A lost opportunity perhaps, but I haven’t been minding much of the World Cup games that have gone on, aside from the one that took place near Boston on our recent BroSox Adventure. That may change with this crowning of Erling Haaland as Dazzler of the Day. Playing for Norway, Haaland has captured the hearts of many with his golden mane of flowing hair and washboard abs. Is there another point to this game?
Golden summer hallucinations are nothing new to these parts. Summer has a way of insinuating itself in the mind, burning and seering an imprint upon the brain, indelible and required for winter survival later in the year. We let it make a mark now so we will remember then. Winters are brutal without it.
A modern spin on the 70’s vibe that our Solid Gold Summer has previously embodied, this is the Tensnake Remix of Duo Lipa’s infectious ‘Hallucinate’, which brings that gloriously tacky decade into the modern musical landscape, melding summers past, present, and future as we look to the next stage of our SG Summer. Are you ready to funk the fuck out? Let the baseline shake you…
What goes best with music? Fragrance, of course, and none better than Tom Ford’s Soleil line, which finds coconut heat and tropical fanfare colliding for some 70’s coded cocoa butter brilliance. ‘Soleil Blanc‘ gets all the notice, but I find something more compelling about the flankers ‘Soleil Brulant‘ and ‘Soleil Feu‘.
Body make you silly, make you do what I want
Oh, baby, I can make it pretty, I could string you along
But I’mma love you like a fool
Breathe you in ’til I hallucinate
No, I couldn’t live without your touch
No, I could never have too much
I’ll breathe you in forever and ever
Hallucinate, yeah
I hallucinate when you call my name
Got stars in my eyes and they don’t fade when you come my way
I’m losing my m-m-m-mind, m-m-m-mind
M-m-m-mind, m-m-m-mind
I hallucinate when you call my name
Got stars in my-
Losing oneself in the pool, in the music, in the perfume – summer causes hallucinations, a suspended state of hazy unreality, some trickery of water and light and shadow and brilliance, some spell cast by fragrance and sound and sensual effect. It’s dangerously easy to get lost just below the surface, to lose one’s mental footing, so to speak, similar to the way sharks enter tonic immobility when turned upside down. A state of peaceful paralysis that is like the call of a killer siren. You want to release and let yourself go because it feels so good, even as part of you knows there is danger ahead, and probably not that much farther ahead. Still, you keep swimming into the pleasure, into the peace, into the summer decadence. ‘Tis the damn season.
Wanna be right where you are
Let’s go dancing in the dark
Don’t wait, you can push to start
Lose control
Kill me slowly with your kiss
Wrap me ’round your fingertips
Damn, I need another hit
Make me lose my mind
Approaching the first turn of summer then… most times I miss it because there isn’t a dramatic demarcation, rather the slow burn of the warmth into the earth, the sun present and strong even when it’s overcast. The fun turn, when summer is at its zenith near the mid-July glory, when all you see on the horizon and for the foreseeable future is more of summer, and all that is behind you is also summer. A song to begin the bridge to our Middle Eastern-inflected section as proclaimed by my summer theme guide, my niece Emi (she who chose ‘Coquette‘ and ‘Island‘).
The journey home is never too long
Your heart arrives before the train
The journey home is never too long
Some yesterdays always remain
I’m going back to where my heart was light
When my pillow was a ship, I sailed through the night
The journey home is never too long
When open hearts are waiting there
The journey home is never too long
There’s room to love and room to spare
I want to feel the way that I did then
And think my wishes through before I wish again
The idea of home in the summer is transient, like the vacations some of us take, the travels some of us make. It’s an idea more than a place, and as such summer teaches us how to make a home wherever we might be, whenever we may need it. For some of us, home is a family, a spouse, a friend, a lover. For some it is a pet, a house, a tree from our childhood. If you’re one of the lucky ones, home is yourself – a place where you always feel at ease and safe and comforted from the torments of the world. That’s the best sort of home to make – and making peace with yourself means you can feel at home wherever you might be (especially your own backyard).
Not every boat you come across is one you have to take
No, sometimes standing still can be the best move you ever make
This is where I’ll be spending the day.
Come back later.
Peruse these summer songs.
Or smoke it.
Whatever floats your boat.
The intense heat of last week threatened to melt away all the golden trappings of this Solid Gold Summer like some gold-foil-wrapped chocolate bunny from the perilous Easter period – but summer has a way of proving itself invincible, refusing to yield even to its own incendiary machinations.
The music is magic as the Solid Gold dancers take to the stage of my hazy childhood memories – sequins sparkling in the roving spotlights, slicing through all the dramatic smoke effects as their limbs flail in impossible feats of human movement.
Glimmers of glory shimmer in the starry wide-eyed wonder of a little boy watching all the flashy magic playing out on the television. What might it feel like to spin in the middle of all those shards of glittering light – to be a disco ball with every light beam trained on you? Where all you have to do is spin and reflect the light back onto the world – the conduit, the vessel, the portal – resplendent in gold and mirrors and taking it all in only to give it right back in some incongruent generosity of spirit of which no one would ever quite believe you were capable. It’s not something we have come to expect of our golden icons.
When I think back to the boy I used to be, the kid who watched those Solid Gold dancers with rapture and transfixion, studying the way their sequined light pierced the stage night, I remember the ferocity he sought to capture, and how he vowed one day to be just as bewitching as the spectacle parading before him.
My dreams of gold read differently now, and I am starting to see things from a changed point of view. My vessel is solid gold; the rest of the world and its people may be gilded, facades and shells of empty, misguided brokenness, but I somehow remain whole, I remain true. I remain solid through and through. The tacit admission is that I’m just a little tarnished – an ironic flip of all that is expected from my sparkling superficiality, from all that has admittedly come before – with the graver implication being that I was tarnished by own hand and head. Overthinking and overanalyzing are the bane to many a Virgo, and I am far from an exception to this overwrought conundrum.
Yet it is precisely at such times when I remind myself that I still have the power to enthrall and enchant, as I’m reminded by friends and strangers alike, in ways overt and covert because nobody willingly gives me any flowers despite how much they know I love them. Or maybe it’s because they know how much I love them, and love has never been easy to come by for me.
The rest of the world gets the show then, and for anyone who is still reading, that goes for you too. The ones I seek to reach are infuriatingly unaware of these spoils. My golden splendor spins with purpose only for itself, for the sake of spinning. It’s something to do, something to fill the mind when more disruptive thoughts might derail an entire summer.
“I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay
Summer fleeting, summer flying by, summer waiting for no man… I feel the swift rush of time in summer more than any other seasons, likely because we want it to last. Its golden splendor seeps into daily summer living, the way heat eventually comes to land in the earth and stay there until September, but once the nights turn it’s difficult to make the warmth last. For now, I let it soak into the skin, into whatever waning darkness remains in my hair like that of some silver-headed wolf.
Gold hints of Egyptian pharaohs swirl us deeper into the past, even though it was the same sun, the same earth, the same stretch of desert still baking in the heat. Sands cycling through time, indeed marking time like the trickle of an hourglass, and so go the days of our lives. Fitting, as summer meant I could reconnect to my soap operas – the entire NBC daytime line-up from ‘Days of Our Lives’ to ‘Santa Barbara’. I don’t even know how many of those shows still run, or whether it’s all streaming now or some other service I’ve ignored and allowed to leave me behind. Summer is no time to learn a new thing.
Instead, I gleefully get lost in all the golden light, embracing summer for the momentary joy at hand. Forget the other seasons if we can have this one golden summer.
Hummingbirds love these deep-throated salvia blooms – because who doesn’t enjoy a deep-throat experience? I’ve planted several in pots on the patio so that we can watch them flit from bloom to bloom, darting with pinpoint precision and split-second motions. It’s one of the most enchanting displays of the summer. Enticing the hummingbirds is always a worthwhile endeavor. They usually favor colorful and interesting blooms, so everybody wins.
A sign that mid-life malaise has kicked in: I missed the due date for my eye appointment by a year. Usually I am right on top of that benefit, as I’m only allotted a check-up and new pair of glasses or contacts every two years, and my eyesight is deteriorating faster than that schedule. This time I let things go for an extra year beyond that – mostly out of laziness and such an onerous experience last visit (clearly I didn’t take my own advice and find a new company). This year the wait time wasn’t any better, I’m just more resigned to accepting that it’s always going to take an hour and a half for a five minute appointment. That little shift made all the complaining go away. There are badder fish to fry.
As for the new specs, I like their less bulky frames – it’s keeping with a simplicity I’m trying to bring into my life. Same thing with the underwear selection, because that’s what most people came here for – no judgment, all respect.
I just read a disheartening report that a disturbingly-large percentage of bees have died in the last year or so, a telltale sign of the distresses that our earth remains under. I no longer know how to process all the horrific news that is happening, other than ignoring it for my own sanity and well-being. In service to that, I will lean into scenes like this – a strikingly scarlet variety of bee balm (Monarda) thus far blessedly unaffected by mildew. We will take our small victories where we find them, grateful that there is still beauty left in the world.
Actor, comedian, and most decidedly NOT a piece of shit based solely on his own website, Evan Mulrooney handily gets crowned Dazzler of the Day for that clarification alone. His work on ‘Only Murders In The Building’, ‘Fargo‘, ‘Justified: City Primeval‘, and ‘South Side‘ – along with his social media hilarity – have righty made him a star. Coupled with his good looks and the build of a former football player, Mulrooney has made an enviable splash in the entertainment world. Watch his Insta space for good things to come.
Emi and Noah came over for the 4th of July festivities (such as they were) and we had a lovely little cook-out with Mom before the twins and I went out for ice cream and a walk at The Crossings. They’re getting older now, and I feel them shift slightly to their phones, shortening their attention span which was never all that substantial in the first place. The changes from generation to generation ring differently when you’re on this side of the divide.
When walking The Crossings we were able to enjoy a moment of touching the grass as it were, even if they complained that they didn’t want to walk. Noah was the one who discovered this lone daylily in bloom, and I explained how each bloom only lasted but a day. He said that was sad, but I showed him the other buds that were waiting to take over when this one had spent its day – and I said that if the daylily only knew of one perfect day, and had no idea of how long other flowers lived, why shouldn’t it be the happiest flower alive for that single day?
Back in the attic, we shared a ‘Circle of Trust’ moment where we talked of things that shall only remain within that sacred circle. One fun and slightly insane thing I can share is that we realized, at Emi’s keen observation, that I had never worn the same outfit twice whenever I’ve hung out with them. Since I see them maybe once a month – and often for the big life events like birthdays and holidays and graduations – it was entirely plausible that they’ve never seen me in the same thing twice. Respect.
More moving was Emi’s unprompted explanation that she always appreciated that she could come visit us no matter what craziness or drama was unfolding in her life, and that our home was a place of calm and relaxation, where she could simply be. Emi’s always taken after me when it comes to astute observations – and being blunt no matter how much it may sometimes hurt. On this day, there was no pain, only love and gratitude.
Is anyone’s star shining as brightly as Meg Stalter’s right now? With a new single (‘Prettiest Girl in America’), scene-stealing moves in ‘Hacks‘, and a Broadway debut in one of the hottest shows, ‘Oh Mary!’, Meg Stalter is doing everything right, and easily earns this crowning as Dazzler of the Day. Check out her hilariously entertaining Insta here.
Mary Haynes may have doted on a fictitious perfume called ‘Summer Rain’, and I myself may have a bottle of the Hermes beauty ‘Un Jardin Apres la Mousson’ recalling the garden after a summer deluge, but I’m still trying to find ways of appreciating a rainy summer day, and I’m not quite succeeding.
Instead, I take a rainy night and turn it into an abstract study in contemplation, painting it somewhere in my mind and streaking it with blurry lines that obfuscate as much as reveal. Strange and wonderful the way rain brings the streetlights to electric, reflecting light; this is why they wet the pavement when they shoot movies. Once you notice that you’ll see it in every outside movie street scene.
With the possible sweet exception of the linden tree blooms, no other summer flower reminds me of childhood, and in such unassuming and visually quiet fashion, as a simple hedge of privet. It immediately rekindles summer memories of Provincetown, of family vacations, of nights walking in hot and humid air, which always carries floral fragrance more potently than any other time of the year.
Like the linden tree, privet doesn’t shout its presence with bold and colorful flowers – it speaks solely through its sweet and somewhat subtle fragrance. When appearing en masse during their blooming season, it manages to fill the surrounding air with a lovely perfume, and most don’t know where it’s coming from since the show is far short of grand ostentation. It speaks to me more sweetly because of this.
Like some paper moon, this bamboo lamp casts a starburst of shadows before a branch of coral bark maple. A scene from the Floating World perhaps, centuries ago, that replays itself in varying versions over all the ensuing years. What remains is the beauty, the lingering sigh, that feeling of being so full you want to squeeze someone’s hand to realize your place is still of this earth. Rainy summer evenings make for some of the saddest times, such gloom at direct odds with the season of the sun. One expects the dreary stuff in fall or winter; summer makes the sting more acute.
This is when we find solace in the interior. This is why we make our rooms as pretty and peaceful as possible. This is where a branch of maple leaves becomes a portal to another century, another place. This is the space where music speaks for longing.
The last thing I want to do is wish the summer away.
Keeping that in mind, I endeavor to embrace the moment, rainy night and everything that goes along with it – the stickiness, the air with enough coolness to give it just an edge, the purgatorial wait until the sun comes up and out again. A rainy summer night is right in its own way, it carries its own beauty hand in hand with its darkness. Still, I yearn for light…
