Safe space, open space

Neeti Ray’s comment about my use of the analogy of the front porch below got me thinking about how we create psychic spaces safely for others to enter, and how we behave when we are invited into another’s.
Children’s literature is full of these spaces: Winnie-the-Pooh’s 100 Acre Wood is one, Narnia is another. These are [...]

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Melancholy baby

I have been weepy all week.
There. I’ve come out and said it. Ordinarily, I’d wait to process the pain before confessing to it, my Capricorn moon preferring to hide in the basement until it passes, but I have been bolstered by the courage of those like the inimitable Lucy Looking Upward to bear [...]

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Venus retrograde: Reassessing what you value

These are tense times. Scanning the headlines on the Huffington Post makes me dizzy, anxious, and mildly depressed. Trying to fix the world is important, but perhaps the only way to do that is to look within and fix ourselves, if ‘fix’ is even the right word.

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Love and possession

As the Sun (self/ego) opposes Uranus (unpredictability, sudden change) today, bringing to light our need for, and often also our fear of, change, we are given a little taste of the greater struggle to come when Saturn (the planet of discipline, constriction, and conservatism) opposes Uranus on the 4th of November later this year. Yes, [...]

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Acting on desire III: talking compersion

Part I and II.
‘Compersion’ has to be as unsexy a word as they come. Nevertheless, it is the closest to describing a condition for which no word currently exists — that is, a non-exclusive love, or an all-inclusive love, depending on which slant you prefer.
Theoretically, the word ‘love’ should itself be enough, but like [...]

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Acting on desire II: sex and the art of good conversation

Part I
For women the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time. — Isabel Allende
As synchronicity, and serendipity, would have it, my ex-boyfriend (not quite the right word, but it’ll have to do) turned up online as I was [...]

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Sitting with desire II

Part I.
It is very difficult to write about loving each person in each moment without sounding like I am advocating hedonism and promiscuity. I am not. I am advocating responsibility, the responsibility that comes from the acknowledgement of one’s own desire. Acting on desire is a different thing, and requires different consideration.

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Sitting with desire I

The cause of suffering, it is often cited of Buddhism, is desire, attachment or craving. We suffer because we crave what we (think we) don’t have. And we crave any number of things, both tangible and ephemeral — ice cream, a bigger house, a bigger car, someone to love us, we may even crave a [...]

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8 for ‘08

I’m excerpting Judith Gayle’s ‘Big 8′ for 2008 here. Couldn’t have hoped to say it better myself.

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