Our first swallowtail of the season appeared a few days ago, gloriously fluttering its pretty wings about the majestic cup plant stand, where it was joined by several buzzing bumblebees.
These beautiful creatures are a sign that we have reached the zenith of summer.
Enjoy the moment.
Certain fragrances define certain summer seasons. Last year the voluptuous presence of ‘Carnal Flower’ was the ideal atmospheric sweetness for our Coquette summer, balanced by the refreshing Creed offering of ‘Silver Mountain Water’. The year prior provided a more poignant moment framed by Tom Ford’s ‘Azure Lime’. Summer fragrances are usually fresh and bright, often grounded in the fleeting nature of citrus, light and breezy enough to disappear when the sun gets too hot and the air too humid. The last thing you want on such days is a cloying, clinging or overpowering scent.
Enter ‘Pacific Chill’ by Louis Vuitton. Perfectly aligned with this year’s Island theme, ‘Pacific Chill’ is a fruity and fizzy fresh scent, with a playful staying aspect. For me, it rings mostly of apricot and orange, after an effervescent opening of citrus, mint and black currant. The fruitiness runs throughout, as the base reveals aspects of fig and dates, fueled by Ambrette.
‘Pacific Chill’ is often listed with ‘Imagination’ as one of Louis Vuitton’s most popular and celebrated fresh fragrances, and deservedly so, even if the performance slightly pales in comparison. For me, ‘Pacific Chill’ gets a good five to six hours of staying power, and it does so in a tricky way. On the skin, it slips away after a couple of hours, depending on how much you have applied – on clothing, it stays a bit longer. When the air is moving, it tends to act more ephemerally – sitting in a car with the AC blasting, I thought it had gone entirely, but it came back an hour later. I like that sort of playfulness in a fragrance, especially in the summer. Liberal spraying gets me through most of the day, but that may not be enough for some considering the price point, and I can’t argue with that. For me, the apricot, mint and orange sparkle of this is worthy enough of a second application half-way through the day.
Feverishly warm, the shades of these flowers shift when the evening light departs and the warm artificial bulbs glow deeper into the night. Summer burns at both ends, inside and out. It is worth a look rather than a lot of words.
Gaslighting is telling me that some salad recipe will take ten minutes to make, when everyone knows it’s going to take me ten minutes to find and chop half a red onion that is only one of the twelve ingredients in the thing.
There are many plants I don’t know by name, many flowers I’ve rarely seen, and I’m always excited to see a new specimen because it reminds me how wide and expansive our world is. It is thrillingly humbling – the humility a reminder of the tiny place and space we occupy and influence on this planet.
This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered the purple flowers pictured here – it feels like I’ve seen them in tropical places – maybe Florida – or some sunny climates as found in California. This particular plant was doing quite well in the warmth and humidity of this summer, draping its purple floral curtains over the edge of its pot.
It would be simple to find out what this plant is. It would be easy to solve this floral mystery. These days, I find more wonder and joy in the not knowing. Growing older, one learns to accept that they do not know it all, that they cannot know it all.
People will sometimes get upset with you when you’re wrong, but they will get absolutely livid when you’re right.
Twenty-five years ago it felt like I was finally coming into my own, and at the height of that July my friends and I made our way to the tip of Cape Cod – that magical land of Provincetown. This photo was taken on that vacation – my friend Kristen can be seen in the water, examining some shell or rock she had just found. On the radio, ‘Desert Rose’ by Sting played, bringing other lands to mind. It hints of future seasons, and possible fall themes… but first, summer memories in the links found hidden within the lyrics.
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of fire
These dreams that tie two hearts that will never die
Near the flames
The shadows play in the shape of the man’s desire
This desert rose
Whose shadow bears the secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this
And now she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothing’s as it seems
I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand
I dream of rain
I lift my gaze to empty skies above
I close my eyes
The rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of love
The heat and sun of this week, and the calendar week itself, brought my Dad’s final days to mind, and on a lunch break the other day I found myself walking to the church where I sat during his last week when I was trying to hold myself together at the office. It no longer stings like it once did, it no longer aches as much, but when the air and sun hit like they did two years ago, it brings me back to that sad time. As always, the melancholy is not unwelcome: it is proof that love survives, and that my Dad is still here with me.
There have been signs, and I’ve been attuned to them. A cardinal flitting about the backyard. A commercial that played ‘You’ve Got The Magic Touch’ – a song my Dad used to sing out loud when he was in a playful mood. Each was a wink from the past, bringing happy memories of my father to the present.
As the anniversary of his death approaches, and summer remains turned to high, I take the days quietly, thoughtfully. It’s the safest and surest way to proceed when Mercury is in retrograde and the world has me in its crosshairs. I feel my Dad with me, and I know everything is going to be ok.
This MacBook is on its last legs, so who knows how many posts I’ll able to complete this week. If it goes silent for a bit, you’ll understand why. In the meantime, here’s a nifty recap of the week for you to bookmark…
The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale brought us back two decades (as seen in the featured pics here, outtakes from the original collection) and the week felt nostalgic.
When they threaten former-President Obama with an investigation, two words: Presidential immunity.
A letter to my Godson on his 3rd birthday.
A charmed weekend with my favorite half-century club.
25 years ago I met the man I would marry.
Getting attacked on all fronts is absolutely nothing new for me. Happily, in these spaces, truth still wins out in the end.
Shedding selves was an integral component of the Divine Diva Tour twenty years ago – and remains so to this day.
Beating oneself up takes a certain sort of brutal style, a particular stylized brutality.
A word on most dips: let them marinate.
Let them chill. Let their flavors meld.
A dip is rarely an instant thing.
We are too careless with dips.
“It would be both foolish and cumbersome to continue our everyday existences in bliss without first denying to ourselves, for the sake of excusing our own repugnance, the inherent cruelty from which modern civilization was conceived…And there can be no other path by which a fiercely competitive, yet social species, as humanity, can afford its members the level of safety, prosperity and stability—such that we enjoy now— without its initial pangs of cannibalism, brutality, dominance and cruelty to forge the foundations, very much like the lava which formed the ground upon which we now stand. Lava still erupts from the core. Brutality, Dominance, and Cruelty similarly erupt from ours; and they are no less prevalent now than in early human history.” ~ Ashim Shanker
“I stood up as best I could to their disgusting stupidity and brutality, but I did not, of course, manage to beat them at their own game. It was a fight to the bitter end, one in which I was not defending ideals or beliefs but simply my own self.” ~ George Grosz
“How delightful are the pleasures of the imagination! In those delectable moments, the whole world is ours; not a single creature resists us, we devastate the world, we repopulate it with new objects which, in turn, we immolate. The means to every crime is ours, and we employ them all, we multiply the horror a hundredfold.” ~ Marquis de Sade
~ The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale ~
“If a man were to look over the fence on one side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his left had laid his garden path round a central lawn; and were to look over the fence on the other side of his garden and observe that the neighbor on his right had laid his path down the middle of the lawn, and were then to lay his own garden path diagonally from one corner to the other, that man’s soul would be lost. Originality is only to be praised when not prefaced by the look to right and left.” ~ Quentin Crisp
“Without knowing it, I was acquiring that haughty bearing which is characteristic of so many eccentrics. What other expression would you expect to find on the face of anyone who knows that if he turns his head too quickly, he will see on the faces of others glares of stark terror or grimaces of hatred? Aloofness is the posture of self-defense.” ~ Quentin Crisp
“I asked many people why they drank so much but never received an explanation that I fully understood. It was the tales of their escapades while under the influence of drink that brought me nearest to comprehending their need for it. It seemed to give them a few hours of freedom from rules which, during the rest of their lives they reluctantly obeyed. If this was true, then in the example of my life lay a cure for drunkenness, though it was hardly an answer which Harley Street would have approved. The prophylactic is, never to conform at all.” ~ Quentin Crisp
~ The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale ~
The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale dives deeper into its loosely-self-destructive narrative, as our protagonist sheds another guise and reveals darker aspects that some people, including himself, may not be comfortable addressing. He beats these down, simultaneously stripping away constraints while adding new binds. It is at this point when he realizes he is not only rounding corners and making turns, possibly irrevocably away from where he started, but also descending – going into the depths of some subterranean dwelling – a descent into the heart of something.
“The search for a life-style involves a journey to the interior. This is not altogether a pleasant experience, because you not only have to take stock of what you consider your assets but you also have to take a long look at what your friends call “the trouble with you.” Nevertheless, the journey is worth making. Indeed, we might say that the purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the terrible things other people say about us.” – Quentin Crisp
“You need to cultivate a lifestyle first for your own benefit – to give you a firm belief in your own identity and to prevent you from importuning others for their approval to make up for your lack of self esteem. You need a life-style in your dealings with others only to a lesser degree. It will tell them instantly who and what you are.” – Quentin Crisp
~ The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale ~
A preamble to the next section of The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale, this may be a wild and wandering post that reeks of vanity and self-indulgence, making it perfectly apt for this particular project. Twenty years ago, that was certainly one of the stages I was at, and thirty years ago I was even further back on that stage, preening and posing for an audience that was both never really there, and somehow watching from afar.
There was a time
When I was so broken-hearted
Luck wasn’t much of a friend of mine
The tables have turned, yeah
‘Cause me and them ways have parted
That kind of love was the killin’ kind
Way back in the summer of 1993, Aerosmith released the song and video for ‘Crying’, which is probably my favorite Aerosmith tune (making me decidedly not one of their truer fans) and definitely my favorite Aerosmith video. In it, a pre-Cher-Clueless Alicia Silverstone and pre-stardom Stephen Dorff acted out the torturous tale of young love gone wrong.
While I was still involved in an innocent dating situation with a female friend (ahh, those 90’s) and had never had quite the dramatic rollercoaster those characters were on, there was something sillier and much smaller in the video that called to me from a deeper and more profound plane. At about the 2:25 mark, after her car breaks down, our heroine doffs the very 90’s floral dress she had on and changes into jeans and a white tank. It’s a quick and minor point, but it had a powerful effect on me.
So listen
All I want is someone I can’t resist
I know all I need to know by the way that I got kissed
That was what I wanted to achieve in my life: transformation. I wanted to shift images like a chameleon, changing into one creature from another, and always keeping the watchers guessing. Refusing to be pigeonholed into one definitive image or style, I would strive to shed my various selves with fashion, clothing, cologne, and creation – ever-evolving and never-stagnant. If I was unrecognizable from one look to the other, all the better. Mercurial and slippery – like its quicksilver namesake – I found it safer to hide behind a multitude of masks and poses, keeping the element of surprise as my chosen weapon. It would be impossible to pin me down – and if you can’t stop someone long enough to get a good shot in, you’re never quite able to capture – or kill – them. If Alicia Silverstone could get her heart stomped on at the start of her Hollywood reign, how the hell would I stand a chance?
I was cryin’ when I met you
Now I’m tryin’ to forget you
Love is sweet misery
I was cryin’ just to get you
Now I’m dyin’ ’cause I let you
Do what you do down on me, yeah!
Now there’s not even breathing room
Between pleasure and pain
Yeah, you cry when we’re making love
Must be one and the same
I started simply enough, in mimicking fashion, bringing a change of clothes on every car ride I made in the event that I had cause to slip from some stuffy school outfit into something more casual. In the summer, it was a change of necessity, as I unbuttoned a stiff dress shirt and opened the windows to let the breeze surround me in an undershirt. In later years, I’d bring a change of clothes to work when I was going out to dinner, switching into something fanciful and extravagant from the dull trappings of J. Crew office attire.
It’s down on me
Yeah, I got to tell you one thing
That’s been on my mind, girl, I gotta say
We’re partners in crime
You got that certain somethin’
What you give to me takes my breath away
I would craft images to match whatever project I was releasing: a Ralph Lauren ‘Safari’-scented romantic look with black vests and frilly white poet sleeves for a ‘Love’ project ~ a leather jacket, ripped jeans, and bulky booted trade ensemble for the ‘diSenchAntMent’ work ~ or a frilly, feathery, boudoir-appropriate robe for the Divine Diva project you may reference below. All of it was in service to shedding my various selves and finding out what was underneath all the layers. I hid and obscured as much as I aimed to reveal, digging deeper in an insane attempt to get out of the hole I was making. I wish I’d seen and understood that earlier, but such was the journey I had to take.
Now the word out on the street
Is the devil’s in your kiss
If our love goes up in flames
It’s a fire I can’t resist
These days, I don’t dive so deeply into my creative pursuits. I’ve learned to create a healthy distance from whatever project I’m exploring to the person I am in real life, easily separating whatever artistic flights I might fancy from my family and friends and husband. There is a definitive delineation that allows me to explore different themes here, in writing and photos, without danger of slipping into a persona that isn’t aligned with who I intrinsically am – even if facets do overlap and dovetail. Whenever something makes me uncomfortable, that’s a sign it’s something I need to explore.
‘Cause what you got inside
Ain’t where your love should stay
Yeah, our love, sweet love, ain’t love
‘Til you give your heart away
Which brings us to the present moment, and this look-back at The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale. It was at that time when I remember just starting to see and sense that separation between artist and artistic output, just beginning to feel the safety of that demarcation and distance. The ensuing two decades have shown that I still have much to learn, and that the work is something that never ends – not that I would ever want it to reach some sort of conclusion: the lovely and infuriating conundrum of learning that there will only ever be more to learn keeps me keen and eager for what’s next and what’s new.
The following step of 2005’s Divine Diva journey arrives with the next installment of this project, which ricochets from the feminine stylings of the previous entry to the more masculine stylings of our next entry… stay tuned.
I was cryin’ when I met you
Now I’m tryin’ to forget you
Your love is sweet misery
I was cryin’ just to get you
Now I’m dyin’ to let you
Do what you do, what you do down to
No, no, baby, baby, baby
~ The Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale ~
The GIF above is how this week has gone for me.
The GIF below is how it’s going to end for some.
(If you think this post is about you, you’re probably wrong – there have been a lot of wrongs done lately.)
Back to my bracelets…
