Alan Ilagan

It is the place I used to go when I was at a complete loss, usually at the end of a love affair, or the non-beginning of one. This is Boston Harbor in the winter. The wind whips off the water, clanging the high flag-pole forlornly in the night. When the temperatures dip below freezing, there aren’t many people around, and certainly not when it’s dark. It was a chilly refuge for those times I needed punishing solitude.

Once in a great while I go back here, to honor, to remember, to replenish the chill that was in my heart. Not in a bad way – more as a reminder of what I once wanted, and didn’t want. Sometimes winter brings clarity, in the cruel shock of a cold spell, or the whispered words of the past, lost on the wind, roped into the clanging of a lone flagpole.

One of the things I miss most about Boston, or any big city, is the way the afternoon lingers just a little bit longer, thanks to the buildings that hold its amber light until the very end. That’s something you don’t get in the suburbs – once the sun starts going down, it fades quickly. I like to hold onto the light as long as possible.

For one of my last acts of 2011, a quick impromptu trip to Boston, and the cozy condo that has always provided a bastion against coming winters and ends-of-the-world. This photo was taken as I walked the Southwest Corridor at 6 AM, in order to make it back home in time to cook the New Year’s candied yams and pecan pie.

At such an early hour so late in the year, the air is usually frigid and dead, but on this morning it had the slightest bit of Spring to it, and the foggy haze was closer to a thaw than the very beginning of a freeze. Perhaps Winter will go easy on us this year.

A woman walks in spurts ahead of me, stopping to talk and mutter to herself every few steps. It is a mad, mad world, but a magical one, and life, even at its most forlorn, has a dim, haunting beauty to it.

Afternoon sunlight of a fading December day holds the brick in Beacon Hill resplendent. A bit of holiday bustle on a Sunday as the pungent pine aroma of evergreen wreaths breathes through muffled scarves. Christmas lights twinkle on the shaded side of Charles Street, while pots of paperwhites burst with star-like blooms through frosted glass. The bells of tiny shop entrances ring as dogs await their owner’s return. It feels like another era, another place, when cobblestone streets and gaslights were ubiquitous.

Now it’s merely quaint, if it exists at all. If I tried to return, to find my way back to this same place, this same moment, I would fail. When the night comes, this will be over, and when the month goes so too will the magic.

These gleefully-upside-down Christmas trees currently hang in the lobby of the Liberty Hotel. Despite its hot-spot status (I know BostonMo is a regular) I had not made my way to its barracks until the last time I was in Boston. Kira and I stumbled upon it on our way to Beacon Hill, and decided to stop in for a spell to check it out.

If there’s a favorite place for me to spend time, it’s at a hotel. Even if I’m not actually staying as a guest, I find a subsidiary thrill in being close to other travelers, in the same way I enjoy being at airports or train stations. Little journeys through approximation, a brush with movement, ancillary excitement.

We made a day of it, stopping all over the city, including my first exploration of the Ritz Carlton as seen below. I’d stayed in the original location many years ago on the other side of the Public Garden (and later when it became the Taj), but the new one offers this spectacular lounge area, backed by a long firescape, and perfectly cozy for a windy December day.

Somehow I feel quite at home in the lobby of a hotel. A transient gypsy calling from a former life, perhaps, or maybe the simple wish of wanting to get away – who can tell the reasons for it. Even in downtown Albany, I’ll occasionally take a lunch break in one of the hotel lobbies, reading just a few pages of a book before being distracted with the arrivals and departures, all the while wondering at the lives of strangers.

Stumbling inadvertently along and around the Freedom Trail, I found myself in front of the wrought iron gate of Old City Hall as the last of the early afternoon sunlight filtered through the Fall leaves. A multitude of shopping bags in both hands (Christmas gifts mostly, mind you) and a coat and scarf staving off the brisk breeze, I walk into the Omni Parker House Hotel, where the past still resides, unwavering in the face of modern hotel minimalism.

This is old-school Boston, with sky-high dark wood, chandeliers, and antique glass – a place where ladies once wore petticoats and gentlemen wouldn’t dare leave without a proper hat. I sit in the cozy lounge area of the Parker Bar, looking out onto Old City Hall on one side, and into the dining room area on the other. I believe this hotel was featured in the movie version of ‘The Age of Innocence’, with a bit of movie-magic to remove the modern city that now encroaches upon its once-glorious entrance.

After a day of walking and shopping, it is officially cocktail time, so I order up a martini and lean back into the comfy chair. Here is where the turn of the afternoon, and the backward-tick of the extra Daylight Savings hour, takes place – and after a bowl of chowder and a club sandwich (and a second martini) – I re-enter a darkened city.

The night is beautiful and clear, and I walk through Boston Common, descending back towards the Public Garden. In the early 90’s, when I first walked along the area by the Boylston T stop, it was not the best of places, and most people were wise to avoid the Park at dusk. Today, it is a safer spot, and at this early hour, even with the sun down, I feel at perfect ease.