Category Archives: General

Next week marks Thanksgiving – something that doesn’t quite feel possible but the calendar tells me it is so. I don’t recall turning my back long enough for this to have happened. That tricky, fickle hand of time. With any luck, this rushed acceleration of the fall season is not unwelcome, especially if it means a speedy rush through winter. All of this makes it sound like I’ve soured on the holiday season, which may very well be the case, but I don’t really want that out there (he said as he set the public post settings for this blog entry).

Rather than fight what is already at hand, this new box of tea is my way of welcoming the holidays for 2025 – a cup of decaf green tea with a peppermint accent. Simple, slightly festive, and just enough of a twist to set it apart from the rest of the days.

The artwork of the box, a whimsical Trader Joe’s creation, is a fun way to steer us into holiday territory without going too extreme into some overhyped Ralph Lauren Christmas vibe (also known as Basic Christmas for those of us who have been aware of Christmas decor for the past half-century).

Get busy to merry-making, my friends.

Our wonky and often-wayward Christmas/Thanksgiving/Easter/4th-of-July cactus, which always and never lives up to its common name (it’s technically an epiphyte, and rarely hits its bloom stride on any of its designated holidays), announces this year’s commencement of the high holiday season! That’s worthy of an exclamation point, no? Who else is ready to start the holiday slide? Hop on – it’s a long way down, and it begins with a day of gratitude, a very good place to start.

We’ll make the holidays colorful and saturated – to mirror the rich oud-like beauty of this fall’s website theme. Enjoy this now, as the winter looks to be bleak. In blooms may we find a balm…

The world moves closer to winter, and my time outside diminishes by the day. To combat that depressing shift, my visits to the local greenhouse will prove paramount in pushing us through the winter. On a recent trip there, these African violets brightened the green landscape. They came in other shades too – pink, maroon, white, and periwinkle – proof that not all violets must come in violet. A name is sometimes nothing more than a name – meaningless and void of context or designation, sometimes deceptively so.

For a Monday afternoon, it’s enough just to look, and end this blessedly-brief post.

A noirish weekend in New York many Novembers ago comes to mind on this mysterious day, more suited to an evening post than Sunday morning, but these fall where they will fall, like the words escaping from my fingers and appearing on the screen before you now. Originally, this was going to be the day I posted our recent Virginia adventures, but in writing them they have taken on an extended life of their own, so they’ll be here in a string of posts slated for next weekend.

For now, the mystery of a mask worn by the elusive Mr. Oud, who was last seen lighting a candle and whispering a prayer or a curse – and when you think about it those two seemingly-opposed items are just the same thing with a different perspective: a wish.

Mr. Oud will return in a bit, at least a brief glimpse of who we think he is, who we think he might be, who we think of when we think of him. He spins spirals of words, of prepositional clauses, of teasing and tantalizing ends that seem to be about to happen and then never do, and when they do it’s so far from where we thought we were heading, and so far from where it all began, that we’re left breathless in anticipation of a still-not-quite-there period.

…And watches it throw not tears but light upon the room.

Flickering flame, dancing name, playful and bleak and right up Mr. Oud’s alley.

The wording is different, the tone flippant, and the wonder whether this is Mr. Oud at all fully realized.

Perhaps that is his tell-tale calling card, if the trail of oud wasn’t enough.

Anyone can wear oud – few can pull it off with the style and panache of Mr. O himself.

The trails of others have come before him, and will remain long after him.

Legacies evolve, families diminish, friends fade…

Mr. Oud remains elusive to remain alive.

To be hidden is to be safe.

To be shrouded in candlelight is something else…

… and again, he is gone.

“Had to schedule an extra therapy session because of you fucks.”

Who said this?

(Just between me and you, it wasn’t you.)

#TinyThreads

The struggle of today’s teenage boy is real: how to obsess and drench oneself in cologne while maintaining the most offensively odiferous feet at the same time. These two things, seemingly and reasonably at complete odds with one another, inform the daily existence of the male teenager. Studies should commence on how to hold two such ideas and modes of living in one head at the exact same time.

Is it defiance?

A brilliant case of reconciliation?

A total shutdown and refusal of reality?

How does this happen? I need to know. Because my head cannot wrap itself two mildly-opposing ideas without hurting itself – and I have to start learning, for my own ease.

PS – This is not a foot fetish post – that can be found here.

Our Japanese maple has been aflame for a few days now, wind and rain and snow be damned. I’m dangerously operating on autopilot, at least on this blog, while the circumstances of life swirl madly around – all of which will be addressed at some point – perhaps here, perhaps not. The dangers of having a writer in the family include being exposed at any moment for the wretched truth of one’s actions, without sentiment or scorn. The court of public opinion is sometimes the most powerful court in all the land, and in the words of Taylor Swift, “I protect the family.”

Should that give you ‘Reputation’-style chills, well, good.

Look what you made me do…

My reputation occasionally precedes me. I feel it in the anticipatory tension of a room of people I know well, usually and most often family, but a few friends as well – and certainly in less-close acquaintances. Carrying that knowledge with me is its own albatross, and it rebounds on itself – one of those nasty little interminable cycles that spins round and round, only gaining momentum and surety. At this point in the story, it’s impossible to completely eradicate or erase the unease, so I turn to humor and quips to give myself and my image a fighting chance.

Occasionally I’ll walk in and say something like “Darth Vader has entered the building” in a disarming and silly attempt at relaying some sense of self-deprecation. It doesn’t negate the fact that, yes, Darth Vader is in the room, but Darth Vader is Darth Vader because the people in that room likely helped contribute to making him Darth Vader.

We are all complicit in who we become around each other.

Cradled between the palms of both hands, the cup of tea warms from the outside in.

Cradled within the throat and stomach, the cup of tea warms from the inside out.

Cradled within the confines of the mind, the cup of tea warms from abstract ideation.

This evening’s post is being written first thing in the morning – before the work day begins, before the sun has come out, before the house and husband are awake.

In this still and silent moment that begins the day, that you come to when it has already ended, I find calm and quiet, and a Zen-like start and finish at once.

Fire falls from the branches, as dripping flames drift to the forest floor, and not even the night can extinguish the fiery licks because the moon gives fuel to the burn below. Ablaze with the splendor of the season, the ground is covered in leaves of beauty, leaves of temporal splendor, leaves of fire. Fall peppers the air with its pungency – half life, half death, a dash of fungus, a pinch of decay, a solemn unlasting sweetness, and a smoky hint of burn. All the senses are fed at once.