November 2021
With a background as rich and varied as Chella Man’s, it’s no wonder he is proving to be an exceptional human being. His social media bio lists him as Deaf, trans-masculine, Chinese and Jewish. He is more importantly an author and artist, known for his work ‘Continuum’, as well as numerous other endeavors so brilliantly illuminated on his website here. Today he is named Dazzler of the Day for so proudly being himself without apology.
Cold nights and chilly days call for a favorite comfort food: soup. Since so many of us don’t get enough fluids on an average day (drink that water!) soup is an easy way to up the liquid intake while warming the stomach. It’s also one of the easiest methods of crafting a meal that lasts for several days – for dinner or lunch depending on how you want to do it.
At the end of a summer season, we are often left with oodles of green tomatoes that simply wouldn’t make it to red without being zapped by a hard frost, so Andy brought in the whole load and let them ripen for a few days. Most of these turned redder than I thought they would, but for this soup I like the green ones too. They added brightness and a tart accent that made this one a little different. To make the soup, I brought about six cups of water to a boil and reconstituted a dried guajillo chili pepper, which added the heat and earthy flavor to the base. For the tomatoes, I roasted them all with a sliced onion at 425 degrees for about 20 – 30 minutes, until they were just browned and splitting open.
Adding the vegetables to the simmering water, I removed the pepper and used an immersion blender to puree it all into a consistency I liked (a few chunks are nice in a soup). A healthy sprinkling of sea salt and freshly-ground pepper was thrown in, along with some marjoram and oregano, and that was it.
I fried up some corn tortillas (so much better than a bag of Tostitos) and sprinkled them with salt, then dropped a heaping dollop of sour cream into my bowl, christened it with some chopped cilantro, and called it dinner.
Activist, songwriter, and all-around-fabulous-human-being Justin Tranter earns their first Dazzler of the Day honor, thanks in part to the upcoming musical ‘WILD: A Musical Becoming‘ which will feature director Diane Paulus and theater icon Idina Menzel. I’m looking forward to that as perhaps the first venture back into the sacred land of live performance. As for Tranter, enchanting audiences is nothing new for such a dazzling delight, and neither is doing good and meaningful work for organizations like GLAAD.
An abundance of super-saturated color informs this recap, as I’m feeling the lull of a bleak November begin to creep into the blue skies we’ve been fortunate enough to have of late. An overcast day is somehow more depressing than one raging with storms or weighted with humidity and heat. As it is, we’ve had a lovely stretch of fine fall weather with sunny bright days and blue skies, maybe to make up for such an awful summer. On with the recap before the gray days return….
Take on me, but in a slow fashion.
Wearing a rusty cape for fall.
The old-fashioned style of streaming.
Day-glo naked pics on a day of worship.
Dazzlers of the Day included Subrina Dhammi and Lisa S. Lee.
Pink petals tinged with green would seem more suited for late spring, but in November they carry a more potent magic than they would in their expected season, and for that reason I adore seeing them here. In this birthday bouquet for Andy, their beauty is matched only by the subtle hint of perfume they exude.
For a deeper artistic rendering of that fragrance, I will spritz some ‘Rose Cuir’ on for a day or a dinner. Followed by a little ‘Portrait of a Lady’ for evening enchantment, these two rose-inflected fragrances give a rich and sometimes smoky effect, ideal for fall or the earliest chill of winter, when their inspiration is most badly needed.
The rose is a year-round sure of beauty, for the eyes or the nose, and with so many ways of wearing it, I find it a signature fragrance that works in ways that don’t always make sense. Beauty is like that sometimes – it doesn’t follow conventional form. It leans toward the unexpected, the untried. Anytime something zigs when we think it should zag makes an indelible impression which the expected can never quite conjure.
As we begin the trek into the holidays, when the rich and decadent hedonism of the season needs tempering from time to time, the rose can both cut through that heaviness while creating its own hefty presence. An impressive trick from a stalwart beauty.
As someone who loves writing, I usually like to tell a story or ten behind the photos I post here. On this day, I’m going to let other more capable artists tell hints of what inspired these pictures, while letting the pictures speak for themselves, no matter what they might say.
“A funny person is funny only for so long, but a wit can sit down and go on being spellbinding forever. One is not meant to laugh. One stays quiet and marvels. Spontaneously witty talk is without question the most fascinating entertainment there is.” ~
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” ~
“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death–ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.” ~
“I just feel like we as a human race tend to fear that which we don’t understand. It’s cause for a lot of bad things and bad behavior to exist on the planet. Artists have a way of touching people and changing minds in a way that sometimes other mediums don’t.” ~ Billy Porter
“The letter, written in absorbed solitude, is an act of faith: it assumes the presence of humanity: world and self are generated from within: loneliness is courted, not feared. To write a letter is to be alone with my thoughts in the conjured presence of another person. I keep myself imaginative company. I occupy the empty room.” ~ Vivian Gornick
“History isn’t something you look back at and say it was inevitable, it happens because people make decisions that are sometimes very impulsive and of the moment, but those moments are cumulative realities.” ~ Marsha P. Johnson
“Some people are born in the mountains, while others are born by the sea. Some people are happy to live in the place they were born, while others must make a journey to reach the climate in which they can flourish and grow. Between the ocean and the mountains is a wild forest. That is where I want to make my home.” ~
“Strike a pose. There’s nothing to it.” ~ Madonna
My first brush with the kalanchoe plant was in some dim and cold fall season when my parents received one as a gift, probably for the holidays. It was a dark pink variety, the color of which thrilled me. It ended up in Gram’s room, where it had a Southwest exposure, capturing the most sun of any room in the house. As a succulent, the kalanchoe loves sun and heat and approaching dryness between waterings. I didn’t know much about it back then, so when it stopped blooming I didn’t give upon it as most people do.
Instead, I pruned off the flowerheads and trimmed it a bit, then settled into a hands-off watering schedule until about a year later it sent up another volley of blooms – this time on longer and leggier stems, but no less beautiful. After that, it yellowed a bit and declined, so they may only be good for a season or two. I haven’t returned to them since, but when I saw these in Faddegon’s, I was reminded of my pleasant first brush with them, and took their picture.
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it” ~ Edith Wharton
Darkness comes earlier and earlier as we roll toward the winter solstice (which occurs next month, by the way) and once the time change happens this weekend, it will be dark even sooner. The time for coziness and hygge is at hand. This year I’m doing my best to make it all about the light – and that begins with a single candle.
Candles are my companions in our little attic loft space, and they are the main components of the transition to the coming winter. With the air conditioner out of the window, the room is brighter, and with the multitude of votives, there are little lights and little sources of warmth scattered throughout.
In one of the first winters I spent at the Boston condo, I discovered the power of candlelight, and candle warmth. The bedroom was always on the cooler side of things – the base-board heaters warmed the front room more than they did the back, and while I prefer a cool room for sleeping, some nights it got a little too cool, made worse by the bay window that drew in the drafts. On a whim, I bought a bulk pack of tea lights and lit about twenty of them in the bedroom. Entranced by the light, I was also pleasantly surprised by how much heat they gave off, as if a little fireplace had been lit in front of the bay window. Since then, I’ve remembered the power of that candlelight.
A maple leaf in a cocktail glass seems like a fitting afternoon post for a Friday. It feels like fall. Looks like it too. We magically gain an hour of time this weekend, and rather than wondering how to save or spend it, I’m going to work on fully inhabiting it, on being present and completely mindful. To be fully present for an hour is a monumental achievement – mostly because if you can master it for an hour, you can master it for a lifetime. But it doesn’t happen easily or without work. It takes many days of practice and effort to be so mindful, and it’s a practice that doesn’t have an end or finish line. That used to bother me – I once did much better with a definitive goal in a finite period of time. Now I embrace the uncertainty, taking each moment as it comes, and counting only each moment as it arrives. No more is guaranteed. No more is promised.
Inspired by the water-like imagery induced by this music, this glimpse of a stream provides a visual framework for this Friday morning post. Musically, scroll down a bit to find something by Karel Barnoski from his ‘Tiny Telephone Sessions’. The first weekend of November is already at hand. Not quite ready for it, I’m in the process of re-introducing meditation into the daily routine, and I need it more than ever. Up to about 15 minutes every other day, I find it easier to slip into the focused slow breathing, and that sacred space of peace and stillness. It’s just enough to take the edge off of the day.
For a sleepy Friday morning, before we set the clocks back, this extra pocket of time provides another moment to pause and regroup. Sitting on a bank beside a stream is an apt metaphor, as the water flows by, but the stones and the trees remain stoic and still. Grounded by the earth, the motion of the stream would not matter were it not for the bed beneath it and the banks beside it.
As a companion post for this other fuchsia-shaded entry, this time it’s the ornamental kale that gives us such color and cheer. More was said in that post than can be seen here, and I’ll cut this short so you can visit that link.
When things get turned upside down, I often find it best to regroup in the woods, and reconnect with nature in a way that brings me back to my childhood, when I’d find escape and safety within the folds of a forest. As a kid, on those days when my anxiety got the best of me, it was the place I went after the stresses of school. If I was raw and tender from the familiar worry and over-analysis running through my head, I could step into the backyard and slip away into the woods.
Growing older, I sought out nature when living in Boston. On those tough nights when I was lonelier than I ever admitted, I would venture out to the harbor to seek the sea. Even in the winter when the flagpoles were clanging in the wind like church bells, there was solace by the water. Other nights, nearer to spring, I would find my way home while skirting the Boston Public Garden, drawn by the shadows of trees, lured by the fragrance of unseen flowers. In the middle of the city, nature found a way, and I would find a way to nature.
These days I’m looking to go back, in any way possible.
A recording from 2018 already feels like it’s from another lifetime ago, and a world far, far away, but the music from Karel Barnoski’s ‘Tiny Telephone Sessions’ has aged like a fine wine, its themes and musical motifs growing more resonant as we try to hold on to the joy we once found in art and music and the creation of something that shows us how we live when we are in the throes of it all. Originally released on vinyl, Barnoski is re-releasing it digitally at long last – check it out here on Spotify.
Rushing along like a stream in the aftermath of winter, ‘I’m on My Way’ cascades down while beginning its aural ascent on the opening track. The idea of water accompanies my thoughts as I listen to this music – perhaps inspired by the photos I’ve seen of Karel’s fishing trips, or his recent painting endeavors which shimmer with watery movement.
This was where he was before the world shut down, and this collection of songs is a reflection of a place that may no longer exist, in the same way a section of a stream is different from moment to moment. (It also illuminates the transfixing beginnings of themes he would go on to further explore in 2020’s resplendent ‘Welcome Home’.)
While the moving ‘Dad’s Song’ evokes contemplative musing in the still and slow moments between its rolling arpeggios, ‘Kathryn’s Waltz’ is full of pretty hopes and hopeful wishes, a whimsical dance fit for dandelion seeds on the wind. That wind shifts a bit, and there is a dark and mysterious undercurrent running through ‘In Between’, but every time it seems ripe for a bit of brooding, the melody turns and the pace changes. This ebb and flow pushes and pulls within the space of sound, contracting and releasing as if acting as some beating heart debating whether to survive by consistency or adventure ~ the ultimate crux of the in-between.
Another gem in three-quarter time, ‘Lola’s Waltz’ makes its turns in fanciful form tinged with the slightest touches of melancholy, approaching the precious but veering just shy of the cloying with a masterful restraint from indulgence. Further confounding this sweetness, the exhilarating ‘Polish Dance’ is a fun romp that starts off at a gallop and ends in an absolute mad dash. ‘Spanish March’ begins where one might expect, then quickly takes a detour – a river that bends and throws curve after curve until you’re certain it’s doubled in on itself and there’s only space for splashing and silliness.
With ‘Move That’ the album shifts from its classical leanings on the grand piano into something more casual and loose, finding Barnoski swinging along on an upright piano, electric keyboard and organ. The split makes more sense when you realize that ‘Tiny Telephone Sessions’ was first released as a two-sided vinyl record. This second side, nostalgic both for its initial vinyl inception and its ragtime-roots, shouldn’t work as well as it does, but Barnoski’s skill at bringing a bit of grace and elegance to the songs here, coupled with his skills as pianist, ultimately creates a work of cohesive unity.
The sugary-funk of the bluesy ‘Banana Split’ is pure fun – the first notion of release and abandon, while ‘Coming For You’ and ‘Barrelhouse Rag’ descend into even bluer territory, the sound river growing a little more rollicking ~ the stuff of rafts and raw energy, enervating and driving, the way water doesn’t want to stop in its run. ‘In the Trunk’ hops along gently, reminding of another stream, another fishing expedition, another interesting journey back through a childhood memory.
Finishing things off with ‘Lowell Street’, we seem to tilt out of the water and right into the nightlife of some magical city that’s as gritty and grimy as it is fascinating and filled with the flotsam and jetsam of inspiration. Seeds that carry on the wind again. Music that moves along like water, in all its varying forms and moody incarnations. In an all-too-brisk half hour the world of ‘Tiny Telephone Sessions’ has come and gone – a world we all once inhabited, brought to life again in the way only an old favorite tune can wheedle out faded memories as it’s played on a piano in a darkened room that now feels empty, and all the more beautiful for it.
“You are a ghost. Filled with stardust, wearing the bones as the shield and the skin as the cape. Fighting every day and opening up for the new wounds in the hustle of hiding the old scars.” ~
At various points, we are all called to be superheroes. It usually doesn’t come in the form of crime-fighting or cape-wearing glory, bur rather in the smaller heroic acts that constitute being a good person. The older I get, the more conflicted I feel about whether it’s easier to be good or bad. There are so many ways where being good and doing the right thing is more difficult, uncomfortable and trying than taking an easier way out. And then there are times when I realize how much more work it is to be bad – to be the perceived villain, to go out of your way to be mean when it’s simpler to live and let live.
Whichever road you take – whether it’s hero or villain – a proper cape is always the way to go. For this time of the year, I’m employing a rust colored woolen beauty that simply reeks of autumnal splendor. It keeps the wind at bay, quieting the world and even warming my head when the hood is on. Functional and flamboyant and just a little bit of a fuck-off to society’s dull trappings of what’s appropriate. Perfect for the fall, when the sweetness or bitterness of certain berries works like a tonic to steer us into good witch or bad witch territory. I haven’t quite made up my mind as to which witch I want to be… either way, I intend to fly.
“You will never become a hero if you keep waiting for someone else to bring a cape for you.” ~
It’s a rare treat when the Dazzler of the Day is also a family friend, so this post warms my heart a bit more than most as it honors an artist I not only respect but count as a part of the family. This is Lisa S. Lee, an author, speaker, entrepreneur, brand and innovation strategist, and Champion of Creators. She is the partner of Suzie’s brother Andy, and they live in Portland, OR with their daughter Ella. Check out Lisa’s website here for further evidence of her brilliance. Since her skills as a writer vastly outshine mine, here is part of her story in her own words:
Once upon a time, I was a corporate marketing gal living in NYC. Now, I’m a Portland writer, speaker, branding educator and entrepreneur. I traded in my black high heel pumps for a pair of teal Hunter rain boots.
I’ve spent a lot time soul searching, trying to find the deepest expression of who I am, the creative spirit I was meant to be. I hope, through my writing, that I can impart some of the wisdom I’ve learned along the way.
If you want inspiration on how to experience more joy through creativity, follow me at @lisaleecreates on Instagram and Facebook
My Story
At age 35, I lived ‘work hard, have fun’ lifestyle in one of the most dynamic cities in the world – New York City. I kept constantly busy, eating in fancy restaurants, going to shows and parties, and dating – a lot. I had a six figure job with a great title and an interesting career in branding and innovation. I had just bought my first adorable yet spacious 1-bedroom apartment, Once a year I traveled to a far off place – Brazil, South Africa, Italy. It seemed as if I had it all.
But in reality, it all felt a bit empty. Something in my life was missing, but I wasn’t sure what it was.
After a particularly intense work period, I went on a vacation to a yoga ashram where I woke up at 5 a.m. every day to meditate. I did yoga several times a day and ate vegetarian food twice a day (and didn’t starve as I thought I would).
That’s where I realized that I was living A dream life – but it just wasn’t MY dream life. I was going through the motions, chasing the idea of what I thought a fulfilling life was. Yes, some of those things were extremely enjoyable. I am a foodie at heart. I love traveling. Even though I was stressed all the time, I actually really liked my job.
My life was filled with wonderful things on the outside, but I didn’t have the richness of insight on the inside. I thought all this stuff – a great job, a great apartment, a great lifestyle – would make me happy. But I wasn’t happy inside. I didn’t know what my authentic self wanted or needed. I was yearning to know myself.
That’s when it dawned on me. I needed to get off the hamster wheel. I had to do it in an extreme way, or else I’d chicken out and never do it. I went to work after my vacation and quit my job.
I quit my job to get to know myself. To go within. To do some soul searching. To follow my bliss.
I have done the deep work into knowing myself and discovering my own authentic self. I have crafted the life I’ve yearned to have – to live MY best life, not someone else’s. I have made creativity a daily practice. I hope to inspire other women to do the same. If you’d like a little bit of that inspiration, sign up for my e-mail list where I’ll share some of the insights I’ve learned about going within.
