Category Archives: General

Today I turn fifty-fucking-one years old.

How did my 50th year go now that’s come to a close? I spoke a bit about that last night, but I’ll break it down again here.

Fifty was a wilder ride than I anticipated.

I felt the years. I felt the weight. I felt the fact that there were more days and years behind me than would ever be before me again. I felt the rush. I felt the hushed, icy lack of turned heads when I’d enter a restaurant. When you’re fifty you blend better into the background, and after fifty years of not blending into the background, there was wickedness and relief in that.

What might be most surprising is that I could still access the tumultuous emotions of life without having to actually go through any of them – a removed yet thrilling way of remembering and experiencing what I once thought solely the province of the young. My 50th year ran through gamut of emotional highs and lows, even as nothing extreme really even happened. In that respect, things got decidedly more exciting, merely from the shift in my own perspective and how I experienced everything. That bodes well for the next half of life.

As for this 51st birthday, I’m laying low and keeping things relatively quiet, enjoying a day in Boston and trying not to take any of the social media flowers too seriously. Fifty-one isn’t one of the big milestones anyway, though some might argue that anything over the halfway mark is worth celebrating. My own love/hate relationship with my birthday doesn’t find reconciliation one way or another – not quite that evolved yet but definitely working on it.

Anyway, have a gander at previous birthday posts, most of which feature some element of my birthday suit because I’m nothing if not a goddamned giver.

Birthday #50: A letter to myself because if you can’t do you on your birthday, what can you do?

Birthday #49: One on the cusp of many things.

Birthday #48: An uneventful year that faded to black.

Birthday #47: A real birthday suit post with only a sheet between me and the eyes of the world.

Birthday #46: A skinny-dipping party and I’d cry if I wanted to.

Birthday #45: Feeling young and fancy and free.

Birthday #44: A real suit for a birthday, and everybody hated it.

And for all the rest (because I’m tired of linking right now) check out this more comprehensive birthday suit post.

Most people would not welcome a rainy Sunday morning, but I’m not aligning with most people these days. On this particular morning, I step onto the front steps of our home and listen to the sound of the rain, grateful for the downtrodden aspect of atmosphere. My lifelong friend Ann has just departed after a weekend of fun and friendship rejuvenation – a time where two old friends could just relax into the easy cadence of our youth, reveling in how much things have changed – and how our friendship remains the same.

Pulling the golden streamers that framed the doorway, I toss them down and see them pool into a sparkling pretty mess. This will likely be our final Solid Gold Summer gathering – I’m too tired and apathetic to rally and plan for more golden moments – and scheduling things with kids is too impossible to try. Leaving it in the hands of others means nothing will happen, and I’m happily reconciled to that.

Spending the weekend with Ann (and a dinner with Missy and Carla) reminded us of how important it is to nourish the soul by having this kind of time together. We did little else but talk and laugh (with a quick trip to Schenectady to get some goodies at Perecca’s) and it was absolutely what we needed to highlight this tender time of summer.

I miss her already, and the rain feels like a fitting coda to complete a beautiful weekend – a happy echo that will reverberate throughout the fall and winter whenever we need a memory of joy.

As previously mentioned, August is a time of plentiful rainbows in these parts. Whenever one appears, I go online to see how many others saw the same thing – it’s one of those increasingly rare moments when humans come together under a single event and have a sort of communal experience – the way we used to all watch the same television show at the exact same time and talk about it the next day. The world is at our fingertips now, but I’ve never felt so far removed from people.

Not that I’m complaining – for someone who’s largely an introvert with a few bothersomely-extreme extrovert aspects, I enjoy solitude and separateness. Distance, but with the option of connecting/disconnecting at the touch of a phone screen. Modern-day living. Depressing as fuck.

But then there are still rainbows to light up the sky and guide our path back toward something that looks and feels like happiness. Maybe it’s beauty – maybe it’s more…

Even solid gold gets old after a while – time being the ultimate equalizer, no matter how pure or whole any element might be. My own golden trappings of this summer are much flimsier than just about any other sort of gold, assembled from the deepest and darkest recesses of the attic wardrobe and supplemented by the nonsensical sparkle of Amazon junk. At this stage, I’m ready to tear off all the golden masks and scratchy sequins, starting over from a place of minimalist majesty. Of course, I always say this, and the stripped-down bare-bones version of me never lasts – my preference for all that is extra invariably returns to rear its ugly insistent head; proof that fighting who you are is a losing, futile, worthless battle.

Perhaps we should be throwing away all the guises we assume to please others – the roles we feel we should be playing to be more acceptable – more loved – in the world. Maybe that’s the real garbage in our lives, these ideas that we should try to fit in and be like everybody else. What a stupid thing to desire – and how difficult it is to not want for the comfort of it. I’ve always considered myself a bit stronger than most when it comes to that – able to defiantly march to my own beat, in my own strange sense of style but even I know it’s often easier to make my way through the average day in jeans and a t-shirt than some sparkling golden ensemble that practically glows in the dark. There are more than enough battles to be waged – battles that will be thrust upon us without say or choice – why would we create any more?

That said, I still want to sparkle – and I will always want to sparkle – and I’m going to throw away all that ever inhibits that from happening.

When I find myself in times of trouble, such as in these emotionally-charged waning days of 50, I have a secret weapon that has always saved me in just about every tricky situation. Looking back over the many years, I’ve come to realize that my secret super-powers have always been my friendships. Whenever I’m in the midst of doubt or difficulty, when the world has done me a wrong turn or someone has hurt me intentionally or unintentionally, my friends never fail to assemble like an avenging source of support and emotional sustenance.

It’s not usually an explicit action in response to a cry for help; my habit is not to cry, and my history is not to ask – yet somehow they all sense when I need a friend.

At those times, we’ll schedule a dinner out, share a phone call at the end of the day, or simply volley some texts back and forth that are enough to make me feel better about the world and my place in it.

As I navigate these treacherous final throes of 50, when mid-life malaise and crisis threaten to derail what personal progress I’ve made over the year, I find my friendships coming to a rescue I’ve only just realized I need – and for that I am grateful.

Despite the gas and grocery prices, I remain rich and abundant with friends – good friends – the sort that have stood by me for decades, and who have become family in a way that real family doesn’t always want to be. Everyone should be so lucky.

“I learned that being envied is the loneliest pleasure on earth, and that self-absorption guarantees unhappiness, and that the worst motive for action is groundless fear.” ~ Alan Helms

There’s a lot to unpack in that single sentence, and I’m not going to dissect it with my nonsense, other than the links contained therein. It probably means something different for you anyway, and that’s the beauty of sparkling writing.

Almost every August there are storms that arrive in the middle of a sunny day, often resulting in rainbows that fill the sky and thrill the senses, if you’re lucky enough to be out and about. Such was the case as I was enjoying a cup of peppermint tea and a sudden rainstorm ravaged the area around Professor Java’s. Waiting out a spell of rain in a cafe is one of life’s greater solaces, so I hunkered down until the sun came back out. The brief pause was worth it, as I managed to capture this rainbow in the parking lot – a happy reminder of whatever rainbow belief system you have (I tend to err on the side of science, but I’m old-school in my preference for facts and scientific evidence). If there is something more meaningful about the rainbow to you, have at it.

Additional proof that rainbows often inform this blog:

The March Rainbow

The April Rainbow

The August Rainbow

The September Rainbow

The Rainbow Fire Hydrant

The Rainbow Reprieve

The Rainbow in the Window

Forget ‘The Office’ – someone should do a series called ‘The Elevator’ because that’s where all the crazy shit happens. Elevators are the great equalizers of an office building.

And what happens in the elevator rarely stays on the elevator if I’m there; I squeal louder than a pig.

All I have for this blog post is a provocative title, no racy finger-pricking scandal to accompany the pretty pink photos of the titular rose at hand. It’s up to the reader/viewer to fill-in-the-blanks, which always makes for a more graphic depiction of scenarios – your sick and sordid imagination fills any holes more insistently than some blatant nudity or sexual situation I might posit or deposit here.

Now I’m just playing with words and teasing easy targets, that’s when it’s not going completely over heads. People either get too much credit, or not enough – too few are the times when people get precisely what they deserve. Justice and comeuppance are the stuff of fairy tales – that’s why our darkest and most base tendencies love a fairy tale. Real life proves far more problematic – but a rose is still a rose, and a rambling blog post won’t make one damn difference in this wayward world.

Autocorrect never corrects when you need it to correct, but always changes the shit that you intended to write that way. Like, I’m never gonna write ‘ducking’ in my life (maybe), yet I consistently write ‘fucking’ this and ‘fucking’ that but it never just lets it fucking be.

WTD?

Next week at this time I’ll be turning 51, so this marks my final week as a 50-year-old, and the end cannot come quickly enough. Two words can sufficiently sum up what 50 was like for me: holy fuck. We now continue with our weekly blog recap in case you missed any of these swell moments… I wish I had.

Summer adoration because what’s not to adore?

The second verse is smaller than the first, because not all in the garden is symmetrical.

Summer is still bursting even when the heart is no longer in it.

A happy new addition to the downtown Albany cafe culture scene.

All those hapless people being impressed by anything remotely kinda chic… pfffft.

The tomato thief strikes again – when will they be stopped?

Happy hibiscus season to those who celebrate.

A visit to my hometown leads to this delicious lunch at Cali Cantina.

Musings over matcha turn a tinge dark, as musings tend to do near the end of summer.

Caught in med-metamorphosis, the artist pauses for a red light.

Friday fuzziness is pink and pretty.

When Virgos cry it’s usually a pretty damn big deal, though it’s worth noting that no tears have been recently spilt.

Finishing ‘The Summer Book’ when all the people really want is the glimpse behind it.

Listen, if parking is going to remotely be a problem, count me out. Tell me what happened later. I have the opposite of FOMO.

Madonna celebrated her birthday, and in honor of that the Madonna Timeline returned in fine fashion, with the first entry from her latest album.

Got my tits out for this summer boogie wonderland moment.

Wondrous echoes of a lilac spring have us nearing a full-circle happening.

Dazzlers of the Day included Joey Graceffa and Urzila Carlson.

Major sign of my advancing age:

I don’t fuck with bad parking scenes, I just won’t go.

Birthdays have become a bit of a mixed bag for me. Outwardly I pretend to love them, crafting carefully-curated wish lists for various friends and family (how easy can gift-giving be with a wish list?) and setting up dinners and lunch dates with the people who matter, but when I really think about it, and when I look back at my history all the way to childhood, I realize I’ve often gotten out of town for my birthday, as if somehow trying to escape from the day. Even when I stay home, I’ll often go out somewhere else like Lake George or the Berkshires or anywhere other than home. In my childhood, I’d request excursions to beaver sanctuaries or Great Escape to get away. It’s a realization that came to me when someone posted online that Virgos always cry on their birthday.

It struck me profoundly that I wasn’t alone in those feelings. Not that I cry every birthday – that is relatively rare – but there’s always been a melancholy undertow to the day, usually a result of disappointing expectations that are only and always in my head, and some careless behavior from others that somehow always manages to manifest on that particular day. And if you can’t get basic decency on your birthday, it does have a way of etching away at your self-worth over the years. (People are going to ask for receipts on this, but I’m done with hurting people with their own truths.)

Slowly, I’ve come to accept this, and I continue to try not to be such a spoiled, whiny brat in the face of all that hurts and stings, and that’s the goal for this and every year that follows. It’s just another day. Whether my birthday happened or not, whether I was here or not, it’s only ever going to be just another day. My life isn’t changing the world in any substantial way – most of our lives don’t. We want to think we matter – we want to think our story is the main story, the only story – but the truth is that we matter no more and no less than anyone else. Some make bigger waves and cause bigger splashes – some do touch history and bend it one way or another, but most of us just don’t matter. That’s a hard truth to face, and one that seems to rear its head whenever my birthday rolls around, re-enforced by the rest of the world on that day in particular. And as bitter as this post might sound or read to you, I no longer harbor bitterness in my heart. A little residual hurt, echoes of confused sorrow, perhaps, but no more bitterness or anger, because that eats away at the soul. If there’s one thing I’ve learned after almost 51 years here, it’s that no one but me is going to protect myself – and happily that’s the one person on whom I can always rely.

One day I may try to make better sense of this 50th summer I’ve spent here on earth, suss out all the feelings and inertia, analyze and over-analyze each rain drop and flower bloom, and every whimsical mood. And maybe I won’t – some summers prefer to remain a mystery, and for their sake it’s usually best not to pry. When you go digging for dirt, sometimes all you get is dirty.

Instead, I’ll simply pause for a mere moment of contemplation. You’ve caught me mid-metamorphosis – on the verge of forging an autumn identity while erecting the necessary armor to see myself through another birthday and another end of summer. When so much feels so wrong, I find it best to slow down, ground myself in meditation, and go easy on all the self-criticism that swirls inside my head.

With a mixture of shame and regret, I confess that I am ready to close the chapter on this summer – a bit early perhaps and I’m sure there will be a few more summer posts to come (we haven’t even arrived at the ‘Last Dance’ moment of Solid Gold Disco Drama) but my head has had to move on from the heaviness that certain summers hang around the heart.

You have to lose yourself before you find yourself – and some summers simply don’t want to be found.

Postings may be lighter of late as I work on the upcoming fall theme of this website and a possible new project to go along with it. Unfathomably re-energized at this sleepy point of a waning summer, I find myself burning the candle at both ends, and gratefully exhausted by it. A busy full day doesn’t leave time for deep and darker ruminations, and the matcha moment musing that is pictured here was accompanied by the quick scrawling of this very blog post in my notebook. Idle hands most definitely bedevil me – better to occupy both hand and mind, staying busily distracted to keep other thoughts at bay.

So much of human life is about such distractions – we occasionally call it purpose, but it’s just distracting filler. I wanted it to mean so much more – life, I mean – but there’s no point in forcing it to be anything other than what it is. There is disappointment in that, but I shrug it all off and sip my matcha.