It’s been a while since we’ve had a torrid post of naked male celebrities or nude male models, so before anyone thinks this site has gone all PG on your ass, here’s a post to get the tongues wagging again. Several guys who have already been featured here are back in the shirtless game, starting with Dan Osborne, who models underwear like it’s going out of style. Given that he looks just as fine with no underwear on at all, that may be a good thing.
Our neighbor’s backyard looked down over a large rolling hill that led into what was called the ‘Four Diamonds’ – a set of four baseball fields sprawled over a broad plane of grass just above McNulty Elementary School. It was the perfect place for the neighborhood kids to gather on summer afternoons and evenings, usually after dinner, because it was a large property with lots of opportunities for hide and seek. They had a gym set, several gardens, and the entire expanse of green that was bordered by a forest.
The older kids would horse around, supposedly keeping an eye on the younger ones. I was somewhere in the middle, happy to disappear in the pack for a while. There were so many kids around that it was one big party, with groups breaking off into subsets, when one could flit from friendship circle to friendship circle like a butterfly or bee and no one was offended or bothered. It made it easy to disappear.
There were swaths of gooseneck loosestrife, with their white flower spikes gracefully curving with bowed heads, a patch of herbs by the brick garage, dominated by chives and curly-leaved parsley, and a grand mound of bridal wreath spirea on the corner of the property, right before it turned into field. The spirea was so immense and full, it created a hiding spot haven: its arching branches went up and flopped over, forming a hollow tunnel that a small child could hide within. There was magic in that for a plant-lover like myself, and I confess I was more interested in the gardens and what they held than any social-mixing with the kids in the neighborhood. Beside the loosestrife was another semi-invasive species, lily of the valley, which spread its sweet scent along a shaded portion of the house, running to a formal stone step-entrance to the back door. In the side yard, two trees stood, signifiers of spring and summer: a pussy willow and a pear. The former would magically drape itself in gray cat paws every spring, while the latter would offer a few hard pears later in the year that were never quite ripe enough to be sweet. We climbed those trees as kids, dangling our feet high in the air and calling out to one another whatever kids say at such moments. I liked the vantage point and the view, taking in the Mohawk Valley from behind a curtain of white pear blossoms.
The other kids seemed largely unaware of the treasure-trove of horticultural finds, just as they passed by the staghorn fern inside or the majestic ponytail palm that filled a window in the back without so much as a pause to admire their beauty.
Despite my love of plants, I wasn’t immune to a little adventure and fun, so I joined the others in their escapades. We’d play loosely organized ball games, races, hide and seek, and all sorts of silly things that we’d make-up on the spur of the moment. There was a lot of running and playing on the gym set – swinging and pulling ourselves across the wooden bars with our hands, hanging there as long as we could without letting go. I was doing just that, dangling in the air and looking out over the fields that led all the way to the river when an older kid came up behind me and pulled my pants down. It was so sudden and unexpected, I just froze there, not knowing what to do. It wouldn’t have mattered so much if I hadn’t gone commando that day. I was in such a rush to get out of the house I had pulled on a pair of loose shorts without bothering to put on any underwear. Even as a kid, I liked to be free.
Mortification and exhilaration burned red across my face as my ass hung mid-air, framed by a jungle gym and backed by the verdant valley of the Mohawk River. No one was in front of me while my cock rocked out; a full-frontal tease from the very beginning. I dropped and quickly pulled my shorts up. Laughing, the kid who did it came up to me and apologized, saying he had no idea I didn’t have underwear on. I laughed it off too. I could do that then. Maybe the exhibitionist side of me was born at that moment. I’d been naked for the world to see and a bolt of God’s lightning hadn’t struck me down. No shame of original sin stained my bare bottom, and everything up front was intact and doing just fine. Not that any of this played upon my mind as I adjusted my shorts and went on to the next game.
It was the summer of ‘Top Gun’ and ‘Danger Zone’ was blasting over every radio.
As the light in the sky slowly faded and we approached the 8 PM bewitching hour (our curfew), the June bugs would arrive, swarming the trees and street lamps. They looked as I imagine the locusts would look in biblical times, and they always freaked me out, but as long as they stayed high in the sky it was all right. Our games slowed, our shouts softened, and the hush of the day’™s end lent those last moments a certain reverence. We looked down over the field, and the bank of wooded land that stretched out to the right of it. Later in the night, teenagers would gather in a little clearing hidden by a bend in the forest, smoking and drinking beer. Teenyboppers, we called them derisively. Someone even created a little song for them:
Teenyboppers, oooh, teenyboppers (neer, neer)
Teenyboppers, showing off their rear (neer, neer)
That was it. (I played no part in writing it, thank you.) But it was catchy enough and I sang along. Apparently there were whispers that the teenagers would come out and moon those who spied on them, as if it was the most scandalous thing that could ever happen in Amsterdam. And maybe, in those days, it was. It would be years before a classmate shot himself, years before the tribute pages of dead kids would show up in our yearbooks. Our dangers were mostly imagined then, and how we thrilled at them.
In the daylight, we’d walk down into the field where the teenyboppers had gathered. Hidden by the foliage at the edge of the woods, we’d whip out our dicks and pee, giddy at the freedom of that insignificant act of rebellion. We would inspect the little pit of what had been a fire, the charred wood and ashes in shades of gray and black. Crumpled beer cans and bottles filled with cigarette butts littered the space. Once, we found a beer ball – a magnificent orb of dark amber plastic whose opening smelled vaguely of skunk. We could scare ourselves into feeling like we were being watched, as though the teenyboppers might suddenly appear and attack us. At such times we’d let out a warning cry that they were coming, then bolt out of the wooded area, running as fast and as far from the danger-zone as possible.
It’s always better when the danger is only in your head. That’s what summer is, at least for the lucky kids: controlled excitement and adventure within the safe confines of neighborhood backyards.
Truth be told, I’m not a big fan of this penstemon plant that I put into the perennial bed last year. I was much more looking forward to the coreopsis that was next to it, but of course that one didn’t make it through the winter, and so we are left with this straggly thing that looks better in photos than it does in real life. If you examine it closely, you can see its messy nature: the faded flowers stick to the same stem on which new blooms are borne, lending it an unkempt feel. I’m a notorious Virgo, and that’s extremely troublesome to me.
Less troublesome, and the reason why I haven’t excised it to the hidden side yard yet, is the coloring. It’s a gorgeous hue somewhere between fuchsia and purple, and it gets set off brilliantly by a backing of lady ferns currently in their early-season chartreuse shading. That combination alone sets off fireworks, and saved this little penstemon for the moment.
(Word of warning: I’m not promising anything when the flowers fade for good, so enjoy this moment while it lasts.)
All I wanted was some peach ice cream. Chasing after a childhood memory that probably never even happened, Suzie and I were with Chris on a hot summer day in Central Park. We’d scoured a nearby Whole Foods Market for a carton of peach ice cream, finding nothing but frozen yogurt which is most definitely NOT an acceptable substitute for ice cream. Chris looked quickly online and said there was talk of peach ice cream in the Chinatown area, but it was too hot to move from our rock.
We sat on a large piece of native stone, something that had been here before the city went up all around it, something that would likely remain after it fell. The day was sweltering, but in the shade of a few plane trees and the company of a couple of close friends it was all bearable. It might have even been beautiful. If only we’d found the peach ice cream.
The original memory, sketchy and problematic as it may be, was of a restaurant in New York City – something like Serendipity. We couldn’t even have been teenagers yet, as Suzie and I were traveling with our Moms. We had been in town for a couple of plays – ‘Lost in Yonkers’ and ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ – and were finding a brief respite from the pounding heat of a New York sidewalk in the middle of the day. We had our lunch while whimsical lamp fixtures fascinated from the ceiling. When it came time for dessert I played it safe and ordered a hot fudge sundae or something similarly plain. Suzie ordered a bowl of peach ice cream. It was the prettiest, most luscious-looking dish. Peaches dotted the creamy mound of ice, wonderfully crunchy in frozen form in the spoonful that Suzie offered me. A perfect treat for a hot day. It was a summer memory made instantly, one that I have held onto and probably morphed into some more than it ever was, especially seeing as how Suzie doesn’t even recall it happening. But I know it did. The details may have been different, but that bowl of peach ice cream was real. To this day, it symbolizes childhood, summer and New York City all at once.
And so we found ourselves, years later, sitting on that Central Park rock and dreamily contemplating an elusive bowl of peach ice cream, making a new summer memory while simply passing a hot, sunny day.
Andy’s Dad passed away one year ago today, and the weather of this afternoon seems to match the mood: ambivalent, cloudy, peaks of sunshine, and dramatic winds. Dark patches of sky threatened to cry down upon us, but for the most part remained peaceful. The pounding thunder of last night has been replaced by something calmer.
In the same way that his Mom’s passing is now a part of the early holiday season, his Dad has become part of our early summer remembrances – not only because of Father’s Day, but because his birthday falls right now as well. It is a bittersweet time of the year, one that completes a poetic full-circle of life.
It’s still too soon for his memory to be much more than sad, but as the years pass I hope we can move to happier reminiscences, and that June will be a time to celebrate and honor everything he did as a father. For now, we mostly mourn, and miss the guy who brought his family such fun and amusement.
More than roses or clematis, the flowering of the Chinese dogwood tree is my official marking of the arrival of summer. Blooming much later than the American variety, and after their own handsome foliage has filled out in bright green form, this is the perfect personification of the purest summer day, with their creamy white bracts (the actual flower is insignificantly hidden in the middle of those lovely bracts). They last a little longer than typical flower petals do too (think of how long those red poinsettia ‘blooms’ last – same principle, same architectural structure).
The branches also make great cut flowers, so if you need to do any pruning, now is the ideal time. A single stem can make an entire bouquet of blooms that seems to float like a collection of butterflies. I’ve had guests over solely for the purpose of showing off one of these bouquets. (Don’t tell them that though.) For that reason, the blooming of the dogwoods has always recalled happy gatherings of friends near and far, the same sort of giddy remembrance I get when thinking of summer parties and pool days. A joyous thing indeed.
When there are rainy summer days, or mosquito-infested summer nights, I retreat to the basement, where there’s a new sofa, a television that always has lots of trash playing, and a pristine desk for prime project development. As we get ready for our summer hiatus, this is where I’ll be working on some new things, and when we return in the fall this site will (hopefully) reap the fruits of that labor. As much as I may love summer, there are always those moments when one needs a respite from all the heat and haze. The cool below-ground calm of the cellar provides just such an oasis.
These little pockets of space are important during the summer months, and I find myself seeking them out when I’m in Boston or New York. It’s not just the place itself either, it’s the frame of mind. Summer, the season that’s supposed to be such an escape, has its confines as well.
Whether it’s a stifling heat-wave or a drought that devours the garden, there are stretches when relief is not at hand. A line of summer storms that hits every weekend is equally mentally debilitating, when the world refuses to grant us a break. Summer cuts both ways.
I’ll put on ‘Gosford Park’ or a black-and-white oldie like ‘The Women’ – each lends comfort to a gray or sickly-hot day in their own way – and I’ll languidly lounge in some ridiculous robe and a pair of underwear. If I had children (God forbid) this would be the state in which they’d be mortified to show their father off to their friends. Thankfully, we remain happily unburdened by children, so there’s no danger posed to anyone other than a wayward Jehovah’s Witness that dares to ring our bell.
Moments of respite and underground escapes – these cool jewels keep my mind mentally collected in a season hellbent on making us all loopy. Not that I’d have it any other way; the shackles of winter leave scars that run deeper than summer’s brief lapses in loveliness.
I’d been reading raves about Dominique Ropion’s ‘Cologne Indelebile’ and its lasting power, which for a neroli-based scent is a striking aspect, worthy of note. It announces its name definitively, without asking or requesting, content to state itself without any other option for dispute. Yet it does so in the most elegant and refined manner, not flopping excessively about with its sweetness, or departing after one whiff. Its neroli notes are reminiscent of any number of similarly-themed scents, but this has a surprisingly long life on my skin (consider it the powerhouse version of Tom Ford’s Neroli Portofino, with a more masculine slant).
Don’t ask me why I paired the packaging with a peony for these photos, other than the simple fact that I loved the pink juxtaposed beside the fiery orange. I suppose in certain peonies there is a hint of tea and spice, just as there is the slightest hint of such elements in the Cologne Indelebile, so perhaps they are bound together in ways not initially or outwardly detectable after all. Everything happens for a reason. There are no accidents.
For the summer of 2018, this is an auspicious beginning, and a signature scent that recalls summers past with anticipation and citrus vibrations of what’s yet to come. A nod to the before and after.
Two words that hold power and meaning, no matter how awful.
Two words that, when put together, are going to cause a lot of trouble.
Two words that Robert DeNiro said on last night’s Tony Awards:
Fuck Trump.
And I couldn’t agree more.
It’s time.
It’s time to resist everything to do with Donald Trump.
It’s time to stop all that he’s trying to do. There are no more passes to be given. There are no more opportunities to meet him halfway. He has burned all those bridges, and now he’s burning our standing in the world.
He has endangered our citizens, our country, and our earth with his utter ineptitude at being President. It wasn’t enough that he lost the popular vote, that he gleefully welcomed intrusion by Russia in the election, in the e-mails, in all the things we don’t even know about yet, he then had to take the vaunted office of President – an office once respected and honored the entire world over – and burn it to the ground. He’s destroying our economy and bankrupting America like he’s done with all his companies. Our deficit is the largest it has ever been. He’s stoking division and inciting hatred among our people. He is morally corrupt, mean, petty, and abusive.
What’s worse is that we have let it happen.
And we continue to let it happen.
It should have been stopped in the Republican primaries.
It should have been stopped in the general election.
It should have been stopped every day he has occupied that office.
But it hasn’t been.
The only way to do that is to resist everything Trump. The media needs to stop writing him free passes. The GOP needs to stop being silently complicit in what he has done and stop their support. The Democrats need to stop playing the traditional political game and realize he will never play fair. The American people need to stop excusing and normalizing what he has done.
We all must stop him at every turn.
It’s the only way.
This is how you deal with a dictator.
And so I say, “Fuck you, Donald Trump.”
Fuck you for all the evil you have unleashed in our country and in the world.
Fuck you for all the hate you have condoned, promoted and released.
Fuck you for all your lies, your hypocrisy, your racism, your intolerance, and your ignorance.
Fuck you for defiling the office of the President and making posts like this necessary.
Joe’s Pub at The Public, June 9, 2018 – 9:30 PM
The slightly restless sonic soundscape of ‘Ecotopia’ signals that this won’t be the usual night of standards by a typical Broadway chanteuse, but Betty Buckley has always been much more than that. Never content to tread the same old boards, she tries death-defying vocal aerobics and challenging interpretations of songs she loves, story songs in which she believes. If you’re brave enough to come along for the ride, the rewards are rich and ample. She’s also got a backing band that does justice to her wide-ranging selections, as evidenced in that opening piece of evocative, contemplative and deliciously moody music. The only way to find hope is to go through some dark places, and dark places have always inspired some of the best songs.
She kicks things off with the ambivalent ‘Any Major Dude Will Tell You’ in which she struts the stage in her high-heeled black boots and enough swagger to knock out any Scoundrel-in-Chief; clearly, Ms. Buckley came to slay, and we came to swoon. More than just telling a story with music, Buckley absolutely inhabits her songs, evidenced by moments when she was clearly moved – and we are moved in return.She has mastered the art of connecting to an audience on an emotional level and at such times, as in the transcendent and exquisite ‘Chanson’, she manages to turn Joe’s Pub into a church, stilling the bustle and holding the room absolutely rapt at this wonder of an artistic vessel. (A simple ‘Mmm-hmm’ near the beginning of Lisa Loeb’s gorgeous ‘Falling in Love’, a throwaway sigh that might be barely noticeable if sung by anyone else, is given a world of emotion in Buckley’s heartbreaking reading.) Complemented by a band that seems to have an innate understanding of Ms. Buckley’s wide-ranging musical skills and styling, the evening is anchored by the brilliant Christian Jacob, whose intuitive arrangements and piano work prove a marvelous extension of Buckley’s own musical instincts.
The hymn-like ‘Hope’ by Jason Robert Brown is the centerpiece and elegiac heart of the show, an antidote to our ever-dimming world, even as it struggles with its primal ambition: how does one find hope in such a world?
‘I come to sing a song about hope
I’m not inspired much right now
But even so
I came out here to sing a song
So here I go
I guess I think that if I tinker long enough
One might appear
And look it’s here
One verse is done, the work’s begun’
In a year in which so many have been left hopeless, the mere act of trying, of getting up and getting dressed is its own act of rebellion and resistance, its own form of fighting back. When one looks back upon Buckley’s astounding career, and the many curves and unlikely roads it has taken, it is clear she knows of what she sings. When she pauses, and Mr. Jacob’s piano work carries Mr. Brown’s sweet sounds and melancholy lyrics across the night, it is a moment of delicate bittersweet joy. This is the Artist, come to grieve, and come to heal. She didn’t even need to explain; every person in that room understood.
Now more than ever, Buckley’s message that no one is better, or, more importantly, less than anyone else informs her shows in ways that belie the multiple standing ovations she gets throughout the evening. That may be the essence of the ‘Hope album: honoring the experience of everybody. It’s there in the characters she brings to life, and the way her own life experience in turn informs her performance. It is, in essence, the very purpose of art. To resonate. To reveal. To connect.
That kind of connection begins with the close-knit group of musicans she has assembled. They are tightly in tune with her rollicking journey here, and each gets a little spotlight at some point in the evening. The most glorious moments, however, may be when everyone is working together in rockers like ‘Don’t Take Me Alive’, when all cylinders are firing away with locomotive-like might. It as at such times that the driving drums of Dan Rieser, the slinky fluid bass of Tony Marino, and the rapturous rock-star licks of guitarist Oz Noy coalesce with Jacob’s piano genius, finally getting their chance to let go as in the rousing ‘I Feel Lucky’. A difficult but wondrously-executed take on Paul Simon’s ‘Quiet’ demonstrates the trust within this group of musicians, with Buckley’s voice soaring over the meditative lyrics.
A touching memory of Gilda Radner sets up a moving version of ‘Prisoner in Disguise’ and she brings the audience through the heartbreak and loss with a brittle bit of beauty and a delicate balm of soothing vocals. Maybe that’s where we will find the hope that sometimes feels so elusive these days: in the way we share with each other, in the same way Buckley has shared her voice and her talent over the years.
Rather than keep it dangling there, however, she offers a coda of release and relief, and a wink at what happiness might just yet come. ‘Young At Heart’ was the requisite encore, and a neat nod to where she is heading. As she prepares to embark on a much-anticipated U.S. tour of ‘Hello, Dolly!’ Ms. Buckley ends on a positive and nostalgic note, a blissful ending to an evening of musical enchantment.When it dawns on her that she won’t be playing Joe’s Pub for a while, she pauses wistfully in the realization, and some of us felt the slightest twinge of sadness that there won’t be a fall show this year. But sometimes it is best to share such wonderful talent with others, to spread the message of hope that she so expertly managed to capture, if just for a night, with the sheer happy exuberance of doing what she loves and doing it so well. It is only fair for her to take that joy on the road, across a nation that needs it like never before.
Besides, a meadowlark sings best when she is free.
Every year it happens in the same way: as soon as the buds come out, I wonder why I originally envisioned them to be so much bigger than they appeared. It’s only with the lilacs, which makes it initially the most disappointing. My mind recalls the bodacious bouquets of my childhood, when the blooms filled and spilled out of their vases to perfume whatever lucky room got to show them off.
As is sometimes the case, I jump the gun in judgment and in disappointment. I always forget how much those buds fill out once they burst into bloom, the way a bunch of balloons becomes something glorious from a paltry pile of rubber.
With these Korean lilacs – smaller of stature but just as potent of scent – the buds are even smaller, but manage to blossom into something full and eye-catching. But don’t take my prose for it, see for yourself.
Of course, these are slightly airier than their American counterparts, which truly fill out into a solid pom-pom of bloom. I like the delicate display here, however, especially at a time of the year when everything is shouting to be noticed.
These flowers only shout with their perfume, and it’s a delicious noise at that.
It is less sharp than the American version, and not so instantly detectable. It’s sweeter in other ways too, particularly when it deigns to re-bloom nearer the fall – something that is an occasional surprise at a time of the year when it’s most needed.
The form and structure of these shrubs are more manageable and neat than the usual lilacs we have here, and they are ferociously resistant to the mildew that creeps into the American hybrids, making them quite useful in the landscape.
Though they are just finishing up, they’ve lasted for a decent time. Some years their show is hastened by hot weather. There are benefits to when the spring cools down and pauses.
SHE HEARD THAT INTO EVERY LIFE A LITTLE OF IT MUST FALL,
SO SHE SPENDS HER EVENINGS PRAYING
FOR A LITTLE OF THAT SOUTHERN RAIN.
~ COWBOY JUNKIES, ‘OUTHERN RAIN’
The planning was just as important as the operation itself, and if we were going to pull it all off we’d need precision. Such things required tact and foresight, reservations and schedules ~ the very things I found most appealing to a proper Virgo. In the late spring of 1992, we made our way to Boston to implement the planning stage of a European visit that would find us attending a two-part New York/Finland wedding of a family friend, while bringing Suzie back from Denmark after her year abroad had come to an end. We had survived, friendship-wise, through a steady stream of letters sent back and forth over the Atlantic ocean. Not that I had ever doubted our friendship or placemark in each other’s life ~ we were family and never to be torn apart ~ but a year, and half a world away, can change things no matter how much you hope it won’t, especially when you’re only sixteen years old. But before we made it to that reunion we needed to plan…
We arrived, in a bit of rain as I recall, at the home of Suzie’s relative Susan who would be joining us for the expedition. She was hosting the dinner in which we would begin to hatch the plan for our trip. There was another event that coincided with and gave additional impetus for the trip: a wedding in Finland for one of the first Ko exchange students. Now, part of our contingent for the trip was assembling: my Mom, Suzie’s Mom (in Boston while she was taking a course to become a Montessori school teacher), and Susan.
We sat at the table eating a delicious and simple tortellini plate while a Cowboy Junkies album played in the background. Plans were made, dates were plotted, and cities were designated. It was my kind of meal: good food and future planning. Surrounded by adults, part of me still wished Suzie was there, hanging onto our childhoods because what boy or girl can do such a thing alone, but part of me was giddy at being at the adult table. That part of me had never been able to wait to grow up. Now that I was entering adulthood, I was simultaneously enchanted and scared. Even so, I couldn’t wait. I wanted culture and worldly experience. I wanted to see what was beyond the small confines of Amsterdam, New York and the Mohawk Valley. Mostly, I wanted to see my friend again, see how we had changed, see where we might still go.
It had not been an easy year away for Suzie. I feared her sorrow and pain perhaps more than I feared my own. My hurts were petty and insignificant when placed beside hers, and what she had gone through terrified me. Losing her Dad so early and unexpectedly, then going to Denmark and being without her own family a few months afterward ~ I couldn’t get my head around how she could do that, but I remember talking to her about it, and how she said it might be the best thing after everything that had happened. She couldn’t know her new host father would die so soon after her arrival, and it must have seemed like she couldn’t escape death or shadow for that whole year.
In my usual knack for timing, my own brushes with suicide didn’t help matters, and in retrospect they feel foolish and selfish. I couldn’t see that then, and when Suzie called me around Christmas that year, when I was in a truly despondent state and had written as much to her, I pretended everything was ok when it really wasn’t. She jolted me into saving myself, at least for the moment.
A RIVER TO THE SOUTH
TO WASH AWAY ALL SINS.
A COLLEGE TO THE EAST OF US
TO LEARN WHERE SIN BEGINS.
A GRAVEYARD TO THE WEST OF IT ALL
WHICH I MAY BE SOON BE LYING IN.
~ COWBOY JUNKIES, ‘OREGON HILL’
Her name was in the Cowboy Junkies song still playing as dinner finished. It was an early-spring night. Winter had only just departed, but warmth was in the Boston breeze that accompanied some of the rain. We talked of castles and lakes, of a two-part wedding in New York and Finland that would unite two people, two countries and two cultures, and all the logistics of how it would work. For a quick moment, I felt a slight trepidation in going. Two moody teenagers don’t necessarily make for an easy way of getting along, even if we’d always felt like brother and sister, even if we were standing within the glow of a gorgeous wedding on a lake in Finland.
Outside, the rain slowed. At the table a round of coffee filled the space with the closing scent of a grown-up dinner party, of which I was now, ready or not, a part. I asked for the name of the CD that was playing and made a mental note of it for later. Memories were made from scents and music, as much as from love. A trip is only as good as its planning stages, and as we finalized our European plan, including a few stops in Russia, and a cast of characters whom I would quickly come to adore, I knew it was going to be good. Better than good; this would be life-changing.
LORD, YOU PLAY A HARD GAME, YOU KNOW WE FOLLOW EVERY RULE.
THEN YOU TAKE THE ONE THING WE THOUGHT WE’D NEVER LOSE.
ALL I ASK IS IF SHE’S WITH YOU, PLEASE KEEP HER WARM AND SAFE
AND IF IT’S IN YOUR POWER PLEASE PURGE THE MEMORY OF THIS PLACE.
THIS LIFE HOLDS IT SECRETS LIKE A SEASHELL HOLDS THE SEA,
SOFT AND DISTANT, CALLING LIKE A FADING MEMORY.
THIS LIFE HAS ITS VICTORIES BUT ITS DEFEATS TEAR SO VICIOUSLY.
THIS LIFE HOLDS ITS SECRETS LIKE THE SEA.
~ COWBOY JUNKIES ‘THIS STREET, THAT MAN, THIS LIFE’
After that dinner, when we’d gotten back to upstate New York, I found the Cowboy Junkies album ‘Black-Eyed Man’ and set it spinning on repeat as spring ripened into summer and the wait until our trip left me in a happy state of anticipation. I went to bed with the ethereal voice of Margo Timmins sounding over my prayers, and she woke me as the sun streamed into my childhood bedroom. The promise of summer tapped like the hawthorne branch against the window. There was other music that would come to personify that summer ~ ‘This Used To Be My Playground‘ for wonderful instance ~ but the Cowboy Junkies album would be the one that resonated the most. A collection of story songs that touched on the forlorn and the forgotten, it came with a lining of love ~ ambivalent love, but love nonetheless. It was a musical map of emotions, perfect for two haunted teenagers about to abandon their youth.
There had been many times when I wished Suzie had been with me during the year she was in Denmark. On New Year’s Day, faced with a house of extended family, I laid in bed dreading the walk downstairs and the social interactions that would be required. I didn’t have a name or explanation for such social anxiety at the time, and in the past all those holiday stresses were eased because Suzie was there. As soon as dinner was done I retreated upstairs and wrote her a letter. It was a habit I’d continued religiously because it was my only outlet during the maelstrom of a sixteen-year-old’s junior year of high school. As we finished the first part of the wedding in New York, and our plane flew us into Finland, I wondered whether I had revealed too much. It’s easy to pour your heart out to someone when they’re a world away. In a rare moment of unguarded non-planning, I hadn’t thought out how I might feel that someone knew everything I shared with the quiet non-response and non-judgment of paper and stamps, and that someone was returning to the States armed with all my secrets.
There was one quick moment of awkwardness that passed the instant we hugged, and it was the last time I’d ever feel awkward with her. A year apart, when we’d both had so much growing up to do, would change us more than we’d ever change between visits, and neither of us knew whether the other had turned into an unbearable asshole.
She had cut off her trademark ponytail while she was away. I would see it later that summer in a box, saved for a doll that her cousin would make. It was like a carcass, a body that had long ago let go of its soul. In that headless braid was our childhood, intertwined and neatly tied at each end, as if a colorful ribbon could make it pretty enough to distract from all the heartache it held.
On the night of the wedding, we held birch branches aloft in a make-do arch right after the happy couple had come ashore from being rowed across an impossibly-beautiful lake. It was the stuff of fairy tales, and felt far from our reach. We had not yet fallen in love with anyone, and neither of us was in any rush for it. We stepped out of the boisterous revelry for a moment and walked by the lake. What we were saying or talking about wasn’t important, at least not important enough to remember, and most likely we were just being silly and laughing, not quite ready to step into adulthood despite our ill-fitting grown-up outfits. (The picture here was taken before or after that quick walk.)
The green and silver tokens of the birch trees fluttered in the breeze. The lake, mostly still, barely lapped at its shore, asleep for the night. Far from home, in a land I’d never known, surrounded by happy strangers, I felt safe. Because of Suzie.
From that summer day she shared her grape taffy beneath a grape arbor, to the time she shut my fingers in the car window en route to ‘Mary Poppins’, from the late-night talks we had in high school, college, and beyond, through the moves and homes, the marriages and divorces, and all the births and the deaths, Suzie has been home for me. No matter what happens, no matter where we go, she is that space of safety and security, the one sure thing in a world of ever-receding certainty.
WE ALL GOT HOLES TO FILL AND THEM HOLES ARE ALL THAT’S REAL
SOME FALL ON YOU LIKE A STORM, SOMETIMES YOU DIG YOUR OWN
BUT CHOICE IS YOURS TO MAKE, TIME IS YOURS TO TAKE
They are in their full glory right now, but the “blooms†of a dogwood tree are one of those wonderful journeys of nature that begins in the high heat of summer, when the buds are first formed and kept hidden, secret, and as safe as they can possibly be. They stay in the tips of the branches, nothing more than a swollen end to indicate that something so precious is stored there, and if they’re lucky, and the winter winds aren’t too rough, they’ll survive into the spring.
As the days elongate and the temperatures ascend, they slowly unfurl, first with these bracts, then with the actual flower (the insignificant little buds barely seen here). Those bracts are what we perceive as the “flowerâ€, and in the dogwood’s case (not unlike another bract beauty, the poinsettia) they are where the real beauty originates.
A bonus is that they last much longer than an actual flower petal would, extending the vision of late spring prettiness they so magically encompass. The bright green of them will soon be a gorgeous light cream color, fluttering against a blue sky like so many butterflies.
