His cloak is cologne and each night he wears it differently. He saves his signature and namesake for only the most special occasions. If you’ve ever been in his presence and he smells particularly pungent – when is scent trail is pervasive, long, and insistent – it means he must like you very much. An extra-salient perfume performance is an indication that he wants to impress you. And if you’ve ever gone home smelling slightly of him, if you catch him on your coat or jacket the next morning, count yourself lucky indeed.
Mr. Oud exerts his influence indirectly – in a sense, a feeling or an emotion. He elicits a visceral response – a primal fight-or-flight reaction – and all the rumors and stories of his polarizing nature do seem grounded in truth. Your guard goes up, because where there’s smoke… and pretty perfume… there is usually fire… and danger.
One gets the feeling that Mr. Oud wouldn’t have it any other way, that this ephemeral bit of hubris is as much in his make-up as it is a product of our collective making-up. If he holds sway or any semblance of power, it’s in what we have granted to him, perhaps through his own machinations.
A pen to embody the sentiment of a Monday morning, and our first weekly blog recap of the month of November for 2025. How we got here when it feels like it was just May is beyond me, and best left unanalyzed, like much of time, moving much too quickly. On with the recap, such as it is, and was…
In an alternate time and universe, a boy religiously watches ‘Days of Our Lives’ while he stays home from school for another day. He’s not as physically ill as he pretends to be, but mentally the idea of going back to school is insurmountable, so a fortuitously-timed case of the sniffles, and a helpful body semi-ironically weakened by allergies, aid in his survival.
Like the prismatic destruction of light through a hanging chandelier crystal, distilled into smaller slivers of pretty colors, memory serves to dissect and illuminate, rendering new truths to old stories. The past isn’t always set in stone, or trapped in the snowy reception of an old television set from your youth – sometimes the past is malleable, and it moves from winter to summer…
Raspberry-shaped and raspberry-flavored hard candies dissolve amid sips of Crystal Light iced tea. Summer inside stays cool as the days of our lives tick slowly by. In the fall the boy welcomes sickness again, opening arms and heart for it to take him further away.
Did rainy days then make him feel more lonely or more frightened? How far apart were they really? On one rainy morning on the way to school he looks up at the sky and lets the water conveniently and convincingly mingle with his burgeoning tears – that’s how much he thinks he misses home, but really he is just afraid.
Not all the points are valid. Some things are most definitely invalid and it’s ok to say as much.
If one side is decidedly bullshit, it’s not a ‘both sides’ situation. Stop giving validity to bullshit. You know bullshit as well as I do, and if you don’t, we shouldn’t be friends, because you’re operating on a baseline of a different set of facts called lies.
Missy is one of my oldest friends – probably one of my first after Suzie, as it was at Suzie’s house when I initially met her – either at one of Suzie’s birthday parties or some holiday when she happened to stop by. Since then, we’ve remained close – even dating for about a year at the end of high school, fittingly marking the end of our youth. The ensuing years have found us intertwined in each other’s lives, seeing us through the difficulties of loss and change, and all the things that happen along the way to our half-century mark in this world.
It is always a return to warmth and safety and comfort to visit her, so when she and her boys invited me for a fall weekend, I rejoiced at the escape – a cozy couple of days ensconced in Connecticut would prove enjoyable for all of us, including their dog Queenie, who greeted me silently, like an old friend, without barking or concern.
We would stay close to home for the weekend, only leaving for a couple of strolls around the yard. Missy kept the fireplace stoked and glowing for a cozy centerpiece, and we picked up where we left off this past summer, as old friends do.
She had also planned out a weekend menu of delicious meals, which we had in the dining room by candlelight – when you have a fancy robe of rust-colored ruffles, you need a proper table setting to set it off. (The highlight being a Saturday night dinner of braised short-robs and fennel risotto, which I’ll be making on my own because it was so amazing.)
Wildlife rustled through the leaves – squirrels mostly, whose noise was always more awesome than the creatures behind it – and this trio of deer, nibbling on the maple leaves they could reach.
They looked inside while we looked out – the ultimate juxtaposition of a sense of safety and warmth indoors with a quickly-cooling afternoon that soon darkened into evening. Clear and cool, it invited a fall fire that Missy assembled, and soon enough I was afforded my first taste of s’mores in decades. We roasted/toasted marshmallows, made our sweet dessert sandwiches, and listened to the playlist that Cameron and I had worked on earlier that day.
The next morning we convened in the living room for a cup of tea and one last talk, while plans for future get-togethers were made, including a winter weekend in Boston to see ‘Some Like It Hot’ while Julian tours Boston schools. Time flies by, children grow up, and friendship remains true, seeing us through it all.
While baby brothers tend to get all the love and adoration, the eldest sibling typically paves the way – in this case Kevin Jonas finally gets some overdue love with this crowning as Dazzler of the Day in celebration of his first solo effort, ‘Changing’. Nick Jonas and Joe Jonas have had their own moments here over the years, but Kevin was in the world first, and has always been the quiet older presence rocking the guitar and guiding the band on its journey.
Missy gifted me the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius on my recent visit to Connecticut (more on that to come) and it’s a welcome return to the mindfulness and meditations I’ve been practicing. Daily meditation keeps my baseline at a calmer level, thereby allowing for greater moments of stress to not raise my mood into emergency territory – a very likely place to find myself in this day and age.
“For a man’s greatness lies not in wealth and station, as the vulgar believe, nor yet in his intellectual capacity, which is often associated with the meanest moral character, the most abject servility to those in high places, and arrogance to the poor and lowly; but a man’s true greatness lies in the consciousness of an honest purpose in life, founded on a just estimate of himself and everything else, on frequent self-examination, and a steady obedience to the rule which he knows to be right, without troubling himself, as the emperor says he should not, about what others may think or say, or whether they do or do not do that which he thinks and says and does.” ~ GEORGE LONG
Our Autumn of Oud enters its golden November hour, framed by this of-the-recent-moment song ‘Golden’, which aligns with all the planetary, astrological charting that Virgo is said to be enthralled in at this moment. I’m not totally buying it, as this fall was supposed to be groundbreaking for us, with all kinds of monetary windfalls, and all I got was broken dishwashers, dryers, light fixtures, and traffic tickets. More is going out than coming in, so all you Tik-Tokers spewing the Virgo glow-up have a lot of explaining to do. Where is the gold already?
Manifesting something wonderful is a lovely way to set a tone and intention for the month ahead, provided there is some grounding in reality and reason, and a pragmatic understanding of the limits of possibility. I try to aim for the stars, while having a safety net of sensibility in place. Also, it’s helpful to be willing to land on an equally-lofty, if unexpected, perch, and be open to such shifts without thinking your way is the only way; there are beautiful tree branches and sparkling high-rise buildings en route to the stars. Many are delightful destinations in their own right.
I’m done hiding, now I’m shining like I’m born to be We dreaming hard, we came so far, now I’ll believe We’re going up, up, up – it’s our moment You know together we’re glowing Gonna be, gonna be golden Oh up, up, up with our voices Gonna be, gonna be golden.
This autumn has found its groove on the blog with the polarizing essence of oud creating drama and metaphor, specifically within the idea of oud coming about from an attack on the interior of the agarwood tree, ultimately resulting in something beautiful and rare and valuable. (Oud is the by-product of a fungal infection, which triggers the production of the aromatic resin as a defense; it’s been poetically described as ‘the fragrant molecules of a wounded tree‘ ~ a description that might pertain to many of us in the ragged world today.) To align oneself with oud, to make oud the fragrance of the season, is to understand the way we must take attacks and difficulties and turn them into something better – something rich, something wonderful, something golden.
This is the sort of night that transforms a warm and pretty autumn into a stark and barren fall. It rips leaves from trees and tidies up brittle, dead branches – a ravaging and potent one-two punch of water and wind, perfectly and naturally designed to bring down all loosely-hanging appendages of beauty. They’re done their summer duty; they know it’s time to release, let go, fall and flutter, and join the ground from whence they came.
One more Halloween song then – a midnight danse macabre, electronic-style – to slide us through to the other world, right when the veil between us is at its thinnest and most penetrable. Enter here…
Escaping the trick-or-treaters and leaving Andy to fend for himself (he ended up sleeping through it) I sit in a nearby coffee-shop enjoying the cafe culture. Aside from this loose sketch of a blog post, I’m mostly just scrolling through the phone when I suddenly remember the need for a proper scent for an upcoming early screening of ‘Wicked: For Good‘ on November 17. One of the scents that Cynthia Erivo herself reportedly wore during the filming of the movies, ‘Witchy Woo’ sounded ideal on more than one level, so I ordered a bottle blindly. It won’t arrive until next week, so it misses Halloween completely, but should get here just in time for the return of our Wicked Witches.
All you sick, twisted fucks celebrating this pagan day of sin and darkness, precisely when the veil between the physical world and the spiritual world is at its thinnest, would do well to remember that this day, this holiday, is amateur hour for those of us who turn out an extraordinary wardrobe nightly. That run-on sentence is my way of not-so-pleasantly reminding everyone who gives the slightest shit (all three of you who read this blog, and whom I should probably treat a lot better) that Halloween is traditionally my day off.
Happy Halloween to all who celebrate! As for the rest of us, it’s almost over – and the real holidays are about to begin. I hear Mariah squealing already…
When you realize that you stand entirely alone in a world that celebrates togetherness, you cannot help but feel forever out of place and at odds with any environment in which you find yourself. When you feel out of place or alienated from your own family, that’s a whole other level of trauma.
Unique, that’s what you are Stilettos kicking vintage crystal off the bar Category bad bitch, I’m the bar (ooh) Alien superstar, whip, whip
Andy recently said that he’s always sort of felt like an alien in his family, and at that moment I understood exactly what he meant, as well as why we get along so well; with such a shared experience we understand things in the other without having to voice it or figure it out – we simply get it, and it’s something that people who have always belonged will never understand. It’s a loneliness, a strength, and a way of survival that sets us slightly apart from most people with more functional family units.
And this isn’t an indictment or criticism of our respective family units – merely an observation, a way in which we have always felt like the outsiders, and a valuable component in finding sanctuary with each other. It’s also made us stronger and better people; when you have to forge your own family, without children or traditional ties, you develop methods of emotional survival that put other trials and tribulations to shame. We have to be strong that way, because we will grow old without the support of kids, and that’s a daunting concept for most people. For now we have each other, and there’s home enough in that.
We learned long ago, from pain inflicted both purposely and inadvertently, that we could only count on ourselves. It should also be noted here that just because we can take care of ourselves doesn’t mean we don’t deserve as much love and support as those who can’t. Alas, that’s not the way the world works, and love sometimes has an unfortunate way of flowing along the easiest path.
Masterpiece genius, drip intravenous Patty cake on that wrist Tiffany Blue billboards over that ceiling (unique) We don’t like plain Always dreamed of paper planes Mile high when I rodeo, then I come down and take off again (unique)
For my part, I subconsciously went about conjuring ways to be as enthralling and captivating as possible to prove my own worth, especially when those closest to me couldn’t be bothered. Andy forged his ways as well, and happily we met in time to create a life together for the last twenty-five years.
You see pleasure in my glare Look over my shoulder and you ain’t scared The effects you have on me when you stare Head on a pillow, hike it in the air
“Another thing I learned in therapy?… The kids in dysfunctional families who act out and rebel are the ones who are the healthiest mentally. They’re the ones who see that something’s wrong. That’s why they act out, because they see the house is burning down, and they’re screaming for help. That was you.” ~ Meg Shaffer
I got pearls beneath my legs, my lips, my hands, my hips (U-N-I-Q-U-E) I got diamonds beneath my thighs where his ego will find bliss Can’t find an ocean deep that can’t compete with this cinnamon kiss (U-N-I-Q-U-E) Fire beneath your feet, music when you speak, you’re so unique Unique, that’s what you are Lingerie reflecting off the mirror on the bar Category sexy bitch, I’m the bar Alien superstar
“At some point in the life of every scapegoat, the clock will strike the midnight hour, the masks will come off, and the aggression of family will reveal itself.” ~ M. Wakefield
Passing the match test? That’s some kind of tease, because everything rests on the moment the little flame sees Let’s go boom boom in the zoom zoom room
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tM2FJZfRV4
If you get past that brief little flash, take down my number with your pencil moustache Play truth or dare in the light of a strike anywhere Don’t follow the fallen already lying down there
This lighting is like hell, behind curtains, beaded fringe, sumptuous and opulent… pure hell.
A French sort of desire, held captive in a birdcage, hot like neon, frigid like nitrogen… hellfire.
The way the face is lit by a flame…
When we trip the light fantastic, a feeling so rare, it will follow your features aligned by the glare Let’s go boom boom in the zoom zoom room Let’s go boom boom in the zoom zoom room
