“Fashion has always been a vocabulary for me, a way to express myself to you and to myself. The artistic practice of fashion is a daily act of self invention. An opportunity open to every one of us to recognize a garment as a paintbrush on the canvas of self. We are, each of us, the art of our own design.” ~ Jordan Roth
Fashion impresario Jordan Roth earns his very first Dazzler of the Day crowning thanks to that impeccable sense of cutting-edge style and brilliant genre-smashing courage. The substance behind the outrageous style is found in his Tony-winning theatrical accomplishments as producer, in shows such as ‘The Book of Mormon’, ‘Spring Awakening’ and ‘American Idiot’. Check out his impressive website here, along with all its wondrous portals for more.
Having just returned from a cozy weekend with a dear friend in Connecticut, I’m happily spent from warm emotions, lots of laughter, and loads of fun. More on that when I have a moment – for now, a quick look back in our usual Monday-morning weekly blog recap… what HAVE you missed?
Instagram censored an old photo, so somebody’s been going through my back-issues and for their peace of mind I wish they would just get off my jock. (The hits were appreciated, however, and October looks to be the most popular month for this little blog in years.)
These days a Saturday night on the town in Boston ends by nine o’clock with a nightcap of a decaf lavender vanilla latte rather than beginning at this time with a dry martini. Today marks six years since I had my last drink of alcohol, and as each year passes it feels less and less remarkable, and more the way my life naturally needed to go.
A letter written to my former friend commemorated the fourth year, and by last year – the fifth – I realized I was writing these annual posts for those who might find inspiration or tools to use if they wanted to forge their own paths, as my own had moved beyond the need for such annual introspection.
It’s also helpful and necessary to remind myself how little I know, how I’m not in any way an expert on sobriety, and that I can only speak to what has worked best for my own journey. I understand that every day can be easy or precarious or worrisome or dangerous in ways that sometimes make sense, and sometimes make themselves known without rhyme or reason, and all there is to do is go a single day or hour or minute at a time.
Six years after my last drink, the once-impossible act of not drinking feels as unremarkable and natural as a martini once felt on a Saturday night. At the bottom of a lavender vanilla latte, and the start of a seventh year without alcohol, there is a moment of reflection in an empty cup, and room for further possibility.
Sky was all sorts of messed up too, with a few peeks at pink and mauve layers, then darkness above and below.
It was rain that spit and sputtered, inconsistent and alarming. A bucket and a deluge, one moment – a mist and a fog, the next.
On this tumultuous evening, the bright fluorescence of the local supermarket was like a beacon in the night.
That was a cruel bait and switch, as I walked into the massacre of blueberries you see here. {Exhibit A for future courtroom drama.}
Now, most people who know me know that I’m neither partial to nor particularly fond of blueberries – that doesn’t mean I believe in their murder. Despite what the world would have you think, there are subtleties and nuances still in existence. We need not operate in extremes or absolutes – that shit is for small, unthinking minds.
So to take a bunch of blueberries out like that, leaving them for dead – well, that takes a colder heart than I could ever carry.
“I woke up thinking a very pleasant thought. There is lots left in the world to read.” ~ Nicholson Baker
It’s been a while since I’ve made myself a regular at any cafe, but at the early stages of a new project, this is where I find myself on the daily – a practice that is grounded in ritual and tradition, and one that I have made part of my routine. Even if I do nothing but read a bit (currently ‘A Box of Matches’ by the great Nicholson Baker) it is time well-spent because crafting a ritual is a form of meditation unto itself.
“That was the problem with reading: you always had to pick up again at the very thing that had made you stop reading the day before.” ~ Nicholson Baker
Thirty years ago, on a balmy October day, immediately after getting the go-ahead blessing to begin the quest from my Dad, I embarked upon the search for our Boston home – some place to stay while I finished my matriculation at Brandeis University, and for the family when they visited Boston. We didn’t know then that it would be the single greatest investment our family ever made (well, I had an idea, because all the gays were then flocking to the South End, and where the gays went, the real estate market followed – and exploded).
Still, nothing was guaranteed, and on the night I visited the very last of the three options our real estate broker showed to me, the chains hanging off the door at the next brownstone over seemed a somewhat ominous sign. As I traipsed up a simple but substantial staircase of solid wood, and paused at a marble nook with a single curved stone sculpture in it, I wondered if this would be the one.
Opening the door to the second floor unit, the broker clicked on the overhead lighting, lighting the golden amber floors with a warmth at delicious odds with the suddenly-cold October night. A sad, lumpy, once-cream leather couch sat in the corner like an embarrassing afterthought, but the rest of the expanse was empty.
I wouldn’t realize what a world of difference there was between the light on the first floor of a city brownstone compared to the light of a second floor dwelling – but this was a happy discovery that would wait until years later. On that initial dark night, I slipped silently and almost imperceptibly into a space that might be home.
The broker passed into the bedroom, trying but failing to locate a light until he reached the bathroom. I stood near the entryway alone and felt for my future. A wooden built-in wet bar with an embedded mirror afforded me a quick, dim glimpse of myself; I can’t remember how I looked or what I was wearing. I recall the vague feeling of not being alone there, and there was something joyous and relatively unfamiliar in the sensation. It felt right, it felt safe, and in that moment my heart decided this was the way forward – the first steps of creating my own home.
Dried leaves rustled beneath my feet as I approached the row of brownstones. Looking up at my darkened windows, I knew instinctually at that moment that I couldn’t do in to an empty room. Not right then. Something in me understood that if I went in then, that space would be tainted with loneliness, marred by the seemingly-insurmountable sadness and sorrow I suddenly felt. Some inner-sanctum of self-preservation surfaced, and I stopped abruptly mid-stride.
Once in a while, the body leads the mind, the way a forced smile settles some minor bit of ease into a tense situation, and intuitively I let the body lead. Turning around, my physical self knew it couldn’t face the empty rooms, and I walked back the way I’d just come. Heading toward the Copley Place mall, to where there was light, and warmth, and people. It didn’t matter that they were strangers, only that I wasn’t entirely alone. And it made me feel a little less lonely.
That’s not something I ever admitted until now. Even in all the ensuing years where no night was ever spent alone, I never wanted to admit how lonely I once was. It wasn’t shame (I always took pride and comfort in solitude) and it wasn’t embarrassment – it was the absolute refusal of myself to admit to loneliness at the time, because I understood on some level that to admit it would make it real, and that might destroy me.
Carrying that fear with me through the years has been, I see now, an unnecessary burden – and I lay it down here at last as I put the words onto paper, exorcizing another demon after half a century of being haunted. Letting the ghosts go is an integral part of growing up – and even at this ancient age of fifty, there is still more growing up to do. Happily, the heart is more settled now, and part of that has come about with a home in Boston, where once I felt lonely… until I didn’t – and having that home in that favored city is its own charm against loneliness.
One of my favorite trees is putting on its final show of the season, as seen in the bright foliage of this coral bark maple tree. Years ago, I planted two of these – at diametrically opposed corners of the house, to soften their 90-degree turns – and they have grown into substantial trees. Their namesake red bark is glorious in the winter, and striking in the spring as it holds the gorgeous new chartreuse foliage against a blue sky.
Autumn illuminates corners that were darkened with green at the height of summer. This one, surrounded by the leaping arms of a climbing hydrangea, would normally be devouring the sunlight on any given afternoon, swallowing it like some voracious black hole and giving none of it back. Now it is strikingly illuminated by morning and afternoon sun, reflected on the brilliant canary leaves of those up close and further back.
A corner lit by filtered sunlight is a shift from the summer and winter, and somehow more brilliant than both, surpassing even the chartreuse of early spring to give off a light that almost seems to come from within. It is a magical trick, made more enchanting by its fleeting nature. Soon the leaves will be pulled from their perches by wind and rain, and there will be nothing left to set aflame.
I always boycott the company that produces the first Christmas commercial I see – and on October 19th it happened when Old Navy broadcasted the first one I caught this season. This will be a boycott that doesn’t really change anything, as I haven’t stepped inside an old Navy since 1998.
