Birthday boy Jason Leigh Winter gets the only kind of gift I can give to him, which is a crowning as Dazzler of the Day. A social media star and West End triple-threat, Winter recently turned heads in the celebrated production of ‘Hercules’ as it dazzled the London theater scene. More impactful seems to be his beloved social media posts, which largely feature him dancing to requested songs and reminding us of the joy still to be found in the simplest acts of showmanship.
Has this been an exceedingly wild and crazy summer even when not much has actually happened? It feels that way to me, though it’s quite possible (and highly likely) that it’s all in my head. That doesn’t make it any more or less fun – merely an observation of mine. On with this weekly blog recap…
A modern-day Madonna milestone, as she scores her 10th number one album with ‘Confessions II’.
A splendiferous summer’s day before the sky started to burn.
Our mocktail of the summer is this orange concoction, lovingly named ‘The Golden Shower’.
A bouquet of oregano reveals another pretty use for this herb.
The yolk of a daisy, a.k.a. the eye of a day.
As previously mentioned, the sky started to burn from the fires in Canada.
Pool ruminations in one’s underwear, as one does.
Summer darkness and intimacy still reside in the sunny season.
An icebox cake recipe for those who are wisely leaving the oven off this week.
Getting wet with water tableaux.
A Friday night fern for viewing ease and pleasure.
Cloudbusting is a song by Kate Bush, a blog post, and a term meaning… something.
A queen up close is sometimes just as enchanting as a queen from afar.
Pause for dramatic effect, and new glasses.
The very first tomato harvest of the season is always a happy event for my mouth.
My favorite donut shop is better than any basic bitch out there.
A simple Sunday night post in shades of lavender.
Dazzlers of the Day included Patrick ‘Patch’ Hyde and Edward Delling-Williams.
Sitting up in the attic far later than I should be awake, I write these words directly into this blog post. It won’t go up for a few days, and in that detachment and removal from immediacy, I feel emboldened and brave enough to reveal just a little more of myself than I typically might. Lately, I’ve been writing these entries into a notebook, all by hand, then typing them in later along with any necessary editing. It feels more meaningful to write it out longhand, if anyone even knows what longhand is anymore. I’m not even sure I do. Sometimes I just say words because they sound right, and I’m usually good about placing them where they belong, even if I’m doubtful of what they may actually mean. There, a little reveal, a little strip-tease, one that will find you trying to catch me out soon, and I will deserve it.
Jesus saves, and Bubba scores
A childhood you’ll always mourn
You found your things out on the floor now
And you believed in every maybe
Shalala, it drove you crazy
Tough as nails and built for breaking
But you were just a kid when they told you
You’d been born to bleed, little soldier
With your garden heart and sentimental boulder
Oh, it pulled you down
Look at you, you made it out
Yes, I had a garden heart. Still do. The garden has always been the place of peace and healing and learning – and the most interesting thing in the world to me ever since I was a little boy. It’s been a haven and a space of hope, where I learned heartbreak and heaven, sometimes at the exact same time. It set me apart from other boys, as did so much else. That dark trip back won’t be made tonight – I’m skirting the deeper shit until we make it out of retrograde motion.
Now it’s time to go, it’s time to chase it
Break the locks out of the basement
Rearview mirror to the faithless
And you believed in every maybe
Shalala, I love you, baby
Told them all you were good at breaking
Going around the gardens every day is my favorite way to ground myself during the sunny season. It’s a good mental health break – and any time spent offline or away from a computer screen or television is time well-spent. The removal of such stimulation is more powerful than most people realize, it allows for a re-charge, and the chance to be thrilled again when heightened stimulation arrives. Lower your expectations. Shift your pleasure perspective. Refine your acceptance.
But you were just a kid when they told you
You’d been born to bleed, little soldier
With your magnet heart and sentimental boulder
Oh, it pulled you down
But look at you, you made it out
Born to bleed with a sentimental boulder? Were we all such terrorized children? Why do I remember being more resilient before I was aware of myself? A small part of me wants to explain what that means, but it’s late, and a larger part of me wants to sleep. These lyrics hit harder than the music.
Yeah, you’re just like the rain
Carrying everyone’s shame
But you move just like a river
No, you don’t wear an inch of it, babe
I’d follow you down, down, down, down, down to the water
Way down to any kind of chance
To a stone in a creek
‘Til you’re out of the blue
Honey, I can see it too
Rather than say more about that, or offer an explanation for the title of this post (which was originally supposed to be a look at my creative process, as I’ve started the first part of my next project) I’m going to wrap things up since we are winding the song down. This was going to be a break in the Solid Gold Summer run with a glasses-and-all look at what really goes on in the summer. A dramatic pause if you will, then the music speaks to the soul again… and our Solid Gold swing shall return shortly.
‘Cause I was just a kid when they showed me
This great big weight that would come and pull me
Like your magnet heart and sentimental boulder
I carry it with you, throw it on my shoulders
You’re the one way out and I’m your dark horse clown
Isimo, look at you, you made it out
A fern for your Friday night fun. After the age of 50, Friday night fun unfurls differently, not unlike the frond of a fern – gently, quietly, beautifully. What calls to me now is deeper, more resonant for the soul, and it has nothing to do with FOMO or being seen or burning oneself into the break of the next day. It also has nothing to do with being online or engaging on social media, so excuse me while I step back into the world outside – the only world that matters.
Happy Friday!
“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock ‘n’ roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.” – Haruki Murakami
I’m a bitch when it’s hot, because I’m a bitch when it’s not. That said, this summer the heat hasn’t gotten to me as badly as it has in years past, which is strange because we’ve been much hotter than recent summers have been. Chalk it up to the proximity of a pool and air conditioning, and the fact that I’ve largely avoided walking at midday when at the office or visiting Boston or New York in such a heat index. To that end, it’s been a rather enjoyable season thus far, and my lack of complaining is either growth or evolution or the lackadaisical summation of simply learning not to care (or realizing that there is no point to my caring). There’s something that approaches melancholy in all of that, in summer itself, as gleaned from the opening quote. It’s as if the sun, with its relentless cheeriness and charm, illuminates fully all that is otherwise lacking, all that is otherwise wrong, amid the perfect idyllic days: the conundrum of summer, which nobody dares to criticize lest we frighten it away.
Rather than indulge in the melancholy, or fight it outright, I’m finding a quiet sort of middle ground, one where I lean into the feelings while staying afloat and distracting myself with the fun. It mostly seems to be working. From the pool, I watch a red squirrel scurry across the top of the wooden fence, its clicks and clacks a warning or a mating cry or some other exclamation I cannot translate. A hummingbird hovers beside a pot of salvia, its tongue moving deeply into the tubular blooms that few others can so easily reach. Life reveals itself in multitudes when you stop and sit still long enough to receive it.
When the sun goes down, and the light reluctantly drains from the sky, the summer night begins…
“The summer night is like a perfection of thought.” – Wallace Stevens
When a summer day is full, sleep comes quickly and easily.
If it fills your mind with the present moment – the sun, the heat, the flowers, the books, the pool, the garden, the grilled dinner, the first cherry tomatoes just starting to ripen and the thrill of popping one into your mouth directly off the vine – then the day has proven worthwhile.
I’ve had the luck and luxury of having some pretty full days of late – not with any grand adventures or big events, but the simple summer living that the season affords. It’s the best way of dealing with overthinking and overanalyzing – which Virgos such as myself are prone to do to our great detriment. Finding solace in being mindful and present instead of living in my head has proven a boon to my mental health. Summer makes that easier.
After working out and meditating and just making it through a recent day, I slipped into the pool, not bothering with a swimsuit, just pulling off my shorts and wading in with this old pair of underwear that wouldn’t mind getting a bit bleached. Swimming from the shallow end to the deep, I breathe in the scents of evening.
The spicy sweetness of phlox hangs in the air near the deep end. Nearby, the smell of damp earth fresh from being watered reminds me of some almost-fetid greenhouse dripping with its own condensation – plants sometimes have a way of sweating too, transpiration to our perspiration.
Even this late in the day, the sky is a sickly hazy yellowish gray color – still lit from the sun’s rays slicing through the smoke in the air from the Canadian fires – seemingly an annual summer event in a world that burns itself out a bit more with each passing day. I dive underwater to get away from it all, because I cannot afford to think about this world like that too much – humans being so problematic, and so disappointing.
I did what we’re never supposed to do: I looked right up at the sun because it was obscured by the hazy smoke drifting down from the Canadian wildfires. It looked eerily like the moon when clouds pass mysteriously in front of it, only this was the mighty sun, probably damaging my retinas in my foolish act of defiance.
It’s been a week of recklessness, as Mercury continues in its messy retrograde motion and a new moon prowls the sky invisibly. Astrologically, this is said to be a shit show, especially for a Virgo, and I’m definitely in the difficult feels about practically everything. (Forewarned is fair warned: stop fucking with me.)
Things are also said to bring great relief when this retrograde ends around July 23rd. That’s always been a good date for me, so I’ll be laying low and doing my best to keep quiet until then. (This would not be a good time to bet on that happening however, so apologies in advance for all that I’m about to say or do. Again, stop fucking with me.)
Sunny Mondays in summer hit differently. Their intrinsically depressing nature is blunted by the power of the season, a reminder that nature is what will always matter in the end. Mondays are a human construct. Summer is invincible. Here is our weekly blog recap…
Woodstock kicked the last week off in whimsical fashion.
Weather whiplash is a requisite part of summer these days.
Maple and bamboo light in the attic at night.
Triggering summer scents carried by the breeze.
Rainy abstract, taking out the night.
A summer holiday with the twins marks the passing of precious time.
Scarlet bee draw brings all the bees to the yard.
New spectacles, old jockstrap.
A feast for the hummingbirds in a brilliantly-colored salvia.
Embodying golden splendor in mesh netting.
Solid gold summer realizations come when they want to come.
Out pooling for the day: Do Not Disturb.
A golden summer night makes the journey home.
Soleil summer hallucinations backed by a driving beat and a hazy heat.
Golden 80’s glory days for those of us getting old.
Dazzlers of the Day included Mark Harkenrider, Meg Stalter, Evan Mulrooney, and Erling Haaland.
This is where I’ll be spending the day.
Come back later.
Peruse these summer songs.
Or smoke it.
Whatever floats your boat.
The intense heat of last week threatened to melt away all the golden trappings of this Solid Gold Summer like some gold-foil-wrapped chocolate bunny from the perilous Easter period – but summer has a way of proving itself invincible, refusing to yield even to its own incendiary machinations.
The music is magic as the Solid Gold dancers take to the stage of my hazy childhood memories – sequins sparkling in the roving spotlights, slicing through all the dramatic smoke effects as their limbs flail in impossible feats of human movement.
Glimmers of glory shimmer in the starry wide-eyed wonder of a little boy watching all the flashy magic playing out on the television. What might it feel like to spin in the middle of all those shards of glittering light – to be a disco ball with every light beam trained on you? Where all you have to do is spin and reflect the light back onto the world – the conduit, the vessel, the portal – resplendent in gold and mirrors and taking it all in only to give it right back in some incongruent generosity of spirit of which no one would ever quite believe you were capable. It’s not something we have come to expect of our golden icons.
When I think back to the boy I used to be, the kid who watched those Solid Gold dancers with rapture and transfixion, studying the way their sequined light pierced the stage night, I remember the ferocity he sought to capture, and how he vowed one day to be just as bewitching as the spectacle parading before him.
My dreams of gold read differently now, and I am starting to see things from a changed point of view. My vessel is solid gold; the rest of the world and its people may be gilded, facades and shells of empty, misguided brokenness, but I somehow remain whole, I remain true. I remain solid through and through. The tacit admission is that I’m just a little tarnished – an ironic flip of all that is expected from my sparkling superficiality, from all that has admittedly come before – with the graver implication being that I was tarnished by own hand and head. Overthinking and overanalyzing are the bane to many a Virgo, and I am far from an exception to this overwrought conundrum.
Yet it is precisely at such times when I remind myself that I still have the power to enthrall and enchant, as I’m reminded by friends and strangers alike, in ways overt and covert because nobody willingly gives me any flowers despite how much they know I love them. Or maybe it’s because they know how much I love them, and love has never been easy to come by for me.
The rest of the world gets the show then, and for anyone who is still reading, that goes for you too. The ones I seek to reach are infuriatingly unaware of these spoils. My golden splendor spins with purpose only for itself, for the sake of spinning. It’s something to do, something to fill the mind when more disruptive thoughts might derail an entire summer.
“I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.” – Edna St. Vincent Millay
Summer fleeting, summer flying by, summer waiting for no man… I feel the swift rush of time in summer more than any other seasons, likely because we want it to last. Its golden splendor seeps into daily summer living, the way heat eventually comes to land in the earth and stay there until September, but once the nights turn it’s difficult to make the warmth last. For now, I let it soak into the skin, into whatever waning darkness remains in my hair like that of some silver-headed wolf.
Gold hints of Egyptian pharaohs swirl us deeper into the past, even though it was the same sun, the same earth, the same stretch of desert still baking in the heat. Sands cycling through time, indeed marking time like the trickle of an hourglass, and so go the days of our lives. Fitting, as summer meant I could reconnect to my soap operas – the entire NBC daytime line-up from ‘Days of Our Lives’ to ‘Santa Barbara’. I don’t even know how many of those shows still run, or whether it’s all streaming now or some other service I’ve ignored and allowed to leave me behind. Summer is no time to learn a new thing.
Instead, I gleefully get lost in all the golden light, embracing summer for the momentary joy at hand. Forget the other seasons if we can have this one golden summer.
Hummingbirds love these deep-throated salvia blooms – because who doesn’t enjoy a deep-throat experience? I’ve planted several in pots on the patio so that we can watch them flit from bloom to bloom, darting with pinpoint precision and split-second motions. It’s one of the most enchanting displays of the summer. Enticing the hummingbirds is always a worthwhile endeavor. They usually favor colorful and interesting blooms, so everybody wins.
A sign that mid-life malaise has kicked in: I missed the due date for my eye appointment by a year. Usually I am right on top of that benefit, as I’m only allotted a check-up and new pair of glasses or contacts every two years, and my eyesight is deteriorating faster than that schedule. This time I let things go for an extra year beyond that – mostly out of laziness and such an onerous experience last visit (clearly I didn’t take my own advice and find a new company). This year the wait time wasn’t any better, I’m just more resigned to accepting that it’s always going to take an hour and a half for a five minute appointment. That little shift made all the complaining go away. There are badder fish to fry.
As for the new specs, I like their less bulky frames – it’s keeping with a simplicity I’m trying to bring into my life. Same thing with the underwear selection, because that’s what most people came here for – no judgment, all respect.
Mary Haynes may have doted on a fictitious perfume called ‘Summer Rain’, and I myself may have a bottle of the Hermes beauty ‘Un Jardin Apres la Mousson’ recalling the garden after a summer deluge, but I’m still trying to find ways of appreciating a rainy summer day, and I’m not quite succeeding.
Instead, I take a rainy night and turn it into an abstract study in contemplation, painting it somewhere in my mind and streaking it with blurry lines that obfuscate as much as reveal. Strange and wonderful the way rain brings the streetlights to electric, reflecting light; this is why they wet the pavement when they shoot movies. Once you notice that you’ll see it in every outside movie street scene.
With the possible sweet exception of the linden tree blooms, no other summer flower reminds me of childhood, and in such unassuming and visually quiet fashion, as a simple hedge of privet. It immediately rekindles summer memories of Provincetown, of family vacations, of nights walking in hot and humid air, which always carries floral fragrance more potently than any other time of the year.
Like the index tree, privet doesn’t shout its presence with bold and colorful flowers – it speaks solely through its sweet and somewhat subtle fragrance. When appearing en masse during their blooming season, it manages to fill the surrounding air with a lovely perfume, and most don’t know where it’s coming from since the show is far short of grand ostentation. It speaks to me more sweetly because of this.
