Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Certain November days manage to dawn with a bit of sunlight, then proceed to offer nothing but gray and slightly overcast skies. Somehow the sun still manages to peep through, but the day cannot be described as anything other than gray. Drained of the colors of spring and summer, as well as the pristine snow-covered sheen of winter, November is one of the dreariest months on the calendar, but we near its end, and the end of the year that was so dismally 2020, and for that I welcome these next few weeks.

On the Sunday morning before Thanksgiving week, I awaken earlier than intended or desired. I’d been feeling a bit run-down – frequent trips to Amsterdam, lots of cooking and running errands, preparing for the stripped-down holiday season, a day-trip to Boston to check on the condo, and the general stress and mayhem of a pandemic-riddled world and the daily pressure that puts on simple existence. My body was telling me to slow down, and so I listened. Lots of sleep, lots of tea, a daily Vitamin D pill – and a pause in the break-neck pace of late.

November, with all its giving of thanks, is a good time to stop and take stock of life. That’s not always an easy thing to do, and often it is fraught with uncomfortable realizations, irreconcilable stances, and the uneasy notion that some of what we are doing may be wrong. Never a fun place to be, the only way out of it is to be completely honest, and to surrender to the truth at hand. So much of the ill-fitting image I tried to present in the past was about me simply refusing to entertain the truth at hand. There is such freedom in that honesty, though, that I wish I had come to that realization sooner. It would have made so much of my journey that much easier. I see that now. I know that now.

And so I slow down the day. I pause and still the morning. When that break of sunlight bursts through the clouds, I look out the window and watch it play upon the fluffy seedheads of the fountain grass. I see it peek into the innermost recesses of the pinecones dangling high in a neighbor’s tree. A little bird is the only other creature in movement. It darts among the bare branches of a maple, then flits across the sky, out of view.

This is it, kids – Thanksgiving week is upon us at last! The quick slide down the holiday hill to the end of the year is here, and most of us just want it over with. Absent of holiday guests stopping by, absent of holiday parties, and absent of holiday dinners, our home will be super-simplified for the season, with a couple of accents of fresh pine and greenery, and that’s about it. Whether we have a tree or not will be up to Andy – I’m fine either way. In this brave new world, it’s time to get back to basics. On with the weekly recap…

Like so many have this year, the squirrels frolicked in madness. 

Pink is swell for any morning, but Tuesday morning was the lucky recipient this week. 

This loser can’t lose for losing. 

Memory reflection.

The art of the ornamental.

These cyclamen went POP. 

Harry Styles wore a dress and solidified his status as hero. 

Lowered expectations. 

My Christmas Wish List 2020. 

A lighter shade of purple. 

Revisiting the moon and a lost friendship.

A hectic day reminds me to slow down a bit. 

A privileged view from the past. 

Hunks of the Day included Rickie Fowler, Stefan Piscitelli, Jack Plotnick, and Michael B. Jordan.

The whispers came to me early in the morning. One of our classmates had been to his house the day before and was telling people about it. We were in third or fourth grade, maybe fifth, and my memory has been fading of late, but this one remains, embedded and part of what formed the base-rock of my outlook on life.

“His dining room table is a wooden picnic table,” the friend whispered conspiratorially to me. I acted aghast. ‘How poor did you have to be to have a picnic table as your dining table?’ was the sentiment I sensed was expected of me, and I easily slipped into the role, even if I couldn’t have told you what kind of dining table we had in our own house – I only knew it wasn’t a picnic table, and more importantly I immediately understood that having a picnic table was something to be ridiculed. From a very young age, I knew how to recognize the temperature of a room, or a conversation, or a look. I could tell where the popular stance stood, when I could get away with challenging it, and most importantly when it could not be safely challenged without cost to my own image. This was the essence of how to be popular and well-liked, and more importantly how to stay so.

On that particular day, when the whispers came to me, I knew the role to play, and as long as I didn’t have a picnic table in the dining room I was safe to go along with the judgment and derision. I also knew that as the son of a doctor and nursing professor, my family was comfortably middle class, and more fortunate than many others. I never felt that gave me any entitlement, but I saw the effect that fact had on others. It would be a lie to pretend it didn’t rub off on me, that I didn’t take in those perks of privilege and parade through life in a more-peacock-like manner because of that emboldening baseline.

To my regret, I went along with the ridicule that morning, as much as I felt bad about it. Class and financial status were already eating into the innocence of school-children, and we were never as innocent as people made us out to be in the first place. There was more shame in judging that classmate and his family than there would ever be in having a picnic table. I learned that lesson early, in the way it made me feel instantly icky, and from then on I did my best to never join in the ridicule about anyone having less than me.

It was an office day, and since I’m mostly in the office one day a week now, those hours were packed with catch-up and business and non-stop activity. Exhilarating and a reminder of the world we used to know, there was something reassuring about those hours, but they were draining too. So when I realized I’d scheduled a therapy session for later that afternoon, it felt a little overwhelming. Poor planning on my behalf, and just as the holidays are ensuing. 

Still, there was a window of opportunity between work and therapy, and so I set the timer for 26 minutes, lit a stick of Palo Santo incense, and settled into the lotus position as the day lost its light. In this brief window of meditation time, I began the deep breathing, slowing my inhalations and exhalations, locating the breath of the ocean as I moved deeper into a state of calm. 

There, in those 26 minutes, time briefly expanded, and I touched on the edge of the infinite, realizing in simple yet epic fashion the way the mind can clear itself of mental and emotional detritus. A moment of mindfulness allows for the unfurling of an entire universe in a matter of minutes. Time-bending once felt like the unattainable magic of sorcerers and make-believe.

It feels less unattainable today. 

These luscious shades of purple were found along the Southwest Corridor Park where Back Bay bleeds into the South End, and how I came to be walking there on a Tuesday in November is a story that will have to wait for another day, if I deign to tell it at all. There’s nothing very exceptional about it – save for the fact that we are in the midst of a pandemic and one has to be very careful about where one goes and how one goes about getting there. These are the times in which we live. We learn to adapt, we learn different ways to survive. 

I like the addition of purple to the typical orange and rust shades you see everywhere around Thanksgiving. It adds a tinge of royalty to the proceedings. And we could all do with a little royalty these days. Nobility raises its head above the most mundane of trappings. It needs neither title nor riches. It stakes its claim on its own internal sense of self. May you find your own beauty there. 

All I’m saying to Santa is that I better get something out of this shitty year because in the face of all of it, I was pretty damn good. This is my Christmas Wish List, a slight departure from the vapid and vain selections of the past due to the need for masks and humidity, but there are still exorbitant items of fancy thrown in for those who still aspire.

Let’s get the utilitarian mask thing out of the way, as I just discovered that Tom Ford has his own line of face masks done in typically-elegant fashion. My preference is toward the nude/beige shades but I’m open to whatever’s available. (And honestly, these may have already sold out since I’m late getting this post up.)

If they’re gone already, here are a few more practical, and available, price points, in these offerings from Nordstrom or Saks Fifth Avenue or Neiman Marcus. Mask up, people, mask up.

Accessories are still the simplest way to feel a little more glamorous, even when stuck at home, and here’s a way to do so on-the-cheap: a Marcus Adler bandana set in pretty floral prints.

If those Tom Ford Masks are still sold out, here’s one more chance for Mr. Ford to enter our lives: TF Anti-Fatigue Eye Treatment. Because like all my body parts, my eyes are fatigued too.

In a year when we were suddenly stuck at home, it became about comfort and beauty, not to mention practicality, so this rather unglamorous gift request of another room humidifier is the unheralded way of improving our winter air quality. Throat and skin and hair all do better when there is a little more humidity in the air, particularly when the drying effects of home heat and arid winter air collide. This model works wonders and runs at least a full day without needing refilling.

I never thought I’d be looking at Men’s Wearhouse for clothing items, especially given how much their commercials bothered me a few years back, but this is 2020, the year of COVID, and after being cooped up in sweats and T-shirts I actually long for some basic office wear. They’ve also been upping their game recently online, so let’s give them a whirl. We begin with this striped turtleneck sweater (size medium), and then seal the deal with these red floral pants (size 32).

Before anyone thinks I’ve lost my ever-loving mind at the Men’s Wearhouse, check out these Holiday Tartan pants from Bonobos (waist 32, length 30) because they are divine.

In a throwback to the type of gifts I usually sought when I was younger, this spinning globe from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts recalls my fascination with science and motion and the simple delight of our earth. I already have a spot in the sun selected for it.

Turning our noses toward the fragrance portion of this wish list, I’ve long wanted to get into the Henry Rose line of cleaner scents, and they have this economical sampler set that would be perfect for that. 

Finally, here are two glam gifts that mark a season or a year, even when it’s been such a doozy as this one has been. First up is the exquisite ‘Rose & Cuir’  – a fragrance by the olfactory wizard Jean-Claude Ellena, who did all those delicious Jardin scents for Hermes. He’s crafted an exquisite rose and leather scent for Frederic Malle’s glorious line, and it’s one of the finest scents I’ve sniffed of late.

The darker cousin of ‘Rose & Cuir’ is ‘Portrait of A Lady’, befitting an evening instead of sunny winter day, and a scent I’ve flirted with over the past few years and have at long last put near the top of the wish list. A pair of rose scents would be a comfort and antidote to a mostly dreadful year.

If you still have slots to fill, there’s always my Amazon Wish List. Fanciness can be found there too if you delve deep enough. This one’s for you, Santa baby.

Ornamental cabbage and kale never used to appeal to me until I got well into adulthood. There was something disconcerting about having something so utilitarian transformed into something designed solely for beauty and appearance. How strange that I should have fought it for so long. Sounds delightfully perfect for me – but really that’s only been the image of me. The real me is much more practical and frugal. 

Now, I find myself at a happy reconciliatory place, able to enjoy such prettiness as a function of itself, even if it’s meant not for the stomach, but for the eye, destined to thrill only by sight, before wilting away in the hardest frost. These days the ornamental kale and cabbage seen in fall entryways all over New England are favorites of mine, and I always fall prey to taking a hundred photos of their innermost beauty. 

Just a short month ago, Andy and I were still wading into the space you see in this nifty photo. For those trying to make heads and tails of it, it’s the reflection of some trees in our pool cover, when it was first pulled on, and a rainstorm created the puddles of clear water that act like mirrors here. The underwater leaves act as a disorienting element that lends the picture a slightly surreal aspect which I heartily enjoy. 

At the start of the summer we had little joy here. I can still picture Andy sitting forlornly at the edge of the pool, feet hanging disconsolately over the deep end, before the new steps and liner were installed. But they went in eventually, and we recovered a couple months of swim time and summer enjoyment. Just enough to what our appetite for more, and so we settle into an anticipatory winter, hunkering down and keeping cozy as best we can before spring’s inevitable return. 

I like having something to which we can look forward. It keeps us going. It gives us hope. We need that right now. 

It’s been two weeks since Trump lost the election. 

Has anyone told him?

#TrumpLost

#TrumpIsALoser

#OneTermTrump

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