A preamble of sorts for the recounting of this year’s BroSox Adventures (coming up this weekend), this post celebrates the roses that were in bloom when last we were in Boston. It seemed that every square or garden we passed had some sort of rose show happening – the glorious sign that June was at hand and summer had, or was just about to, arrive. This first flush is usually the biggest and best, and it did not disappoint. They were tumbling off their trellises, rising and arching like some colorful fountain of fragrant petals. The red ones seen here were found along the Southwest Corridor Park, whose garden plots have been lovingly brought to beautiful life over the last decade or so.
When I say ‘Summer Head‘ I mean the summer mind-set.
In my case, that’s an annoying amount of overthinking and overanalyzing and overdoing just about everything in my head. An exhausting and endless regime of mental gymnastics that always gets in the way of mindfulness. Thankfully, mindfulness is not merely its match, but its dominator. When set against overthinking, mindfulness always wins, if you know how to conjure it, if you can focus enough to make it happen. As with so many things worth having, there is difficult work involved.
The hobgoblin of the overthinking mind will try to derail the happiest summer days, blocking and obscuring the sun while you frantically seek shade and darkness to ease the headache, to find the coolness that will finally bring relief from the heat. You will try to find sleep, hoping it will bring peace, but the overthinking mind doesn’t allow for sleep. Its work is insidious that way. Diabolical.
I battle my own head games like vampires might battle each other. Formidable foes, so perfectly matched in viciousness and vitriol, fight not until the end of one, but the end of two. There is only ever complete destruction and utter annihilation. The summer head trip is designed to self-destruct like some Mission Impossible missive, yet the real impossible mission is in reconciling the mind’s night with summer light.
Hidden behind the shimmer of short-shorts or the smitten yet sinister smile put on for public appearance, for this very post perhaps, for the sheer vanity of survival – summer’s head trips spin wildly out of control, while the gilded sun of golden power glimmers from its far-off glory.
At the time that I write this, it is pouring rain outside. The sky is dim – a dull gray that portends a long, and helpful, onslaught of rain. The lawn and the gardens need it, especially the ferns. It is brooding weather – puts one in a dampened spirit, and it’s at odds with the pictures presented here from the day before, when the sun was shining, the sky was blue, and the clouds were merely artful accents unfilled with rainwater. The difference of a day. The difference of a night. Some things change, just like that. It’s the nature of the world. Ask any night-blooming cactus, if you’re lucky enough to catch one in bloom.
The new hangover is waking up to an e-mail notification that an order was received, with a little picture of an Egyptian headdress or other such nonsense telling me I sleep-ordered some ludicrous piece of trash that is being delivered in two days.
Only the second day of summer is at hand, and we are already recapping things, which means the tail-end of spring (and my tail end) is also encapsulated here. Have at the links within this weekly blog recap, and as fronted by a golden sunflower.
This first day of summer also happened to be Father’s Day, something we haven’t really celebrated since losing Dad three years ago. There’s no longer an overwhelming sadness or despondency that comes from that, though my melancholic mood of late didn’t help matters. To combat that, I made a day of driving and exploring and keeping busy to keep my mind off darker thoughts.
First, I made a pasta casserole and dropped it off for Mom, who had taken a spill on Friday, resulting in a bad black eye and cut head; my incredulous annoyance at her not going to the doctor was likely expected as she didn’t bother to tell me any of what happened until Saturday. Nurses often make the most obtuse patients; if this had happened to her children or grandchildren it would have most definitely been checked out by a doctor, but what can I do? It’s too upsetting to do anything more than keep my distance and hope that people do right for themselves.
I then stopped by the hospital to visit Dad. The cemetery would have likely been busy with others visiting their dead dads, and I didn’t want to share misery. Besides, I never really feel like my Dad is there – if he is, it’s on the periphery, in the shade of the evergreens, not wanting to be bothered. Instead, when I want to feel closer to him I go to the hospital where he worked, where I have many memories of him being vibrantly alive and beloved by his co-workers. I sat in the chapel and spoke to him a bit, then stopped by the cafeteria, near the room he once had me stay in when he had to pick me up on a day I got sick at school. I feel him more keenly there.
Afterward, I took a long drive. This weekend I’ve been doing a lot of driving – it affords solitude, and time and space to think. Mourning the end of spring feels rougher this year. I drove along the backroads outside my hometown, where the corn was barely knee-high, the hills were gently rolling, and the clouds and sky were making scenes primed for painting. I forget how beautiful the world can be when spring departs.
When I finally returned home, Andy had just put a couple of burgers on the grill – an ideal dinner for a fatherless household on this first day of summer. Later in the afternoon, while Andy was napping, I went for a swim. I haven’t been swimming as much since the summer of 2023. I went today in honor of my Dad. That was his habit when we were little kids.
Despite owning an in-ground pool and maintaining it meticulously during the summer months, my Dad didn’t enjoy swimming. He never went in the water on any of our vacations – not at the beach, not in the pools, and not in his own backyard. The one day he would deign to swim with us was Father’s Day – a noble act that was more of a gift to his kids than anything he actually enjoyed. The signs of a father’s love are often hidden, often deep, and often deeply held. That was always one of them.
At the end of today, I went in our pool and thought of Dad. I wasn’t sad about him – there were more other pressing matters to be sad about – and I wasn’t overcome the way I was earlier in the car listening to some of his favorite songs. It felt peaceful, it felt calm. It was a good ending to the first day of summer.
THE MORE THAT YOU LISTEN TO AND SLOWLY IT TURNS INTO GOLD…
Our summer theme ‘SOLID GOLD SUMMER’ takes its name somewhat ironically, as there will be nothing solid about the gold or the summer you are about to experience here. From its disco soundtrack to its sparkling metallic sheen, this kind of gold is superficial, surface, and hardly even skin-deep. It’s a gilded sort of decadence – empty of anything substantial, deceptively glowing as if it was something more – when sometimes summer is just a flash in the pan. It’s best to prepare for the letdown, to be ready for the fall when it comes, because it always – always – comes.
SOLID GOLD – FILLING UP MY LIFE WITH MUSIC
SOLID GOLD – PUTTING RHYTHM IN MY SOUL
THERE’S A SONG THAT’S UNREELING
TO FIT THE WAY THAT I’M FEELING
MY HEAD KEEPS SPINNING TO MUSIC, SPINNING TO GOLD…
And so the smoky voice of Dionne Warwick sets the scene and the stage for a summer of golden glory – just because it’s empty doesn’t mean it won’t sparkle and shine – and a gilded cage is as pretty as it is dangerous. Summer is a time ripe for that sort of ambivalence. It gives giddy hope, then dashes it into oblivion, the way it burns an early morning fog away. You’re left wondering what the hell actually happened, and how much was all in the foggy recesses of your head.
Summer is as much the sweet and juicy watermelon as it is the gleaming knife that cuts it all into dripping pieces of blood-red wreckage. It burns its golden suns into each day, gold melting into gold, becoming one and returning to the cauldron of night and heat.
I’VE COME TO DISCOVER
THAT MUSIC’S A LOVER
ITS HEAT KEEPS ME WARM WHEN I’M COLD
THE BEAT STARTS TO BEND ME
THE MELODIES SEND ME
AND EVERYTHING MELTS INTO GOLD…
This summer we shall dip ourselves in the gold, letting it burn and cover our bodies like the spinning sun, letting it light our hearts aflame and afire – burning with the kind of intensity that only lasts for a single summer. Dare we fly so close and approximate the risky trajectory of Icarus? How dare we not? Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all…?
A telling question mark to end that one. I’m too old to completely believe in that anymore, but I’m too young to entirely give it up. The knife of summer cuts many ways. What will this one bring? Only the rise and fall of many suns will tell… and some summers simply hurt.
SOLID GOLD – FILLING UP MY LIFE WITH MUSIC
SOLID GOLD – PUTTING RHYTHM IN MY SOUL
THERE’S A SONG THAT’S UNREELING
TO FIT THE WAY THAT I’M FEELING
MY HEAD KEEPS SPINNING TO MUSIC, SPINNING TO GOLD…
SOLID GOLD!
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s leash hath all too short a date.” – William Shakespeare
As I careen through this third or fourth mid-life crisis (how unfair that certain people should have more than one, enough to lose count) I find myself in a contemplative mood as we near the end of spring. On the day this is being written, a thrashing of wind with an occasional outburst of rain wreaks havoc with the outside world. I watch from the window, hearing the mad rush over the roof and through the trees, their branches waving wildly in the shifting air. This music feels apt for the moment at hand, when the heart yearns to be still and quiet amid all the noise, emotional and otherwise.
Tornado warnings have been issued for our surrounding area. The sky in the distance has an enormous bank of dark clouds – ominously churning and moving in ways that clouds don’t usually move – headed in our direction. Inside of me, the heart now churns too, in ways that my heart doesn’t usually churn.
Outside, another banana leaf unfurls in the humidity and heat before the deluge. A glimpse of sun suddenly and somewhat ominously appears – it feels sickly, it feels off. It feels so wrong. Spring, ending on a tortured note; summer, hesitant to appear. I’m not ready for either.
Holding on to this spring – or any spring for that matter – is folly and madness. I don’t know why we bother, other than to make the inevitable end more miserable when it finally does arrive. Perhaps I had it right simply celebrating all those starts to summer instead of mourning the stops to spring. Now I am lost, mourning and missing and moving toward something I can’t quite see yet…
This slow-burn of a song, ‘The Sky is Crying‘, feels like a fitting start to the finale of spring, which arrives in a pair of blog posts tomorrow. (Forewarned is fair-warned: there is some stripped-down nakedness in one of them to go along with the soul-baring.)
Matching the music’s agitated unrest, the weather decided to get all kinds of dramatic for spring’s penultimate evening. It is unsettled weather. The wind is chaotic – swirling out of nowhere one minute, departing and instantly dropping its power the next. The clouds are Cumulonimbus – enormously imposing, like some stretch of formidable mountains, or some impossibly deep, drowning sea.
Sunlight appears in patches, sometimes backed by a bright blue, sometimes disappearing behind gray. It’s not as uneasy as yesterday’s tornado warnings had us feeling, but it was distressed weather, and the sky wasn’t sure what it wanted to do other than warn us of something. Spring wasn’t quite ready to let go and summer was not sure she should appear. What are we to make of all this? It feels like too much.
Spring has traditionally been a tricky emotional time – thawing the brutality of winter with a tender bit of rebirth, and even if we’ve been here countless times before, it always feels fresh and exciting and new. It gives the heart a giddy spin, swirling on the sweet perfume of apple blossoms and Korean viburnum. The intoxicating magic of a spring evening. It swirls differently on the eve of its last day, portending of summer uneasiness, summer ambivalence, summer blues…
These days, when faced with adversity or setbacks or the simple/profound toll the years of life take on a person, I find myself able to put just about everything on autopilot until such time that I can finally find some safe sanctuary in which to cry or break down or feel all of the things. That means I can go to work, keep this blog updated on the daily (it helps to have a schedule of postings up about a week in advance), post social media promos, and hang with family and friends all while my inner existence is crumbling.
At somewhat odds with the above is the realization that thanks to several years of serious therapy, I’ve learned not to keep it all bottled up – and my friends will vouch and attest that I’m much more open about talking about the shittier parts of life. My therapist would certainly second that, as she’s heard it all. Sometimes, in fact, I’m too open and blunt about what I’m feeling – and that cuts both ways.
Mostly though, I still process things on the inside, at least in the beginning, putting on a happy social media countenance and profile pic, a gleefully sardonic work persona, and a wise-cracking fun-guncle sidekick image for family and friend gatherings. It’s a state of autopilot and survival in one – and I’ve learned how to navigate the emotional storms in such a way as not to cause any damaging or long-term disruptions. Surely there’s a toll of some sort, and I’ll work it out in other ways. Being an adult of a certain age means sucking some things up, carrying on, and doing it all with a broken heart.
PS – Check out the new profile pic below – it’s only going up for a few days as our summer season on this website is about to change things up…
Catching cowboy fever was not on my fashion radar, but sometimes we become that which we resist. (I just found a summer cowboy hat in Boston, ordered my first pair of cowboy boots, and have big plans for cowboy/leather chic this fall.) It turns out that Western wear has some cheeky and brilliant undertones, as exemplified and explained by Cowboy Ed, owner and proprietor of London’s impressive Western clothing store Hey Cowboy!
Challenging and demolishing traditional gender boundaries, and turning the typical notions of Western wear on their head while embracing the intrinsically campy accoutrements like sequins, rhinestones, embroidery, and fringe, true Western wear has the spirit of defiance in its hidden history. Ed found his first Western hat while living in California many years ago, falling in love with the style and feeling at home whenever he found himself in said hat and cowboy boots. It was a love affair that led to a market stall of Western wear in 2021, and the Hey Cowboy! brick and mortar store which opened in London in 2023. If/when I finally make it back across the pond to visit London again, this place will be one of my first stops. Thanks to his eye for a classic cowboy look, coupled with a progressively-modern take on acceptance and harmony, Ed earns his first Dazzler of the Day crowning.
Our values are grounded in the West. There’s no denying that the Old West was the frontier of an aggressively expanding nation that mercilessly expropriated lands from native inhabitants. It was often lawless and violent. But it was also a place of accommodations, co-existence and freedoms. Black folk headed west to escape stricter racial hierarchies found elsewhere. Cowboys shared blankets and formed lifetime bonds. Many trans folk managed to live their gender identities as they pleased. Experiments with new ways of living from religious conservatives to labour movements to communes flourished in the west. Cowfolk always came in all genders, colours, sexualities and ways of thinking.
Cowboys are a masculine archetype. We’re okay with that, because we think masculinity is where much of the work needs to be done. Hey Cowboy! transmits an image of positive masculinity through the messages we put into the world and the pieces we design. A real cowboy treats all folks as equals. He stands against injustice, never goes back on his word and helps those who need it most. He speaks his mind, but doesn’t need to brag or boast. He mistrusts authority and has little time for status. He respects women. And of course, he always gets his man. Those are our values.
Every year around this time, when the Gay Pride celebrations are strong, and the imminent arrival of summer has everyone on glorious and excitable edge, the linden trees exude their lovely perfume. From the most unassuming of light green blossoms – even in a banner year of blooms, most people don’t notice them as they blend in. Their fragrance, however, is unmistakable. It fills the air with a sweetness usually reserved for the most luxurious perfumes. Because of this unshowy declaration of presence, I’ve always loved the linden tree.
It took me years before I finally figured out that it was this tree that was producing such an intoxicating scent. I had been looking for some exotic tropical flower in bright pink or white, waxy of petal and heavy of head, for how could such a potent perfume come in anything other than something so show-stoppingly grand? To discover that beautiful perfume could be found within the branches of the stalwart linden tree was one of those pivotal lessons of life that humbled me in ways more potent than my usual hubris-detonations.
This year, I got to experience the blooming of the lindens in both Albany and Boston – fortuitously-timed for my presence in both cities – and the fragrance still recalls the hope and fervor of the days straddling spring and summer. Heady and happy days all.
One entire perennial plant disappeared overnight, chewed down to the ground with nary a leaf left behind. We suspect it was the work of a rabbit, as a couple have been hanging around here, including the tiny tyke seen in these pics. It would fit in the palm of my hand, so small and adorable was it. I’ve gladly given the particular perennial (whose name I can’t even recall) over to such a cute consumer, but it ends there. No more plants other than lawn and weeds shall be offered as freely.
