A Palimpsest of Soul and Skin

It just hit me: in the last year—if not longer—I'd have a daily sense of anticipation and anxiety that I'd receive a phone call from my mom saying that something had happened to Granny—that she'd taken sick or died. I carried that fear around for a long time. In fact, I think I've carried that fear around for decades. It became a habitual thing, that anticipatory grief. I just had that old sensation once again, like feeling around for a tooth that I used to wiggle, but finding only space. It's very disorienting. Anticipatory grief has done me no good; I certainly don't feel more prepared for this loss, and it only stretched out the sadness over the years.

It's the day before a full moon, and I find myself rather feeling a bit introspective and somewhat restless. Also, for the last two weeks, I've been experiencing repeated moments of synchronicity, too mundane to relate, but significant to me in their precision. Today, I received an email from a new friend, with whom I had occasion to share the following excerpt (from Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale ). She told me that only an hour before speaking with me yesterday, someone that she'd just met had encouraged her to read this very same book. Her enthusiasm about this synchronicity was a tremendous encouragement to me this morning. I am pleased that, despite my relative distraction and introspection about my upcoming wedding, I am inexplicably plugged-in on some other level. Comforting. The following words were shared with me a number of years ago while I was in a tempestuous relationship that ended up completely falling apart...and quite contentiously, at that. It n...

Lately I have taken more of an investigative interest in The Beauty Myth - both the book by Naomi Wolfe (which Warren purchased for me earlier this week - the darling!) as well as the idea itself. As shown in the Wiki entry (which, yeah, is always good for a drive-by), a portion from the Introduction: The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us...During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty...pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal... More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ...