Astro PSA: Venus and Mars Run Free
Huzzah! Today is a very fine day indeed.
After more than two months, Mars finally goes direct—ending a retrograde that has taught us a lot about our conflicts, management skills, ambitions, desires, and shadows. But this retrograde also been a royal pain in the ass that’s enabled 45 to block a smooth transition of power and broken more than its fair share of teeth, bones, workplqces, and relationships. Mars won’t be back to its normal station til the end of the year, but as soon as this weekend you’re likely to experience smoother negotiations and, uh, sexual healing.
ALSO ALSO ALSO today is Friday the 13th, which according to any cosmology that honors the divine feminine, is a transcendently empowering holiday—Venus Day, essentially. Know that this day has been demonized by the same historical patriarchies that landed 45 on top. 
So honor rather than fear this beautiful goddess energy, symbolized by the 13 moons in a lunar year. Count your blessings, hatch them for others, and release everything that doesn’t live up to the glorious goddess ethos of truth, love, beauty. Here’s to beautiful change we meet halfway.
❤️To meet your own magic halfway, book a reading or dream interpretation for yourself or a loved one. ❤️
The Coldness of Strangers
I’ve never been the type to pick up strangers and bed them. When I was younger, my approach was to take numbers—flirt copiously, then drift away. The occasional follow-up dinner, the potential plus one. But bedding someone—taking them inside myself in some way—always seemed so invasive that I reserved it for people I’d inspected closely, actually loved a lot. Perhaps it was the former anorexic in me. I used to joke that bulimics went through sexual partners like water, but we “restricters” hardly ever let anything inside. God knows I never swallowed when I gave blow jobs—too many calories.
Only once did I fuck a complete stranger. I picked him up at the coffee shop where I have met so many of my lovers over the years. Usually when I met someone there, we would commence a long, slow courtship that would take months, if not years, to consummate. Sometimes these people would become friends afterward, more often they never became anything but friends. Friendship really is the highest form of human relationship, anyway—the most elective, the most gracious.
Part of why I slept with this man was I’d just ended it with someone who didn’t deserve any mourning. He’d been my boss—was still my boss, in fact, and wielded a great deal of power over me. So my goal was to get over him as soon as possible—to get the taste out of my mouth, so to speak. 2011 was doggedly pre-#metoo. Continue Reading →
Miss Grace and the Mouse: A Very 2020 Parable
So I’ve been laid up for the last three days with my now-annual autumnal bad back. This year I chalk it up to being a middle-aged woman who danced all Saturday night and then ran a victory lap around lower Manhattan on a broken baby toe. That, and the Slow-Moving Coup the Trump administration is attempting to stage in the shadow of Biden’s inarguable victory. People I love and trust tell me it’s all going to be ok but anyone with genocide in their family lines doesn’t rest easily while a fascist is refusing to cede office.
On every level, in every way, Donald J. Trump’s mic should be cut. No social media. No quotes reported by news outlets. Yes, document the policies he’s pushing through, the terrifying appointments he’s making. But don’t grant his ravings a platform. The amount of chaos and hatred he can still sow is dangerous, if not lethal. Let’s not exacerbate this.
All to say that while I’ve been largely immobile a certain furry roommate has been acting peculiar and finally yesterday gallumphed into my bedroom with a living mouse in her mouth. After triumphantly laying the vermin at my feet, she recommenced chasing it in a dance that went on for two hours–Grace’s happy squawks and the mouse’s fainter squeaks punctuated by the duo’s dashes to where I was, gulp, lying on the floor. This permakitten was in permakitten heaven. I could tell in her mind she even had named this new playmate. “Herman,” maybe–“Hermie” for short. Continue Reading →