Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

What do you make of this image?

What is real and what is reflection?

What is artifice and what is art?

I don’t claim to have the answers, particularly regarding a visual riddle like this, where the interpretations – wild and varied and unfettered – reveal more of the viewer than the one who captured the image. A shift in focus – welcome and new – will keep this site from stagnating, and as I contemplate and loosely plot out another year of this nonsense, I like such a shift.

Mercury is once again in wretched retrograde motion, and I am so over it already I can’t even deal. On my way to the cafe where I’ve been writing lately, a traffic jam around that stupid traffic circle near the Colonie library (the circle should have been installed at the goddamned Crossings intersection) we paused for a few minutes going nowhere.

Above, I noticed a large bird circling, widely at first, then tighter and tighter. Initially I thought it was a blue heron, which was sometimes at the little library pond, but as it turned its head I saw the distinct white crest and white tail feathers of a bald eagle.

A majestic sight, and a reminder that at our most frustrated and annoyed, we should pause to take in our surroundings, to be mindful and present, so as not to miss anything, especially out of anger. Easier said than done, the lesson of this bald eagle is a powerful one – from a powerful totem animal – and I felt grateful to be in its wondrous presence.

After traffic resumed moving, I came upon a car accident on Wolf Road, backing things up further, but my mind was quieter then, and I was able to reach the cafe before the police arrived to shut the shit down.

Then it was the early evening of cafe culture until the streets cleared, and I finished this post.

The week of Halloween is a good time to celebrate all things Candy.

Everyone knows I love a good sweet treat.

And a cheesy, cheeky pop song.

Like Candy.

I was there to witness
Candice’s inner business
She wants the boys to notice
Her rainbows and her ponies
She was educated
But could not count to ten
Now she got lots of different horses
By lots of different men

And I say, “Liberate your sons and daughters”

The bush is high, but in the hole, there’s water

You can get some when they give it

Nothing sacred, but it’s a living

Halloween songs should be catchy and simple – it’s part of their potency. This bop by Robbie Williams is pure aural candy, sweet and sticky and bad for you in the best ways.

Hey, oh, here she goes
Either a little too high or a little too low
Got no self-esteem and vertigo
‘Cause she thinks she’s made of candy
Hey, oh, here she goes
Either a little too loud or a little too close
Got a hurricane at the back of her throat
She thinks she’s made of candy

Give me a treat over a trick any day – the slicker the sweater, the sweeter the better…

Having just returned from a cozy weekend with a dear friend in Connecticut, I’m happily spent from warm emotions, lots of laughter, and loads of fun. More on that when I have a moment – for now, a quick look back in our usual Monday-morning weekly blog recap… what HAVE you missed?

Mr. Oud sensed it was time for a new project.

Instagram censored an old photo, so somebody’s been going through my back-issues and for their peace of mind I wish they would just get off my jock. (The hits were appreciated, however, and October looks to be the most popular month for this little blog in years.)

Chad Putman wrote a Special Guest Blog, resurrecting a feature whose time has returned.

A recent weekend in Boston began its retelling with this happy diner ending.

It’s difficult to find genuine patriotism these days, but here is some red, white and Boston blue.

A rainbow can’t be bound with zip-ties, because Pride cannot be contained.

In the hands of Mr. Oud, the world turned into shades of gray.

It’s too fucking soon.

The light of a corner, illuminated by the autumn sun.

A coral bark maple goes up in brilliant flames.

A Boston night, thirty years ago…

An admission of loneliness prompted by a 30th anniversary.

Three decades ago I found our Boston home.

I adore cafe culture.

‘Tis the damn season for a blueberry massacre.

It’s been six years since I had a drink of alcohol.

Mr. Oud in repose.

These days a Saturday night on the town in Boston ends by nine o’clock with a nightcap of a decaf lavender vanilla latte rather than beginning at this time with a dry martini. Today marks six years since I had my last drink of alcohol, and as each year passes it feels less and less remarkable, and more the way my life naturally needed to go.

The first year was probably the most transformative. It was a sea change, an entire shift in lifestyle that was oddly and fortuitously aided by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. It also came with a realization that unlocked years of tortured living, and finally rooted out the cause of such self-medicating motions.

By the second year, I was beginning to see how it all played out, and how I did it. In the third year, deeper philosophical concerns led me to the understanding that most of our journeys were not linear with an ending and a beginning, but rather a continuous, winding curve of learning and understanding.

A letter written to my former friend commemorated the fourth year, and by last year – the fifth – I realized I was writing these annual posts for those who might find inspiration or tools to use if they wanted to forge their own paths, as my own had moved beyond the need for such annual introspection.

It’s also helpful and necessary to remind myself how little I know, how I’m not in any way an expert on sobriety, and that I can only speak to what has worked best for my own journey. I understand that every day can be easy or precarious or worrisome or dangerous in ways that sometimes make sense, and sometimes make themselves known without rhyme or reason, and all there is to do is go a single day or hour or minute at a time.

Six years after my last drink, the once-impossible act of not drinking feels as unremarkable and natural as a martini once felt on a Saturday night. At the bottom of a lavender vanilla latte, and the start of a seventh year without alcohol, there is a moment of reflection in an empty cup, and room for further possibility.

It happened on a Thursday night.

A rainy night, when the windshield wipers were having a time of it.

Sky was all sorts of messed up too, with a few peeks at pink and mauve layers, then darkness above and below.

It was rain that spit and sputtered, inconsistent and alarming. A bucket and a deluge, one moment – a mist and a fog, the next.

On this tumultuous evening, the bright fluorescence of the local supermarket was like a beacon in the night.

That was a cruel bait and switch, as I walked into the massacre of blueberries you see here. {Exhibit A for future courtroom drama.}

Now, most people who know me know that I’m neither partial to nor particularly fond of blueberries – that doesn’t mean I believe in their murder. Despite what the world would have you think, there are subtleties and nuances still in existence. We need not operate in extremes or absolutes – that shit is for small, unthinking minds.

So to take a bunch of blueberries out like that, leaving them for dead – well, that takes a colder heart than I could ever carry.

It takes all kinds.

“I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.” ~  Nicholson Baker

It’s been a while since I’ve made myself a regular at any cafe, but at the early stages of a new project, this is where I find myself on the daily – a practice that is grounded in ritual and tradition, and one that I have made part of my routine. Even if I do nothing but read a bit (currently ‘A Box of Matches’ by the great Nicholson Baker) it is time well-spent because crafting a ritual is a form of meditation unto itself.

“That was the problem with reading: you always had to pick up again at the very thing that had made you stop reading the day before.” ~  Nicholson Baker