Karel Barnoski was playing one of his Tuesday night jams on FaceBook and I was watching a video of the Amsterdam Mall (now Riverfront Center) and suddenly I was brought back to 1983 all over again. That’s what happens on Tuesdays now, I guess. Recalling some remnant of childhood innocence for a moment, I gave myself a brief break – a pause from trying to accept imperfection, a pause in trying to reject perfection – and in that space came the realization that maybe I’m trying too hard, or maybe just about to burn out. There are trying times – we’ve been in such a state since last March, and as we creep up on a full year of living in this way some things may be catching up with me. I’m ok with acknowledging that I’m wiped out, and in these last weeks of winter it seems a good time to re-charge for spring. It helps to own up to that, to take a moment and set down the struggle.
I’ve also learned that sometimes we have to fake it until we make it, to forge the physical manifestations of happiness as a way of willing it into existence. If you force yourself to smile and laugh, it miraculously makes you feel a little happier, no matter how fake or false it might initially feel. (At the very least you may end up making yourself laugh by how ridiculous and silly it all feels – which is accomplishing the very same mission in a roundabout way.) In all these years of posing for selfies and photographs, I’ve learned to fake the little laugh that makes for a better picture, and even if the joy is diminished from the laugh or guffaw that might result from an actual dinner with Suzie or pre-movie jaunt with Skip, it’s still joy, albeit on a much smaller level.
Little joys are all we have.
So smile, and laugh, and preen and pose, as if all was right with the world, because someone has to lead the way.
Limping along slowly, winter is reluctant to move or budge much, but I sense the gradual shift into rising temperatures. Tomorrow we may break into the 40’s, the first of such tropics since last year. Even more telling, our overwintering fig tree in the garage has started to put forth its first tight buds of green – always earlier than is comfortable, with so much winter yet to come – but even if/when that first flush gets pushed back, the signs of life, of spring, are impossible to ignore. In the branches of the juniper out front, the cradled snow begins its mid-day melting.
It will freeze again come night, and colder temperatures, but the glistening sparkle of afternoon respite hints at warmer stretches. We want so badly for spring to arrive. Andy and I stare out the windows, willing the snow to go, willing the winter to rush away. We talk of times when family and friends might gather again, when the weather is nicer, when the world is safer. We live in the space of the future, as much as mindfulness matters, because it feels good to look forward again.
Yes indeed, this is the final recap that will have the displeasure of taking place in the month of February – as one week from today marks the first of March! Hurry, let’s hustle and bustle through this last week of February – spring arrives next month no matter what.
They are almost non-existent. There is no rhyme or reason or regular cadence to them. if you’re not extremely observant an quiet you may not hear them at all. They are the sounds of spring – and they’re not the bird calls or peepers or this piece of Copland. They are smaller and less prominent than all of that. It is the sound of snow and ice melting, and the tiny little pings and clicks that go along with it. When things melt, they break and fall apart from their respective perches. Some bits of frozen water remain solid, crashing quietly into something else, and these little bursts of sound on a quiet day are the percussive songs of spring in its purest form. For those who prefer their music more pronounced and deliberate, here is a favorite for this time of the year.
It’s always worth a resist when the end of winter is in sight, and hope returns to right the world again. I’m hesitantly going to embrace such a thought, as we march toward the last couple of days with Mercury in retrograde. Godspeed.
Lent begins today, and thus the final trudge to spring ensues as well. This is the long Catholic haul – the more sinister sister of Advent that culminates with crucifixion and resurrection. Drama, drama, and more drama, and the mystery of rebirth cloaked in incense and prayer and mournful hymns.
The terror of performing as an altar boy for someone as socially anxious as myself was more traumatic than I could properly express, and so my dread and fear was kept mostly within. I didn’t want to disappoint God, and I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. The spiritual and the practical were both guilting me into doing something that set me decidedly off-balance and into a zone that was anything but comfortable. Rather than numb me to social situations where all eyes were on me, or accustom me to such a public performance, it instead seared a lifelong revulsion to all large gatherings. And so Lent carried a darker element than just the Jesus story.
It began in the dim evenings of winter, when we would shuffle into church for Ash Wednesday or the Stations of the Cross every Friday, and carried through our sacrifice of something fun or sweet or enjoyable during its 40-day duration (not counting Sundays). Such a long journey of drudgery, shrouded in the smoke of inscrutable incantations, made the last weeks of winter especially slow. The most haunting of the hymns was as disturbing as it was heartbreaking: the Stabat Mater, which came to embody this period of time.
As my brother and I carried candles past each station of the cross, the story of Mary about to lose her son Jesus seemed a sorrowful tale for any child to carry to bed every night, but such were the thoughts that followed me home, the ideas that populated my days, knocking on my heart and bothering my head. At the end was always the promise of the resurrection, the notion that no matter how bad we had been, Jesus would always be there, dying for our sins, suffering for our human failings, sacrificing himself and leaving his mother behind for the collective mistakes of humanity. It didn’t quite seem fair, and the lack of justice in all of it left me disconcerted, as upset by the torture of an innocent man as I was by having to parade around in robes that seemed to be a little longer than I was.
It sounds more upsetting now than it did then, and what kept my mind relatively unaffected by the drama was the promise of Easter – and candy and bunnies and colorful eggs – and the main celebration of Jesus rising from the dead. There was a lesson in all of it, something that felt more elusive than any sort of solid faith that made sense or was entirely believable. I couldn’t quite see what it was though, and I’m not sure I see it now. Faith is mysterious that way, in how it lends sustenance and power to some, and how it strips steadiness and sense from others.
Mostly I took my inspiration from the ultimate spirit of generosity and sacrifice that was inherent in the story of the end of Jesus’s life, even if I couldn’t quite grasp or understand it. That God would send his only Son just to die for all of us sinners struck me on some level as the ultimate travesty and tragedy. It always felt like those who most needed to model themselves on a martyr paid no heed or attention to the story, and those of us who were scared into believing didn’t have the room for any sort of peace or calm.
I spoke to God in my own way, in the rare moments when I wasn’t serving as an altar boy, kneeling in the pew or on my bedroom floor at night. It was a form of prayer that was absent from all those extra trappings of Catholicism, from the man-made bindings that too often strayed from the spiritual lessons at hand. And in that there was a comfort and protection that the church itself would never provide.
There’s one thing we don’t fuck around with in these parts, and that’s ice. We can barrel through a foot of snow on the Thruway on any given day, but as soon as you add ice into any travel equation, I’m out. And so it was that I had to delay my office day by a few hours when the ice storm hit early this morning. (See, if it’s Tuesday and I’m due at the office, the inclement weather occurs. Check the last four Tuesdays and prove me right.)
It does make for something pretty though ~ a veritable winter wonderland that makes everything a bit brighter, even if a bit more dangerous, as if we needed any more of that right now. Mercury is in retrograde until the 21st. Be safe out there.
One flies by day, one flies by night. Both hunt the lowly crew who roam closer to the earth, snatching them from their skittish movements, slicing and tearing them apart. Winter calls for desperate measures, dire decisions. Sometimes it’s a simple matter of survival, and that makes it easier not to pass judgement or cast aspersions. We are, all of us, merely trying to get by, especially when the air is threatening.
Watchers of the wilderness, they gaze from above, seeing more than we will ever see in a single day.
Smack dab in the middle of February, we have reached the mid-point of winter, and if history is any indication, the second half usually follows Broadway standards and moves much quicker than the first. Sometimes, though, winter stalls, especially when we want it to hurry out the door. There are snowier days still to be had, icy nights to be endured, and so we wait it out a bit longer. First, a quick look back…
Every Valentine’s Day found the students of McNulty Elementary School filling up bags with Valentine cards for our classmates, and by the time the afternoon rolled around most of our bags were filled with the innocuous cards that kids (or more likely their parents) picked out for one another. Cartoon characters or superheroes or unicorns and rainbows, they were a varied bunch – a mish-mash of harmless lovey-dovey sentiment before any of us had any idea what romance meant.
This post is going to be a little like those bags of Valentines – some of this, some of that, none of it very serious, none of it very meaningful. ‘Tis the damn season. First up, a poem, because I’m not entirely ready to forego some Dorothy Parker:
Experience
Some men break your heart in two, Some men fawn and flatter, Some men never look at you; And that cleans up the matter.
~ Dorothy Parker
Second, a song – sort of a companion piece to this ‘Crazy’ entry, but something more upbeat and bombastic. I’m heading into a Beyhive moment, and this one pushes all the right buttons, charging all the right stations. It’s a song for strutting when you’re in the throes of that first flush of love.
Third, a more recent, and heartbreaking, poem, to show the other side of love, because there’s always another side of love:
A Regret
by DAVID TRINIDAD
Kurt, early
twenties. Met
him after
an AA
meeting in
Silverlake
(November,
eighty-five).
I remem-
ber standing
with him up-
stairs, in the
clubhouse, how
I checked his
body out.
But not who
approached whom.
Or what we
talked about
before we
leaned against
my car and
kissed, under
that tarnished
L.A. moon.
Drove to my
place and un-
dressed him in
the dark. He
was smaller
than me. I
couldn’t keep
my hands off
his ass. Next
morning, smoked
till he woke,
took him back.
He thanked me
sweetly. I
couldn’t have
said what I
wanted, though
must have known.
Drove home and
put him in
a poem
(“November”)
I was at
the end of.
Later that
day it rained
(I know from
the poem).
And finally, a few quotes for this day:
“Loneliness is not being alone, it’s loving others to no avail.” ~ John Berendt
And there, just like that, in the most unlikely of places, was a sliver of beauty and grace – in the way a fading bit of sun illuminated the unexceptional gray concrete support beam of an overpass. Winter has been opening such secrets to me this year, or maybe I’m just noticing what has always been there, in a different light.
Such a scene is unremarkable in an upstate New York winter, and for that very fact I find this glimpse of beauty even more touching. Why should there not be beauty in what many would consider mundane? The older I get, the more I realize how much of our experience is in what we are willing to see, and how we are willing to see the world. In the past, this overpass would have registered as gray and dull. These days it thrills me with its spectacular structure, its shading, and the way it cradles the last light of the day in its arms.
Every passing day seems to move us further from the time when attending a Broadway musical in New York felt normal and commonplace. When seeking throwback shots for this recent post, I stumbled upon these cheeky peeks from a January weekend in New York a number of year ago, and instantly I was brought back to some happy, if frigid, memories.
It feels like there have been a few very important January shows that I’ve been lucky enough to attend. The first was when Andy and I had tickets to ‘Grey Gardens’ on what felt like the coldest weekend of the year. We had a steak dinner at Gallagher’s before rushing to the theater, bundled up and braced against the wind and chill, and Christine Ebersole warmed us with her glorious portrayal of The Edies. It was, despite its icy nature, a weekend I think back on quite fondly.
Much like the one depicted here, when I was in town to see a revival of ‘Follies’ with Bernadette Peters. Suzie was my date that night, and we repeated a hearty dinner at a nearby steakhouse. Such icy evenings apparently build a hankering for substantial meat. The show was exquisite, the company grand, and my lodgings at 6 Columbus were cozy enough.
In the bathroom, an O-ring right before they even made O-ring lights surrounded the mirror. It should have been colder in that tiled bathroom, with its shiny navy vertical design, but the heat had been indulgently turned high, and a robe made things extra cozy. As was my wont when enjoying a weekend away, I’d purchased a bottle of body wash from L’Occitane nearby, making a memory with some Lemon Verbena.
Such a simple weekend in New York feels so exotic and distant now, and it brings me back to my last brush with the city. That’s all it was, as it never came to fruition. I wonder if we’ll ever get back there – not just in the physical, actual sense, but in the figurative, emotional place where such things as COVID hadn’t yet come into existence. It will be more difficult to find that again. Places and things can be found. The past… not so much.
Within this mid-point of winter, a bit of the garden still endures: these dried umbrels of Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ seen in the afternoon sunlight, caged by the shadows of the stalwart cup plant stalks. Blue snow echoing blue sky, and in this winter landscape that once formed the floral border beside the pool, the invincibility of summer shone through the deep freeze.
This is still the golden hour, come summer or snow, and it retains a different kind of magic now. The shadows are more pronounced, less hazy. Maybe the snow lends a crispness to it, a way of sharpening the light.
As the hour progresses, and the sun lowers itself in the sky, colors grow deeper, the world gets more saturated, and the myth of winter as a colorless bore is confronted and confounded. The little forest of sedum flower-heads stands defiantly against the snow and wind. I admire their resilience, their tough and unyielding stance. Once upon a time I feared I would bend or break in the face of such adversity. Now, I follow the sedum’s example and stand in the winter wind. A cloak is all I need.
This Throwback Thursday is brought to you by the madness that is Mercury in Retrograde. For a couple of weeks now I’ve been wondering what the fuck is going on, as moods and insanity and other such full-moon feelings have been rearing their ugly heads, not to mention a number of crazy circumstances and happenings that are more in line with the kookiness of 2020 than a promising 2021. As a full day of challenging events unfolded one right after the other, I looked up Mercury in Retrograde dates and sure enough, there it was: January 30 through February 21.
That sets my mind oddly at ease – I was beginning to think I was losing it. Now that there’s something external to blame, we can move forward and be a little more careful. In the meantime, here are a couple of fun throw-way-back pics from a behind-the-scenes peek of our old knotty-pine room haunt in Ogunquit, Maine. Maybe this will be the year we return… or maybe not. We need to get through this apparent retrograde motion first… be wary, be warned.
It’s not the cold or ice of winter that bothers me. It’s not the wind or snow. It’s not even the messy mix of salt and dirt that winter roads invariably become. It’s the darkness – that pervading darkness that comprises too much of the day and all of the night. It’s there when I wake and there when I retire, and it seeps into the middle of the day through gray shadows and the early setting of the sun.
Most of the time I employ candles at night, when the full darkness has overtaken all the land. I forget the powerful presence they can have early in the morning, when I’m about to sign on for the day, when the sky is still dim and darkness stubbornly lingers in more than just corners. Somehow it’s quieter then than the latest hour of night. Easing one’s way into the day is equally as important as easing into the time for slumber.
Our crazy Thanksgiving/Christmas/Halloween/Easter cactus is blooming again, which means the light is mirroring some point in fall, ricocheting back and ever-closer to spring. This echo of blooms is a happy happening, signifying days that are getting longer, and a faint hint of hope in the air.
We no longer have a walking iris, the blooms of which would be the other sign that winter was about to start its slow exit, so this cactus will have to do.
