Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Andy and I were both excited to see what we thought was the first Monarch butterfly of the season. It felt a little early, so I went out to catch a photo and inspect its arrival, and instead of a true Monarch there was this pretty little imposter. Just as welcome, and just as pretty. 

The Monarch will arrive a bit later in the summer, when the cup plants are high, but given the fast rate that this season is progressing, that could be any day now. We will watch the skies for their return, and prepare the way. Prettiness stills all in its path. 

Usually Monday morning is when we reconvene after the weekend to do a weekly recap, but with yesterday’s holiday, we are pushing it back to now, so let’s look quickly back over the last week, then proceed with the new one at hand, amid the explosions of fireworks and all the requisite bombast.

Return to Lilium.

Petunia power!

When you simply must pea.

The humble and majestic BLT.

Don’t sleep on my Insta.

Madonna love back in full-effect.

Closing out Pride Month.

Flaming July.

A lazy mocktail for a hazy day.

Wet thighs don’t lie.

Summer in July.

The balm of bees.

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do!

Swimming pool Speedo summer.

Born in the U.S.A.

A grand old flag.

Dazzlers of the Day included Adam Lambert and Chris Salvatore. 

Is there anything more gaudy and self-glorifying than a 4th of July celebration? I hope not, because this country can’t handle any more gaudiness or self-glorification right now. Of course, both of those are cornerstones of my wheelhouse – even if a wheel doesn’t technically have corners. Welcome to the more fun Independence Day post (as opposed to this more serious one where I still manage to front with an ass-shake, and will do again below). 

Happy Birthday America. You are all sorts of messy right now, but you remain beloved, and you will come back to your ideals and the dreams that made you possible in the first place. To return to a more serious and somber sentiment, and a hopefully hopeful note, here is a stunning poem by Amanda Gorman to close out the day.

“New Day’s Lyric” by Amanda Gorman

May this be the day
We come together.
Mourning, we come to mend,
Withered, we come to weather,
Torn, we come to tend,
Battered, we come to better.
Tethered by this year of yearning,
We are learning
That though we weren’t ready for this,
We have been readied by it.
We steadily vow that no matter
How we are weighed down,
We must always pave a way forward.

This hope is our door, our portal.
Even if we never get back to normal,
Someday we can venture beyond it,
To leave the known and take the first steps.
So let us not return to what was normal,
But reach toward what is next.

What was cursed, we will cure.
What was plagued, we will prove pure.
Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree,
Those fortunes we forswore, now the future we foresee,
Where we weren’t aware, we’re now awake;
Those moments we missed
Are now these moments we make,
The moments we meet,
And our hearts, once all together beaten,
Now all together beat.

Come, look up with kindness yet,
For even solace can be sourced from sorrow.
We remember, not just for the sake of yesterday,
But to take on tomorrow.

We heed this old spirit,
In a new day’s lyric,
In our hearts, we hear it:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
For auld lang syne.
Be bold, sang Time this year,
Be bold, sang Time,
For when you honor yesterday,
Tomorrow ye will find.
Know what we’ve fought
Need not be forgot nor for none.
It defines us, binds us as one,
Come over, join this day just begun.
For wherever we come together,
We will forever overcome.

Born down in a dead man’s town

The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much

Till you spend half your life just covering up

Most people seem to have missed the deeper and darker meaning to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ Far from a celebratory anthem, it’s more of an indictment for our country and some of the atrocities its committed over its history. That feels more relevant than ever, as our Supreme Court recently robbed our women of their right to choose, gutted our environmental protections, and allowed for guns to be all but given out to any and all white supremacists who choose to carry. (It appears white men can choose, but no one else can.)

While I remain quietly hopeful that our country will do the right thing, and that this relatively small group of hateful people with hypocritical and heinous ideologies doesn’t end up running America, I’m also realistic, and I’ve seen how selfish and awful people can be. So I will celebrate America in a quieter way today – the America my parents taught me about – where freedom and acceptance are the true orders of the day – and I will pray for her speedy recovery. 

Daisy, Daisy

Give me your answer do

I’m half crazy

All for the love of you…

The small group of us sat huddled in a line, ordered by the notes we each held in our hand – one musical note from each little piece of a deconstructed marimba-like instrument. We were in fifth or sixth grade, and we sat in a side room to the main music room in the basement of McNulty School. The rest of the class continued with their musical studies while the few select students chosen to play ‘A Bicycle Built For Two’ in a mini-concert for the class. 

How I absolutely abhorred group activities.

Almost as much as I abhor ice-breaker activities. 

Such social anxiety wouldn’t be named or understood until decades later, and by then what did it really matter? Back then was when I needed to know, and I didn’t, but I trudged through, confident in my limited musical skills and well-liked enough to sail through this exercise in corn-dog musicality. 

We ran through the song what felt like a bazillion times, and someone always screwed it up. ‘This shouldn’t be so difficult,’ I thought to myself. What I voiced out loud was probably (definitely) more cutting. Social anxiety or not, I had my store of patience, and it wasn’t plentiful. When that was gone, I tended to go brazen and blunt. 

Yet I was not immune to the charms of working with a smaller group of people I’d have considered my friends at the time. As difficult as it sometimes was for me, I was also capable of ingratiating wit and charm, even as I cut down others – sometimes precisely because I could so deftly poke fun at others. In other words, I could be a hoot, and people genuinely enjoyed my company, if only to be entertained. It was apparent then that it wasn’t necessarily affection or adoration I could elicit – it was a sense of people waiting to see what I might say or do. There was a certain power in that, and a certain emptiness. 

We worked through that silly song, over and over, until we had a pretty good grasp of it. Of course when we performed it for an audience we inevitably fell apart – not horribly, we just weren’t perfect – an early lesson on accepting imperfection, and one that I fought against for the ensuing years, foolishly and regrettably. 

Anyway, the daisy will occasionally bring back those memories of grade school, and banding together with my classmates and friends, left briefly on our own to work toward something as a group.

I still prefer to bloom on my own.  

While this blog swims slowly into the likely fall and winter of its lifespan, there is still room for a gratuitous tease and skin-friendly post for summer. Still time for shirtless male celebrities, or gratuitous nudity, or other such click-dick-bait. Still time for summer to shimmy and sweat and dive into the coolness of a day by the pool. Still time… still time…