This is a boffo double recap of the past two weeks here, since I missed it last week, which means double the trouble or twice the nice depending on how you view my posts. With that said, and trusting you will indulge or ignore as you see fit, here’s how the last two weeks went down…
Nobody knows how to hustle as well as Shawn Gillie, and for all that relentless work ethic, as well as his hard-won notoriety in the Capital Region, he gets crowned as Dazzler of the Day, which I’m sure he’ll poke fun at, but which I intend with the most genuine of appreciation and earnest gratitude for all that he’s done for the community over the years. A man of many hats, and countless career endeavors (DJ, comedian, owner and founder of Gillie’s Getaways – see his website here), he dazzles with a hilarious wit, and has mastered the truly talented comedian’s hat-trick of turning his own personal heartaches into a story of survival, making everyone around him feel good even when he himself isn’t always feeling it. There’s a nobility in bringing that kind of joy to other people. There’s also something profoundly generous about him, which was apparent as I searched his FaceBook profile for photos – in almost all of them he was there with other people – a testament to his genuine attachment to and love of others. He can wisecrack his way out of it, but at the heart of everything he does is a desire to connect and make other people happy – and that’s more dazzling than just about anything else.
Amid the delights and distractions of summer, my daily meditation practice has taken a bit of a hiatus. In its place has been a daily dip in the pool, whenever the weather has afforded, and sometimes even when it hasn’t, because this summer has been a dud as far as sunny days go. As soon as the work day is done, I will wade into the pool, and float, making a few slow and gentle laps – back and forth – letting the mind drain of its worries from work, letting the tension leech out into the water and leaving it there when I finally emerge and dry off. Meditation comes in many forms and manners, and for summer this little ritual was enough to see me through, but I realize it’s not quite enough, and the worry and tension of life was slowly building and accumulating. And so the other day I went back to my traditional method of meditating, and already my mind feels a little clearer and less cluttered.
Lighting a stick of Palo Santo incense and picking up where I left off, I cradled the egg-like form of rose quartz in my palms and returned to the slow breathing – a long, slow intake of air through a slightly-constricted windpipe to aid in the drawn-out breath, and letting it out slowly and deliberately in the same way. It took a while to find the comfort again, but soon – sooner than my first awkward days of meditating – it all came back in calm and tranquil fashion.
Entering the final weeks of summer comes with its own worries and consternation, and this is the ideal time to get back into meditation. It’s seen me through difficult falls and winters, and as the tensions of the world build for all of us, this is the best way to tune out those things over which I have no control or say. These moments of meditation clear out the nagging thoughts that the mind will produce when taxed and burdened with anxiety. It creates a safe space, empty and pristine and expansive, pushing away bothersome worst-case scenarios that might otherwise start to take root. This calm centeredness short-circuits the instant tripping of annoyance or anger, giving me pause when the first instinct might be to snap back or attack. Inner-peace sounds so hokey, but it really does beget outer-peace.
I’m starting out with fifteen minutes a day, but that may quickly increase once I get back in the habit of things. It’s time.
It is likely the aging process as much as the monochromatic design schemes trending on social media designer accounts, but I have a long overdue apology to make to Beige and Cream, as I’ve maligned and bad-mouthed them for years, when all along they haven’t been nearly as offensive as Maroon or that ghastly Hunter Green. In fact, I’ve embraced the white and cream look for the attic loft, reveling in the calm and tranquility such a color design evokes – something I never really took into account in all the years I favored walls of lime green and curtains of fuchsia and pillows of teal and turquoise.
When I first moved into the Boston condo my Uncle rolled on a striking shade of scarlet, which I ragged off for a mottled effect that just read deep bordello red in all photographs. Juxtaposed against this in the adjoining kitchen was an equally strong shade of Kelly green. The bedroom was a deep but bright blue, while the bathroom would cycle through peach and lavender and pink over the years. In other words, I loved color – and I still do – but I’ve come around to appreciate a more nuanced and subtle use of it in my advancing years.
That goes for the garden as well. I never had an overall design in my mind, with the exception of a long row of carefully plotted out Thuja ‘Steeplechase’ infants that now form a living privacy wall thirty feet tall. The gardens themselves would be haphazardly filled with whatever perennials or shrubs caught my fancy through the years. Somehow, it all worked, and even when it didn’t, I managed to find joy and appreciation in everything I planted because I only planted that which I genuinely enjoyed. There’s a method in that sort of madness I suppose, but looking back at the cacophony of color that explodes and recedes at various weeks of the summer, party of me wishes I’d gone with a more cohesive design plan.
Where once I scoffed at monochromatic garden designs, I now find myself drawn to them, and I appreciate the unifying sense of connectedness and the ease it brings to the eyes. Maybe I’m getting boring in my older age, or maybe I’m simply refining my taste. Either way, I’m a tree and I can bend. The evolution continues. The growth doesn’t stop. And there’s always room for more.
(As for you, Hunter Green, you still suck and you always will.)
This one goes out to Jeff, though in all fairness Natalie Portman has always been a shoo-in for Dazzler of the Day if only for her performance in the brilliant ‘Black Swan’ – a film I absolutely adored. I’ve been a fan of Portman’s since her early and indelible turns in ‘The Professional’ and ‘Beautiful Girls’ all the way through to her kick-ass hilarity on ‘Saturday Night Live’. Through it all, she’s maintained a grace and elegance, which in the land of Hollywood is not always easy to do.
Late summer is at hand, as evidenced by the blooming of the seven-son flower tree. The buds to this form much earlier in the summer – usually peeking out at the end of June, and then slowly developing into these small and unspectacular blooms that are more fragrant than anything else, produced in enough abundance to appear as loose clouds.
Beloved by bees, who have been buzzing around en masse and eliciting all the sweet nectar they can, the perfume of this tree is its most intoxicating aspect, though the papery bark of its trunk, when allowed to develop fully, may give such intoxication a run for its money.
The birds have found a haven in this tree too, with cardinals using its branches as a perch between flights, and finches finding safety in its leaves whenever someone gets too close to their preferred cup plants. It’s a focal point of the poolside garden, and its charms mostly outweigh the peskiness of its falling blooms, which I’ll scoop out as much as possible before they sink to the bottom.
Never in my life did I think that Debbie Gibson’s 80’s classic ‘Lost In Your Eyes’ could be improved, but Joey McIntyre helps her turn it into the duet that it feels like it may have always meant to be. Following in the steps of Gibson, McIntyre earns his own Dazzler of the Day tribute here, with his own musical evolution and survival in a career that began as part of a boy band – not typically the most lasting of careers. That McIntyre has turned it into a life-long series of unexpected successes (see his hilarious acting turn in ‘The Heat’ for example) and his recent solo albums, and you have a list of reasons why he’s our Dazzler of the Day. (Also note his previous appearances as Hunk of the Day here, and Hunk of the Day there.
The mark of great music for me is whether you can listen to something for a long time, then come back to it and still feel the same emotional thrill while discovering new elements, new sounds, new nuances that escaped you on the first few listens. A good album grows and evolves that way, revealing itself slowly over time, and resonating in differing stages of development.
But I can see us lost in the memory
August slipped away into a moment in time
‘Cause it was never mine
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets
August sipped away like a bottle of wine
‘Cause you were never mine
For all the awfulness of 2020, the melancholy musical journey that Swift framed and guided us through was an integral part of how I managed to survive and at times thrive when the world around us fell to pieces. She provided a contemplative background for processing the dramatic shift in how we lived our lives, and the ways we were all changing. Change isn’t easy for most people – looking back the entire population experienced the greatest changes most of us had ever experienced as far as socialization and day-to-day life went.
Your back beneath the sun
Wishin’ I could write my name on it
Will you call when you’re back at school?
I remember thinkin’ I had you
But I can see us lost in the memory
August slipped away into a moment in time
‘Cause it was never mine
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets
August sipped away like a bottle of wine
‘Cause you were never mine
In so many ways, both wondrous and wicked, that year feels like a dream and a nightmare. How did we manage to make it through? And how did it keep twisting and turning as it careened into 2021 without a drastic return to what we all thought would be something better? It’s too soon to tell – we’re still in the muck of it and we don’t seem to be learning the lessons we are too stubborn or stupid to try to learn. I fear for all of us.
Back when we were still changin’ for the better
Wanting was enough
For me, it was enough
To live for the hope of it all
Cancel plans just in case you’d call
And say, “Meet me behind the mall”
So much for summer love and saying “us”
‘Cause you weren’t mine to lose
You weren’t mine to lose, no
August is one of the trickiest months of summer. September has already given up the ghost. July is prime. And June… ahh… June… June is nearly perfect. But August, so full of herself one moment, so timid and unsure the next – she’s fickle and fun and infuriating. Maybe not the most happy or peaceful months in which to be born, another illustration of how little say we actually have in the world.
But I can see us lost in the memory
August slipped away into a moment in time
‘Cause it was never mine
And I can see us twisted in bedsheets
August sipped away like a bottle of wine
‘Cause you were never mine
‘Cause you were never mine, never mine
August holds the heart in tremulous and deceptively-delicate hands, rough and wizened from digging in the earth as some Virgos are wont to do, yet tender and easily cut. August sunsets bleed behind shadowy oak trees that will hang onto their leaves long after they have browned and expired. August lends the world both flowers and seeds, the excitement of the hunt and the plight of the hunted. She toys and teases, carouses and caresses, and when you think she has finished with you she starts all over again, setting up a second act of summer that sifts into September.
But do you remember?
Remember when I pulled up and said, “Get in the car”
And then canceled my plans just in case you’d call?
Back when I was livin’ for the hope of it all, for the hope of it all
“Meet me behind the mall”
Remember when I pulled up and said, “Get in the car”
And then canceled my plans just in case you’d call?
Back when I was livin’ for the hope of it all
The cool hues of today’s earlier post have turned, and the purple of this butterfly bush has a heavy dose of red in it, lending it a hotter feel, and backed by the rich lemon shades of the cup plant flowers in the background.
The strangeness of this summer is encapsulated in the odd circumstance that I’ve noticed of late: the butterflies and bees have been more drawn to the cup plants and lavender all around the butterfly bush, and for some reason have been avoiding this striking namesake. No idea why, other than 2021…
It took a Debbie Gibson mix-tape playlist that entranced me on Sirius XM radio while coming back from Boston this week that reminded me of the brilliance that Gibson has been creating since the 1980’s. She recently dropped her first album of brand new material in twenty years -‘The Body Remembers’ – and the cuts I’ve heard thus far are as compelling as those she was making in our youth. (Absolutely in love with ‘Strings’!) Back then, it was ‘Lost in Your Eyes’ that held my rapt attention, cemented by the dance abandon of ‘Electric Youth’ – and her parade of pop hits informed my childhood more than I realized. More compelling was watching her artistry mature and evolve, all while somehow retaining an integrity and talent that so many others squandered in the industry. For that alone, she earns this Dazzler of the Day honor. Hearing her new album reminds me that while youth still contains its own electricity, maturity and grace resound and resonate more profoundly these days. Check out Debbie Gibson’s official website here for links to all the new music and upcoming performance dates.
Shades of indigo and lavender and violet are soothing to the eyes, especially when they pop up in the middle of a hot summer day. Those have been in short supply, but these purple-hued blooms, seen after one of the many rainy days we’ve had, are no less lovely without the sun. In fact, on overcast days their subtle beauty shines in a different, gentle manner.
The pictures of delphiniums seen here were taken at the local garden center. I’ve never quite had the nerve to attempt growing them in my own garden – Lee Bailey warned me of their finicky ways, and difficult cultivation to produce a pretty plant that worked well in the landscape – and I always listen to Lee Bailey.
Rather that tempt further failures, I have chosen to admire them from a distance – the safe vantage point of spectator versus participant. It’s more comfortable here – safer too. Less risk of loss. Less risk of heartbreak. But no less beautiful.
On a recent rainy morning, I went through some photos on the phone and found this lovely pair of Helianthus – a ray of proverbial sunlight on the umpteenth rainy day this summer. (Though in reality we are way beyond the teens at this point.) This plant is either an ancestor of a perennial sunflower I’d planted when we first moved in, or a gift from the visiting birds. Either way, I’m glad it’s appeared, and I’ll do my best to cultivate it more properly next year. Any plant that comes into bloom at such a late stage is a boon to the garden and should be treated as the precious commodity it is.
Helianthus appreciate a good dose of water throughout their extensive growing season, rewarding with these August blooms at a time when most plants have given up for the season and are just beginning to slow down for their long slumber. This particular sunflower has grown up in the shadow of an enormous clump of cup plants, and I’d like to give it a space of its own. I’ll mark it and hope to remember it next spring. On certain rainy August mornings, this is the only sunshine to be found.
