Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

While I’ve come a very long way in my appreciation of winter, I do find its stubborn refusal to relent a little rude, especially considering all the awfulness that currently swirls around us, as well as the consistently brutal cold weather this winter has already provided. We didn’t even get our customary January thaw. Like, throw us a goddamn bone with this weather please… the return to plunging temperatures is not welcome, even if it is still technically winter.

That doesn’t look to end soon, so here we stay, stranded in this purgatorial waiting room, somewhere within the last throes of winter and striving to arrive at spring. Mother Nature so cruelly reminds us who is in charge, and who will always be in charge.

Spoiler alert: it’s not us, it never was, and it never will be. In the meantime, false hope in a flower bouquet.

Right before our foolish country pushed the clocks forward, I was up early enough to capture two scenes of light. The first was the light from the window, the second was from the additional illumination from a single lamp. What light, what warmth, emanates from its fringed opulence, and what a luxury light feels like after such a dark winter.

In the stillness of this dawn, the light makes its own sound – not in the clicking of a switch or some crackling of electrical current, but in the soft shifting of its intensity and luminosity. It is the soft and muffled sound of a glow, like the whisper of a willow’s strands on the cusp of chartreuse.

Stirrings.

Awakenings.

Beginnings.

And endings.

On the wind, in the light, the Springing…

A man and a woman sit down at the table beside mine at my favored cafe. Prickled by their presence (I’d purposely sat near the back corner of the place to focus on writing this post) I tried shutting out their conversation. Sometimes I want to listen, especially if they seem to be on an awkward first date or about to erupt in an argument unbridled by their public stance, but these two seemed to just be traveling partners, co-workers or colleagues talking of the flight they were catching next, and then talking incessantly of absolutely every stupid thing they could possibly think of to fill the silence, not leaving time for a single deep breath between them. 

I doubted that they were married or even semi-attached – two people who can’t spend a few moments in silence together are usually two people not at all at ease around each other. It’s the couples who sit in unbothered silence, happy just to be next to each other, who are usually in it for the long haul. 

The two people next to me couldn’t stop babbling. Even when the guy got up to use the bathroom, the woman continued. I turned around with a quick dirty glance because she was still talking to herself when the bathroom door closed – she was literally responding out loud to whatever she was texting or doing on her phone. Noise for the sake of noise. I know people who have to live like that – well, who choose to live like that – and part of me always pities them. Their baseline of peace is in the noise and chaos – they probably don’t even notice it. When they do notice, and what seems to upset them the most, is silence.

Quiet.

Stillness. 

How wonderfully different we all are, I think, with a little more forgiveness and kindness than the tone of this post would have you believe.

The blank spaces between the lines of lined paper have always been an inspired space of endless possibility. Here is where hope lives eternally, here is where demons might be slain, here is where the heart could break open in ways that elicit tears or love or hurt or happiness or hate or hilarity – all of life resides in these blanks bits. 

Trying to makes sense of the world – this world at this particular moment – is probably a fruitless endeavor, but if we can’t get a fruit, perhaps we can at least coax out a flower or a few. 

I’ve grown enough to realize that diminished expectations are much better than great ones. Modifying and managing life is easier than slashing and burning and rebuilding everything from the ground up. Call it laziness or call it wisdom – in the end it’s all the same. Perspectives shift. Lives evolve. People change. Would you sacrifice tomorrow just to have me here today?

Will spring temperatures arrive this week or will we continue with this miserable winter? Mercury in retrograde is certainly proceeding as infuriatingly unplanned, and a newly war-torn path with higher gas prices looms dismally on the horizon. Meanwhile, we do our best to carry on and keep calm amid all the chaos – here’s the weekly blog recap in all its messy glory.

A sweet call from on high.

My favorite Madonna anniversary.

A heart full of latte.

Moon of blood and worm.

With gray hair comes great responsibility.

I adore an olive.

Winter echoes in full color.

Seed me.

Crumpled mess of black underwear.

Snowman standing.

Sensing blood on the moon.

Winter spell-breaker.

The mocktail treatment.

Gray pride.

Pre-populating obscurity.

The best baristas.

When moon water elicits tears.

Dazzlers of the Day included Thomas ‘TJ’ West and Paul Anthony Kelly.

You can look up how to make your own batch of moon water the next time a full moon rolls around, though after this you may not be too eager. Made by the light of the bloody Worm Moon, my jar of moon water sat in the window where it was mostly made when I remembered it the night after the full moon appeared. A tad too timid to down the entire jar (I’d save the bulk for our Norfolk Island Pine) I only took a few sips before bed. I wasn’t manifesting anything as much as cleansing, and there was no reason to wet the bed by drinking an entire mason jar of water. Still, it was enough to work its mystical machinations.

At 2:18 AM I awoke in a tearful state of whimpering sadness. A dream, bordering on a nightmare so disturbingly difficult, jolted me up, my own cries loud enough to break through the sleep. It was about my Dad, only he was not in it. It was about his Absence – Absence as its own central character, Absence as the main villain. And I was mad, my tears falling from anger – anger at my father, anger at his leaving us.

If that’s one of the stages of grief, I don’t think I ever went through it, and even as my tears were just starting to dry, I thought how childish and silly it was to be angry with him over dying – as if he chose to do it.

Even at fifty years old, I felt like a little kid. Some men have claimed they didn’t feel like grown men until the day their fathers died. I used to wonder if that was as stupid a thing to say as it was for my younger self to hear. Now I know for certain it’s a crock of shit. I’m no more or less of a man now than I was when Dad was alive. The men who said such nonsense obviously had other issues in reaching their manhood. My own was re-confirmed with a quick run to the bathroom in the hopes of expelling any remaining moon water that might be manifesting such an emotional night of fitful sleep.