Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Make it anime with AI? No fucking thank you.

AI will always and only stand for Alan Ilagan around here.

The rest are just a bunch of wanna-bes.

When the wind has stilled, and the leaf-blowing neighbors have stopped, it’s possible to hear the snow fall. The tiniest shards of ice ping like the little crystals they are, part drum and part bell, and all of it the most subtle and magical music you could ask to hear. This is the way we open the holiday season here – with a gentle image of an early snowfall and a simple seasonal song for anyone looking for Christmas, or some sort of Christmas spirit.

I’m not sure that I’m the best person to guide or share anything that relates to the sweet baby Jesus, but if calm and peace and meditative endeavors bring us closer to God, maybe that’s as good as it will get. At the very least, may this be a place where there are glimmers of peace and tranquility, moments of stillness and relative silence when the rest of the world falls to noisy and chaotic pieces. I’d never be so presumptuous as to think I can change the world, but I can change what I decide to put out here, how I tell the stories I want to tell, and which was I decide to go when life demands decisions.

When you listen to the snow, you can listen to your breathing. One’s breath is sometimes all one has, and it’s the most immediately available resource we have for calming the race of the mind. When all else fails, breathe in, breathe out, slow it down a bit… and breathe in, breathe out… and again…

The holiday season is upon us – keep breathing.

Despite the current White House’s attempt to erase World AIDS Day from happening, it’s still being honored among decent people, so fuck the people running the government right now. We’ve had to fight sun fights before, and we will fight them again and again, and in the end love and human decency will always prevail. Hatred eats away at itself, and one’s behavior in this world will surely not go unseen in the next. On with the weekly recap, in spite of the dumpster fire engulfing us…

Mr. Oud holds a string of green crystals.

The demise of society begins here.

My new mantra: leave me the fuck out of this.

Food pornucopia.

‘Tis the damn season for this.

Giving thanks for prescience.

Thanksgiving day at hand.

A turkey lurkey tradition.

Thanksgiving night.

Black Friday vs. the art of shopping.

Burning regrets beneath an early snowfall.

For the sake of the fuck.

Sage of wisdom & fortitude.

Watching humans.

A smoky eye.

30 Days Hath November.

Am I the fucking drama?

The dissolution of a friendship and a tradition.

… or some such bullshit rhyme. The sooner this astrologically-fucked month departs, the better. The emotional rollercoaster of the past few weeks can’t entry be blamed on the stars and planets – we each have a hand and some pull in our destinies. Personally, I’ve been doing a decent job at handling tricky events with a lighter touch, knowing full well that to incite a battle at such a time would be to incite a war – and who can be bothered with such an undertaking just as the holiday season gets under way?

While I reserve the right to wage the wrath of truth and blunt talk at any time I damn well please, I am making an effort not to burn anything to the ground right now. We shall see how long this charitable stance lasts… I suggest not pushing it.

Peace be with you – and also with you.

Watching humans for any length of time always ends up moving me. That’s partly why I’ve embraced my nightly coffee stops at a nearby cafe. It allows me to work on a new project while also observing a small stream of life from a safe vantage point. Mother and son smiling at each other while waiting for their dessert order. The first few bites a gruff forty-something guy with a military buzz-cut takes, and its apparent joy judging by his slight smile.

Most of us revert to the kids we were when we think no one is watching – no matter how old we grew, no matter how much we’ve accomplished, no matter how awful we’ve been; our childhoods are always somewhere within us.

It makes it more difficult to be cross with humanity when you think of it this way – a trick I shall endeavor to employ regularly when people start getting on my last frayed nerve (I’d say about three days ago – whoopsie-daisy.)

Now that Mercury has ceased its havoc-wreaking retrograde emotion, I’m hopeful the world calms its ass down a bit for the reminder of the holiday season. We shall see.

Cradled in the fuzzy arms of a sage plant, flecks of early snow collect and lend their own fuzziness to the scene at hand. Portending of winter, it is a portrait of stillness and elegance. Muted of color palette and simple of composition. Enthralled in the throes of these last few weeks of autumn, the garden seems grateful for the opportunity to slumber – for a few months of rest from the watering, feeding, pruning, and harvesting routine that dominates the spring and summer months. Summer is a bit of a break for almost everyone other than the gardener – and the plants must feel the weight of that workload too.

This little snippet of the backyard is a cozy patch of herbs – it keeps going right until the big winter storms – certain herbs are miraculous that way. It sets the tone for the upcoming winter season: muted, calm, fuzzy, and contemplative. Outside the attic window, a small section of garden reveals itself for more herbs next year. It’s never too early to think about spring.

For those of us who take pride in our shopping, who treat shopping as an art form, an enchanting enterprise, and a way of life, Black Friday has always felt like amateur hour – the same way Halloween feels like childish fun and games for those of us who get gussied and dolled up on the regular.

Fighting with crushing throngs of shoppers hell-bent on finding a bargain, who are there partly for the participatory thrill of the day (because you can get these deals online without even leaving the house) has never appealing to the shopping aficionado I pride myself on being. When I’m shopping I like to take my time and leisurely stroll about a store’s space, to take in the meticulously-curated displays, to entirely inhabit the moment and the surroundings. Shopping as an act of meditative meandering.

For a true shopper, the art of shopping is not solely a means to a transactional end – some of my favorite shopping expeditions haven’t even yielded a bag of purchases. The art of shopping is, for me, more about the entire experience – a philosophical treatise on imagination and possibility, on the idea of what we might be – with the right outfit, the right fragrance, the right accessory. The art of shopping dangles the notion of perfection before us, and I remain powerless to its pull, no matter how impossible I know it to be.

Nobody wants to talk about the messy aftermath of Thanksgiving dinner.

That very much includes me, so let’s focus on anything else.

As soon as I wrote the promise of another post, the ambition and effort to write it dissipated, and now I sit at the cafe a few days before Thanksgiving, forcing words onto paper and lamenting the lazy lack of any driving inspiration to set this blog post on fire.

Instead, all I can muster is a resigned and lackluster rumination on the wind-down of another day of Thanks – my 50th, thank you very much (and how do I return some of them?) – as I feel every single one of those years. Looking ahead as we are wont to do here, as the good Virgos always do, this holiday season doesn’t have a definitive theme (a Ralph Lauren Christmas is redundantly foolish, and our next image overhaul on the blog won’t be until the turn of the New Year) so for the next few weeks we’ll have the final maneuverings of the mysterious Mr. Oud, and a somewhat darker encapsulation of the season as that’s the mood in the air. There’s a deep sunken beauty to a dark Christmas, to paraphrase a celebrated and maligned sadist/writer.

Perhaps this isn’t the best way to greet the season, but I can’t think of another. Buckle up, buttercups.