Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Following up the recent string of ‘Divine Diva Tour’ posts, which evoke the colorful lifestyle I was attempting to live twenty years ago, this muted post is a more accurate rendering of the present moment, and happily for me it’s richer and more colorful in its own way. If we’re lucky, that’s the way life works – the giddy and extreme highs and lows of our youth should become tempered with reality, and finding the joy in more subtle and nuanced ways is the best way to remain entertained and inspired. A change in perspective is the easiest way to roll with the punches of life – expecting there to be more and more exciting and stimulating things every day until we die is a certain path to disappointment, if not outright devastation. I refuse to go down that path – it’s a path too often riddled with unhealthy coping mechanisms and dangerous ruses. 

Instead, I center myself, breathing slowly and deliberately in and out, and when you think of the luxury that taking a breath in relative comfort is, you appreciate it more, and it becomes imbued with something fascinating you never quite realized before. 

Take these photos for example – outwardly they may seem to pale in comparison to the explosive fire of something like our Divine Diva journey, but when you pause and fully take them in, they reveal bits of magic only discernible to the refined eye. The sparkle of the crystalline snow, the intricate patterns of the tree branch shadows, the way the background could be snow or sky – it invites more questions, more examination, more rumination, more thought – and maybe that’s lost on those of us who have become immune to such simple joys. How unfortunate for anyone that can’t access this beauty. 

Ahh, Valentine’s Day. 

There is so much love and hatred for a single day, often depending on where your own romantic situation is, and it is foolish and folly in every single aspect. For me, this day has never really been about romantic love – we show and receive love daily if we’re lucky enough to have found our person, and it’s in the simple things like sharing the ride to pick up groceries, sleeping in on lazy Sunday mornings, or simply unwinding beside someone at the end of a day. Valentine’s Day is merely another excuse for a gift or a dinner out – both very much welcomed, don’t get me wrong, but nothing that couldn’t or shouldn’t be done at any other time of the year. My love with Andy is more powerful and resonant than could ever be captured or celebrated in a single Hallmark holiday. 

Instead, Valentine’s Day brings me back to my elementary school days, when sending a Valentine to my classmates was the first introduction to the power of an epistolary hello, and how it could be an art form. As much as I loved seeing my Valentine bag decorated with construction paper hearts and paper doilies fill and drop beneath the weight of the cards from my classmates, I found an equal thrill in dropping their cards into their bags, hoping that the ones I had made or chosen for them would make an impression and properly convey how much they meant to me. 

My friends then were mostly girls – Rachael, Lynn, Jill, Laura, Angie, Tonya – and they made me feel accepted and adored in a way that was never quite there with the boys. Girls could be terrible towards each other, but very rarely were they ever mean to me (unless it was deserved, and yes, it was often deserved but even then they were kinder and more forgiving than I would ever be).

We recently had dinner with Lynn after reconnecting a while ago and she exclaimed with slight exasperation that all the girls loved me in elementary school. It was something I never fully realized then, and as she said it forty years later I started to feel beloved by them for the very first time. It moved me immensely, and I quickly glossed over it so as not to make a mushy scene. That Lynn remembered, and that it had been true, was a soul-healing balm over a tender part of my heart that never quite felt loved back then. Realizing it this late in the game left me humbled and grateful. If that’s what Valentine’s Day has come to mean, then let us have it in high heralded spirits, let us shout about its heart-bursting brilliance and celebrate the idea of love in all its forms. 

Here are a few previous V-Day posts for your perusal – together they create a little playlist for this day:

The Unexpected Valentine: Kissing A Fool

The Modern Day Valentine Mix: Side One and Side Two.

A Valentine Hodge Podge: At This Moment

Crazy Valentine Love: Crazy For You

Valentine Miscellany: Crazy In Love

A Valentine Sweet Treat: Studded With Chocolate 

Hearts of Cheese: Making Love Out of Nothing At All

A Simple Valentine Song: I Only Want To Be With You

A Friendly Valentine: That’s What Friends Are For

A Valentine Folk-You Mix: Side One and Side Two

Winter’s talent is in encasing its icy chill in scenes of other-worldly beauty. While driving a frigid dagger into warm flesh, it distracts with the pretty wonders of ice, momentarily sculpting the smallest waves of water into architectural swirls that sparkle in the light of the sun. 

Freezing the dark green needles of the Japanese umbrella pine – an architectural marvel of its own – this winter ice accentuates the beauty of the season, holding a scene of weeping in frozen place. Winter can still the heart that way, forcing us to either gasp in relief or hold it all in, pretending that we are all right with the freeze. 

When I was a young boy, I’d seek out scenes like this on winter walks in the wooded bank behind our home. Water would occasionally pool between tree roots, forming little ponds of ice, or drip beneath the eaves of the pool house, splashing onto an iron fence and dropping icicles in opposition to the steel spikes that pointed upward. 

The whispered secrets of a pine bough, told only in a masked brush of wind, would be silenced in such ice – the chattering and shattering when the wind came again was a telling bit of hell-bent destruction for having tried to quiet them. We will too often hurt ourselves in our efforts to hurt others. 

Winter is a fickle beast who won’t be tamed for a while. 

My Dad left us on a night with a full moon – the Surgeon Moon – and since then every full moon, even with all their mayhem and calamities, has offered a reassuring reminder of his presence. For last night’s Snow Moon, Dad visited in a dream. How strange that an ephemeral experience like a dream could embody such substantial emotions and feel so real. 

In the dream, we were staying in a hotel room, as if we were on vacation, but it was just the two of us. Mom and Paul were out and I was trying to do a bunch of laundry that was on the floor. Dad went into the bathroom to take a shower. He must have been older here, because I remember wondering if he could do it on his own, but I listened to be sure things were ok and they were. I marveled that at his age he could still do things like take a shower without assistance. When it was done, I went in to collect the towels and laundry from the bathroom. 

He sat on a couch and for some reason I asked, “What was the secret… of the lavender river?” He sat there silent and didn’t answer. I said it louder, “What was the secret??”

Still no answer. 

It was a typical Dad moment: he was there, silent and stoic and somehow supportive.

The dream ended. The full Snow Moon floated out there somewhere.

Mom still thinks of him whenever there’s a full moon. Maybe that’s why he was saying a silent hello. 

Having just started posting 2005’s ‘Divine Diva Tour: A Fairy’s Tale‘ I thought I’d give a little technical scheduling note for those already annoyed at it: strap on for the long haul, as I’ll likely be posting this well into spring, perhaps beyond. I’m not doing one big cum-dump of posts like some lame guys who shoot their wad way too early – this one will be deliciously and decadently drawn out so as to elicit every last gasp and groan. An edging session that has already lasted twenty years long…

This is also more than a simple re-posting of something you’ve seen here before – yes, a few of the images have appeared in these parts (hello infamously-immortalized blue Speedo) but the bulk of this project has never before been posted, and more than that, there are numerous photos that didn’t make it into the original tour book because it was a physical entity with physical limits – we now have this online outlet to put it all out there (with some judicious editing to hide the more extreme naughty bits, or highlight them per my whim).

I’ll try to schedule most posts for the weekend, when we need to embrace and lean into our escapes, finding fun where fun can be found in such perilous times, but I’ll sneak a few into the weekdays as well; part of survival means having to find the fun when it’s least expected. You find the fun and – SNAP! – the job’s a game! When I’ve segued into Mary Poppins, it’s time to end the post.