Category Archives: General

Certain November days manage to dawn with a bit of sunlight, then proceed to offer nothing but gray and slightly overcast skies. Somehow the sun still manages to peep through, but the day cannot be described as anything other than gray. Drained of the colors of spring and summer, as well as the pristine snow-covered sheen of winter, November is one of the dreariest months on the calendar, but we near its end, and the end of the year that was so dismally 2020, and for that I welcome these next few weeks.

On the Sunday morning before Thanksgiving week, I awaken earlier than intended or desired. I’d been feeling a bit run-down – frequent trips to Amsterdam, lots of cooking and running errands, preparing for the stripped-down holiday season, a day-trip to Boston to check on the condo, and the general stress and mayhem of a pandemic-riddled world and the daily pressure that puts on simple existence. My body was telling me to slow down, and so I listened. Lots of sleep, lots of tea, a daily Vitamin D pill – and a pause in the break-neck pace of late.

November, with all its giving of thanks, is a good time to stop and take stock of life. That’s not always an easy thing to do, and often it is fraught with uncomfortable realizations, irreconcilable stances, and the uneasy notion that some of what we are doing may be wrong. Never a fun place to be, the only way out of it is to be completely honest, and to surrender to the truth at hand. So much of the ill-fitting image I tried to present in the past was about me simply refusing to entertain the truth at hand. There is such freedom in that honesty, though, that I wish I had come to that realization sooner. It would have made so much of my journey that much easier. I see that now. I know that now.

And so I slow down the day. I pause and still the morning. When that break of sunlight bursts through the clouds, I look out the window and watch it play upon the fluffy seedheads of the fountain grass. I see it peek into the innermost recesses of the pinecones dangling high in a neighbor’s tree. A little bird is the only other creature in movement. It darts among the bare branches of a maple, then flits across the sky, out of view.

This is it, kids – Thanksgiving week is upon us at last! The quick slide down the holiday hill to the end of the year is here, and most of us just want it over with. Absent of holiday guests stopping by, absent of holiday parties, and absent of holiday dinners, our home will be super-simplified for the season, with a couple of accents of fresh pine and greenery, and that’s about it. Whether we have a tree or not will be up to Andy – I’m fine either way. In this brave new world, it’s time to get back to basics. On with the weekly recap…

Like so many have this year, the squirrels frolicked in madness. 

Pink is swell for any morning, but Tuesday morning was the lucky recipient this week. 

This loser can’t lose for losing. 

Memory reflection.

The art of the ornamental.

These cyclamen went POP. 

Harry Styles wore a dress and solidified his status as hero. 

Lowered expectations. 

My Christmas Wish List 2020. 

A lighter shade of purple. 

Revisiting the moon and a lost friendship.

A hectic day reminds me to slow down a bit. 

A privileged view from the past. 

Hunks of the Day included Rickie Fowler, Stefan Piscitelli, Jack Plotnick, and Michael B. Jordan.

The whispers came to me early in the morning. One of our classmates had been to his house the day before and was telling people about it. We were in third or fourth grade, maybe fifth, and my memory has been fading of late, but this one remains, embedded and part of what formed the base-rock of my outlook on life.

“His dining room table is a wooden picnic table,” the friend whispered conspiratorially to me. I acted aghast. ‘How poor did you have to be to have a picnic table as your dining table?’ was the sentiment I sensed was expected of me, and I easily slipped into the role, even if I couldn’t have told you what kind of dining table we had in our own house – I only knew it wasn’t a picnic table, and more importantly I immediately understood that having a picnic table was something to be ridiculed. From a very young age, I knew how to recognize the temperature of a room, or a conversation, or a look. I could tell where the popular stance stood, when I could get away with challenging it, and most importantly when it could not be safely challenged without cost to my own image. This was the essence of how to be popular and well-liked, and more importantly how to stay so.

On that particular day, when the whispers came to me, I knew the role to play, and as long as I didn’t have a picnic table in the dining room I was safe to go along with the judgment and derision. I also knew that as the son of a doctor and nursing professor, my family was comfortably middle class, and more fortunate than many others. I never felt that gave me any entitlement, but I saw the effect that fact had on others. It would be a lie to pretend it didn’t rub off on me, that I didn’t take in those perks of privilege and parade through life in a more-peacock-like manner because of that emboldening baseline.

To my regret, I went along with the ridicule that morning, as much as I felt bad about it. Class and financial status were already eating into the innocence of school-children, and we were never as innocent as people made us out to be in the first place. There was more shame in judging that classmate and his family than there would ever be in having a picnic table. I learned that lesson early, in the way it made me feel instantly icky, and from then on I did my best to never join in the ridicule about anyone having less than me.

It was an office day, and since I’m mostly in the office one day a week now, those hours were packed with catch-up and business and non-stop activity. Exhilarating and a reminder of the world we used to know, there was something reassuring about those hours, but they were draining too. So when I realized I’d scheduled a therapy session for later that afternoon, it felt a little overwhelming. Poor planning on my behalf, and just as the holidays are ensuing. 

Still, there was a window of opportunity between work and therapy, and so I set the timer for 26 minutes, lit a stick of Palo Santo incense, and settled into the lotus position as the day lost its light. In this brief window of meditation time, I began the deep breathing, slowing my inhalations and exhalations, locating the breath of the ocean as I moved deeper into a state of calm. 

There, in those 26 minutes, time briefly expanded, and I touched on the edge of the infinite, realizing in simple yet epic fashion the way the mind can clear itself of mental and emotional detritus. A moment of mindfulness allows for the unfurling of an entire universe in a matter of minutes. Time-bending once felt like the unattainable magic of sorcerers and make-believe.

It feels less unattainable today. 

These luscious shades of purple were found along the Southwest Corridor Park where Back Bay bleeds into the South End, and how I came to be walking there on a Tuesday in November is a story that will have to wait for another day, if I deign to tell it at all. There’s nothing very exceptional about it – save for the fact that we are in the midst of a pandemic and one has to be very careful about where one goes and how one goes about getting there. These are the times in which we live. We learn to adapt, we learn different ways to survive. 

I like the addition of purple to the typical orange and rust shades you see everywhere around Thanksgiving. It adds a tinge of royalty to the proceedings. And we could all do with a little royalty these days. Nobility raises its head above the most mundane of trappings. It needs neither title nor riches. It stakes its claim on its own internal sense of self. May you find your own beauty there. 

All I’m saying to Santa is that I better get something out of this shitty year because in the face of all of it, I was pretty damn good. This is my Christmas Wish List, a slight departure from the vapid and vain selections of the past due to the need for masks and humidity, but there are still exorbitant items of fancy thrown in for those who still aspire.

Let’s get the utilitarian mask thing out of the way, as I just discovered that Tom Ford has his own line of face masks done in typically-elegant fashion. My preference is toward the nude/beige shades but I’m open to whatever’s available. (And honestly, these may have already sold out since I’m late getting this post up.)

If they’re gone already, here are a few more practical, and available, price points, in these offerings from Nordstrom or Saks Fifth Avenue or Neiman Marcus. Mask up, people, mask up.

Accessories are still the simplest way to feel a little more glamorous, even when stuck at home, and here’s a way to do so on-the-cheap: a Marcus Adler bandana set in pretty floral prints.

If those Tom Ford Masks are still sold out, here’s one more chance for Mr. Ford to enter our lives: TF Anti-Fatigue Eye Treatment. Because like all my body parts, my eyes are fatigued too.

In a year when we were suddenly stuck at home, it became about comfort and beauty, not to mention practicality, so this rather unglamorous gift request of another room humidifier is the unheralded way of improving our winter air quality. Throat and skin and hair all do better when there is a little more humidity in the air, particularly when the drying effects of home heat and arid winter air collide. This model works wonders and runs at least a full day without needing refilling.

I never thought I’d be looking at Men’s Wearhouse for clothing items, especially given how much their commercials bothered me a few years back, but this is 2020, the year of COVID, and after being cooped up in sweats and T-shirts I actually long for some basic office wear. They’ve also been upping their game recently online, so let’s give them a whirl. We begin with this striped turtleneck sweater (size medium), and then seal the deal with these red floral pants (size 32).

Before anyone thinks I’ve lost my ever-loving mind at the Men’s Wearhouse, check out these Holiday Tartan pants from Bonobos (waist 32, length 30) because they are divine.

In a throwback to the type of gifts I usually sought when I was younger, this spinning globe from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts recalls my fascination with science and motion and the simple delight of our earth. I already have a spot in the sun selected for it.

Turning our noses toward the fragrance portion of this wish list, I’ve long wanted to get into the Henry Rose line of cleaner scents, and they have this economical sampler set that would be perfect for that. 

Finally, here are two glam gifts that mark a season or a year, even when it’s been such a doozy as this one has been. First up is the exquisite ‘Rose & Cuir’  – a fragrance by the olfactory wizard Jean-Claude Ellena, who did all those delicious Jardin scents for Hermes. He’s crafted an exquisite rose and leather scent for Frederic Malle’s glorious line, and it’s one of the finest scents I’ve sniffed of late.

The darker cousin of ‘Rose & Cuir’ is ‘Portrait of A Lady’, befitting an evening instead of sunny winter day, and a scent I’ve flirted with over the past few years and have at long last put near the top of the wish list. A pair of rose scents would be a comfort and antidote to a mostly dreadful year.

If you still have slots to fill, there’s always my Amazon Wish List. Fanciness can be found there too if you delve deep enough. This one’s for you, Santa baby.

Ornamental cabbage and kale never used to appeal to me until I got well into adulthood. There was something disconcerting about having something so utilitarian transformed into something designed solely for beauty and appearance. How strange that I should have fought it for so long. Sounds delightfully perfect for me – but really that’s only been the image of me. The real me is much more practical and frugal. 

Now, I find myself at a happy reconciliatory place, able to enjoy such prettiness as a function of itself, even if it’s meant not for the stomach, but for the eye, destined to thrill only by sight, before wilting away in the hardest frost. These days the ornamental kale and cabbage seen in fall entryways all over New England are favorites of mine, and I always fall prey to taking a hundred photos of their innermost beauty. 

Just a short month ago, Andy and I were still wading into the space you see in this nifty photo. For those trying to make heads and tails of it, it’s the reflection of some trees in our pool cover, when it was first pulled on, and a rainstorm created the puddles of clear water that act like mirrors here. The underwater leaves act as a disorienting element that lends the picture a slightly surreal aspect which I heartily enjoy. 

At the start of the summer we had little joy here. I can still picture Andy sitting forlornly at the edge of the pool, feet hanging disconsolately over the deep end, before the new steps and liner were installed. But they went in eventually, and we recovered a couple months of swim time and summer enjoyment. Just enough to what our appetite for more, and so we settle into an anticipatory winter, hunkering down and keeping cozy as best we can before spring’s inevitable return. 

I like having something to which we can look forward. It keeps us going. It gives us hope. We need that right now. 

It’s been two weeks since Trump lost the election. 

Has anyone told him?

#TrumpLost

#TrumpIsALoser

#OneTermTrump

PS – Follow me on Twitter. Everyone else does. 

Panicked, they raced from the front yard to the backyard throughout the day. Jumping from limb to limb in the oaks, sometimes scurrying across the roof, then down through the coral bark maple, they made the whole yard their workspace. The squirrels were making their final search for acorns and seeds, storing and hoarding them high in their nests, before the earth went into its winter freeze. They will persist and be seen scavenging throughout the next few moths, when it’s easier to spot them without the benefit of camouflaging foliage. But these are their busiest days, when things are simpler to find without a foot of snow obscuring their location. 

Only once did one manage to find its way into our attic one cruel winter, and it was quite the scene to eradicate, or so I was told. No way was I going to battle with a squirrel up close and personal. I can appreciate them from a distance, where they look fun and slightly cuddly, a puff of gray fur slightly skittish and slightly playful. I can admire their resilience and persistence in the face of the coldest winds. But there is no way they are invited in. Sorry, squirrels. Your madness must remain outside. You deserve to be wild and free. 

In another week that saw Donald Trump losing his election for the fifth time, the November clock ticked into decidedly dreary territory, closing the door definitively on those magical fall days that could be lit by sunlight and golden leaves. Most of the deciduous foliage has fallen to the ground, and the sparse barren limbs we see now will be with us until spring breaks her chartreuse glory again. Already we are counting the days… on with the recap.

The moon finally backed off. 

Flaming November. 

A view from the office.

25 years ago I had an unfortunate ponytail. 

Rugged, relentless beauty.

A different kind of drunkenness.

November roses for Andy.

Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone. 

Beautyberry brilliance.

Like a Canadian bobsledder.

A cray cray cactus.

Mars exits retrograde and sanity is restored?

My Interview with the Vampire phase. 

Hot soup for a dreary day.

Hunks of the Day included Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, Michele Morrone, Osiel Gouneo, and Ben Lawson. 

Yesterday Mars left retrograde motion behind, resuming its perceived correct direction, and hopefully cooling the battles it tends to elicit. I’ve had a fair share of moments when I’ve wanted to scream and yell about some very obvious wrongdoings, but I held off for fear of sparking a war. We can afford a battle now and then, but not a war. Never a war. Wars are not worth the cost. 

And so I’m focusing on the peace, and the calm and centeredness that I’ve located within myself over the past year or so. That also makes the maelstrom of others’ emotions more easily managed, or in some cases not managed at all – I’m just better able to walk away, at peace with the truth. That may be the greatest superpower. With the holidays right on the horizon, that skill-set may come in quite handy. 

Such a perspective arrives just in time, as fall limps into winter, and outside beauty slowly loses its vibrant color. I have a difficult time when that happens – the diminishing light, the faded hues, the way the gardens go to sleep and don’t want to be bothered. There’s a difference this year, however, in the awareness of that, in the refusal to allow it to get to me the way it usually has. I’ve got a shiny new toolbox of coping mechanisms, an arsenal of weapons designed for peace, and a suit of emotional armor whose clever secret of strength is in revealing the truth of the heart and owning up to its vulnerability through honesty and honor. 

There is work to be done. There will always be work to be done. And there’s no better time to work on the soul than the winter. 

The Harvest Moon

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes

  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests

  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests

  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes

Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes

  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!

  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,

  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!

All things are symbols: the external shows

  Of Nature have their image in the mind,

  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;

The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,

  Only the empty nests are left behind,

  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

Skip and I enjoy taking the piss out of each other, which is often what happens when you’ve known a friend for a decade and a half. And so my main comment after a touching FaceBook post he wrote was focused on the one line that struck me most out of the whole thing. Since it deserves more eyes on it, and because the sentiment is real, I’m going to post it here, with the simple proviso that I’ve been shopping with Skip a number of times, in a wide-ranging assortment of places – from Macy’s to Muji, from Wal-Mart to Sephora, from Trader Joe’s to Shreve, Crump & Low ~ and I can emphatically affirm there was nothing Canadian or bobsled about any of it. On with his post:

Does anyone else have a favorite cashier at the supermarket? The kind that you don’t mind waiting in a slightly longer line for? I do. I couldn’t tell you her name but she’s a black girl in maybe her mid-thirties. She’s always bright and chipper, never rings anything up incorrectly, offers me a coupon if I don’t happen to have one that pertains to something I’ve bought, and she’s always happy to chat with me. Last week we talked about Hall and Oates. We share part of each other’s Friday mornings every week. This week she looked and me and said “I can’t believe Alex is gone.” I looked at her puzzled and said “Alex?” To which she replied “Trebek.” I told her I was sad as well, how I recently tried out for Jeopardy and how much that show has meant to me over the years. We continued chatting as she rang and I bagged. Eventually we had come upon the fact that we both lost our grandmother’s over a decade ago. Grandmother’s that we both recalled enjoying watching Alex Trebek and Jepoardy with. We finished up and both wished each other a great weekend as we always do. As I rode my cart back to my car like a Canadian Bobsledder a thought occurred to me… what a small intimate memory we had in common. I think that’s true of everyone. We are all on this planet for a short few trips around the Sun. And while we each have our own unique stories, we also have so many similarities. These past few weeks we have been bombarded by the media about how much we differ. In thoughts. In feelings. In values. But it was nice to be reminded that as people, as a species, as human beings, we also share so many things in common. We could all do with a reminder and take care in how we deal with one another. We are more alike than we are different.

This Friday the 13th needs a jolt of something brilliant, a pop of color to remind us how much glory is still out there. In service of that, here’s a bit of beautyberry taken several years ago in the Southwest Corridor Park near our Boston place. A photo like this requires very few words. Take in its color and design and let’s have a wonderful weekend. 

“One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters… But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you choose. But get drunk.” ~ Charles Baudelaire

Today I’m getting drunk on color. Most of my excesses and indulgences these days come in the form of beauty, in the intoxication of bright gorgeous hues and strong shades of super-saturated tints. I’ve been that way since birth. When others went for basic blue or red, I wanted deep flaming fuchsia or sizzling chartreuse. 

Luckily for my fix, this kind of color has bled into November, when it’s usually gone by now and replaced by browns and grays. This photo was taken from our backyard, where there are still some striking things going on high in the air, such as this afternoon show of leaves as the sun sets them on fire before a perfectly-blue sky. 

This is the kind of drunkenness I love best. One can never have enough color. It always leaves me wanting more.