A lot of people I love dearly have never been head over heels in love. They ask me what it feels like. I explain it in terms of neurotransmitters. Serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin. How each of those feel independently. I explain it in colors. In the feeling in being enveloped in a weighted blanket. Of floating […]
There’s this voice that sometimes speaks to me and says, “Vene, what do you think you’re trying to accomplish? There are so many healers and thinkers and artists better than you who are already much more successful than you.” But a new voice has come back to rebut it recently, and it says this: “Vene, […]
Heaven and hell may all exist simultaneously. Freedom is found within. To do things with intention and conviction. To feel engaged in the course of one’s life. To feel agency instead of subjugation or mere passivity. Last night I saw the crescent moon dangle over the Brooklyn skyline and I felt the joy of being […]
Jack and I have been talking on and off about moves and when to make them: do you tell someone you want to kiss them or does it take some of the yummy anticipation out of the not knowing? After all, you can’t kiss someone for the first time twice. We’ve argued all sides of […]
Some things are bigger than us. There exist secret, intangible currents that carry us away on journeys we can’t consent to or predict or navigate in the moment. All we can do is trace them on maps from memory once they’ve concluded. Was there a moment…in the moment…when I knew? With him, yes. Moment after […]
While washing the dishes right now, it came to me that the reason people want us to love them, at least when it comes to Mikey and me, is that our love can’t be bought. It can only be earned. To have our love shine on them feels good. I remember when I figured this […]
Some things shouldn’t be analyzed to death. I can’t say that with a straight face. You know that. All I do is analyze everything over and over until there is no meat left on the bones and the bones have been boiled for broth. For two years now, the lesson has been to trust myself. […]
I cut my hair (with craft scissors), bought a Denman brush for curly hair and some curly hair gel, and now I’m starting to get the hang of this hair. A midlife hair change doesn’t sound like a big deal but it kinda is. There’s a learning curve. There are new habits that must be […]
There is a hubris that I find more and more grating with time. It is possessed and professed by white American men of liberal political disposition. Not all, but almost exclusively. They know the world is fucked and for their benefit. They didn’t ask for the inheritance and they don’t want to claim it. This […]
If you’re American, at some point in your primary education you were probably introduced to the concept of the “marketplace of ideas.” Basically, you were told that in America we prize free speech so much that we protect it all and let the good ideas float to the top on merit and the untruths sink […]
Veneranda Jade 