Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Procured from the internet:

Dear people who type in all lowercase,

We are the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse. 

Sincerely,

Capital Letters

I didn’t see the second one at first.

The first was apparent and I was zooming in on it.

Only after I opened the window to the backyard did I see the second one, thanks to its immediate bolting out of the vicinity when it heard the window squeak open. 

Two rabbits were making the most of these glorious last few summer days. If you look in the shadow beneath the lawn chair, you’ll see what I later realized I had captured before scaring it away with the window. 

I watched the remaining one for a while – it’s good for the heart to hold still in these last moments of summer, especially when the sun is so lovely and so warm, and a rabbit is pausing to pay its respects too. At this point the garden is in need of some editing and cutting back, so any help the rabbits want to provide in munching on leaves is fine by me. 

As I closed the window to the backyard, I wandered to the front door before sitting down for y daily meditation. There were two more rabbits there. Could they be the same ones from the back? Unlikely, as they seem to have been there a while based on their peaceful and slow grazing on the grass. But who knows… rabbits are magical creatures, and I wouldn’t put it past them to try to trick me in such a whimsical manner. 

Here, too, the last rays of the day’s sunshine drenched their endeavors, summer hanging on to the very last minute, perhaps showing fall how nice it can be when things are done gently. The preponderance of rabbits is also a boon to my soul when it needs something enriching. It was a happy end to the last Monday of summer. 

We have arrived at the final week of summer, and it feels like we are actually getting one last dose of the good stuff – thank you global warming! While the world burns, a look back at the week that came before…

Preparing for a fit of rightful rage.

A golden September gets all the blame.

To the left?

This blog always go silent on 9/11.

Dad’s second heavenly birthday.

A mealy little meal.

An unhappy harvest.

A not-so-scary confession.

Keep calm and coquette on.

Keeping on coquetting.

Papyrus or bust.

A summer-salvaging moment by Andy.

The summer of John Duff.

Dazzlers of the Day included a very naked Hugh Jackman, Morgan Freeman, Benson Boone, and Chappell Roan.

What a strange name ~ papyrus. 

Say it again ~ papyrus.

Keep saying it ~ papyrus.

Papyrus.

Papyrus.

Papyrus.

Doesn’t it sound strange? That happens with any word if you say it enough – it starts to sound strange and odd and you wonder how a word came to ever be in the first place – or maybe it’s just my mind reaching its long-predicted breaking point. 

Anyway, our pot of papyrus, drainage holes mostly blocked for extra moisture, and which usually does quite well with the regular watering and feeding I give it, failed to astound as it has in previous years. Another disappointing result of this past summer’s waning charm. 

Maybe all those perfect summers were never quite as perfect as they seemed, but the factual comparison of this one and the performance of papyrus in the past – strange word again! – lead me to believe that things have inarguably shifted. 

No one will pay much attention to that, despite its momentous ramifications. 

This blog post will be lost and forgotten.

Nothing really matters.

Papyrus.

Let us have one final full weekend of coquette escapism before the official arrival of fall, and for this one I’ll even get up into a dress and Sunday hat and pearls. A boy shouldn’t go anywhere without a pearl necklace. The Sunday hat is really just for Sundays, or Kentucky Derbies, but it fits the finery of our coquette aesthetic for the moment, and in honor of summer magic it stays on. Frilly and fantastical, I’m seeing this summer theme through to the end, though in all honesty I’m rather over it. The sweetness has turned sour, which is the greatest risk to any act of coquetry. 

A reprise, then, for this penultimate summer weekend, courtesy of Laufey, who provided much of the soundtrack for our coquette moments. This is ‘Bewitched’ again. 

A bit of bewitchery bodes well for the transition into fall, as does a certain feminine energy – and all will be revealed in the months to come. For now, let’s let out a sigh of gratitude for the summer. It’s largely been good to us, even if we haven’t always been good in return. There were sunny and beautiful days where I just didn’t manage to make the most of it, choosing to stay indoors, to stay hidden, to stay in a stasis as much from grief as from healing. There were also new wounds that opened old ones just when I might have thought things were better. The conundrum of a coquette summer… the work of the coming fall.

The sun shines differently in September. It still warms the day, but its staying power has diminished. The earth is priming itself for the bigger chill on the way. I hope it takes its time, slowing advancing into coolness instead of taking some precipitous drop that kills our tender plants in one fell swoop. Maybe that’s the better way though – like jumping right into the deep end of the pool instead of wading slowly in. Rip that ridiculous cherry bandage right off with nary a flinch or flutter. 

Our hanging ferns in front of the house have performed poorly this summer, putting on the worst show of any ferns I’ve ever hung there. Of course they happen to be the most prominent plants on view to the street, another one of life’s little fuck-overs. I’ll take them down right after I write this, and drop them into the dumpster. Beneath the veneer of a coquette summer, there is always an underlying ugliness, some bit of bitterness to poison the sweet. Now I’m already veering into fall, and we still have a glittering part two of this madness to post.

{…to be coquettishly continued…}

While everyone else’s tomatoes went gangbusters this summer, our two pots of cherry tomatoes – usually very prolific as seen here – have produced about ten cherry tomatoes until this point. Now that we are on the verge of frost, they are beginning to put out fruit. Too little, too late – and a telling sign of how a summer that started out with such promise has turned to total shit. 

Am I a bit bitter? Perhaps… no, definitely. And it’s only the start of what this fall will bring. Forewarned is fair-warned. Whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean…

There was once a time that people assumed tomatoes were poisonous because of their classification as part of the deadly nightshade family. I do so enjoy a plant that inspires fear in simpletons. Wish we had a bit more.