Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Smack dab in the middle of February, we have reached the mid-point of winter, and if history is any indication, the second half usually follows Broadway standards and moves much quicker than the first. Sometimes, though, winter stalls, especially when we want it to hurry out the door. There are snowier days still to be had, icy nights to be endured, and so we wait it out a bit longer. First, a quick look back…

It began with a contained bit of chaos. 

A Filipino comfort food dish warmed the stomach and the heart. 

The words of Mary McLeod Bethune.

This crazy cactus.

Breaking the morning with candlelight.

Wednesday pants.

Channeling Dalloway.

Ahh, Mercury in retrograde explains it all. 

Invincible in winter.

The words of Langston Hughes.

Girl Scout cookie season.

Bare-assed throwback. 

Beneath an overpass.

Lady in Red.

Valentine sweet treat.

Crazy Valentine Love.

Valentine miscellany. 

Every Valentine’s Day found the students of McNulty Elementary School filling up bags with Valentine cards for our classmates, and by the time the afternoon rolled around most of our bags were filled with the innocuous cards that kids (or more likely their parents) picked out for one another. Cartoon characters or superheroes or unicorns and rainbows, they were a varied bunch – a mish-mash of harmless lovey-dovey sentiment before any of us had any idea what romance meant. 

This post is going to be a little like those bags of Valentines – some of this, some of that, none of it very serious, none of it very meaningful. ‘Tis the damn season. First up, a poem, because I’m not entirely ready to forego some Dorothy Parker:

Experience

Some men break your heart in two,
Some men fawn and flatter,
Some men never look at you;
And that cleans up the matter.

~ Dorothy Parker

Second, a song – sort of a companion piece to this ‘Crazy’ entry, but something more upbeat and bombastic. I’m heading into a Beyhive moment, and this one pushes all the right buttons, charging all the right stations. It’s a song for strutting when you’re in the throes of that first flush of love. 

Third, a more recent, and heartbreaking, poem, to show the other side of love, because there’s always another side of love:

And finally, a few quotes for this day:

“Loneliness is not being alone, it’s loving others to no avail.” ~ John Berendt

“Lovemaking is the consolation for living in the body, just as art is the consolation for living in the world.” ~ Laura Argiri

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” – Oscar Wilde

And there, just like that, in the most unlikely of places, was a sliver of beauty and grace – in the way a fading bit of sun illuminated the unexceptional gray concrete support beam of an overpass. Winter has been opening such secrets to me this year, or maybe I’m just noticing what has always been there, in a different light. 

Such a scene is unremarkable in an upstate New York winter, and for that very fact I find this glimpse of beauty even more touching. Why should there not be beauty in what many would consider mundane? The older I get, the more I realize how much of our experience is in what we are willing to see, and how we are willing to see the world. In the past, this overpass would have registered as gray and dull. These days it thrills me with its spectacular structure, its shading, and the way it cradles the last light of the day in its arms. 

Every passing day seems to move us further from the time when attending a Broadway musical in New York felt normal and commonplace. When seeking throwback shots for this recent post, I stumbled upon these cheeky peeks from a January weekend in New York a number of year ago, and instantly I was brought back to some happy, if frigid, memories. 

It feels like there have been a few very important January shows that I’ve been lucky enough to attend. The first was when Andy and I had tickets to ‘Grey Gardens’ on what felt like the coldest weekend of the year. We had a steak dinner at Gallagher’s before rushing to the theater, bundled up and braced against the wind and chill, and Christine Ebersole warmed us with her glorious portrayal of The Edies. It was, despite its icy nature, a weekend I think back on quite fondly.

Much like the one depicted here, when I was in town to see a revival of ‘Follies’ with Bernadette Peters. Suzie was my date that night, and we repeated a hearty dinner at a nearby steakhouse. Such icy evenings apparently build a hankering for substantial meat. The show was exquisite, the company grand, and my lodgings at 6 Columbus were cozy enough. 

In the bathroom, an O-ring right before they even made O-ring lights surrounded the mirror. It should have been colder in that tiled bathroom, with its shiny navy vertical design, but the heat had been indulgently turned high, and a robe made things extra cozy. As was my wont when enjoying a weekend away, I’d purchased a bottle of body wash from L’Occitane nearby, making a memory with some Lemon Verbena. 

Such a simple weekend in New York feels so exotic and distant now, and it brings me back to my last brush with the city. That’s all it was, as it never came to fruition. I wonder if we’ll ever get back there – not just in the physical, actual sense, but in the figurative, emotional place where such things as COVID hadn’t yet come into existence. It will be more difficult to find that again. Places and things can be found. The past… not so much. 

Within this mid-point of winter, a bit of the garden still endures: these dried umbrels of Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ seen in the afternoon sunlight, caged by the shadows of the stalwart cup plant stalks. Blue snow echoing blue sky, and in this winter landscape that once formed the floral border beside the pool, the invincibility of summer shone through the deep freeze. 

This is still the golden hour, come summer or snow, and it retains a different kind of magic now. The shadows are more pronounced, less hazy. Maybe the snow lends a crispness to it, a way of sharpening the light. 

As the hour progresses, and the sun lowers itself in the sky, colors grow deeper, the world gets more saturated, and the myth of winter as a colorless bore is confronted and confounded. The little forest of sedum flower-heads stands defiantly against the snow and wind. I admire their resilience, their tough and unyielding stance. Once upon a time I feared I would bend or break in the face of such adversity. Now, I follow the sedum’s example and stand in the winter wind. A cloak is all I need. 

This Throwback Thursday is brought to you by the madness that is Mercury in Retrograde. For a couple of weeks now I’ve been wondering what the fuck is going on, as moods and insanity and other such full-moon feelings have been rearing their ugly heads, not to mention a number of crazy circumstances and happenings that are more in line with the kookiness of 2020 than a promising 2021. As a full day of challenging events unfolded one right after the other, I looked up Mercury in Retrograde dates and sure enough, there it was: January 30 through February 21. 

That sets my mind oddly at ease – I was beginning to think I was losing it. Now that there’s something external to blame, we can move forward and be a little more careful. In the meantime, here are a couple of fun throw-way-back pics from a behind-the-scenes peek of our old knotty-pine room haunt in Ogunquit, Maine. Maybe this will be the year we return… or maybe not. We need to get through this apparent retrograde motion first… be wary, be warned. 

It’s not the cold or ice of winter that bothers me. It’s not the wind or snow. It’s not even the messy mix of salt and dirt that winter roads invariably become. It’s the darkness – that pervading darkness that comprises too much of the day and all of the night. It’s there when I wake and there when I retire, and it seeps into the middle of the day through gray shadows and the early setting of the sun. 

The concept of hygge has shown me the importance of light, even if it’s just the light from a candle or two. In that warm little beacon there is all the brightness of the world, all hope and joy and the single spark of spring on the tongue of a flame. There is warmth and loveliness here. 

Most of the time I employ candles at night, when the full darkness has overtaken all the land. I forget the powerful presence they can have early in the morning, when I’m about to sign on for the day, when the sky is still dim and darkness stubbornly lingers in more than just corners. Somehow it’s quieter then than the latest hour of night. Easing one’s way into the day is equally as important as easing into the time for slumber.