Summer’s seduction is approaching its final turn. Cloaked in pastels, it still might trick you into thinking it’s endless, or that it’s harmless, when it is neither of those things. If a pretty flower is poisonous, its prettiness doesn’t remove the poison, it parades it. Fuck with it at your own peril.

Whenever my birthday approaches, I feel the end of summer is near, which makes it all the more dangerous. When there is nothing left to lose, when summer approaches its last stand, the thorns and knives begin to cut. Don’t be fooled by the pretty pastels, don’t think we are soft because of our silence.

The August Virgo is not someone with whom to fuck.

The woman taking my blood scoffed at my white pants.

“You don’t like them?” I asked incredulously and with more than an edge of hurt.

“No, I do, I like them a lot! But…” and she motioned to the needle in my arm. “Blood!”

Oh, I thought to myself, I’ve gotten way more blood out of way more things than a pair of white pants. She put a bandage on, and much more tape than I thought necessary. “You can take it off after half an hour,” she said before adding, “Well, forty-five minutes, since you’re wearing those pants.”

It still touches me to be given the slightest bit of care like that, especially from a stranger. Exactly how thirsty was my childhood? I sat in the car, alone with my white pants and bandage, wondering at what had become of this summer. Whenever they draw blood, I get a little philosophical, waxing contemplative on the simple fact of life.

My cold, analytical gaze, learned early and often in my childhood home, mostly serves me well.

Mostly.

When our house got power-washed earlier this summer, whatever cleaning mix they used ended up all but destroying our beautiful maidenhair ferns. They’ve only just started to come back from their almost-massacre, thanks to a regular watering schedule I’ve employed amid the recent stretch of hot and dry days. Fresh new growth at this time of the year is an unexpected and welcome surprise – and the second-act of this maidenhair fern reminds me that it’s never too late to begin again.

It also recalls the difficult lesson that sometimes you have to burn it all down to the ground before building from the ground up.

There are times when you know it’s best not to speak, and that speaking at those times will result in people getting hurt, even if what you are saying is entirely true and factual and actually happened. There are times when speaking such truth, even when it’s demanded of you, even when the perpetrators of such atrocities are begging you to speak about their own actions, will only ever end with you getting hurt. When this happens repeatedly and consistently over the course of decades, it’s impossible not to think at least part of it is diabolically intended to fuck with your mind.

I don’t wanna hear
I don’t wanna know
Please don’t say you’re sorry
I’ve heard it all before
And I can take care of myself

I don’t wanna hear
I don’t wanna know
Please don’t say “Forgive me”
I’ve seen it all before
And I can’t take it anymore

At such moments, I find it best to let Madonna speak for me, in the same way I’d play certain songs in the car when my parents would drive me somewhere ~ a vain attempt to get them to hear my silent cries for help. And sometimes, even when the cries were made directly to them beneath tear-stained desperation, they looked at me, pretended to hear, and moved on, unmoved.

I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before
I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before

This song has already been featured in a Madonna Timeline here, but it’s such a banger that it works on a multitude of levels, going beyond some jilted romantic endeavor into something far more powerful and universal. A bit more sinister too, when one thinks of all the wrongs that a family can inflict over the years, over and over and over…

I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before
I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before

If you have to say “not gonna lie” are we to assume that what you would usually do when speaking is… lie?

#TinyThreads

BAM – just like that, Snoopy takes a big old shit on any of my hoped-for ideas of pretending that everything was cool in a delusional but safely-emotionally-dead way, as this philosophical post rears its head and gives me another gut-punch. Like all things that really bother me and stick somewhere in my brain, it’s bothersome because it must ring partly true. Or at least some part of me thinks so.

Yes, I suppose the truth is that at my age I’ve lived more years than I’ve got left. Most of my friends have. We don’t much notice because we’re all doing it together. Maybe none of us thought enough to point it out. Maybe the others have wisely pretended it away. It’s true, but it feels like it’s not because I don’t feel like I’ve accrued enough wisdom to have it be so. Maybe… so many maybe’s in this post. I’m embracing that, because when over half your life is done, you want a few more maybe’s – you know how soon they will end.

“A son who never quite felt loved, who had to go out on his own to find unconditional acceptance… A man who never quite felt loved, who had to be out on his own to realize his worth… And I did that. I went into the world to find what I could not get at home.”

This was from a post written almost ten years ago, and whenever I think I’m the crazy one in the family, I return to history, to the past, to the truth, and I remember… I remember.

This is the last week of my 40’s, and I’m finally starting to feel it. I’ve been unexpectedly emotional, and we will leave it at that. Here’s a weekly recap as I’m clearly not in the mood to write much more.

It began innocuously enough with a naked Bad Bunny on a jet-ski.

This bummer of a summer tried to find its island groove again, to no avail.

A shirtless Tom Holland did his gratuitous best.

Got bush?

For purple floral majesty.

In the shade of a cemetery, I still look for my Dad.

The showgirl must go on.

Towering insurmountable summer.

Summer lace queen.

A glimpse of the F-word.

Bugle beads but alive.

Beaded beauty with a touch of tragedy.

A Madonna birthday post.

A tribute to the Ilagan twins.

With all due respect.

A silly shirtless Travis Kelce post.