Category Archives: General

The woman taking my blood scoffed at my white pants.

“You don’t like them?” I asked incredulously and with more than an edge of hurt.

“No, I do, I like them a lot! But…” and she motioned to the needle in my arm. “Blood!”

Oh, I thought to myself, I’ve gotten way more blood out of way more things than a pair of white pants. She put a bandage on, and much more tape than I thought necessary. “You can take it off after half an hour,” she said before adding, “Well, forty-five minutes, since you’re wearing those pants.”

It still touches me to be given the slightest bit of care like that, especially from a stranger. Exactly how thirsty was my childhood? I sat in the car, alone with my white pants and bandage, wondering at what had become of this summer. Whenever they draw blood, I get a little philosophical, waxing contemplative on the simple fact of life.

My cold, analytical gaze, learned early and often in my childhood home, mostly serves me well.

Mostly.

When our house got power-washed earlier this summer, whatever cleaning mix they used ended up all but destroying our beautiful maidenhair ferns. They’ve only just started to come back from their almost-massacre, thanks to a regular watering schedule I’ve employed amid the recent stretch of hot and dry days. Fresh new growth at this time of the year is an unexpected and welcome surprise – and the second-act of this maidenhair fern reminds me that it’s never too late to begin again.

It also recalls the difficult lesson that sometimes you have to burn it all down to the ground before building from the ground up.

There are times when you know it’s best not to speak, and that speaking at those times will result in people getting hurt, even if what you are saying is entirely true and factual and actually happened. There are times when speaking such truth, even when it’s demanded of you, even when the perpetrators of such atrocities are begging you to speak about their own actions, will only ever end with you getting hurt. When this happens repeatedly and consistently over the course of decades, it’s impossible not to think at least part of it is diabolically intended to fuck with your mind.

I don’t wanna hear
I don’t wanna know
Please don’t say you’re sorry
I’ve heard it all before
And I can take care of myself

I don’t wanna hear
I don’t wanna know
Please don’t say “Forgive me”
I’ve seen it all before
And I can’t take it anymore

At such moments, I find it best to let Madonna speak for me, in the same way I’d play certain songs in the car when my parents would drive me somewhere ~ a vain attempt to get them to hear my silent cries for help. And sometimes, even when the cries were made directly to them beneath tear-stained desperation, they looked at me, pretended to hear, and moved on, unmoved.

I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before
I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before

This song has already been featured in a Madonna Timeline here, but it’s such a banger that it works on a multitude of levels, going beyond some jilted romantic endeavor into something far more powerful and universal. A bit more sinister too, when one thinks of all the wrongs that a family can inflict over the years, over and over and over…

I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before
I’ve heard it all before, I’ve heard it all before

If you have to say “not gonna lie” are we to assume that what you would usually do when speaking is… lie?

#TinyThreads

BAM – just like that, Snoopy takes a big old shit on any of my hoped-for ideas of pretending that everything was cool in a delusional but safely-emotionally-dead way, as this philosophical post rears its head and gives me another gut-punch. Like all things that really bother me and stick somewhere in my brain, it’s bothersome because it must ring partly true. Or at least some part of me thinks so.

Yes, I suppose the truth is that at my age I’ve lived more years than I’ve got left. Most of my friends have. We don’t much notice because we’re all doing it together. Maybe none of us thought enough to point it out. Maybe the others have wisely pretended it away. It’s true, but it feels like it’s not because I don’t feel like I’ve accrued enough wisdom to have it be so. Maybe… so many maybe’s in this post. I’m embracing that, because when over half your life is done, you want a few more maybe’s – you know how soon they will end.

“A son who never quite felt loved, who had to go out on his own to find unconditional acceptance… A man who never quite felt loved, who had to be out on his own to realize his worth… And I did that. I went into the world to find what I could not get at home.”

This was from a post written almost ten years ago, and whenever I think I’m the crazy one in the family, I return to history, to the past, to the truth, and I remember… I remember.

This is the last week of my 40’s, and I’m finally starting to feel it. I’ve been unexpectedly emotional, and we will leave it at that. Here’s a weekly recap as I’m clearly not in the mood to write much more.

It began innocuously enough with a naked Bad Bunny on a jet-ski.

This bummer of a summer tried to find its island groove again, to no avail.

A shirtless Tom Holland did his gratuitous best.

Got bush?

For purple floral majesty.

In the shade of a cemetery, I still look for my Dad.

The showgirl must go on.

Towering insurmountable summer.

Summer lace queen.

A glimpse of the F-word.

Bugle beads but alive.

Beaded beauty with a touch of tragedy.

A Madonna birthday post.

A tribute to the Ilagan twins.

With all due respect.

A silly shirtless Travis Kelce post.

“With all due respect” usually implies there is more respect than is deserved, and often comes at the start of something that shouldn’t get any respect at all.

Just tell it like it is. We all know the truth.

#TinyThreads

Apologies for using the ‘F’ word this early, but when Halloween has taken over the stores, part of me has already given up the glorious ghost that is summer, letting the gardens turn to dried hay and refocusing on what’s inside the house and going to see us through the fall and winter. In that spirit of preparation, this picture of Snoopy may be my inspiration piece for the season to come.

Happy Friday, everybody. Take it easy in these final weekends of summer… and a reminder that next weekend is my 50th birthday. If you need to drop any gifts off to Andy to make sure he brings them to Boston with us, please contact him directly. Blessings.

Queen Ann’s lace is practically a weed in these parts, and for many years I decried and condemned it as such. (As is so often the case, I was the cause of my own trauma, having plucked a plant from the roadside and bringing it back to my childhood home, where it soon filled the entire garden with volunteers quickly putting those stalwart taproots down like little carrots, and giving me ample weeding opportunities.) As much as I’ve come to appreciate the plant and its delicate lace-like flowers, it has no place in the cultivated garden.

Its use as a cut flower is also iffy in my experience. Sometimes it’s grand, and sometimes the flowers wilt no matter what kind of magic one employs. While I can relate to and respect that sort of temperamental moodiness, I’m approaching the age where I just don’t have the energy for such games. Best to admire this beauty from afar, along the edges of things, where roads and meadows mingle, and the sun illuminates the creamy dreaminess of the blooms.

There comes a point in every summer where I tend to feel a little anxious for fall. I mean that in all the varying meanings of the word – the excitement of looking forward to it, the anxiety of what might be to come, the mixed emotions of rushing to the end of a favored season. Maybe that explains my feeling on the verge of tears and wanting to throw up lately – perhaps it’s not just the turn of 50 around the corner, but just the usual machinations of a season in flux.

It’s puzzling to me, as the weather has been ideally summer-like of late, and after a slow start and agonizingly-paced build-up to the sun and heat, I should probably simply enjoy it, but my mind has rarely done what it’s supposed to do. To combat such foolishness, I will re-focus my energy on enjoying the moment at hand, on my daily meditation, on the idea of being mindful and aware of every sensation before summer slips by.

Summer – always some towering, insurmountable idea, always some indefinable force, always shining when you least expect it, and always waiting for you to indulge just as she’s about to leave.