This really should have been a proper Holiday Card, but since it wasn’t I’ll just keep reposting it when Christmas rolls around – it will always tickle me and me nether regions in the warmest and fuzziest way.
We don’t always have the entire say in what memories pop up, or when they decide to rear their heads, but we can embrace and engage with the good ones, while acknowledging and letting the bad ones go. I’ll hold onto this happy one for as long as possible.
Making what will likely be his final appearance here to close out the Autumn of Oud, he rather ironically wears an Amouage fragrance titled ‘Overture’ (and little else) in the promise of a beginning and an ending at once – the very essence of incongruous impossibility. Such has been the conundrum that is the existence of Mr. Oud. For those seeking resolution or revelation of who Mr. Oud really is, this post will not go very much further in illuminating that. If anything, he departs leaving more questions, more mysteries, than we had before his arrival.
Mr. Oud artfully ingratiates himself into your world, making you think of him in a way he will never think of you – his exquisitely-fragranced coat and scarf floating in the air as more of a ghostly apparition than any physical embodiment of personhood.
He is Scrooge and Santa and little baby Jesus as much as he is not, balancing precariously between worlds, straddling the dangerous space where the precious clashes with the permissible, and what you want to see diabolically overrides what you actually see.
Mr. Oud has only ever been who you want him to be – a mirror and crystal ball that invites the indulgent luxury of getting to put him in whatever box you’d like. Like smoke and perfume, he can find his way through he smallest openings – transporting himself invisibly, riding on the wind and infiltrating the mind because he was never quite real. Mr. Oud was an idea and a ghost, and once his purpose was served, it was like he was never there.
But what purpose was that? What role did he actually inhabit in your world? What does anyone really mean to anyone else?
Maybe he was just fashion and movement, pose and provocation, fuckery and trickery for a fall of dreams that went unfulfilled. Maybe he was the tragedy you could enjoy, brush up against, and thrill at from a distance. Maybe you made him do your dirty work, and maybe you were just a little envious that he got away with it. Maybe you were mad because he dared, and maybe you were glad.
The many maybes of Mr. Oud hang there in the air like filigrees of incense, curing elegantly into a darkened sky of almost-winter, studded with the sparkling promise of starlight from the past – the ultimate illustration of the multitudes that that the universe contains.
And so he ends his brief time with us on the note of Amouage’s ‘Overture’ – his ironic little wink of a name, coupled with a potent and polarizing fragrance, to be appreciated only by those with the most exquisitely refined taste – and abysmally irritating for those who like their scents sweet and safe. This one reads dangerously mythic, with notes redolent of the dark season – myrrh, frankincense and sandalwood – along with a hefty collection of spices like cumin, cardamom, cinnamon and saffron to keep things in the gourmand camp. It is most definitely and deliciously not for for everyone – just like Mr. Oud himself.
If you or your family or friends are looking for a place with holiday sparkle and made-for-Instagram backdrops, along with a killer collection of mac and cheese dishes, consider the glowing environs of Druther’s Brewing Company in downtown Albany (and several other locations as seen on their website). It’s a crazy-magical experience, centered around a cozy fireplace taking pride of place right near the entrance, which sets the scene for the surrounding light show.
Along with some of the friendliest hosts and servers in the area, this was a warm-hearted holiday experience and a fun dining scene for all of us too spent to cook at this most wonderful time of the year. A festive dinner with friends is a very good way to celebrate the holidays.
A line of Christmas gift bags, one each for every member of our family, sits atop the organ bench, while the other furniture in the room sits in closer and crowded arrangement so as to allow for the fullness of the tree. My mediation space has dwindled, but when I close my eyes the entire universe sprawls open-ended before me, and if I’m doing it right no space is too small for meditation.
On the dining room table, a jumbled mix of Christmas cards, bills, scarves, papers, gifts and boxes is messily sorted into little piles, while the chairs around the table are hung with multiple holiday-hued coats. Our home is, in short, in the midst of its annual holiday mess, and though this would typically stress me all the way out, I’m not especially bothered by it. The mess will get cleaned up, the holidays will happen, I’ll look fierce in every single one of those coats, and our well-ordered existence, or at least the appearance of one, will return in the New Year. In the meantime, this purgatorial bliss of unprettiness reminds me to embrace the magnificent messiness of life.
“How are you doing?” my therapist asked as I sat down on her couch for an extra holiday-edition of therapy. I’d scheduled it anticipating the usual emotional mayhem, but strangely found myself without much to talk about, mostly because I’d dealt with and addressed what had been bothering me directly as it came up.
“I’m doing pretty well,” I began. “And I’m surprisingly not stressed out at all over this holiday season.”
“Well, you’re the only person who has said that to me!” she replied.
I consider that some sort of therapeutic breakthrough – in addition to some genuine progress in how I’ve reached at this stress-free moment of living. Arriving at the final weeks of 2025, in the year that found me turning fifty years old, one of those indelible light-bulb revelations of understanding lit up in my head – the kind that, once ignited and seen, can never be turned off altogether or forgotten. It’s rare to have such moments, and even rarer to realize them as they are happening. It’s also not something Ive fully processed or formulated into words – similar to the way I stopped drinking, which hinged on a internal realization, and, more importantly, a deep and profound understanding of and connection to that realization.
This time around the lesson/revelation is a simple but powerful one – that we are in complete command of our world. Not in what precisely happened to us on any given day – we don’t always have a say in what the world doles out – but in how we react and deal with whatever happens.
That’s right – whatever happens.
If it’s not impressing you with the weight and magnitude of what that means you may be like I was for the last fifty years; I knew it in some abstract, universal truth sort of way, but never truly made the connection until recently.
There’s so much more to say on it, and I’m not equipped or able to do that here. Not yet. It is, however, the ideal launching pad for a brand new calendar which quickly approaches, and we head into our 23rd year here at ALANILAGAN.com…
Writing these blog entries used to be accomplished almost entirely on my lap-top, directly into my antiquated WordPress set-up. That still happens, especially for the shorter ‘Tiny Threads‘ or ‘Dazzler of the Day‘ featurettes, but lately I’ve returned to writing these out in old-school cursive (a dying art), filling notebooks that have long been blank, gifts from dear friends, finally being utilized. In the same way that I’ve returned to writing in a nearby cafe, so too have I returned to longhand writing, in the ancient art form of cursive. (It’s like a whole secret and indecipherable language that the young people cannot even read.)
This is more than a return to physical habits and placements, it’s a return to a profound ritual that has informed my life and always worked to help me figure things out during times of doubt or uncertainty. (The more honest I am with myself, the more these moments tend to materialize.) And so I write, letting thoughts become words, and words fall onto and fill paper. There is something more meaningful about writing these words out by hand – a greater connection between mind and body that creates some sort of covenant between what my head thinks, what my heart feels, what my hand writes, and how my intentions are put forth into the universe.
More practically, this format also tends to improve my writing in a technical sense. When I enter blog posts directly into a lap-top, it instantly appears perfect and finished, giving the very misleading look of completion to it. When I write this out on paper first, it can be messy and jumbled and incomplete, with crossed-out words and phrases, arrows to re-order ideas, and all sorts of raw and unedited mistakes. When forced to type it all out again, I am able to edit and ideally improve on what I might just have otherwise go live because it looked good enough.
There is always room for improvement, and often that does with looking at the same thing in a very different way. It’s practice, and honing, and accepting the ideas that while nothing is perfect, the notions of betterment, of learning, of seeing opportunities of evolution, all exist – a helpful reminder that the work will never be done. What a happy and reassuring thought for all of us who enjoy a challenge and a purpose: the work will never be done.
I’ve always loved ‘Vanity Fair’ and lately it’s become one of the only reliable sources at a time when the others seem to have given in to propaganda and fascism. Check out this brilliant article, based on audio recordings of its participants. (I say that as they are all acting like they never said what they actually said, on tape.) It’s the lying that might bother me most about the current administration – they just keep lying, and the media just repeats it without check or push-back. Sad times.
And brilliant photographic work by Christopher Anderson – no filter, no photoshop – real, honest, and true to who these people are – ugly from the inside out.
When the office Christmas party arrived last week, it came upon us so quickly there wasn’t time to get too worked up about it, and it’s been that way for the bulk of this holiday season. Somehow I’ve largely avoided getting stressed out, and it must be partially attributed to the fact that any expectations have been lower than low – practically non-existent, which makes for far fewer disappointments. There’s a sad commentary hidden in all that’s unsaid here, but overall this has been a happier holiday spell, and I’m trying to figure out exactly why so that I might replicate this ease for future Christmas runs.
The biggest shift may simply be in intention. There is great power in deciding what sort of season you’re going to have. You always have a choice in how you’re going to react to whatever happens on any given day – we tend to forget that, thinking that we are what befalls us, rather than what we make of it.
Such a profound and dynamic change in perception comes at the tail of a year of similar seismic shifts. The universe will often wait until we are ready before delivering the lessons we most need to learn. It bodes well for a brighter start to 2026. Low expectations, high intentions, and malleable perceptions. So much of human terror arises simply from feeling out of control. We may be in command of more than we realize – and when we’re not there is opportunity to get more comfortable in the messy space of all that we can’t control.
Betsy once made chocolate chip cookies for an office cookie contest, and they literally had about 2 chocolates chips per cookie. She promptly lost the contest to Heath, who had generously added a reasonable amount of chips to his batter. I always think of that when I order anything with chocolate chips, such as this muffin from Professor Java’s.
It stands as an ideal image of the perfect ratio of chips to muffin, and the almost-scientifically-even spacing and dispersal on display here is a thing of wonder and beauty. Behold its prettiness, as life doesn’t often approach this kind of perfection, especially during the holiday madness, and this makes me extremely happy. As did eating every bite of this chocolate chip muffin.
It should be no secret that I find Donald Trump to be the worst President our country has ever had, and also one of the worst people the world has known. Despite several FAFO posts, and the occasional anti-Trump post here and there and otherwheres, I have tried to keep this place as free from politics as possible. It’s my escape from such awfulness, but I’ve had to get vocal sometimes so that future generations, should any electronic echoes of my posts or feelings on this administration persist, know that I fought this terrible person at every step of the way. If anyone wants to know what I did when it was happening, it’s documented here. Hope you have something similar when your kids ask what you did.
His latest post on Rob Reiner is just confirmation of his deplorable views. For those who want to employ the ‘both sides’ mentality (or, how the news has ruined itself) let’s take a comparative look at two takes on this. Here is President Barack Obama’s message, followed by Trump’s. I know what side I’m on, and it’s the side I’ve always been on: the side of basic human decency.
