Category Archives: General

The day started in typical January fashion – cruel, cold, and gray – so I spent much of the morning reading on the couch, yearning for brighter light and wanting for something warm. As the hours ticked away, the sun fought to make a showing, and the clouds parted to afford a peek at a soft blue sky. The tops of trees, mostly bare branches now, were lit up brilliantly – warm wood against a cool mottled grayish-blue firmament. 

Indoors, a few ferns and a Norfolk Island Pine basked in the available light and the water vapor of the humidifier. The heat was on steadily throughout the day, drying the air and consistently reminding us that it was still winter. Not that we needed any reminders. The wind whispered fiercely, its hissing heard through the windows and the kitchen vent. January was stalling, like most guests you wanted to leave sooner rather than later. Wandering to the front door, I peered into the tall thuja hedge and noticed some movement in the upper branches. Watching to see whether a bird would emerge, or if a squirrel would scurry down the trunk, I waited until I could see the beak of a cardinal. Hopping a bit higher, it drew my gaze upward, to something I had never seen above our home in almost twenty years of living here. 

Above the trees, high in the sky, and resplendent in the light from the setting sun, a bald eagle soared. Struck by disbelief, I screamed for Andy to come and confirm what I was seeing. We hurried onto the front step and watched its bright white head and tail, unmistakable no matter how high it was. I didn’t have time to get a photo, and I just wanted to stay there and keep my eyes on its magnificence fading behind a line of trees. Standing next to Andy, the cold beginning to bite, I lingered a little while longer in case the majestic creature returned. Our brief brush with such glory felt like a benevolent sign, a blessing of some sort ~ a soaring ray of hope at a time when the world needed it. 

We stepped back inside, into the warmth of our home, and continued our walk through winter.

If we were lucky, we were all royalty in our youth. That’s when the world bestows upon us its finest favors, or so some literature and certain movies would have us believe. In truth, youth mostly provides resilience and ignorance – powerful talismans of protection, as potent as they are fleeting. One cannot get away with things in their 40’s that one did in their 20’s, and thank whatever entity in which you believe. My own blossoming came much later, and quite frankly may not even be here yet, and that is the greatest favor of all. To peak too early, as in high school or college, is certain cause for a life of ruin, and rather sad in the long run. The majority of our lives, and the bulk of our existence, extends through the long ends of middle-age. I’m glad I held out my enjoyment for now. 

There are perks to being young, and benefits to making the most of our time in youth’s ever-fading glow. It instills an essence of invincibility, a notion of royalty that puts crowns on most of our heads. Only later do we realize how dumb it all looked, with our poses and posturing and cigar-laden romps in the pool. Passing fashion, passing fads.   The surly, contemptuous entitlement of my early twenties was a necessary stage of development, one with which I couldn’t wait to get over. Not that it wasn’t fun sometimes, but I knew it wasn’t all the fun I wanted to have. 

For at least a couple of seasons of childhood, ‘Gimme A Break!’ and ‘The Facts of Life‘ formed the extent of my Saturday night entertainment. From these cultural touchstones, I gleaned the wonder of cheesy comedic timing, sophomoric slapstick, and an appreciation for catchy theme songs. I knew then that I wanted my life to resemble the safe, laughter-rich environs of a sitcom. It would be a few years before I found my true aspirational niche: night-time soap operas like ‘Dallas‘ and ‘Falcon Crest‘ but for my youthful 80’s, it was half-hour comedic romps, that started and ended with a memorable theme song. On this Saturday night, let’s go back to a simpler time, a time sweetened by the powerhouse vocals of Nell Carter, a time that feels as innocent as it does far away.

I wanted life to be this way – centered around a family room sofa, a staircase leading tantalizingly into never-seen bedrooms, potted pothos and other plants perched on shelves that could never have provided enough light – in other words, the patina of perfection with families whose problems could be solved in 22 minutes, unless it was a special two-parter. 

Life would reveal itself as much more complex, and far less bouncy and fun – with nary a theme song to be sung – but I held onto the dream, I yearned for the laughter, and I grew houseplants in every available window. 

When immersing myself in the concept of hygge, I reached out to Suzie, who spent a year abroad in Denmark during our junior year of high school. Much happened in that tumultuous and somewhat-perilous time of our lives. I think we both sometimes marvel at how we made it through when so many things were so close to going wrong. It was there that Suzie said she first experienced hygge, though she did question how meaningful it could have been for a cynical teenager. Something must have stuck, because ever since then, and even before I had heard of hygge, Suzie has been that source of safety and warmth and convivial joy for me. 

Upon my recent research and discovery of the whole Danish concept of coziness, I turned again to Suzie, who then introduced me to the Danish String Quartet, which has been providing the soundtrack to this snow-laden mid-winter stretch. This selection brings a bit of vibrancy to the white and brown outside world, where fallen hydrangea flower-heads nod beneath the fluffy weight of a recent snowfall. 

Slowly, I am learning to appreciate the season of winter, with its subtle textures and subdued beauty. One has to work a little harder to make sense of the show now, and there’s a different sort of reward when it comes into focus. For instance, see this snow. It’s not a heavy, uniform blanket of white stuff – it’s lighter, and some flakes have formed little balls, tiny pom-poms of frozen wonder. It reminds ever so slightly of the lace-cap hydrangeas of early summer. Nature is cunning like that – cunning and gorgeous. 

It showed up as a FaceBook memory, but I had recalled it quite vividly even prior to that. It was Inauguration Day 2017, when that wretched inciteful criminal was being sworn into office, and the country felt like it was being enveloped in some Orwellian nightmare. Those feelings would prove to be well-founded and mostly came to sad and unfortunate fruition, each and every single step along the way. I’d made reservations for dinner at 677 Prime that night, and after work I made my way to the bar to have a cocktail before Andy arrived.

Lifting the olive-festooned martini to my lips, I did my best to ignore the television station playing the inaugural event, but every now and then my eyes glanced up at the sad not-quite-spectacle that played out on the screen. Who could have foretold all the evils and atrocities that man would commit or attempt to commit? (Well, me.) Who could have foreseen all the disasters and deaths that he would single-handedly allow on his watch? (Again, me.) And who would have predicted that this would be the sorry state of the world four years later (Same.)

Today we stand in all the swampy muck and awful mess that he left, the shambles he and his family so heinously made of America, and we look to someone – anyone – to help clean up the disaster. In so many ways, it’s too late. The monster has been unleashed. The hatred has been given light and space in which to move and breathe and spread. It happened in ways large and small, from the liars themselves to the media who gave it a place to exist in the first place. That doesn’t mean some of us won’t fight back and work to return to the essence of what made America great from the beginning. Those basic tenets remain in place, standing despite the reckoning they’ve been given: freedom, equality, and opportunity for all of us.

I’m tentatively hopeful for the first time in four years, and that in itself is a feat worthy of respect and honor. We move forward to greater unity, essential accountability, moral come-uppance, and a better future.

“Hygge is about fostering a long-term sense of happiness and general well-being; material consumption and ambitious striving are ephemeral distractions that lead us not to happiness ~ but to hurriedness. Hygge gives us the opportunity to step back from our overly busy lives and instead, start to value the small, daily joys we are surrounded by. It encourages us to be present in our own lives.

Philosophically speaking, hygge is about comfort and coziness, preferably in the spirit of fellowship and family. Practically speaking, hygge is about designing a lifestyle that is simple and serene, warm and happy.” ~ Barbara Hayden, ‘Hygge: Unlock the Danish Art of Coziness and Happiness’

This winter I am taking a deeper look into the Danish concept of hygge, which is as much about finding coziness and comfort in the familiarity of friends and family as it is about learning to embrace the winter and turn the idea of darkness and cold on its head. I’m all about changing perspective as the best way to changing circumstance. Winter has always held a literal and proverbial chill – diving into hygge turns it into a season of light and warmth and joy. A candle just isn’t quite as brilliant in the summer.

This Martin Luther King Jr. Day coincides with my Mom’s birthday (that post comes later), so it is very much a day of heroes for me. January requires such lofty inspiration to lift the spirits and propel us through the winter. The past week has proven emotionally wearing on me for some reason, and since not anything particularly specific has been pinpointed as the root cause, I’m left wondering if it’s the simple accumulation of emotion over the past few months, and the realization that a full year of living in a COVID world is coming up. That’s a heavy suitcase I may unpack at a later time. Or maybe I won’t. On with the recap…

The Bundt cake deserves a renaissance. 

This Señor Breakfast Sandwich is a blessing for late-mornings in January. 

Greenhouse candlelight. 

Moonlight, faded by snow.

Eating a slice of humble pie. 

Words of inspiration in a barren land. 

The saddest day of the year.

When a Cape Codder is a cookie instead of a cocktail. 

Comfort food in the form of enchiladas. 

In the bleak mid-winter.

My website turned 18 years old, and my 45-year-old naked ass turned it out. 

All winter sparkle and pizzazz.

The week had its way and wore me down. 

Summoning a spirit from its slumber. 

Sharing Country Flowers with Mom.

Floating like the Butterfly Amaryllis.

Once upon a year ago, I journeyed by my lonesome into the mountains on a gray winter day. The morning, overcast and threatening snow, was a dismal one, yet something drew me out of Albany at a time when it was still all right to do so. I couldn’t know the impending storm that would ensnare the entire year to come. Driving east, just over the border into Massachusetts, I veered off the turnpike and wove my way into the beginnings of the Berkshires. Several summers ago we took a similar route up to the Mount, summer home of Edith Wharton. This was a different path, into a different realm. I made it on my own, to reconnect to my soul at a time when I was most afraid.

The route I had taken took me through Stockbridge, where I would later pause for a cup of tea at the Red Lion Inn, but something pulled me away from that cozy spot, further toward the mountains. I drove off the main route and took a few side roads. Seeking solitude and silence, I wanted to escape the more-frequented space, and eventually I wound my way into relative seclusion. Winter whispered to me there, as snowflakes fell delicately through the air, silently and without wind to move them the least bit sideways. It was entrancing, creating an effect that was as beautiful as it is has proven elusive ~ wind so often acting as a companion to snow.

The world stood silent, the sky stood gray, and the air stood still. There, I saw what I thought was a wolf or a coyote, and I couldn’t tell for quite some time. It paused in its own path, turned to look at me, and shared a moment of wild communion. Someone once remarked my eyes reminded them of a wolf’s, but that suddenly felt far away. In that instant, I rekindled a certain fire within, and knew I would be all right, no matter what happened.

In that wilderness, at the base of the land where the mountains began to climb, I summoned the spirit that had been eluding me. Conjured from a winter world where warlocks and wizards floated in castles filled with fire, a little spark set off a proverbial tendril of spiritual smoke – a shroud to rival any woolen cloak – which would protect my heart like a powerful talisman. It felt like I was being made whole again, forged from some crystalline mountain magic of ice and snow, laced with the wonder of winter, a season which I never embraced as much as I should have. It took me in then, it made me partner and friend, sensing what I needed and imbuing the soul with the wherewithal to survive all the winters to come. When the animal retreated, it was time for me to go as well.  

Later that day I would find a piece of rose quartz shaped like an egg – a sign of rebirth – that fit the palm of my hand, nestled and cradled like it was molded specifically for me to hold it. It would form the heart of my meditation – a new way of life that was setting me off on a journey that was more than mere survival.

‘There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.’ – Jane Austen

Every time I get an e-mail from Regal Cinemas, it’s like a little jab to the heart. A bittersweet reminder of our current state of affairs, it seems to affect Skip the same way, as he texted he couldn’t follow the Regal Twitter account anymore because it was too painful. I knew exactly what he meant. We have lost our movie nights for the moment, and so much else in the midst of this pandemic. That finally started hitting home with me this past week, when the weight of the winter, and our current conditions, fell fully upon my countenance.

Maybe it’s just the accumulation of almost a year of living like this. Maybe it’s just the void of those human connections which I’ve had such a love-hate relationship with all these years coming into irrefutable existence. Maybe it’s just a simple case of stir-crazy restlessness caused from the lack of going anywhere all these months. 

To combat this, I’ve been formulating and working through several remedies, all top-secret in the event they find fruition in a project or something else, and living in such mind-scapes isn’t fancy or make0believe – it’s survival. 

Skip has hopes we will be back in the movie-going game in some way shape or form by next fall. I’m hoping for something even sooner, because hope is all we have, and I’m going to indulge and refute pessimism for as long as I can. We’ve had enough of that here. Let’s have hope now. 

This month my website turns eighteen years old (despite some miscalculations over the years), and here’s a cheeky bit of fun to mark the occasion. Actually, we seem to be going the opposite direction, as eagle-eyed regulars may have noticed. While I’m a pro-sexual-expression kind of guy, and have no hang-ups when it comes to nudity and nakedness, I’ve been drawn to more spiritual and ethereal concerns of late, and that has likely bled into the content that’s been produced here. Such concerns have always played a part here, they’re just becoming more prominent and important, while other more salacious turns fade into the background.

The sparkle of a glistening male model emerging from the sea a la James Bond may always be a thrill, but there is sparkle in other things as well – and a spiritual sort of sparkle seems to last longer and resonate more deeply with my frequency these days. Not that there isn’t room for both to happily coexist, and there’s a valuable lesson in that too. Binary limits are so early 2000’s. With that in mind, here are a few cheeky photos from roughly a year ago, when I was still able to go to Boston without care or worry, a time that feels very far away, when it was but a year. It’s amazing how much can happen in a year. And it’s even more remarkable for how much can happen in the eighteen years since I first put this website into the world.

The year was 2003, and websites and blogs were only beginning to take off. I didn’t do much online in those early days – it was mostly a repository for my writing and photographs – and I definitely wasn’t updating anything on a daily basis. There were also no projects on display, which made for a sparse and rather sterile environment. Social media itself was in its infancy, and FaceBook, Twitter and Instagram didn’t even exist. In this brave new world, a personal website seemed rather quaint, and those early long-lost posts were surely the stuff of such innocence. While the posts have populated and grown, and the intertwining links have created an extensive web of its own, the main simplicity and sparse format has remained, and is one of the reasons it’s lasted this long. Avoiding the bells and whistles of the online world, and aside from a brief experiment with comments that didn’t last, not much has changed here as we begin our 18^thyear.

In some ways, this blog has become a diary of sorts, and there are entries where I’ve revealed more than I probably should have, and lots where I haven’t. It’s a ritual and habit that is now second nature, and while that once held albatross connotations, I’ve reconciled myself to its soothing, consistent nature. As a Virgo, if you believe in such things, I enjoy organization and structure. As a human, I enjoy working within and without those constructs, challenging and pushing and rezoning as necessary. There is something thrilling about contained chaos, of operating within a prescribed space, and in that prescription feeling the freedom of knowing anything can be done within such a safety zone.

Now that we are eighteen, and have been doing this longer than any other personal blog I can think of, I feel even more freedom, but instead of going hardcore full-frontal, I find bigger thrills in other forms of revelation. A new honesty in what can and should be tolerated, a new honesty in what exactly I want in life, a new honesty in how I’m working to better myself – and a few new tweaks in the logistics and features we’ve had here over the past few years.

The first of these changes is the reconfiguration of our not-quite-venerable Hunk of the Day feature. What started out as a simple eye candy/guy candy display has, at its best, turned into something deeper and more honorable, where the recipients were less interested in showing off their physical features and more about doing something that made a bigger difference in the world. To that end and purpose, I wanted to open it up to women and non-binary persons, which always made the ‘Hunk’ moniker problematic. More on that shortly.

As for our 18^thbirthday, it is a low-key if cheeky affair, as befitting life in the time of a pandemic. We will find other ways to celebrate and mark the occasion, and I’d like to draw it out. There is pleasure in anticipation, joy in elongating a moment of calm and peace and waiting.

This may be slightly premature as we have not yet crested upon the official mid-point of winter, that will arrive the first week of February I believe, but I’m looking quickly forward to the future and hoping to hasten things along, particularly with the current state of the world. Everyone is a little uneasy, and we are certainly right to feel so. These are indeed perilous times – perhaps more-so than we even know.

This blog was created, and still exists for the moment, as an antidote to such times, if not for the entertainment and delight of you the reader, then certainly for the entertainment and delight of myself as the creator. Writing and conjuring images is the alchemy in which I practice, and I always hope the end result is something that leaves me slightly changed for the better, or at the very least feeling less alone.

Thus far, in the seventeen years I’ve had this website (we’ll begin our 18^thyear this month!) I’ve found this work a form of peace and solace, a form of creative and artistic expression that has worked as well as therapy. Because of that, I’ve kept it going, even on the days when my ambition slags, and inspiration is difficult to find. I do feel like we are deep in the winter of this blog’s life, but there’s no telling how long a winter might be. 

Pining for the baked goods at Cafe Madeleine in Boston, I searched the web for an approximation of their Cape Cod cookie. Typically this time of the year finds them closed until early spring,  and it is always with great sadness that I find the sign on the shop that says see you in March. In that respect I’m accustomed to going without their deliciousness through the winter – but with COVID I haven’t had a sweet treat from them in almost a year. And so my thoughts have been obsessing over a cookie which is not usually my style (the cookie, I mean, not the obsessing – I’ll always obsess and I’m not sorry about it).

Many people enjoy an oatmeal and raisin cookie, but I get a hankering for them maybe twice a year. The Cape Cod cookie is an exception. It uses oats and golden raisins, cranberries and candied orange and ginger (I think) so I set about to capturing that and found a recipe that looked good. 

It’s got a lovely trio of spices so it packs a flavorful punch, perhaps more than the original. In this version there is freshly-grated nutmeg, ground cloves, and cinnamon. 

Of course there are oats, though I used the wrong sort (I think I needed rolled instead of quick – this being my first shallow-dive into the word of oats I was already annoyed.) 

Luckily there was candied ginger and since I wasn’t the one making it there was nothing that could go wrong with that ingredient. I chopped them up and enjoyed the sharp, sweet fragrance. 

Cranberries took the place of raisins, as it should be. They formed the tart heart of the whole affair, blending magically with the sharpness of the candied ginger, and mingling magically with the trio of spices to conjure a winter respite for the tongue. The recipe I found called for a half cup of dark chocolate, so I added some mini chips because chocolate is never wrong.

Cozy and spicy and warm, this was the perfect cookie for a snowy night. I’ll tweak it a bit the next time I make it. I’d like to find some candied orange, and I might try adding some golden raisins like the original. There also must be a way to make it a bit bulkier with less tendency to spread, as in this magnificent beast. 

Winter is a good time for cookie experimentation, especially when it reminds me of Boston and cafe-culture and a world that feels centuries away…

The snow in these photos is long gone, brushed out of the boughs by dry winds that either soaked it up or knocked it to the ground. Such snowy prettiness doesn’t last long in these parts, when snow is too often accompanied by wind, but on the morning of our most recent storm, it was good enough to let the beauty linger. The delay afforded my late morning venture (hanging out the window to get these shots), allowing enough time to grab the fluffy white stuff before it went away. That was days ago. The branches are bare now, and the skies are gray. There is wind too, but no more snow to pull down. 

It is said that we just had the most depressing day of the year (January 6). This time it was depressing for more than the typical post-holiday-blues reasons and the seemingly endless stretch of winter days ahead of us. The world is in turmoil, the world is in tumult. We hang onto whatever is around us, grasping desperately for what we know, what is comfortable, what is safe. And maybe nothing is anymore. 

Puts me in the mind of an Adrienne Rich poem…

Look: this is January the worst onslaught
is ahead of us Don’t be lured 
by these soft grey afternoons these sunsets cut
from pink and violet tissue-paper by the thought 
the days are lengthening 
Don’t let the solstice fool you: 
our lives will always be 
a stew of contradictions 
the worst moment of winter can come in April 
when the peepers are stubbornly still 
and our bodies 
plod on without conviction 
and our thoughts cramp down before the sheer 
arsenal of everything that tries us: 
this battering, blunt-edged life 
– Adrienne Rich

A Twitter friend recently brought the brilliance of Brené Brown to my attention, and I’d like to share some of that with you now. There’s never a bad moment for finding inspiration, even if it happens in the newly-peaceful realm of Twitter. Here are several of Ms. Brown’s thought-provoking quotes:

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimise the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”

“Sometimes the bravest and most important thing you can do is just show up.”

“A lot of cheap seats in the arena are filled with people who never venture onto the floor. They just hurl mean-spirited criticisms and put-downs from a safe distance. The problem is, when we stop caring what people think and stop feeling hurt by cruelty, we lose our ability to connect. But when we’re defined by what people think, we lose the courage to be vulnerable. Therefore, we need to be selective about the feedback we let into our lives. For me, if you’re not in the arena also getting your ass kicked, I’m not interested in your feedback.”

“When I see people stand fully in their truth, or when I see someone fall down, get back up, and say, â€˜Damn. That really hurt, but this is important to me and I’m going in again’—my gut reaction is, â€˜What a badass.’”

“What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?”

There is no silence as silent as the silence that follows a snowfall at night. Cradled by its blanket of snow, the world slumbers contentedly, not bothering to barely elicit the quietest of sighs. In the sky, the faded echo of the moon peeks over the shoulders of bare oak trees, then moves on in its nightly journey. 

 Not even the squirrels or rabbits seem to want to disturb this peace at first, waiting until morning to make their paths and mark their trails. I wonder what the owls do. Do they shake the snow off their heads, shifting their feet and shifting more snow as it falls from such lofty boughs? I listen for them, but no one is talking on this night. Embracing the mystery of winter, I shudder in the cold, even as there is warmth in beauty.