These are difficult days.
I feel torn by wanting to disconnect completely, and feeling responsible for being somewhat aware of the basic downfall of our country.
Mostly I watch winter go by outside the front window, and in our living room all is quiet and calm. It feels selfish. It also feels like survival.
There is an infuriating isolation of watching what you predicted so tragically playing out.
And there is a loneliness in being right that diminishes any joy in it.
Every once in a while I’ll call my friend Chris for no substantial reason other than to tell him I made a killer breakfast or some other insignificant and largely mundane bit of information (often the call goes out after a therapy session when I’m in a rare mood to talk). Here’s how a recent check-in went:
ME: I just made the most amazing French toast, using egg nog! And it’s a life-changing experience.
CHRIS: I’m a father who has to drop off his kid at school.
ME: I know… why did you choose that life?
That was actually the end of the conversation.
At this time in our country’s history, remember to check on your friends – they’re hurting, and they’re people too.
Maybe releasing 1500 convicted criminals for their role in the January 6th insurrection wasn’t the best way to back the blue and support law and order, as some are already having run-ins with the law. At least one of these altercations resulted in the pardoned criminal being shot and killed. Criminals are gonna crime, right? It will be interesting to see what happens to those 1500 criminals who suddenly feel they’ve been vindicated for their violent actions – doesn’t feel like the deterrent it should be. Watch this space for more FAFO moments, because they’re coming. Maybe this should become a new category, like Tom Ford or Madonna or Male Models… The FAFO Files… perfect for this time in our country, and the next four years.
Winter has been having its way with me, and rather than fight that, or work on embracing it, I’ve lately been letting it simply flow. I feel my body slowing down a bit, and I’ve been taking time to simply watch winter as it goes by. A certain bit of slumber and hibernation often come into play during this season, and I lean into this sense of nesting; staying home becomes comfortable habit, one that I’ll have to break when spring comes again. For now, I go with my sedentary heart and mind, lounging and cuddling into our unmade bed.
I’ll sink into the couch in late afternoon, as the last rays of sunlight fall into the living room, and read a little, or go into my daily meditation. It is a place of peace, and a time of tranquility, somewhat at odds with the rest of the world, and that’s always been my way.
Even the prickliest among us, and I acknowledge I may one of them, deserve some love. We don’t always mean to attack, it’s just our armor, and some of us needed that armor to survive. If you were lucky enough not to need any, consider yourself fortunate. As for those who make others go through a little more to love them, I choose to think that sometimes it’s worth the effort. Love is always worth the effort.
My birthday gift to Mom this year is our somewhat-annual Broadway trip for Mother’s Day weekend, and now that she’s been given her gifts I can reveal that we will be seeing ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Maybe Happy Ending’. The former is a special treat, as we were lucky enough to see Audra McDonald in her original roles for ‘Master Class’ and ‘Ragtime’ on previous Broadway trips, and her take on the iconic mother-figure in ‘Gypsy’ sounds like another tour-de-force.
‘Maybe Happy Ending’ has been recommended by a number of theater people whose opinions I respect, and Darren Criss has yet to find a role he cannot full inhabit and make his own. While ‘Gypsy’ has been a stalwart classic for decades, ‘Maybe Happy Ending’ sounds like the most modern musical playing right now – an arresting juxtaposition for a weekend back on Broadway.
We’ve had several beautiful sunsets this past week, a gift in January when skies are typically gray and drab. With everything happening in the world right now, such a scene is worthy of gratitude, worthy of noting, worthy of a blog post without much else.
British racing driver and reigning European Sports Prototype Cup Champion Richard Morris nabs this Dazzler of the Day honor for feeling the need for speed and blowing away his competition. More impressively, he created the Racing Pride movement in order to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion in motorsport – which has its own inherent hurdles. Seeing someone stand up for themselves while insisting on a place that hasn’t historically celebrated diversity is always an inspiration. Check out his website here.
God knows I’ve been a prick in the past, and in many instances I’ve been largely sorry for it. Sometimes, however, it’s been a matter of survival – emotional survival – when being anything other than a prick would have resulted in someone walking all over my ass. Thankfully, those days are mostly done – both of me being a prick, and of needing to be a prick. When you get to a certain point in your life, you’re either ok with who you’ve become, or you work to be something better than you are today. Dangling somewhere between the two is where I find myself now, and it’s not a bad place to be.
Two candles burn on a winter’s night. One end at a time – as there are two we need not burn one at both ends. That’s the quickest way to burn a candle out, and make a mess in the process. Instead, two are better than one, and the glow of a duo makes quick work of the darkness, even on a Monday night, which is when this is being written.
My friend Ann once remarked that she loves Monday as it offers the chance to start again fresh. I love the sentiment, even as I find it difficult to love the Monday aspect. I went into the day with that mindset, however and for whatever reason the day wasn’t as bad as it usually is. The sun and slightly warmer temps no doubt helped contribute to the change in attitude, but maybe we have more of a say in any given day than we think we do. I’m going to try it again today; Tuesdays are always more trying than Mondays because we think they won’t be.
In the meantime, before the light of the day really kicks in, there is candlelight.
Every greenhouse keeps a store of sexual secrets inside its sweaty glass walls, at slight odds with the way flowers so flagrantly flaunt their sexual activities. For those attuned to every protuberance and emission of pollen, reproduction is around every corner, and in every crack and crevice of a greenhouse is the possibility of propagation.
A song about sex then, one that has come before but is given new life here.
Most flowering plants are monoecious, meaning they contains both female and male elements, so that they can procreate on their own. No need to get into the science of it all – that always waters down the sexual energy buzzing in the greenhouse air. Better to let the floral fantasies unwind, unfettered by fact and technical terms.
Amid an endless winter, a greenhouse provides greenery and life – pulsating, pumping, refusing-to-be-pushed-down life. You can almost feel the fluids flowing through the stems and leaves, filling the veins and throbbing through each unfurling flower.
Bulges of buds, swelling and bursting, some with color, some with fragrance, some with sturdy erect form, some drooping and hanging limply in extravagant splendor. There is sex around every corner, waiting to be grabbed, wanting to be bent over, needing to be opened and filled and hit like a truck…
Bumping against each other in the slightest humid breeze, or in clandestine meetings behind the veil of night, flowers will have their fun for survival.
Lacoste was the lucky company who snagged Taylor Zakhar Perez as their underwear model, and he fronts this weekly recap – hot enough to thaw out our frigid January space…
Last week began with a snowy, cozy night.
Nobody bothered to tell me the best and easier way to peel potatoes, so I still don’t know.
While outside a winter raged, this daily meditation was dappled in green light.
Is no one else bothered by the no-bake cookie?
This Tom knows how to keep me warm in the winter.
Sad & pretty, pretty & sad.
A message to the Fraternal Order of Police from the husband of a retired police officer.
A gratuitous Tom Holland shirtless post.
Now found is the fairest – the fairest of them all.
Taylor Zakhar Perez in his underwear for Lacoste.
At the close of a winter day, music by the Danish String Quartet.
Holy shit, can you believe this?!?
Scaring away the Sunday scaries.
Our Dazzlers of the Day were Michelle Obama and Mariann Edgar Budde.
In this age of misinformation, FaceBook or Meta or whatever the stupid fucks have named it now has decided to do away with fact-checkers, because who needs them?
Incidentally, it seems that Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly and allegedly a pedophile. Oh, and dead. This is what is being reported and I only wish there was a fact-checker to disprove it.
Thoughts and prayers.
(And no community notes here, sorry!)
¯\_(?)_/¯
Just to be fair, let’s give Zuck the last word, though I’m not sure how it supports his fact-free stance for FaceBook, as it seems that {consults notes} fact-checking might solve his issue?
Writing this blog post on a Saturday morning, scheduling it for a Sunday morning, and titling it ‘A Sunny Sunday Beginning’ takes a big old set of foolish balls, especially without having consulted any sort of weather app to even attempt something with any accuracy, but such recklessness is what makes writing this ridiculous blog so much fun sometimes. (As does a wildly unwieldy run-on sentence – it’s my blog and I’ll run on if I want to. I’ll even wrongfully end a sentence with a proposition if I want to. Twice.)
Playfulness rears its welcome head when the possibility of a sunny day approaches – and given the meteorologists lately, we just don’t know when that might be, so I’m taking this as that possibility. If it’s dark and dreary, so be it – no sense in worrying about that until it’s actually happening – and even then, what can we possibly change about the weather? What I can do is focus on the diagram presented here – one that dissects the fact that we have finished out the ten darkest days of the past year. It’s only getting lighter until summer, and maybe that’s the energy, and preposition, to end on.
