Category Archives: General

Rain.
Hard, sustained and heavy rain – impossible to ignore with all the accompanying wind.
Rain for which I’d unknowingly been waiting, and wanting.

Rain to still the day.
Rain to still the heart.
Rain to still the sands of time.

In an alternate time and universe, a boy religiously watches ‘Days of Our Lives’ while he stays home from school for another day. He’s not as physically ill as he pretends to be, but mentally the idea of going back to school is insurmountable, so a fortuitously-timed case of the sniffles, and a helpful body semi-ironically weakened by allergies, aid in his survival.

Like the prismatic destruction of light through a hanging chandelier crystal, distilled into smaller slivers of pretty colors, memory serves to dissect and illuminate, rendering new truths to old stories. The past isn’t always set in stone, or trapped in the snowy reception of an old television set from your youth – sometimes the past is malleable, and it moves from winter to summer…

Raspberry-shaped and raspberry-flavored hard candies dissolve amid sips of Crystal Light iced tea. Summer inside stays cool as the days of our lives tick slowly by. In the fall the boy welcomes sickness again, opening arms and heart for it to take him further away.

Did rainy days then make him feel more lonely or more frightened? How far apart were they really?
On one rainy morning on the way to school he looks up at the sky and lets the water conveniently and convincingly mingle with his burgeoning tears – that’s how much he thinks he misses home, but really he is just afraid.

Some part of him knows how unbearable the world will be.

Missy is one of my oldest friends – probably one of my first after Suzie, as it was at Suzie’s house when I initially met her – either at one of Suzie’s birthday parties or some holiday when she happened to stop by. Since then, we’ve remained close – even dating for about a year at the end of high school, fittingly marking the end of our youth. The ensuing years have found us intertwined in each other’s lives, seeing us through the difficulties of loss and change, and all the things that happen along the way to our half-century mark in this world.

It is always a return to warmth and safety and comfort to visit her, so when she and her boys invited me for a fall weekend, I rejoiced at the escape – a cozy couple of days ensconced in Connecticut would prove enjoyable for all of us, including their dog Queenie, who greeted me silently, like an old friend, without barking or concern.

We would stay close to home for the weekend, only leaving for a couple of strolls around the yard. Missy kept the fireplace stoked and glowing for a cozy centerpiece, and we picked up where we left off this past summer, as old friends do.

She had also planned out a weekend menu of delicious meals, which we had in the dining room by candlelight – when you have a fancy robe of rust-colored ruffles, you need a proper table setting to set it off. (The highlight being a Saturday night dinner of braised short-robs and fennel risotto, which I’ll be making on my own because it was so amazing.)

Wildlife rustled through the leaves – squirrels mostly, whose noise was always more awesome than the creatures behind it – and this trio of deer, nibbling on the maple leaves they could reach.

They looked inside while we looked out – the ultimate juxtaposition of a sense of safety and warmth indoors with a quickly-cooling afternoon that soon darkened into evening. Clear and cool, it invited a fall fire that Missy assembled, and soon enough I was afforded my first taste of s’mores in decades. We roasted/toasted marshmallows, made our sweet dessert sandwiches, and listened to the playlist that Cameron and I had worked on earlier that day.

The next morning we convened in the living room for a cup of tea and one last talk, while plans for future get-togethers were made, including a winter weekend in Boston to see ‘Some Like It Hot’ while Julian tours Boston schools. Time flies by, children grow up, and friendship remains true, seeing us through it all.

All you sick, twisted fucks celebrating this pagan day of sin and darkness, precisely when the veil between the physical world and the spiritual world is at its thinnest, would do well to remember that this day, this holiday, is amateur hour for those of us who turn out an extraordinary wardrobe nightly. That run-on sentence is my way of not-so-pleasantly reminding everyone who gives the slightest shit (all three of you who read this blog, and whom I should probably treat a lot better) that Halloween is traditionally my day off. 

Wear a cape and top hat to Hannaford on a random Tuesday in August then come see about me. Putting on a costume for Halloween – where is the challenge or surprise in that? 

Be better.
Do better. 
Dress better.

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate! As for the rest of us, it’s almost over – and the real holidays are about to begin. I hear Mariah squealing already…

What do you make of this image?

What is real and what is reflection?

What is artifice and what is art?

I don’t claim to have the answers, particularly regarding a visual riddle like this, where the interpretations – wild and varied and unfettered – reveal more of the viewer than the one who captured the image. A shift in focus – welcome and new – will keep this site from stagnating, and as I contemplate and loosely plot out another year of this nonsense, I like such a shift.

Mercury is once again in wretched retrograde motion, and I am so over it already I can’t even deal. On my way to the cafe where I’ve been writing lately, a traffic jam around that stupid traffic circle near the Colonie library (the circle should have been installed at the goddamned Crossings intersection) we paused for a few minutes going nowhere.

Above, I noticed a large bird circling, widely at first, then tighter and tighter. Initially I thought it was a blue heron, which was sometimes at the little library pond, but as it turned its head I saw the distinct white crest and white tail feathers of a bald eagle.

A majestic sight, and a reminder that at our most frustrated and annoyed, we should pause to take in our surroundings, to be mindful and present, so as not to miss anything, especially out of anger. Easier said than done, the lesson of this bald eagle is a powerful one – from a powerful totem animal – and I felt grateful to be in its wondrous presence.

After traffic resumed moving, I came upon a car accident on Wolf Road, backing things up further, but my mind was quieter then, and I was able to reach the cafe before the police arrived to shut the shit down.

Then it was the early evening of cafe culture until the streets cleared, and I finished this post.

The week of Halloween is a good time to celebrate all things Candy.

Everyone knows I love a good sweet treat.

And a cheesy, cheeky pop song.

Like Candy.

I was there to witness
Candice’s inner business
She wants the boys to notice
Her rainbows and her ponies
She was educated
But could not count to ten
Now she got lots of different horses
By lots of different men

And I say, “Liberate your sons and daughters”

The bush is high, but in the hole, there’s water

You can get some when they give it

Nothing sacred, but it’s a living

Halloween songs should be catchy and simple – it’s part of their potency. This bop by Robbie Williams is pure aural candy, sweet and sticky and bad for you in the best ways.

Hey, oh, here she goes
Either a little too high or a little too low
Got no self-esteem and vertigo
‘Cause she thinks she’s made of candy
Hey, oh, here she goes
Either a little too loud or a little too close
Got a hurricane at the back of her throat
She thinks she’s made of candy

Give me a treat over a trick any day – the slicker the sweater, the sweeter the better…

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?

Mr. Oud sensed it was time for a new project.

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.)

Chad Putman wrote a Special Guest Blog, resurrecting a feature whose time has returned.

A recent weekend in Boston began its retelling with this happy diner ending.

It’s difficult to find genuine patriotism these days, but here is some red, white and Boston blue.

A rainbow can’t be bound with zip-ties, because Pride cannot be contained.

In the hands of Mr. Oud, the world turned into shades of gray.

It’s too fucking soon.

The light of a corner, illuminated by the autumn sun.

A coral bark maple goes up in brilliant flames.

A Boston night, thirty years ago…

An admission of loneliness prompted by a 30th anniversary.

Three decades ago I found our Boston home.

I adore cafe culture.

‘Tis the damn season for a blueberry massacre.

It’s been six years since I had a drink of alcohol.

Mr. Oud in repose.

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.

The first year was probably the most transformative. It was a sea change, an entire shift in lifestyle that was oddly and fortuitously aided by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic. It also came with a realization that unlocked years of tortured living, and finally rooted out the cause of such self-medicating motions.

By the second year, I was beginning to see how it all played out, and how I did it. In the third year, deeper philosophical concerns led me to the understanding that most of our journeys were not linear with an ending and a beginning, but rather a continuous, winding curve of learning and understanding.

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.

It happened on a Thursday night.

A rainy night, when the windshield wipers were having a time of it.

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.

It takes all kinds.

“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

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.

This time of the year, it goes up in these golden flames, each tree turning into one big ball of fiery wonder, especially in the rich afternoon sunlight that only fall affords.

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.

Rainbows are indestructible.

In a zip-tie or the sky, the rainbow cannot be so easily eradicated.

It will come and go at its own will, not before or after it is ready.

Do not mistake its prettiness for frailty.

It is not delicate of design or constitution.

Rainbows cannot be felled.

Rainbows cannot be contained.

Rainbows cannot be conquered.

In a rainbow is all the power and might, made up only by the light, as if that is such a small thing in any way.

The truth is that I hadn’t planned on being in Boston during the No Kings Rally this past Saturday, but when I found myself ambling along Newbury Street and saw the signs of people assembling, I decided to stop by and take part briefly in the proceedings, because this country is in grave danger, whether you choose to believe the reality of that or not, and if all we have is each other, then it was important to feel that we were not alone.

I haven’t been to any rallies or demonstrations or protests since the fight for marriage equality in New York State was raging over a decade ago. That feels quaint now, as well as on the verge of endangerment. The world has gone to hell under the current President, and if you can’t see that I can’t help you.

Boston, for her part, welcomed me as she always has, with these blooms in red, white and blue – a reminder that true patriotism has no place for kings or despots or fascist dictators. As the city opened its arms, I felt the ready acceptance of a majority of people who wanted the best for each other.

A red canna burned its fiery form in the afternoon sunlight, while a white aster nodded in the breeze. A stalk of Monkshood bestowed its blue beauty in the same garden, and together they christened the Boston weekend in patriotic form.