And when you’re done, when you’ve re-aligned yourself and acknowledged where you are, and where you might want to be, get back in the game. Get back to your life. Get back to your family and friends.
My fanatical devotion to Kathy Griffin began with her bit part on ‘Medusa: Dare to be Truthful’ and the riotous way she so defeatedly muttered, “I’m so broke.” That was a brilliant spot-on spoof of Madonna’s ‘Truth or Dare’, and ever since then Griffin has been slowly ascending the pop culture mountain, and experiencing all the peaks and valleys such a journey entails. She was one of the first, and at the time only, celebrities who fully embraced a funny yet cutting critique of the awfulness that is our current President, and she got burned for doing what everyone now views as precisely what that monster deserves. After a widespread blacklisting and being almost entirely written off in Hollywood for several years, Griffin is finally getting the recognition and appreciation she has always deserved, and she’s taking that rightly-earned cachet to further point out the evils of this administration, and inspiring others to do the same. For all that, and her resilient hilarity in the face of those challenges, Griffin is crowned Dazzler of the Day. Check out her website here and see one of her live shows as they are always a good time.
The lead single from the forthcoming Harry Styles album ‘Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally’ has been released, and it’s a gently shuffling sort of beckoning to the disco dance floor that primes the beat for what might be to come. It’s called ‘Aperture’ and it’s a vibe. I don’t know if it’s a proper right primal banger that’s gonna make you sweat, but it’s a beginning. Perhaps that’s what this moment needs – escapism and fantasy from the floors of dance and good times. It feels far away, it feels necessary.
https://youtu.be/7sxVHYZ_PnA?si=cz7oc3xoQa8tgZIt
And still it doesn’t feel like enough. There is so much darkness, I’m not sure I can find solace on the dance floor right now, or ever again. A sense of defeatism pervades our world, shading the future, bleeding into all the days to come. Maybe this is just what getting older means. Maybe this is what getting older does.
“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for. It didn’t look like we were going to win then and we did. It doesn’t feel like we’re going to win now but we could. Keep fighting, keep dancing.” – Dan Savage
The sun has started staying out until I get home from work on office days. A good sign. A sign of progress, seemingly slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
‘Nonetheless’ – a somewhat strange term/word, and I wonder if I’m even using it correctly anymore. It’s one of those terms we sort of assume we know, but never really delve into what it truly means. I don’t feel like googling anything today. Nonetheless…
My silhouette stares ahead of me – I view it from behind and the sun is behind me – or am I viewing it from the front and my face is literally a blank space? Is this a super-villain or some tragically-masked anti-hero? Every few months I find my silhouette, and it’s often in the winter, usually late winter, when tree limbs are still bare and sun enters the house unobstructed. Sun not blunted by summer foliage – how bizarre to find a clearer version of the sun in this Winter Obscura.
The blank face of a ghoul, some demon exposing itself through shadow, the way some things only appear in peripheral view. Ghosts or visual spiders – or did I make all of that up? Silhouettes tell multitudes of slippery stories in hushed whispers, in whispered prayers.
In the words of the wise Rose Nylund, “What’s Irish and stays out all night?”
“Patio furniture!”
Here’s a look at our snowy patio furniture after fifteen inches of snow fell on us starting Sunday. It’s still falling out there as of this writing, so there may be a bit more by the time this gets posted.
It should go without saying that my favorite Dazzlers are those whom I’ve actually met in real life. My very favorites among those are family members (see Mom, Paul, and Dad) and my super favorites among those are the chosen family who aren’t forced to be here (see Andy and Suzie and now today’s recipient). That means choosing Landrie Leone as Dazzler of the Day is a very happy moment, and long-overdue. As mother to Jaxon Layne, she will always hold a special place in my heart, and in addition to that she’s become a surrogate Mom to the twins, keeping a home together no matter how challenging things get. It’s not always easy coming into the Ilagan family, and sometimes you just need the right people to make things click and fall into better place.
Today is Landrie’s birthday, and until we can make it through the snow to deliver her gift, this Dazzler of the Day crowning will be a placeholder present. Happy Birthday Landrie!
According to folklore, and depending on whether the reader readily believes any of it, the smoke from a Palo Santo stick is said to smell especially acrid to those who have the most to cleanse. When I first started using Palo Santo, I found the scent of the smoke challenging, but not disagreeable. Over the years it’s wavered, but mostly I enjoy it now.
Last night there was a sourness in the smoke of the new batch I lit. As much for the newness, as for what has been weighing on the mind of late, I’m afraid. To offset the world, I find it best to up my meditation time. Gradually, just a few extra minutes a day, until we make it out of the winter wilderness.
The Palo Santo always smells sweeter in the spring.
Sometimes it bleeds gray, drained of hue, drained of shade.
It’s hard to find much hope when we’re still in January.
Still, I follow the light. It shifts, it slides, it changes ever-so-slightly.
When the sky begins getting that Maxwell Parish glow, and the clouds look painted when the sun hits them in the afternoon, I know spring is on the way. Maybe not arriving tomorrow, maybe not next month, but not long thereafter.
When the days have become horrific, and the world is in the throes of angst and agitation, all we can do is hold tight to loved ones, and take a moment to simply breathe. A daily meditation is barely enough, but it’s the enough that counts, not the barely. In the flickering candlelight, I sit on the floor and slow my breathing. Eventually, with each elongating inhalation and exhalation, the mind clears, or at least stalls its racing thoughts.
A moment of mindfulness feels as silly as it does imperative for my own mental health and emotional well-being. At fifty, I know myself well enough to know how to navigate such trying times, but this past week has been especially challenging. Mostly I’ve felt rage and anger at the injustice of it all. It’s important to acknowledge that, at least for my mental processing. I don’t say it often enough, and I don’t express it, but I know I have to get it out. Maybe this post will be enough to let the rage subside. Maybe it will be enough to let the anger go. It doesn’t fix anything, it doesn’t change the world. It makes it easier for me to reach out again to others, to be a better husband, son, brother, uncle and friend.
And I’m sad – sad at the state of our country, our world. It helps to say that out loud too.
Finally, I’m tired. Exhausted of all of it. I haven’t given up… but I’m tired. It takes a toll.
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
There isn’t much more to say about the past week in this country – a country I no longer recognize, as much as I am unsurprised by where we are. Most of these silly posts were programmed in advance of recent days, but there are a few that address it because our silence is our complicity. People may not like political posts, but when politics become a question of morality, it is our obligation to speak up. Now, a look back at the previous week, when just a few days ago things felt only slightly less awful…
A post of pause upon the murder of yet another American citizen by ICE.
Hey MAGA, didn’t many of you vote for Trump to protect your 2nd Amendment rights? Well, the government just shot and killed a man for legally carrying. They took his gun, THEN they shot him, point blank, multiple times. It’s on video and we can clearly see what happened. They are treading on YOU.
Someone suggested it was because they were voting for FEMA money (which Trump has already proclaimed won’t go to blue states, so what were Suozzi and and Gillen even thinking?) but regardless of that, the time for nuanced political games has long since passed. To our Democratic leadership, and I used the term loosely, catch the fuck up and meet the perilous moment already at hand.
If there are elections in the future – a very big ‘if’ that grows increasingly unlikely with each passing day – we need to primary these elected officials because we did not vote for this. Then vote out the entire next generation of GOP candidates – they are hellbent on continuing their destruction as long as it keeps lining their pockets with money and power.
“You can’t have guns. You can’t walk with guns.” ~ Donald Trump
Hey MAGA voters who only wanted their 2nd Amendment rights: the government just shot and killed a white male American citizen for legally carrying a firearm. Multiple ICE agents took him down for filming them, beat him, grabbed his gun, then fired multiple shots at him, point blank, instantly killing him.
Sitting down to a cup of peppermint herbal tea, still scalding hot and sweetened with just a spoonful of honey, I would normally send out a volley of texts with the photo you see here, captioned simply, “This is cafe culture.” A silly and foolish way of staying in touch with friends.
Today, it feels pointless and stupid and too sad to do such a thing, as our own government just ruthlessly murdered yet another American citizen on our own soil. Watch the video and see for yourself; don’t listen to the media or the White House at this sad point.
You wouldn’t know it here in the sanctuary of a cafe. The staff still serves its coffee and tea and food stuffs. Clients still find their friends and sit down amid laughter and bonhomie. Talk of football, snowstorms, and the typical winter banter spills out from other tables. Because really, it’s just another Goddamned day in America, and this is what we supposedly voted into office. Well, not me, and not most people I know, but too many to stop what some of us knew was coming. Here we are.
And so I pause.
I read. I sip tea. I meditate.
Selfish self-preservation, because no one seems to care.
