With Apologies to Nancy Pelosi
I hugged my permakitten. I ate a huge burger while poring over Susan Cheever’s excellent biography of Louisa May Alcott. I fumed over the cost of tampons. I planned the Oscar TV show we’re taping next week. Four worthy organizations and one uninsured ill acquaintance canvassed me for cash. I learned I officially qualified for Medicaid. I had 3,245 obsessive thoughts about how much I hate the GOP and Valdetrump. I cried about all the kids in the terrorist camps, everyone not getting paid in the wake of the shutdown, how much I miss my last lover. I cooked some salmon and greens and watched last night’s This Is Us. I hugged my permakitten again. I am a 48-year-old woman in America on January 23, 2019.
He Led With Light, He Led With Might: MLK Jr
He was 39 when he died. He was only 39. I think about that all the time. When people hit that age now, they are still using the word “adulting.” Or at least, the entitled people who have a cushion of some sort—a cushion of money or education or white skin or some other privilege they’re wantonly taking for granted. Something that makes them think they don’t need to pick up a pitchfork or a picket sign or the concerns of others. Martin Luther King Jr wasn’t one of those people. He was a person who led with light but also might, who loved everyone but suffered no fools, who knew he would end up sacrificing his own life for a line that was not just ancestral not just racial but the dream of the human race at its absolute best. He said, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” He said, ““Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable.” He said, “Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle.” Continue Reading →
This Wolf’s Birthday
Question: What happens when your solar return arrives the day before a supermassive blood red wolf moon eclipse in my-way-or-the-highway Leo? Answer: You cry a whole river, which is how I spent my birthday. No holds barred, I wept more yesterday than on any birthday since I was a kid. Today I woke feeling crazy and a little frantic. I’ve long believed that how you spend your solar return dictates the tenor of your new year, which meant I was in for an unholy dirge. In desperation, I called my shrink, not an astro-maven but a wise woman across the board.
“You’re letting it all go,” she said. “Your myths, whatever and whoever was holding you back. Your old ways of getting through the day. Whatever wool was still in your eyes.
“This doesn’t mean your 49th year will be terrible,” she went on. “It means you are being shown what can’t enter your year to come.” Continue Reading →