Category Archives: General

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ~ George Eliot

This little-website-that-could is celebrating its 20th anniversary this winter, a rather impressive feat when you consider the average lifespan of a personal blog. Its length is not for any popularity or demand, but rather the singular self-focus of yours truly, and the way this has become a daily journal/diary which helps me sort out certain things in a very public fashion. Spilling such tea can be a messy business, but the messier things get, the more interesting they seem to be. 

“He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

This is my playground, where I get to trot out playthings like words and photographs and whatever fancy feather that happens to drift my way. Far more than that, once I started keeping posts and archiving them (rather than simply revamping and erasing a year’s worth of posts, which is what I did for the first ten years or so of this site) this became a way of looking back at the overarching themes and trends of my life – what was working and what continually held me back or caused problems. 

“One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon-instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today.” ~ Dale Carnegie

As my interests developed and changed, so too did the blog posts, and the way I wrote about myself and others. Focus shifted, gradually and gently over time, and while I still feel like the same person I was twenty years ago, in many ways I simply am not. That’s how it should be, and I’ve always been slightly suspicious of anyone who hasn’t exhibited the capacity to change or evolve over time. Adaptation is an essential component of survival. 

“People like this are beautiful storytellers, breaking rules you didn’t even know were there, just so you can see better and maybe be better. Life is so full of rules and so full of predictable routines that one can almost forget that art and life depend on spontaneity. Enter the eccentric.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan

Eccentricity is a term largely used in negative fashion, designed to denigrate behavior that is merely unconventional. We too often associate that which is different with that which is negative, perpetuating the idea of difference as something dangerous.  I don’t consider myself all that different from anyone else, but over the last twenty years I’ve heard many remarks to the contrary, and I’ve leaned into all that is contrary, if only to jolt myself into new ways of thinking.

Having a place to document and notate what my daily life is like, and heightening it for some aspect of entertainment and enjoyment (my own admittedly and selfishly above anyone else’s) has resulted in a space that forces me to face things I might otherwise tamp down or pretend away. Confronting such darker facets of a personality is not something most people enjoy or often employ, and for that I may be a little eccentric. To do so in such public fashion begs the question why, and part of it has been for accountability. Not everyone likes that either.

“That’s what makes a real eccentric: they really mean it, and they’re willing to suffer for it. Their social function is to explode our preconceptions about what beauty is and what good taste means. Eccentrics raise the bar on the impossible… The true eccentric gives us more mystery, more wonder about being human, a new side to beauty, while the faux-eccentric gives us less of everything.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan

As we embark on the 20th year of this website, I’m reminded to embrace my eccentricity, such as it may be, while owning up to my failings and flaws, and using them to better my future actions. I’ve made many mistakes over two decades, and while I usually find a way to learn from them, I also have my moments of refusing to learn. The process continues, the work endures, the journey begins again… 

“They didn’t always get the life they wanted, but they knew how to dream… And maybe that’s the true definition of an eccentric – someone who can’t be slain by what lesser people might say.” ~ Andrew O’Hagan

His recent hair-cut made the biggest hair news of the years, as Shawn Mendes just lopped off his signature wavy locks for a swaggering short-do, and, like most things, it becomes him. Here he is showing off the new look, with some shirtless sun shots to remind everyone of what they’ve always loved about him. 

Mendes has appeared here strikingly in posts that celebrated his underwear, his shower, his shirtlessness, and his… everything. 

What wonder is a cup of tea. Seems like such a simple thing – water tinted by dried leaves – and yet in that process is all the worth of the world. I often forget how the mundane acts of a morning make for the sustenance of an entire day. Please, join me, and sit for a spell. I’ll put on some music so we don’t even have to worry about conversation.

While a snowstorm swirls outside, let’s keep comfort on the conversation couch, enjoying the calm and quiet and simplicity of a couch. Pull up a blanket if you’d like some extra warmth – ’tis the damn season after all. Sip slowly, hold the warmth in your palm. Tea should be a sensual experience. 

It has literally been four years since I was phased by illness, thanks to that stretch of masks and social distance. I was happy to keep that going for as long as possible, but a nasty little stomach bug final caught up with me, and as I write this I’m propped up in bed, just seconds away from my next all-liquid bowel movement. 

The bathroom is my church now, the toilet a porcelain throne and altar all-in-one. Unsure of which end may be evacuating first, I do a little dance, make a little twirl, and if my friends could see me now…

At such times, bound to bed and bathroom, my mind wanders and tends to put out just as much crap as my body (such as in this blog post quaintly entitled ‘Holding Onto My Penis For Dear Life’). Hence this stream-of-semi-consciousness

Andy has been dispatched to pick up some popsicles and Pedialyte, and I hastily assembled a pie mold of jello and popped it into the fridge before I went fully down. The last time I downed some Pedialyte I was attempting to stave off a hangover (and it worked!) but I’d rather be here than there any given day. 

As for the blog schedule here, this bug came at a most inopportune time, as my first burst of promotional packages hyping up this website’s 20th anniversary are set to be delivered this week. Thus, the universe has spoken, and I have been told to slow down and listen, pause and reflect. That’s my usual tone for Lent, so everything is as it should be. 

Today marks two months of winter done, and one more to go. Before we jump into elation, however, I have to remind myself that this last month is always the toughest, even if there will be days when spring is definitely and defiantly in the air. We can get snow up until May in these parts – and some of those storms are the snowiest and most frustrating – so we will not be sending up a celebratory flare just yet. Keep it in your back pocket for another month. We can, however, recap the following week, and put that into the books. Another week of winter down… only a few to go. Hang in there.

Valentine’s Day opened with a bit of cheesy music, the way this Hallmark holiday should be greeted. 

The day of love closed out with an acoustic set, because love is love is love.

A mundane mid-afternoon in downtown Albany.

Looking back out of sheer exhaustion.

Roses not for Valentine’s Day.

Round one of a new Madonna bracket was inspired by the Super Bowl. 

Date night with Andy at the Scarlet Knife.

First perambulation of the year. 

Coaxing a mystery orchid back into bloom. 

Sticks of winter fire against a February sky. 

The miraculous cotton candy grape.

Dazzlers of the Day included Ricky Martin, Harper Watters, Salma Hayek, Marcus Law, and Jo Koy.

The stems of the Coral Bark Japanese Maple give the tree its name – a bright coral red that is a highlight of the winter garden, when the world is starved for color and vibrancy. Lit by the sunlight of late afternoon, which grows happily longer by the day, these stems look brilliant against a blue sky. 

In the spring, the chartreuse leaves of this tree complete the show with a stunning shade that complements its bright bark. Holding that thought while the winter limps onward is a test of mental fortitude, but rather than force the matter, I’m going to appreciate the stems bare against this February sky. 

“This has been a day,” I said to myself, and anyone who would listen.

Three days into the work-week, I found myself saying it three days in a row.

“This has been a week,” became the new mantra.

And breaking the hump of the week has broken my spirit a little bit, which is precisely when I stopped in my steps and took stock of the moment. The day had turned sunny and warm – warmer than I can remember it being at any point this year – a very happy sign, a sign we are on the right track, and that little dose of sunlight carried me over the Wednesday hump. 

When out of energy or time, as I found myself when trying to write this post, the easy way out is to look back – and so it is that I dug out this old photo, and a few old posts that follow. Enjoy the pause, enjoy the shift in weather, enjoy the possibility of spring on the wind.

The narcissist. 

Making a rope of words, a beautiful rope of words.

Getting into David Beckham’s underwear.

Naked sprawl.

The room of the bed.

Ten years ago in Boston.

A 21st Century Renaissance Man.

A beautiful killer.

A cozy night with the twins, a decade ago.

Sooner or later I always get my man.

One of my favorite books.

A closing reprise for Valentine’s Day finds us all a little bit, or a lot, older. 

The years pass, and with them twenty-three Valentine’s Days so far… and counting. 

There is more in that than can ever be said, more in those years and days than can ever be expressed or conveyed – not in a blog or a book, not in a whispered bedroom conversation or an exquisitely-rendered work of art. How wonderful it should be so – how wonderful that love can not be confined or bound to those worldly things. How wonderful that love can be so elusive and slippery, and at the same time so sustaining and stalwart. How wonderful love can be…

The beating of my heart is a drum and it’s lost
And it’s looking for a rhythm like you
You can take the darkness from the pit of the night
And turn into a beacon burning endlessly bright
I’ve gotta follow it ’cause everything I know
Well, it’s nothing ’til I give it to you.

Ahh, St. Valentine’s Day. You cheesy-as-fuck fake-holiday that puts so many in a tizzy every year… with your thirty-dollar chocolate boxes, fifty-dollar roses and multiple-hundred-dollar bottles of cologne – the things you make us do to show our love to our beloved – it’s a feat that someone hasn’t turned Cupid’s bloody arrow back on you and all this nonsense. 

Andy and I long ago agreed that this ‘holiday’ wasn’t worth the hassle and craziness of a dinner out, and for several years early on in our relationship it always seemed to snow wildly on this date anyway. Once you get into the habit of staying in, it’s a hard habit to break, and for this day of love, why would we want to? 

But before this takes a bitter turn into an anti-V-Day crusade, I’m going to throw out a peace-offering to all those who love what this day has come to embody – all the cheesiness and over-the-top bombast of celebrating love, Love, LOVE! – because I remember what I thought it meant when I was a little kid handing out Valentines to my classmates. Let’s consult with the sages of Air Supply for what this day really means:

So much of my early life was informed by the power ballads of the 80’s, and that might have given me a slightly-skewed view of what love was – it felt wondrous and unattainable, dizzying and grand – and somehow I felt that songs like this only touched at the real glory of love. I couldn’t wait to try it out for myself, and I wanted all the drama and heightened emotion of a song like this. Little did I know how traumatic that could truly get, and how insanely silly, and how absolutely soul-enriching. 

And if that’s not dramatic enough for you, here’s Bonnie Tyler doing what Bonnie Tyler does best.

And so we have arrived at another Valentine’s Day – make love out of nothing at all, or make of it whatever you want. Happy V-Day to all the friends, and all the lovers! 

Mondays always carry the risk embodied by the featured photo here – there is danger lurking just ahead, no matter how unlikely it may be. And so we enter another week in winter, but this is one with a little bit of hope, a distant light of spring at the end of its proverbial tunnel. Let’s put the past week officially to bed with a recap, then charge ahead. 

Gearing up for our 20th anniversary of ALANILAGAN.com, I put the kettle on the burner. 

Meditation on a rose. 

Tale of a Target tweet.

The brightest of mocktails to stave off the winter. 

Don’t fuck with Madonna on my time.

A Troye Sivan appreciation post. 

This lion never sleeps.

The perfection of the imperfection. 

Tibet by way of Cambridge. 

Finding mindfulness in a dish rag.

The ducking truth.

Signs of hope first in the house. 

Jaxon Layne and Lolo.

Of football, jockstraps and Tom Brady.

Dazzlers of the Day included Nick Offerman and Brandi Carlile.

Never in my life have I needed to text the word ‘ducking’ to anyone, yet it’s all my phone thinks I want to write.

Duck all of this. And duck you too. 

Many years ago, I found myself trudging through a winter day in Cambridge, MA during a weekend in Boston by myself. Hurrying away from the bustle of Harvard Square and all the annoying college kids, I found myself on a quieter stretch of sidewalk, where I came upon a little store whose entrance was draped in strings of bells and colorful prayer flags fluttering in the wind. Seeking respite and peace, I ducked into the small space, where a man sat behind a little register, and two tiny rooms were filled with clothing and prayer bowls and Tibetan objects. 

Tibetan flute music played over the sound system, filling the store with the calming sounds you may hear below. A stick of incense emitted curls of smoke, which drifted into every corner of the store – not overbearing or heavy, like incense can sometimes be, but light and airy and cleansing. 

On that day, the man behind the counter taught me how to tie a scarf for maximum warmth, and I found this collection of Tibetan music. I play it every winter, around this time, when one needs some solace from the lengthy drudgery of the dark season. It instils a calm, partly from remembered quiet nights in the Boston condo, where I’d drift to sleep in the warm comfort of that brick fortress, partly from newer memories conjured from evenings of tea, with warm light and warm blankets on the conversation couch after a dinner by Andy. 

The cup was a gift from Suzie from her trip to Denmark this past summer. Andy uses it for coffee, but once in a while I’ll use it for tea, especially on winter evenings when something precious is appreciated. A Friday night in February feels like just such an occasion. 

Sometimes an entire story can be told in a single tweet.

Is it meta to do a blog post of a tweet, and then tweet out the blog post?

Or is it just FaceBook? 

Impressive Insta.

Tik Tok we don’t stop. 

“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.” ~ James Baldwin

For twenty years, this website has spilled my personal tea, while occasionally commenting on pop culture, LGBTQ+ culture, Madonna culture, and often nothing cultural at all. In preparing for its 20th anniversary (coming in March!) I’ve been going through some previous posts and found a few that I feel are worth sharing again. Pull up a chair, plop down on the couch, or go full tilt back on the bed and see if anything sounds interesting. I’m putting on a pot of tea and getting cozy and comfortable with this spot of ‘Tea for Two’ as we take a little trip down memory lane… 

Those links go back many years, and much of this website gets lost and buried in the passage of time. Here are a few more that have been posted more recently, because it’s usually more interesting to deal in the here and now than the past and previous.

Feeling my years – a way of bridging the past and present. 

Forty years into her game, Madonna is going on tour again.

How a year begins.

Burning it all down: the first ring of fire.

Burning it down again: the second ring.

Tea time with Dad.

Empty rooms of a young heart.

How to make the whole place shimmer.

The room for meditation and tea.

Bet I made you look.