricane Sandy crashed elsewhere in Brooklyn and Queens. I felt those disturbances in the force anyway, though, and I feel this now. It’s what pulled me awake at 4:45 this morning, early even for me.
In the darkness I made coffee and prayed for the 29 injured by the 23rd street bomb. Then, clad in slippers and the caftan I rarely wear outside the house, I hopped into magic car Minerva and zoomed over the Williamsburg Bridge still lit up against the night sky. (The sun is so lazy this time of year.) As I drove, I wondered at the rush of energy I was feeling. Was it dissociation? Despair? No, I said loudly, and turned on the Beatles’ Revolver, which had been playing in my head since I’d woken up.
Your day breaks, your mind aches
You find that all the words of kindness linger on Continue Reading →
Never Say Goodbye: Sweet MJ Forever
Today would have been Michael Jackson’s fifty-eighth birthday, and he’s been on my brain since I woke. Diana Ross fell in love with him on first sight and so did I, fell for those big eyes beneath big fros long before either of us hit puberty. I adored him in the Jackson 5, emulated his Thriller moonwalk every day afterschool at my best friend Ansie’s. Listened to Off the Wall a ton when I started to have good sex in my twenties—even more when I learned to love in my thirties. Continue Reading →