Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Outside the single window of our attic room, sole portal to the winter world, the wind made a guttural moan. It rattled all, as judging by the barks of a dog that followed, nipping on the heels of those retreating moans. Aural signs of an unsettled evening: wails of wind and cries of dog. Both were comfortably muffled enough to be but mild reminders that life and movement existed beyond the confines of our attic.

These were the sounds of Winter Obscura – faded, abstract, fuzzy – if sound was a color these would be some drab and depressingly unremarkable gray.

Like a battleship, like an ending, like a dark pearl.

There is beauty in the unremarkable, and subtlety carries its own grace. Delicate renderings and minor reckonings. Winter upheavals run the gamut from life-altering to microcosmic. Sometimes the same event can be both at once. The power of perspective is too often unharnessed. I wear it around my neck like an ox wears a yoke.

Every once in a while I see something on social media that reminds me of its original wonder. The other day it was a fleeting sentiment posted by someone whose name now escapes me, and I can’t find it anymore, but the words live on, and they have wisdom:

“I need to be best friends with a crow.”

This is the energy I want to see, this is the attitude I want in my social media feeds.

Self-amusement is the simplest and fastest route to happiness that I’ve found. This was evident to me even as a child – not so much the way it led to a happy life – what could I know about life at six or seven? – but the basic mechanism of amusing myself was something I figured out relatively early. If there was one thing I had and honed more than most people around me, it was my imagination. Many children do, but we drill it out of them as they grow older, not trusting those flights of mental fancy found in frilly tea parties and the lives of dolls or stuffed animals.

Of all the rooms I inhabited as a child, my imagination was the one in which I spent the bulk of my time. As such, I would conjure lands and realms of fantastical adventure and delight, all within the space of solitude, and it was quite simple to turn this space into one of amusement and fun.

These days my imagination remains blessedly intact, taking the form of further self-amusement, which finds me laughing kindly at the foibles of myself and others, imagining the silliest of scenarios or reactions of friends to my various nonsense, and I’ll laugh – alone, in public, at inappropriate times, such as when I took these selfies during cafe culture – and I’ll absolutely love it.

The one who speaks in memes should not be tolerated.

#TinyThreads

Paper snowflakes hang in the window of the cafe, the kind we used to make in grade school, of folded white paper and intricate yet simple cut-outs. I never had the mind to know what sort of design would result, so mine were always a mystery until the final reveal, and never as lovely as some of the more beautiful ones that other kids created.

The decorative demarcation of seasons and holidays, hung on the walls and windows as a way of guiding our children and ourselves, of making some small semblance of sense from a world gone all disorderly chaos and meaningless madness.

Childhood memories are trapped in all that papery snow, hidden in the little holes and etched in every line of this approximation of frost.

Someone at the counter asks if they have lemonade.

“We only have lemonade during summer,” comes the friendly let-down.

Suddenly I miss summer, as if I’d forgotten to do so in the rush of holiday mayhem.

What an unpleasant reminder.

It had been a full week since I’d ventured outside – meaning it had been a full week since I left the house in any way. To be honest, as we all should be because what’s the point otherwise, two of those days had been totally lost to the haze of sickness – the rest of the time I was slightly more aware, but only slightly, and all was shaded with the cloudiness that has come to represent this Winter Obscura. Never let it be said that when there’s a theme I don’t lean all the way into it. Extra is my only mode of existence.

It strikes me, having been away from the daily rituals of life for a bit, how much work and effort is involved in simply getting out of the house, and as daunting as it felt first thing on a dark Monday morning, I did what I usually do: broke it down into manageable bits and sections, and slowly charged my way through the day, minute by minute, hour by hour.

Baby steps upon re-entering the realm of the living.

No definitive verdict yet on whether it’s good to be back.