Untitled

nanna, this time is for us

(communion

two jewish ♀)

i am a candle, lit

vaporizing wax

i am a tree, cut

sap glistening at the wound

i am an oyster, shucked

briny tang of another world

i am a woman, whole

do you know the sanskrit word

kapalbhati?

i shine for you

you shine for me

B. 1977

 

I just finished this beautiful book about friendship, collaboration, and the creative process:

The author was born the same year I was and calls our age group the Oregon Trail generation. That rings true for me. 

As a marketing gimmick, the publisher made a video game from the book. 

Appropriate.

Recently a handful of friends, 45 year old women all (myself included), reached out within the span of a week to share about independently purchased hot tubs and wide toed shoes. 

Never would have called that. 

What a delight, these mid-life surprises!

Montreal

i gingerly descend the steep, sweeping staircase to the door.

a pharmaprix umbrella. i set out along sainted streets, all of them men (unlikely).

i pass the same woman twice (unlikely) pushing her child in a stroller, protected from snow and rain.

tarnished mirrors reflect fig leaves. a laptop (not mine) balances on a jenga tower. bathroom walls a bilingual conversation.

churchbells compete to toll noon. carmelite nuns beyond stone walls. an intermittent wail of sirens.

hydrangeas in the snow. back alleys spangled in graffiti and murals.

the 747 to the 55. head canted against the window. people (drunk, homeless, mentally ill) at the gates of chinatown. 

patches in the night air smell of good scotch. vegan sushi, a converted ferry. i filch cucumber water.

hibernating public compost barrels. a dedicated space for friendship awaiting strangers. parks laid bare in winter.

so many miles (kilometers) for this return to self.

Wrestling With God And Self

 Marilynne Robinson's insights in her essays on faith illuminate the heart of Judaism, reframing the Old Testament as the private act of a people striving to make sense of themselves and the world around them...

Even pious critics seem never to remember that, in the Old Testament, the Jews were talking among themselves, interpreting their own experience to themselves.  Every negative thing we know about them, every phrase that is used to condemn them, they supplied, in their incredible self-scrutiny and self-judgement.  Who but the ancient Jews would have thought to blame themselves for, in effect, lying along the invasion route of the Babylonians?  They preserved and magnified their vision of the high holiness of God by absorbing into themselves responsibility for their sufferings, and this made them passionately self-accusatory, in ways no other people would have thought of being. This incomparable literature would surely have been lost if they had imagined the use it would be put to, and had written to justify themselves and to defend their descendants in the eyes of the nations rather than to ponder their life in openness toward God.  By what standard but their own could Israel have been considered ungrateful or rebellious or corrupt?  Granting crimes and errors, which they recorded, and preserved and pondered the records of for centuries, and which were otherwise so historically minor that no one would ever have heard of them – how do these crimes compare with those of other peoples, their contemporaries and ours? The grandeur of the Old Testament, and the fact that such great significance is attached to it, distracts readers from a sense of its unique communal inwardness.  It is an endless reconciliation achieved at great cost by a people whose relation to God is astonishingly brave and generous.  To misappropriate it as a damning witness against the Jews and “the Jewish God” is vulgar beyond belief.  And not at all uncommon.  It is useful to consider how the New Testament would read, if it had gone on to chronicle the Crusades and the Inquisition.

The artwork of Gerald Chukwuma, a contemporary Nigerian artist, beautifully captures for me what it means to tangle with history and self understanding.

If I Wanted A Tombstone

 ...[I don't], it would read: 

Corpse pose was always her favorite.

Adagio [Definition: Slowly; At Ease]

Crushing hard on Dr. Jacob Ham after listening to this conversation between him and his patient, Stephanie Foo, the author of a memoir about recovering from childhood trauma:

 

다시

 

Welp, a Korean rom com has once again eaten my life. And has me craving gimbap something fierce. 

Last time, I emerged from an episode to the smell of gas pervading our house. This time, it was the smell of sewage water flooding our basement. 

Worth it.

An Underdog Story

 Welcome to Wrexham.

I am not much of a sports fan, but I am a human interest fan so while this documentary series is transparently promotional, it still had me cheering and cringing through the season's highs and lows.

Count me in. I am a Wrexham fan.

Soheila Sokhanvari

Women in Iran have taken to the streets in defense of their bodily autonomy in recent weeks. There has been bloodshed and brutality in response. 

In 1939, Iranian women were forced to unveil. Beginning in 1979, Iranian women were forced to wear hijab.

The artist Soheila Sokhanvari uses the traditional Persian medium of miniatures to paint Iranian feminist icons from the pre-revolutionary era.

They pummel with their power and passion. They are alive and well.

A song of present day protest:

It's Never Too Late

I am taking cello lessons. For the first time. Inspired in part by this series in the NYT. 

The Immodesty Of Desire

A lovely essay called Sex-Positive Parenting for Prudes.

A wonderful film about seeking and finding pleasure:

What beautiful offerings. 

They honor Mary Oliver's maxim, "Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."

And they recognize comfort as vital to imagination and imagination as critical when realizing a better world.

You Are The Joy In My Day

 

Me: Where did you get your dress? It's wonderful.

Her: It was custom made for me in Zaire.

Tall grasses moving in the wind, dotted by yellow flowers.

A kindness between strangers (which reminds me of this case for love affairs).

The beauty of fidelity.

The Art Of Motherhood

This:

And this:

Brutal Brilliance

 

This shit is real. real. good.

Yemeni Coffee

 

I just tore through this book about a hero's journey revitalizing coffee production in Yemen.

Like Ethiopia, its neighbor across the Red Sea, Yemen has long fascinated me as a place of human origins and natural beauty.

Like Afghanistan, Yemen has captured my imagination since childhood-- a nation of fabled history yet currently out of reach, ravaged by the interplay of tribal conflicts and political ambitions beyond its borders.

Wow Factor

 

Evan found this stunning new series:

And it was worth braving a movie theater in the era of COVID to see this gripping gem:

It is amazing how stories can be told these days. 

Muse

 

I have been taken of late by the portraiture of Alice Neel and Glyn Philpot...

(Rainbow) Pride

...and Prejudice, bitches!

Thank you, world, for Fire Island-- the gay version of Pride and Prejudice I didn't know I needed.

Also fabulously gay:

Hottie

 

Grateful to be living my life with this partner.

Epigenetics (Is Not Eugenics)

 I have been reading about ways inheritance travels along the limbs of family trees-- how ancestral trauma expresses itself in the genome. 

Every symptom makes perfect sense if you know the whole story. And yet we rarely know the whole story. 

This takes Oprah's "what happened to you?" and expands it to include, "what happened to your ancestors?"

What A Race

As a child, I was obsessed with watching the Kentucky Derby each year. 

My claim to fame was I chose Alysheba to win in 1987 and if my mom had allowed me to bet two dollars (she didn't), I would have gotten a $109.60 return. 

So when Evan told me I needed to put eyes on the 2022 Kentucky Derby, I was all in...

I have watched this multiple times now and it never ceases to astonish. 

Simply amazing! 

Longest odds to ever win the race at 80 to 1. Worst starting position in a field of 21 horses. 

The moment when Venezuelan jockey, Sonny Leon, asks Rich Strike to give it everything he's got-- my god, they ran a masterful race together.

Heartstopper

 An aptly named series...

Gosh, who doesn't remember the excruciating pain/joy of love at this age?

Motherhood Is A Hero's Journey

"The truth is that motherhood is a hero’s journey. For most of us it’s not a journey outward, to the most fantastic and farthest-flung places, but inward, downward, to the deepest parts of your strength, to the innermost buried core of everything you are made of but didn’t know was there. And what I’ve learned is that there’s a reason motherhood as a story is so infrequently told.

It’s because, for so many people, our safest, sweetest, earliest memories are of nestling in our mother’s lap, in her rocking warmth, hearing her sing as we get milk-drunk and sleepy and burrow, heavy-eyed, into the crook of her soft arm. And if you knew that your mother’s journey was, intrinsically, a hero’s journey — if that was in any way an established narrative in our culture — you’d have to accept that this memory of womb-like safety, this foundation upon which so much of our identity is built, was often just an illusion. You’d have to realize that while you were blissed out on your mother’s lap, one of those epic battles, the kind that envelops heroes as they fight their way out of a ring of fire, was raging just above your head. No one wants to believe that in the moments you felt the most peaceful, the woman cradling you so softly was shielding you from a sword that she herself was holding.

A mother’s heroic journey is not about how she leaves but about how she stays."

-an excerpt from an essay in Jessi Klein's new book

Zodiac Signs

 Baseless, but nonetheless compelling...

Ah, horror scoops. I heart you.