Whenever the day and the spirits turn to gray, the world turns upside down, and everything you once thought you knew reveals itself as something different, it’s the ideal opportune time to pause and take stock of what’s really at work. In my experience, the bulk of problematic ickiness that descends on certain rainy Sundays is largely a matter of perception – of perceived grievances and false attributions that our worst instincts re-enforce and perpetuate, our own minds actively working overtime to become our own worst enemies.
At such times I take to writing to make whatever sense I can of the moment. Putting it down on paper and working it out in words helps me organize and analyze – but even more simple and basic than that, it gets it out of my system. I literally let it pour out of my head, into my hand, then out through the pen and the paper that now holds a written testament to whatever is going on at the moment.
Sometimes all the universe wants is acknowledgement – a nod of recognizance that none of this is normal, and that all it was seen, and felt. Sometimes – at the most lucky times – this is enough to move beyond the muck of a gray Sunday.
My garden work is paused and I’m not ungrateful for the break.
Instead, I write this post, a rare in-the-actual-moment capture of what’s going on rather than a pre-populated and sanitized version to make everything pretty. In the soft hazy light of a cloudy morning, a more raw, and at times tender, truth comes out. Spring often has that effect – it breaks open what was hidden all winter, exposing what might have only heaved a time or two in the winter before we push it back down into the earth. A poor mix of metaphors, that, and I’m too exhausted or lazy to modify it or make it better. Sometimes it’s best to let the world see you as you are, the way lovers glimpse you first thing in the morning. Such an intimate reveal, such a frightening concept. When you’re brave enough to show all your darker shadows, all your hidden recesses, something akin to freedom arrives, and you forget what ever made you afraid to reveal yourself in the first place.
If I pour your cup, that is friendship If I add your milk, that is manners If I stop there, claiming ignorance of taste, That is tea
A quiet wisp of a song is all the heart and head can take right now. Like a cup of tea.
And maybe even this is too much, with its expectant tongues and measured sugar.
But if I measure the sugar To satisfy your expectant tongue Then that is love,
After a stretch of sunshine and warmth, the cold rain and overcast dimness of the day have conspired to bring me back – to winter, to contemplation, to a life before the spring – and to a life after the summer. There, the danger of such a day in an overthought and overwrought nutshell. We are only a month into spring and my mind is wandering off to what happens after summer. None of that. Not now, not yet. All we need to do in this moment, on this Sunday morning, is raise a cup of tea gently to our tongues, sharing in this ritual, enjoying the gentle patter of rain on the roof.
But if I measure the sugar To satisfy your expectant tongue Then that is love, Sitting untouched and growing cold
This is one of the fern stages I love best – when the fiddleheads are just starting to unfurl and their feathery show is about to begin. On a sunny Saturday (at long last!) I waded into the Ostrich fern stand and inspected their progress. It was a good day for garden work, and I’d just amended the soil with 240 pounds of cow manure and compost – like Prince said, this is the glamorous life.
The big pots of bamboo (the only safe place for a running bamboo) that I overwintered in the garage were also brought out – they’re on their own for whatever frosts may be left to the season. I’ll clean the deck on the next sunny day and then the backyard will be just about ready for pool season. We need it early this year.
“Nervous, but in a happy way.” Is this a description of falling in love or a tenderly anthropomorphic rendering of spring’s assessment of its own arrival? The days before the ‘safe’ frost-free date (nothing is ever guaranteed when it comes to weather in the age of global warming) are sometimes stricken with the queasy nervousness one can only liken to burgeoning love – and the earliest days of a romance with summer.
Don’t you notice how I get quiet when there’s no one else around? Me and you and awkward silence Don’t you dare look at me that way I don’t need reminders of how you don’t feel the same
Harkening to our Coquette Summer of a couple years ago, Laufey is a lovely musical selection for this lilac spring – an idyllic starting point for the blooms and perfume about to start popping.
Effervescent and fizzy, with Laufey’s trademark melancholic undertones, tempered by a sumptuous romantics, here is how we slip into a Saturday evening in spring.
That when I talk to you, oh, Cupid walks right through And shoots an arrow through my heart And I sound like a loon, but don’t you feel it too? Confess I loved you from the start
Confess I loved you Just thinking of you I know I’ve loved you from the start
“… he had yet to acknowledge the romantic fever it was his gift to inspire, and the inflammatory dreams and misunderstandings he could ignite with his silences.” – Laura Argiri, ‘The God in Flight’
Old books are like old friends – when they’ve played a pivotal part in your formative years, it feels like they know you in a way that only an old friend could. Currently I’m re-reading one of my favorites, ‘The God in Flight’ by Laura Argiri, an indulgence I partake of every few years, the same way I return to the more mainstream ‘Great Gatsby‘ just for the cadence of words, the depictions of longing, and the sense of romantic abandon that has always privately called to me (and that I always had the reckless determination to foolishly act upon).
Born with a viciously romantic nature, I had it beat out of me – as much by my own hands as the metaphorical hands of wicked men whose only wickedness was in not being interested. Anything but apathy seemed bearable; how unfortunate that disinterest was what I most inspired due to my own petrified countenance among those men who captured my attention. Eventually I embraced apathy as well, as much for emotional survival as from the wear and tear of having gone through it so many times; an unhappy collision of forced and natural modification to a romantic soul not quite designed to navigate the fickleness of human beings.
“Even if he had not been beautiful, he would have been the first person in any crowded room whom the others looked at first, the one whose motions they tracked with fascinated eyes… My God, he smells wonderful.” – Laura Argiri, ‘The God in Flight’
When I think back to the first time I read these words, and the young man whose romantic yearnings were just being kindled, I feel a tenderness and ache for what he was about to put himself through. If I could speak to my younger self I’d say something like, “Relax, enjoy, stop overthinking everything and simply inhabit the moments and days of youth. If it’s meant to be, it will be. If it’s not, it won’t. The rest will fall into place.”
The only thing I wouldn’t change would be his willingness and overzealous desire to fall in love. To that I would only say, “Do it. Whenever in doubt, choose to love. Even if they don’t love you back – keep on loving them. Even if they don’t deserve it, love. There is a nobility in that no matter whether the sentiment is returned. And don’t ever apologize for loving.”
Granted, the actions and craziness that often accompanied such emotions are a different thing entirely – those should definitely have been modified, but the folly of youth was strong and, for me, insurmountable.
“He was a dandy, a beauty, an actor, a fabulist – your canting puritan might say a liar – and he loved to make trouble for deserving parties, including himself. He did all this in a spirit of cheerful despair, being one who experienced sadness in the guise of intolerable restlessness rather than in its raw form.” – Laura Argiri, ‘The God in Flight’
No matter how inconvenient or disruptive, no matter how much it hurt, I never gave up loving. Whenever I felt it, I proclaimed it, unabashedly revealing feelings I hadn’t even fully processed. It’s an essential component of what made me into the person I am – perhaps one of my only saving graces – and I would most certainly need grace, and perhaps a bit of saving in all the years that followed.
Now when I read this book it resonates differently, the way the past no longer hurts quite as keenly, the way infatuations no longer sting, the way I’ve moved beyond losing myself to such wild abandon.
While I don’t grow pansies myself, I enjoy them whenever and wherever I see them. Such pretty smiling faces almost seem to rise up to say hello. They symbolize the earliest hope of spring, standing solidly against late snows and cutting winds, and absolutely laughing off rain. On the day I caught these beauties at the nursery, some rare sort of planetary alignment was knocking all of us for a loop (scheduled to last through tomorrow, I believe) and I leave into my daily meditation a little more, reminding myself to be mindful and present in the moment so as not to overthink things.
So many lessons can be learned from the plant kingdom, and gardening has taught me many things over the years. How to be patient, how to nurture, how to prevent death, how to accept death, how to appreciate life – all the major lessons in being a good human being can be culled from the garden. I see that whenever I find a pansy’s happy face in the spring.
The morning was an ambivalent one. Couldn’t decide between sunny and hopeful or dreary and overcast. Moods shifting like the swiftly-moving sky. Spring a master of the capricious.
Awakened by the kettle’s scalding water, the dried flowers and herbs come back to life – the familiar magic of tea calling from centuries past, lives and lovers crossing time and space to make themselves known, to be unforgotten. Tea is the promise that even when a flower dies, its petals dried and desiccated, its soul might continue, might find purpose and be reborn.
Tea captured in a cup, cradled in my hands, diminishes the chill of morning.
Tea stilling time, bringing clarity and clouds, swirling like the sweet nectar on the lips of a Hoya bloom.
Madonna’s super-long-awaited studio album, ‘Confessions 2’, kicks off its promotional-storming tomorrow as the first single is supposedly going to be released. Her first album since 2019’s ‘Madame X’, this is also a return to the promising dance-floor arena where she has always executed her greatest flexes. Reportedly a sequel of sorts to 2005’s ‘Confessions on a Dance Floor’, possibly her last near-perfect album in its entirety. At this point I’ve mostly given up on her matching the other-worldly brilliance that was the ‘Ray of Light’ masterpiece, but the original ‘Confessions’ was a genius move in its own way, and if ‘Confessions 2’ approaches such glory, the queen will handily regain her throne (again).
Initial looks at the visuals for this one are scintillatingly enthralling – the color scheme, the art direction by those who did LUX and BRAT, and the throwback references to the first ‘Confessions’ comprise a release by her original Warner Brothers label that finds her coming home in more than one way.
This lilac spring was in need of a jolt, and this springboard is precisely what the disco ball spins for: escapism through the dance. With its projected release date of July 3, we’re going to have an epic, hot, solid gold summer, rife with confessions and filled with the sort of sweaty passion that can only be found on the dance floor.
The first jonquil to bloom is traditionally a bashful one. Shy and hesitant, it doesn’t fully unfurl its petals right away, usually holding one of two back, keeping themselves close, similar to the way some humans cross their arms. Much of my life has been spent like this first daffodil – cautious, careful, slightly cunning. Especially at the beginning of things, when nothing is sure, nothing is sacred, nothing is certain. Safety first – safety for surety, safety for survival. There could still very easily be snow, and storms have been blowing up out of nowhere, terrifyingly fast – too fast for a little jonquil to close up its petals before they might be ravaged.
But think of all the sun it misses by playing it safe, think of the shadows it casts on itself before letting go, how much wasted time, how much wasted light. The lovely warmth of a spring day is there for the taking, for the loving, even if storms come later, even if the petals are torn, even if it’s not perfect.
There is a noble grace that comes from living for the day.
It arrived suddenly, almost without warning, save for an ominous blanket of clouds rolling quickly overhead. One moment I was taking a picture of the first jonquil to bloom, the next the sky was releasing a deluge of wind and water, and branches and leaves and pinecones were flying through the air like some Wizard of Oz cyclone. It was violent, and while storms usually thrill instead of scare me, this one left me spooked from its hurried and instant attack. A raw brutality crackled through the sky. Lawn bags by the road were torn asunder – hours of filling them wasted in the debris strewn across the street and driveway. The rain was savage too – not steady or gentle, but choppy and haphazard – gigantic drops that fell like little cups and swirling mists that stung and rendered umbrellas useless.
Then, just as quickly as it arrived, it was gone. In its place was a double rainbow – the covenant, the promise, or the simple refraction and reflection of light through water. The explanation of science has never taken away from a rainbow’s beauty and, quite frankly for my analytical mind, has only ever added to it.
A dramatic and messy glimpse of a possible summer, as the day’s 80-degree temperature offered a peek at what might come… how fortuitous to have it end in a rainbow.
Sometimes grapes remind me of my Dad, who used to peel them for me when I was a small boy. That gesture always stood out as one of the surest signs of love – the delicate carefulness required to actually peel a grape, shedding its somewhat sour skin to leave only sweetness and softness, revealed the sort of love that can only be expressed or shown in such an act, never to be said or dwelled upon. If you’ve ever tried to peel a grape – to fully peel it, leaving no slivers of skin behind – you know the careful work involved. And if you’ve been loved by someone like that, you know how lucky you are.
Loser on the right is Viktor Orban, who just resoundly lost his re-election bid in humiliating fashion.
Loser on the left is JD Vance, current Vice-President of the United States.
Orban had Vance campaign for him a few days ago, and promptly lost a couple days later.
Not sure how the American VP campaigns for a foreign authoritarian candidate, but that’s where we are right now. Thankfully, and hilariously, everything that Vance touches, like his President, turns to shit. Losers gonna lose. The FAFO is strong with this administration, but people seem slow to understand that. Hungary’s good choice makes the world a better, and safer, place. May JD Vance soon follow in his footsteps.
Early in the morning there is only birdsong and wind to bother the ears, which is the sort of quiet that allows garden work to become somewhat of a meditative experience. It used to take me a while to reach such a state – I was accustomed to noise and music and the general buzz of life making its monotonous roar. Once I started meditating, I learned to embrace the silence and enjoy the stillness. These days I can go outside and instantly adopt a meditative posture – deeper breathing, deliberate mindfulness, and the calm and tranquil countenance that, once engaged, builds upon itself – peace fostering peace.
