A preamble of sorts for the recounting of this year’s BroSox Adventures (coming up this weekend), this post celebrates the roses that were in bloom when last we were in Boston. It seemed that every square or garden we passed had some sort of rose show happening – the glorious sign that June was at hand and summer had, or was just about to, arrive. This first flush is usually the biggest and best, and it did not disappoint. They were tumbling off their trellises, rising and arching like some colorful fountain of fragrant petals. The red ones seen here were found along the Southwest Corridor Park, whose garden plots have been lovingly brought to beautiful life over the last decade or so.
Since I was not looking for anything specific, I kept my mind open to whatever the universe might throw in my path. That happened to be the gorgeous House of Guerlain, which I had previously sampled in the amazing Guerlain fragrance bar at Raffles. On this day, I was drawn to the golden honeycomb bottle of their Aqua Allegoria Forte line, and the one that spoke to me in cool whispers of refreshing brightness was this ‘Oud Yuzu Forte’.
Oud and Yuzu are separately two of my favorite fragrance profiles, yet for some reason I’ve never happened upon them in a combination that worked as well as this one. The woody aspects of oud ground the tangy effervescence of the yuzu. Citrus was made for summer, and while most citrus scents are gone within minutes, this one, being an Eau de parfum, lasts a decent deal longer. Carrying a golden sparkle, this scent strikes the perfect chord for a Solid Gold Summer, offering something a little deeper, a little more striking.
The hosta blooms rose early this year, in the weird way that nature has of delaying some plants, while accelerating others. I’ve noticed the seven sons’ flower tree already shooting out its buds, which shouldn’t bloom until August if we’re on the usual trajectory. This hosta bloom is backed by the brilliant chartreuse of the Aralia cordata ‘Sun King’ – the lilac color looking splendid against the bright green of earliest summer (though this King will hang onto its gorgeous bright green for the entire season).
When all else fails, and you find yourself in the spiral of another mid-life crisis or just the simple wear and tear of a few weeks of the current world, I find it best to re-focus my daily meditations, which have admittedly become lax in the excitement of the arrival of summer. As may have been evident in some recent posts, my brain has been a bit scattered, a bit manic, a bit all over the place. I’m attributing it to the end of a spring – perhaps the spring to end all springs, as I’ve never dealt with spring endings in the thrill of summer arrivals. Now, at the ripe old age of fifty, I’m thinking of endings a bit more, and I’ve come to the realization that unless an ending is actually at hand, there is no good worrying about it. In these times, I hone in on my daily meditation, re-centering from where I’ve strayed and drifted, and returning to the calm and peace I’ve always found there.
Even after meditating for almost seven years now, I still have to work at the practice, especially if I want to find that stillness of the mind that a proper meditation can elicit. It begins with deep, slow breathing – measured intakes of air – slowly, slowly – and then an even more measured release, narrowing the windpipe a little to allow for a slower pace of exhalation. Thoughts often flood this first part of the meditation process, so I let them come, acknowledging each and then letting them go by the time the next breath arrives. It helps me to focus on tangible things at first – so I’ll start with whatever physical sensation I might be feeling – a stiffness in the chest, a dull ache in the shoulder, the typical soreness in my back after bagging a bunch of leaves the day before. Honoring the body this way and allowing each little pain its moment is sometimes all the body wants to let go of some of the tension and hurt.
If I still haven’t calmed enough to have a clear head, and if intrusive thoughts continue to cross my mind, I’ll go through the previous few hours and what I felt during those moments, whether it was worry, fear, annoyance, anger, love, acceptance, sorrow – and allow each to have their moment. By this point, my breathing is usually slow and steady, my mind is clear and open and blank, and I’ve reached the state of mindfulness that is like the Savasana at the close of a yoga session.
The more I access that space of mindfulness, the more of life’s stresses flow around me rather than stop me in my tracks. Summer may proceed.
When I say ‘Summer Head‘ I mean the summer mind-set.
In my case, that’s an annoying amount of overthinking and overanalyzing and overdoing just about everything in my head. An exhausting and endless regime of mental gymnastics that always gets in the way of mindfulness. Thankfully, mindfulness is not merely its match, but its dominator. When set against overthinking, mindfulness always wins, if you know how to conjure it, if you can focus enough to make it happen. As with so many things worth having, there is difficult work involved.
The hobgoblin of the overthinking mind will try to derail the happiest summer days, blocking and obscuring the sun while you frantically seek shade and darkness to ease the headache, to find the coolness that will finally bring relief from the heat. You will try to find sleep, hoping it will bring peace, but the overthinking mind doesn’t allow for sleep. Its work is insidious that way. Diabolical.
I battle my own head games like vampires might battle each other. Formidable foes, so perfectly matched in viciousness and vitriol, fight not until the end of one, but the end of two. There is only ever complete destruction and utter annihilation. The summer head trip is designed to self-destruct like some Mission Impossible missive, yet the real impossible mission is in reconciling the mind’s night with summer light.
Hidden behind the shimmer of short-shorts or the smitten yet sinister smile put on for public appearance, for this very post perhaps, for the sheer vanity of survival – summer’s head trips spin wildly out of control, while the gilded sun of golden power glimmers from its far-off glory.
At the time that I write this, it is pouring rain outside. The sky is dim – a dull gray that portends a long, and helpful, onslaught of rain. The lawn and the gardens need it, especially the ferns. It is brooding weather – puts one in a dampened spirit, and it’s at odds with the pictures presented here from the day before, when the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the clouds were merely artful accents unfilled with rainwater. The difference of a day. The difference of a night. Some things change, just like that. It’s the nature of the world. Ask any night-blooming cactus, if you’re lucky enough to catch one in bloom.
Golden is the hour, golden is the time. Golden is the summer, washing the luster away in the rain, because nothing gold can stay. Summer isn’t usually this pessimistic, but this is no ordinary summer. It’s my 50th full summer, and I can finally say I don’t really know what I’m doing. Some say that is the first step to learning anything. It’s a tenet of Buddhism, and the art of not knowing anything means you are fully open to learn of the present moment, allowing you to fully inhabit the time at hand with curiosity – ever seeking knowledge, ever open to learning more. Consider summer school in session.
The new hangover is waking up to an e-mail notification that an order was received, with a little picture of an Egyptian headdress or other such nonsense telling me I sleep-ordered some ludicrous piece of trash that is being delivered in two days.
This pair of magenta blooms is currently lighting up the garden – the first is a brilliant rose campion – small of stature and size, its color is so potent it shows itself from any distance, piercing through the green surroundings with its clarion-call. The second is a smaller monarda – bee balm – that was a bit of a lark when I planted it a couple of years ago, and it’s come back again. I like a survivor. And I love this color.
You have your summer memories, I have mine. Let’s make a new one together to this classic Donna Summer cover of ‘MacArthur Park’; it fits into the Solid Gold Summer theme rather loosely, as Alysa Liu won her gold medal skating to this song. Consider it gold-adjacent via the Winter Olympics. A campy golden reference that is deceptively at odds with how deep this post may go. For now, let’s get lost in the cheesy drama of a pressed pair of striped pants or a cake being left out in the rain…
AND THE OLD MEN PLAYING CHINESE CHECKERS BY THE TREES
There is something both insanely ridiculous and incredibly moving about the words and imagery and music here. When you’re in the throes of heartbreak, when you find yourself suddenly left behind and out of love, you do what you have to do to cope and survive. Sometimes that’s in a cheesy pop song (see ‘Bye Bye Bye’ by N’Sync for how I got over one previous paramour) and sometimes that’s in more probing mind tricks.
MACARTHUR’S PARK IS MELTING IN THE DARK
ALL THE SWEET GREEN ICING FLOWING DOWN
SOMEONE LEFT THE CAKE OUT IN THE RAIN
I DON’T THINK THAT I CAN TAKE IT ‘CAUSE IT TOOK SO LONG TO BAKE IT
AND I’LL NEVER HAVE THAT RECIPE AGAIN
Can you force yourself to feel or not feel things? I used to think you couldn’t force your way out of either of them, but I don’t know if that’s entirely true. So much of life is in our perception and perspective – change those and you change what you might actually feel. Like grieving or lost love. Is it better to allow ourselves to feel all of it, to embrace the sorrow and hurt and get into it, or does that run the risk of diving deeper and possibly irreparably into an everlasting funk? The past few years I’ve leaned into feeling all of it, even when it sucked, even when it hurt, because I understood that burying it all inside wasn’t helpful or healthy.
THERE WILL BE ANOTHER SONG FOR ME AND I WILL SING IT
AFTER ALL THE LOVES OF MY LIFE, YOU’LL STILL BE THE ONE
‘Fake it until you make it‘ was how I made it through my college years and early 20’s. Sometimes you have to hang curtains of glistening gold material to hide the scaffolding and machinations behind building the bones and structure of self-worth. I know I can do that – I’ve trained myself to shift my perception and perspective, to coldly and analytically examine my feelings then take them carefully and resolutely apart, rendering them mere sections and segments, bits and parts and pieces of something that once constituted something grander. But do I want to do that anymore? I’m conflicted.
I WILL TAKE MY LIFE INTO MY HANDS AND I WILL USE IT
I WILL WIN THE WORSHIP IN THEIR EYES AND I WILL LOSE IT
I WILL HAVE THE THINGS THAT I DESIRE
AND MY PASSION FLOWS LIKE RIVERS FROM THE SKY
OH AND AFTER ALL THE LOVES OF MY LIFE,
AFTER ALL THE LOVES IN MY LIFE
YOU’LL STILL BE THE ONE AND I’LL ASK MYSELF WHY…
As we embark upon this Solid Gold Summer, it is worth noting that there is nothing solid about summer. There is only irony, hollowness, emptiness – the sheen, the shell, the facade. There is no sure footing here. Every step is perilous and you must watch for slips and falls, cracks and ruin, degradation and destruction like some marble faun sculpture falling to the ground and smashing into pieces. Fake gold, false gods, imitation metal – there is nothing real to this summer. Reality is dead.
Along those lines, there is no such thing as a stable summer either. The atmosphere is too volatile, the conditions too prime for tornadoes and hurricanes – the peaks and valleys too high and too deep for a smooth base of stability or permanence.
Only one song will do for this day – and it’s the ‘Second Night of Summer‘, literally and musically, as we do our annual post of this ditty that somehow grows in resonance with each passing year. Summer is maddening and magical like that. It reeks of ambivalence and doubt, while emitting heady hope and impossibly intoxicating fantasies.
It’s also the time for short shorts and thigh-high breezes.
This summer will never be what you think it’s going to be, especially in these parts.
I don’t even know what’s to come – how could you?
Still, summer is fun, and that’s all we can do – have fun.
Only the second day of summer is at hand, and we are already recapping things, which means the tail-end of spring (and my tail end) is also encapsulated here. Have at the links within this weekly blog recap, and as fronted by a golden sunflower.
This first day of summer also happened to be Father’s Day, something we haven’t really celebrated since losing Dad three years ago. There’s no longer an overwhelming sadness or despondency that comes from that, though my melancholic mood of late didn’t help matters. To combat that, I made a day of driving and exploring and keeping busy to keep my mind off darker thoughts.
First, I made a pasta casserole and dropped it off for Mom, who had taken a spill on Friday, resulting in a bad black eye and cut head; my incredulous annoyance at her not going to the doctor was likely expected as she didn’t bother to tell me any of what happened until Saturday. Nurses often make the most obtuse patients; if this had happened to her children or grandchildren it would have most definitely been checked out by a doctor, but what can I do? It’s too upsetting to do anything more than keep my distance and hope that people do right for themselves.
I then stopped by the hospital to visit Dad. The cemetery would have likely been busy with others visiting their dead dads, and I didn’t want to share misery. Besides, I never really feel like my Dad is there – if he is, it’s on the periphery, in the shade of the evergreens, not wanting to be bothered. Instead, when I want to feel closer to him I go to the hospital where he worked, where I have many memories of him being vibrantly alive and beloved by his co-workers. I sat in the chapel and spoke to him a bit, then stopped by the cafeteria, near the room he once had me stay in when he had to pick me up on a day I got sick at school. I feel him more keenly there.
Afterward, I took a long drive. This weekend I’ve been doing a lot of driving – it affords solitude, and time and space to think. Mourning the end of spring feels rougher this year. I drove along the backroads outside my hometown, where the corn was barely knee-high, the hills were gently rolling, and the clouds and sky were making scenes primed for painting. I forget how beautiful the world can be when spring departs.
When I finally returned home, Andy had just put a couple of burgers on the grill – an ideal dinner for a fatherless household on this first day of summer. Later in the afternoon, while Andy was napping, I went for a swim. I haven’t been swimming as much since the summer of 2023. I went today in honor of my Dad. That was his habit when we were little kids.
Despite owning an in-ground pool and maintaining it meticulously during the summer months, my Dad didn’t enjoy swimming. He never went in the water on any of our vacations – not at the beach, not in the pools, and not in his own backyard. The one day he would deign to swim with us was Father’s Day – a noble act that was more of a gift to his kids than anything he actually enjoyed. The signs of a father’s love are often hidden, often deep, and often deeply held. That was always one of them.
At the end of today, I went in our pool and thought of Dad. I wasn’t sad about him – there were more other pressing matters to be sad about – and I wasn’t overcome the way I was earlier in the car listening to some of his favorite songs. It felt peaceful, it felt calm. It was a good ending to the first day of summer.
