I'm 52, and both Holy and Profane

So, Wednesday I turned 52 years old. It's weird. It's great. It's confusing. I like it. It's unnerving. It's sort of all the things, but mostly very good. I have been sitting since then with the idea of who am I? I feel like that is a question for our whole lives, but at this age, I am starting to understand it more and more. I’m just so many things at once—and so are you.

I started my birthday the night before with a call from my ex-boyfriend M who is still a good friend of mine and who is currently in Transylvania where he is from. He told me to look on the top shelf of the pantry behind the pasta. I did and I found a bottle of Versace perfume. He hid it there for me before he left for Romania, so I’d have a present from him on my birthday. I can’t tell you how delighted I was.

The next morning on my actual birthday I had a dream that I was in college and Liza Minnelli was my literature professor and she read to us out loud and acted it out and I was like, “college is the best!” I woke up and posted about it on Facebook and put a picture of her. Then I went to my friend E’s house and spent the morning just hanging out and having fun. She is pretty much a real-life Rainbow Bright, and she was showing me her new unicorn costume and her little Strawberry Shortcake Lego houses she got at Five Below, built and put on a living room shelf.

Liza being Liza in the most Liza-i-est ways. Hell, yes!

After that I went home and my friends S who is a massage therapist came over and I gave her a reiki session and she gave me the best massage of my life—and a huge chocolate cupcake with sprinkles and filled with candy. I spent the rest of the day taking a long walk and talking to friends and family on the phone and it was great.

It felt like a threshold day. I mean technically all birthdays are, but this one really felt like it. I looked back on Facebook to the picture I chose of Liza and realized, that is what part of me feels like now that I’m this age. Her huge eyelashes, red nails and red lipstick, side-eye bombast. Yeah, I feel that. But also, I turned on one of my very favorite movies that I’ve seen a billion times Perfect Days and watched the main character enjoying komorebi, the shimmering light between leaves, then cleaning his apartment, tending to his seedlings, and laying on the floor all by himself listening to Lou Reed records with the most perfect serene happiness. Yeah, I’m that, too. When I feel safe and regulated and in my own power, I feel that life is a cabaret, old chum, and that deep pleasure in slowly moving about my daily life like a sacred ritual.

My very favorite scene from the movie Perfect Days where he is laying on the floor listening to music and enjoying the metaphorical komorebi. Just the BEST.

I am not bad nor good, obedient or disobedient, I am just myself and this is what I’m like. My motives in life are to alchemize generational dysfunctions I inherited and transform my life into something beautiful and meaningful and hopefully start those transformed patterns in our family line. I want to express myself through art and words, and to have fun and pleasure and leave the world better than I found it and to help others find their own ways to live big. I have a LOT of 8^th house in my astrology chart for those of you who are star people. It means I am here for sex and death and the alchemical rebirth that happens after total destruction again and again, and to live with an existential grief because I understand the transitory nature of all, and I see you and your suffering as clearly as I see mine. It’s a lot of work just to be an 8^th house person. It is the thing I knew about myself since I was a kid that I could never explain, and even why I named myself Persephone. Then a year or two ago I found out about the 8^th house, and I was like, that’s the core thing that I know about me that is inexpressible. I guess like everyone in the world, I’m a lot of things at the same time.

People often say I remind them of a nun—like a lot. People also often also send me things they think I would like that are subversive, sexy and transgressive like Montmartre in the early 1900s kind of deals—like a lot. I am all of those things. Our Lady of the back ally Cabaret and tattoo parlor, I suppose. Patron saint of strip tease and ink-dipped needles. Reverent Mother Persephone both beloved and dread with ink-stained holy wafers and cappuccino from a tiny porcelain sacrament cups, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. Leaving a fat typed memoir in the confession booth. Father, I have sinned—enjoy.

For my birthday week that I haven’t done yet, I plan to go to lunch with a new friend who is a medium and sensitive and to hear her haunted stories. Then go to my favorite Buddhist temple where I go all the time. Then to give myself a tattoo of a dragon from an antique French lace pattern. I just haven’t decided on the right one yet or the right part of my body to bring it to life. We’ll see.  

I asked AI to create an antique baroque dragon cross stitch pattern because I base my tattoos off antique lace and needlework patterns. It didn't understand the cross stitch pattern assignment, but I freaking love how cool this looks. I might print it out and put it on my wall. The one I will do on my body will be MUCH more small and simple than this.

The thing is, this is where big lives start—just knowing the sides of yourself and owning them and honoring them and living them in little ways daily like enjoying the komorebi, putting on red lipstick, getting the tattoo, booking the tickets for the burlesque show, meditating at the temple. Not trying to make some congruent picture of who you are. You are myriad, as I am. Big lives are myriad and are to be enjoyed that way. Own the sides of you that you know are true, even if other people aren’t evolved enough to appreciate it. A big life is being you and living you and embodying who you are in the act of daily living.

So today I will post this blog to remember where I was at this age and to encourage you to look at the facets of yourself and to realize how rich and beautiful they are, put on my red lipstick and Versace perfume and go out to lunch with my haunted friend, come home and research tattoos and maybe make one with my own tattoo gun, do some work, then lay in bed with my cat and watch a movie and enjoy the peace and have a good day being 52.