Kristen Schiele, 2019

As soon I finished my block of intuition readings yesterday, my immune system 100 percent hit the wall. My clients were lovely, but with Mercury in Cancer during Gemini season, people are projecting their big emotions rather rather than filtering them. You can’t walk down the street without tripping over a weepy, explosive confrontation. The effect is toxic.

Word to the wise: All projection but astral projection is ill-advised. Eh, film projection is all right, too.

Being sick this time of year is miserable. It’s also discombobulating, because these should be halcyon days. NYC has so few blocks of decent weather that when they arrive you want to call in happy to every obligation hanging over your head. Instead all I’ve been able to do on this sunny, clear Sunday is writhe on my bed, feverish and clogged up. Oy vey, I moan.

Question: When a writer’s whining in her apartment and no one’s there to hear it, is she really whining? Answer: Oy vey, yes.

And sola dwellers must fend for themselves, no matter how they’re ailing. So this morning I put on a schmata–no point in combing my hair–and hobbled down to Whole Foods for the sort of provisions that might miraculously restore my health, or at least not worsen it. Usually I stave off my Whole Paycheck crabbiness with good deals on free-range chicken (and Fairway). But the number of white guys in baseball caps and expensive footgear who bumped into me because they were fiddling with their phones while wandering up the aisle– not looking up, not soldiering bags, JUST LETTING THE LITTLE WOMEN BY THEIR SIDES DO THE ACTUAL FORAGING–was simply mind-boggling. Okay, the number was three but, oy vey, that’s a lot given that it was only 8 am and it’s 2019. Here they were, taking up space but in no way interacting with it, let alone improving it.

The metaphor loomed.

Here’s the thing. I’ve lived in Williamsburg off and on since the 1990s, and while that may mean “entitled hipster” to you, for long-time residents it means community and hustle. Certainly the one thing it’s never meant in all its generations of immigration and creative gentrification is dumb dickocracy.

Until now.

So did any of these forever frat boys excuse themselves when they bumped into me? No, they looked up annoyed, as in WHO DIDN’T GET OUT OF MY WAY? Maybe if I’d been feeling stronger I would given them the ole Rosmaniac pushback but today their ugly arrogance just made me sad– as did the plastic-encased cut flowers and the prohibitively expensive organic food and the older woman I spotted in the dairy aisle carefully counting the change in her purse.

Part of me thought, why is she shopping here if she’s so strapped? Then I remembered you could say the same of me and maybe she also needed healthy food without venturing out of the neighborhood. So I tuned into her, and was immediately stuck between her rock and hard place, walls closing in on all sides like I was in the Star Wars garbage compactor.

Oh, don’t mind me. I’m feeling everything and everybody–an occupational hazard when my defenses are down–and the truth is few of us are having a very good time even though it’s the prettiest spring I can remember. Our world isn’t just changing. t’s crashing down, and the saddest part is the rude white dudes unapologetically running everyone down in their lane.

I write all this and then remember the ten episodes of The L Word I watched in the last 24 hours. (What can I say? It’s Sox and the City for this sickie.) Though the series only ended 10 years ago, the queer community has come a long way, baby. I pray someday soon those lane-crashers will be forced to catch up.