Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Sundays are family days – a tradition instigated by Mom when people started to gather again in a vaccinated world – and kept going as we make the most of our time with Dad. He doesn’t always make it into the dining room, as pictured here, so sometimes we will bring our plates into his room and share the meal there, as we did yesterday. It’s a shift, but after the past few years we are all more malleable, all willing to go with the flow. Now on with the weekly recap as we head into the holiday season…

It began with a head of gray hair, as everything does in the mirror these days.

A sweet treat makes any Tuesday more manageable.

An almost-full moon over Amsterdam.

Under a Maxfield Parrish sky.

Assuming the ax pose.

Fountains of gold.

The Madonna Timeline rises again.

At tea-time everybody agrees.

Music of madness.

The Pride Center Gala 2022 takes place this Friday.

Beneath the blood-red maple leaves of autumn.

The Full Beaver Moon.

You’re on your own, kid.

Likely the last daisies.

Dazzlers of the Day included Sexiest Man Alive Chris Evans, Maura Healey, Jason Momoa, and Chanel Lopez.

There is more than a little cheeky irony to the fact that I used to love beavers as a child. Yet it was absolutely true – I adored beavers. Did all my school projects on them, made dioramas of their lodges, read all I could read on how they raised their kits, and even had one of my birthday party celebrations at a place called Beaversprite, which was basically the house of a woman who had a beaver living in her basement. 

Yes, there are things most people don’t know about me still left to reluctantly admit, and my love of beavers is actually one of the less-embarrassing ones. 

This past Tuesday we had a full Beaver Moon, which sounds like an oxymoron, or at the very least some supremely confusing sexual symbolism. Something for the front and the back at the same time? I digress… 

The full moon has wreaked much havoc in our lives, but in the last few years I’ve learned to take a little extra care during the days immediately preceding and following a full moon – and definitely during the actually full moon period itself. That has made a remarkable difference, and if lunacy is just a matter of the mind, this is the easiest solution. 

Do there seem to be more instances of foibles and fumbles and just bad luck during the days the moon is full? It does seem to be that way, and some studies have proven it to be true – others illustrate that the moon has little to no effect on things. 

I choose to hedge my bets when it comes to the moon. Around the time it gets full, I take things a little slower, and a little more carefully. I remind myself not to get offended at the little slights, not to be argumentative on silly points because they always lead to bigger fights, and to go a little easier on myself. It allows the blunders to happen without blame, making the room for imperfection and mistakes, which should be there always anyway, and it has turned these full moon sessions into times of learning and, dare I admit, genuine enjoyment. If you can learn to laugh at yourself, and the occasional misstep we are all prone to make, life suddenly becomes much easier. And fun.

So here’s to the full Beaver Moon! Shine, shine, shine!

Scarlet leaves bleed their colorful carriage onto my neck and shoulders as I seek shelter and a place to hide beneath their brilliant canopy. Summer is better for disappearing, when so many dark green leaves work to camouflage the shy and timid. Fall strips the trees and bushes of their privacy screens, but this Japanese maple is still providing a bit of safety for those of us not quite ready to bare it all. 

This is the season where one begins seriously contemplating hibernation, and wondering if the bears know wisdom that isn’t accessible to foolish humans such as myself. Would it be so awful to sleep the winter away, emerging in the spring just as the earth is waking again too?

The red leaves of this Japanese maple surround me like a scarlet cloak. Fall finds a way of protecting those who require it, working in strange and unexpected ways to see us through the winter to come. Whether it’s a trick of the mind, an altered state of perception, or an actual shift in reality, fall provides a cozy blanket, a spiritual balm, for all that is about to come. 

Beneath the blood red leaves of a maple tree… 

Suzie brought us this beautiful hand-made cup from Denmark from her visit there this past summer. She has always had exquisite taste, though she rarely employs it ~ day-to-day life being rather inhospitable to the exquisite. We usually see photos of teacups and such while holding tea or coffee or other nourishment, and that’s typically what I post here. Everyone wants to see the purpose and the action – no one wants the emptiness. 

In this post, we examine the emptiness, and the vacant vessel, and I see them instead as filled with something else. 

Hope.

Possibility.

Opportunity.

I also see something different, something that expands the realm of what we think we know. Do not limit yourself to coffee or tea just because it’s what we have always done. Even if that’s always worked. Why not cider? Why not hot chocolate? Why not chocolate milk? Why not grapefruit juice? Why not granola? Why not bread pudding? Why not jelly beans? Why not salted pumpkin seeds? Just because we label it a tea cup doesn’t limit its capability to hold something more. 

People can be like that too. Just because they seem vapid or empty doesn’t mean they can’t fill themselves with possibility or hope or even love. When we expand our ideas of what’s possible, we create the space for something exquisite, even if our daily life doesn’t feel like it can hold it.

Rising to a full ten feet, our enormous stand of fountain grass has grown just as wide, meaning it is in need of some severe pruning and reining-in next season. I’ve been putting it off because that is arduous and difficult work – this specimen is about two decades old, and has steadily expanded over that time thanks to an early dumping of manure over its crown and then some steady watering through dry spells. 

I’d forgotten how glorious their end-of-the-season finale can be, but yesterday morning this sight lit up the backyard. Structurally, these stalks will remain largely as you see them, slowly being stripped of the foliage as winter progresses, but the feathery seed-heads will remain, and the spindly stalks will form their own winter interest. 

For now, the fountains of gold shine brilliantly on a sunny day, rapturously resplendent against a blue sky. When a breeze gets them waving, it’s an especially gorgeous sight.

“I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.” – Henry David Thoreau

My love of the forest goes back to my childhood, when I would lose myself there without care or concern of getting lost or being found. Instinctually, I knew my way, and could sense wherever I was, no matter how deep I went. Of course, the woods near my childhood home were anything but vast. Bordered by streets and houses, it was easy to keep one’s place. Even when I explored unfamiliar forests near baseball fields and parks, I still managed to keep my bearings, and sometimes I spun around in circles, daring my senses to lose sight of where I was. Always, I found my way. 

“And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.” – John Muir 

When one embarks on a woodland walk, there are dangers inherent to the expedition. Will your ax be wielded in protection or destruction? Perhaps you wish for a little of both. The blade is rusty in physical and metaphorical terms, and the pose is silly and histrionic, because all poses are. Poses have no place in the forest – not even on the edge.

“No one who loves the woods stays on the path.” – Millie Florence 

A useful tool for certain acts of destruction, this little ax fits perfectly in hand, lending a false sense of safety for the one who carries it. In truth, such a trifling object is no match for the might of the woods, even when the day is warm and glorious and just like mid-summer. 

“We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne 

A chopping block of secrets, where whispers are splintered like aged wood – not always as easy as it seems, not so simple as it looks – this is where tales are wound like that unchecked bittersweet vine at the end of summer. Such thin and wiry stems of green all too quickly thicken and harden into chokers of wood – a poisonous piece of deadly jewelry that will strangle its trusting host. 

Hence the ax. For taming the invasive beast. 

Waves of wind sounding like ocean roll through the trees in the distance. A spattering of crow calls is incongruously answered by a barking dog. Somewhere a hanging set of chimes tangles and untangles itself, tinkling with the arrival of said wind. In the sky, clouds move swiftly, indicating they are anything but trapped in a Maxfield Parrish painting. But the light speaks other words, telling of colors and art and beauty that the wind refuses to hear. 

Streams and rivers mirror this strange light, and the fish must wonder at the water’s queasy hue. Water rippling slightly from the brush of the wind, sky putting on a late afternoon show, and forest deciding whether to slumber now or when the darkness has fully unfurled. We are incontrovertibly, and inconsolably, into November.