This Japanese hotpot recipe is so simple, and turns out so well, even with myriad variations. It also takes kindly to all sorts of supplemental bolsters, such as noodles and rice – making it as filling and substantial as you want it to be. It’s the ideal fall and winter dish – lasting for several days, lending itself to all kinds of transformations – a good thing to prepare when a stretch of snow is expected.
Comfort food is a way of making it through the winter, a way to lean into the colder season and make something cozy for it. Like candles and yeasty-baked goods, heavy blankets and endless scarves, and the stark beauty of winter dangling like icicles waiting to fall.
Here we are – the high holiday season – and we are deep in it already. This past weekend I was in Boston, and whether or not there was a holiday stroll will have to remain quiet until I wrote those posts – and they will be… something. But I’m jumping ahead – let’s do our weekly look-back at the week of the Cold Moon...
For my sophomore slump holiday card effort, I ricocheted from the bondage-heavy shock-jock scene of the first to a more somber and contemplative pose as seen below. As soon as the first card set up an element of expectation for the follow-up, I knew I’d have to do something entirely different rather than attempting something to top the untoppable. Cue this calm shot from a trip to the green hills of San Diego, as captured by my brother.
We were there for a family wedding, and that was the trip I first came out to my brother as gay. (He thought I was doing it to be trendy, and I don’t think I entirely convinced him it was true, but it did end up sticking.) Madonna’s ‘Evita’ was very much my influence and obsession at the time, so I quoted her on it via Eva Peron: “So share my glory, so share my coffin.” Once again, it sparked whispers of suicide, which were slightly more understandable given the quote, and at that stage of my life I fervently believed that whispers of anything were better than no whispers at all.
This one remains a favorite in the entire canon of cards, mostly because it’s such an incongruous setting and background. I still remember that sunny day in San Diego – my brother and I were hanging out and he showed me to a vintage shop where I picked up the feather boa used in the featured shot above. Then we walked about in this rolling grass field, an impossibly beautiful day in late November for the Ilagan brothers, who had come from the already-frigid and wintry Northeast. It lent this holiday card an element of warmth that was missing from the first year. It also set the stage for the possibility of surprise through understatement – a trick that would come to define ways out of other creative conundrums. Every time the world expected me to zig, I would choose to zag. Coupled with the first card I did, this one was my way of showing my yang after having already given up my yin.
The elements are all present: the velvet rose of his robe, slightly ruched at the sleeve – the ring of colorful jewels, just slightly out of focus – the way his fingers idly roam about some patch of dyed faux fur – and the fragrance of oud, alternately off-putting and intoxicating, the most compelling way to wear a fragrance.
He is there, but he is not there. When you lock eyes with him, he seems to disappear. Sleight of hand and face and body, present and absent at once. He is like scent itself – indelible and invisible.
Perhaps Mr. Oud is merely making the holiday rounds, and then he’ll disappear for good.
Or until he is seen, and not seen, again.
Memory like scent – powerful, evocative, fleeting – memory like a man gone missing.
For one of my very first acts as a twenty-year-old adult on his own in Boston, I decided to take part in one of the most grown-up traditions I could think of: sending out Christmas cards. Such a tried and true tradition also reeked of dullness and banality, which I took as the ultimate challenge. Of course I’d been writing Christmas cards to my friends for years – sometimes finding unique ones that didn’t have Santa or Christmas trees or glitter on them. (The only time I didn’t fancy glitter was on a Christmas card because that’s where one expects it to be.)
When I was a kid, my Mom’s friend had sewn an adorable bear that we hung on the door in our entryway, extending its stuffed arms to hold a basket made for holiday cards. I thought it was the greatest thing – a creation that celebrated crafting and letter-writing and Christmas spirit. It held the usual red, green and gold cards from neighbors and relatives and family friends, but it was the bear that was the most interesting thing about the Christmas card tradition. I aimed to be more exciting than that bear, and any of the cards it held in its cozy arms.
My holiday card would have to stand apart if it was ever going to be the focal point of any card display, and my initial goal was to the make it onto the family fridge of all my friends’ houses, and maybe, eventually, if I did it extra right, to be deliberately left off of the family fridge certain years for being too much.
That first year, however, I played it relatively safe. Earlier in the summer, channeling Madonna’s ‘Human Nature’ video, I’d done a basement photo shoot in shiny latex and a leather collar, a dog chain pulled taut (TAUT!) and a pair of handcuffs (an accessory from a Limited Edition of Madonna’s ‘Erotica’ album) doubling as a belt. This seemed a fitting first Christmas card, because nothing says Christmas like a touch of bondage and S&M.
It made the intended splash and set the slightly-surprising tone for all the cards to follow – even garnering some element of controversy when a friend’s father misinterpreted the image as a scene of me killing myself via hanging (when suicide was so 1992). It seemed a little shocking at the time – feels nostalgic and quaint by today’s standards.
Through the years, my holiday card became the one that certain people waited for and clamored to see – because who else bothered to put much creative effort into a Christmas card? To keep it enthralling to myself, I’d volley and vacillate between a shocking/provocative image one year, and a somber/serious one the next, exemplifying the extremes to which I sometimes felt drawn. More on that dichotomy in another post, as I managed to unearth the second card I did way back in 1996. The years between that and 2004, when I finally went digital (and kept better archives) have largely been lost to time and poor attic-filing retention. Everything from 2004 and beyond has been immortalized here (see below for the full list).
This year marks the 30th anniversary of my very first effort, and in honor of that I’m attempting to achieve a throwback to the shock and awe/aww/eww elements that the first card produced. It was also the hardest card I’ve ever shot, so trust men when I tell you I worked for it. Stay tuned… (and scroll down for previous cards!)
Sandalwood has always been my go-to note for the holidays, and ‘Bois Pacifique’ provides that, along with added layers of spice perfectly aligned to add a festive note to the proceedings. There is cardamom and turmeric, blending in beautifully with the forest elements of cedar and oakwood. Olibanum and orris butter round out the journey, and the sandalwood weaves its creamy way through the heart of it all, making for a divine holiday fragrance.
The snow was forecast to begin at 7 AM on Tuesday, and as I turned on the work laptop around 7:30, it was already falling. Not the kind of big fluffy flakes that mark a passing squall or some brief fit of the sky, but the fine, almost-imperceptible sort of snow that usually indicates the start of something major. I’d already stocked the kitchen with the provisions for soup and stew should we be snowed in, and Andy had made a big batch of pasta fagioli the night before.
We had tickets to see Lea Salonga at the Troy Music Hall that evening, and I’d asked Mom to come with us as an olive-branch of sorts that I’d extended following a difficult talk we’d had earlier in the fall. Knowing that those concerts rarely get canceled, even in inclement weather, I’d asked her to stay over the night before so she’d be here by the time the snow started. Andy would be able to get us to Troy in the snow, but there would be no way for her to safely get from Amsterdam to Albany if she waited until that day to leave.
Alas, she chose not to stay over, and as the snow continued to pile up throughout the day, it became clear there was no way she could safely make it to us to see the show. I offered the ticket to other friends, but no one else was able to make it either, so Andy and I would be on our own, and I’d have a paid-for seat just for my coat. (No one can claim that I don’t embrace extravagance when given a chance.)
Downtown Troy was hushed and slow beneath the first substantial snowfall of the season, and it made for a sweetly romantic backdrop at this festive time of the year. We walked about near the Music Hall before finding a cozy, slightly-below-ground-level wood-fired pizza and pasta place that we’d been to before other events here – Bacchus – and it was the ideal space to warm up, fill our stomachs with salty food, and stave off the still-falling snow before the show. It turned into one of those unexpectedly magical moments of coziness twenty-five years into our relationship, one that felt familiarly destined as us against the world, and I leaned into Andy as we took our seats in the gorgeously-appointed Troy Music Hall.
Lea put on an amazing show, careening through decades of iconic musical theater and movie moments, with a nod to the Philippines and two Judy Garland classics to close the show. As she sang a song in Tagalog (‘Kailangan Kita’) I wished my Dad had taught me his native language so that I might understand better. I also wished that he could hear this now, and somehow it felt like he was listening.
Tonight’s super moon is the last one of the year. Banally christened the ‘Cold Moon’ for obvious reasons (it’s fucking cold, duh), this one is also said to inspire motions of reflection, renewal and closure. Coming at the end of the year, this seems a safe bet, along with all the other ruckus a full super moon typically raises. At the time of this writing, the forecast looks to be rather gray and unconducive to viewing, but there may be a clearing later in the evening (post-script note: the sky has cleared, so I took some new pics for this post). Temperatures, however, may not be inviting enough for a naked full moon ritual, but when you’ve done that once you don’t really need to do it again.
My main practice will be my usual practice: to lay low, look inward, and embrace my daily meditation. There is enough madness around us to occupy the drama-vacuum, and I would like no part of it.
Who the fuck am I kidding? This is shaping up to be a Dorothy Parker month, and we’re only four days into it. I’m feeling all sorts of bitter, querulous and unkind – and it makes me all the more morbidly obsessed with overthinking whether I’m the actual problem. Some of my friends and family would disagree, but they’re likely the ones who are disagreeable to me right now. At least I know enough to step back and retreat from being the sort of bad company I would prove to be, while trying to avoid too much texting that will be mis-read and misinterpreted. It’s funny how only the texts that people find personally problematic with some element of their life that has nothing to do with me are the only ones that are read or responded to. There, take that sentence-ending preposition as an indication that I just don’t fucking care anymore.
It’s too early to be over this holiday season, and so I shall withdraw into myself, into my own quiet breathing – slowly in, slowly out – enjoying the only company that has always proved to be true. I know I made a promise not to be messy this Christmas, but fuck it, I lied. Some days I’m going to be a strong cup of black and bitter coffee, and I’ll want nothing to do with a tempering of your cream, your sugar, or your holiday fucking sprinkles.
Cold mess, hot mess, bold mess, shot mess – I’m done betraying my brilliance for good behavior.
Dorothy never did.
Frustration by Dorothy Parker
If I had a shiny gun, I could have a world of fun Speeding bullets through the brains Of the folk who give me pains;
Or had I some poison gas, I could make the moments pass Bumping off a number of People whom I do not love.
But I have no lethal weapon- Thus does Fate our pleasure step on! So they still are quick and well Who should be, by rights, in hell.
While ‘There’s Always Tomorrow‘ plucks at the heartstrings, and ‘The Christmas Waltz‘ sways in sad three-quarter time, it is this song that always melts my heart – strangely, as it’s one of the most uplifting holiday classic songs that’s ever been written. A highlight of the animated ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ – one of the stalwart chestnuts from my childhood’s television diet – this tells the story of when the Winter Warlock is transformed into a friendly creature through the generosity of Kris Kringle.
