Keeping thematically pure with the lines of this post earlier today, this Chamaecyparis, one of a pair standing sentinel by our front door, forms the only holiday-like decorations outside the house this year. I may string some lights around the Japanese umbrella pine that stands slightly taller than me in our small front garden. No more than that though. Not this year.
If you have a similar set-up for the holidays, and want to draw out the beauty for as long as possible, and maybe even see the greenery through the winter, don’t forget to keep these slightly waters, especially if they’re covered by a roof, as these are. When the snow arrives, and it always does, I will grab some and cover the soil with it, allowing it to melt slowly and naturally as it would into the ground.
There’s still no guarantee or even likelihood that these will make it through the whole winter. Survival can only be counted on when the roots are secure and insulated beneath a healthy snow cover. Still, it’s worth a shot. And they make a beautiful spot of chartreuse splendor, especially as the morning sun weaves its way through the branches.
To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. – E.B. White
Taking a year off from the traditional holiday decorating I do at this time of the season – what’s the point when we’re not having visitors inside anytime soon? – I’ve happily trimmed down that extravaganza to a few choice pieces – a group of bells for jingling on the front door, our childhood mouse-house, and this bouquet of evergreens and eucalyptus, punctuated by a pair of owls from Faddegon’s.
It was at Faddegon’s where I saw the original (and much finer) version that inspired this whimsical display. It’s a magical place at the holidays, filled with bulbs, poinsettias, ornaments and other holiday jewels. Their designers craft scenes and holiday-scapes to complement every season, and manage to conjure particularly enchanting work at Christmas.
For this bouquet, I started with some eucalyptus, then looked right in my own backyard, plucking a couple of Eastern pine branches, a sprig of juniper, some Thuja ‘Steeplechase’, and a few bare oak branches that had some horizontal elements to them. The latter provided the perfect perches for the owls, lending a whimsical aspect that is usually too precious for my liking. I’m shedding such cynicism for the rest of the year, embracing the winter wonderland that such a scene evokes.
The moon was near full a few days after Thanksgiving, and it hovered at the top of my parents’ street when I stopped by for a quick dinner in the garage. It seems silly to have prepared the space for one single grand dinner when this unseasonably warm fall allows us to be gathered at a safely ventilated distance. As I made my way back to my car, I caught the moon peeking over Amsterdam, working its magic and wonder and mischief.
Earlier that day I had ticked my meditation time up to a total of 27 minutes, which actually goes by more quickly than one would expect, and the bulk of it doesn’t even focus on me. I spent a good portion contemplating intentions on Andy’s physical and mental health, and have expanded that to include the same for my parents as they are getting older. That only leaves a short time for my own intentions, but they have dwindled in the year since I started meditating, which is how it should be. Getting out of my own headspace will go down as one of the few gifts that 2020 has bestowed on me.
On December 28th, I’ll move up to 28 minutes of daily meditation ~ a lofty goal of peace, a window of light and expansive clarity, and a ritual to quell and calm the holiday mayhem.
Andy claims I have a propensity for trying to burn the house down. He’s being overly dramatic, but I do tend to have some sort of flammable mishap every year or so. This season I got the holiday fire over with rather early on, just as I began wrapping the presents.
Setting the scene with a delicious candle of frasier fir, I conjured a cozy day after Thanksgiving, getting a headstart on the gift-giving. I started by clearing off the dining room table. No sooner had that been done that it quickly became populated with wrapping and presents, and I took a moment to make a peppermint mocha decaf coffee. Topping it off with some whipped cream – tis the season for such indulgences – I sat down and began stuffing a scarf into a bag. I grabbed some pink tissue paper and pushed it to the side as I refolded the scarf. Instantly, the pink tissue found the candle flame and went up like a piece of flash paper. Moving swiftly, I grabbed the part that hadn’t yet burned up and brought it quickly but relatively calmly to the kitchen sink, where Andy had already rushed in upon seeing the flames.
A quick dousing of water took care of the remaining burning bits, though a bunch of smoke lingered as Andy turned the kitchen vents on and opened the front window.
‘Tis the season for eye candy and guy candy, so sound your favorite holiday jam and let’s turn this Christmas out with these naked and semi-naked gentlemen. It’s been a while since we’ve had any nude male celebrities, so let’s make up for that with this post. We’ll ease into it with a shirtless Tom Holland.
The Christmas tree that gets erected (and eventually mostly fabricated) at Rockefeller Center was hyped to be from Oneonta, New York, and when it was initially installed it left a rather deflated impression, quite right for the year of our Lord 2020. Check out the first unveiling here.
I’m not going to shit on this tree. (We’ll leave that sort of thing to this awful lady.) I’ll wait for them to fluff it up – though I can’t imagine the kind of magical fluffing required to puff that puppy out. Here’s hoping for a real Christmas miracle.
(It turns out there was also a little saw-whet owl living in the tree, who somehow managed to survive the cutting and the falling and the driving to New York City. Named Rockefeller, it has since been returned to its native location in upstate NY. All in the weeks leading up to a 2020 Christmas, I suppose.)
And so we move into the Holiday 2020 season. Lord knows what that will entail, and I hope to lay low as much as possible until the year draws to its close. Godspeed to us all, especially to this tree.
In a lovely little FaceBook triangulation of late that involved three pivotal people in my life – Ann, LeeMichael and Skip – I was reminded of a visit to the Gaiety – the male strip club that now-almost-infathomably inhabited a precious piece of Times Square/Theater District real estate across from the Minskoff Theatre. Ann and I had gone into the city to see ‘Sunset Boulevard‘ in 1995, and when it was over I suggested/begged/demanded that we take in a few stripper rotations at the Gaiety, where part of Madonna’s ‘Sex’ book was so gloriously and infamously shot.
Looking at and thinking about Times Square right now, it seems impossible that such a place existed – right near the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre where we had seen ‘Titanic’ in 1997! It was the only male strip club I’ve been to (that I can remember – was there another?) which is a crime in itself when you think about it. Honestly, Ann and I were only there because of the Madonna connections – the naked men were just a bonus, not the destination. And it was a bit of a bizarre set-up when we were there.
There were sets of six or seven strippers, who each did a solo dance to a pop song by some gay diva (obviously Madonna was a perennial choice) in which they took almost everything off. They then disappeared off stage for a few moments (cue the fluffer, apparently) and when they returned, fully nude and rather excited, they did a minute or two more at full mast. Then they left the stage. That was basically it. Each stripper did his thing, in the same basic set-up. I don’t think we stayed for the full duration, so maybe there was something more interactive and interesting at the end – Ann and I were back at our room across the street at the Marriott Marquis before we reached the finale, spent from an evening with Betty Buckley and a few male strippers. It was enough.
Let us have beauty! Unattainable, unreliable, unrelenting beauty!
For the start of December, we demand it. In the month when winter arrives after much hemming and hawing and hinting, we will need beauty and light and warmth more than ever. The holidays can falsely keep hopes lifted for only a short duration – soon that tree will lose its needles, those ornaments will lose their luster, and we will lose the spirit of cheer and joy that has only ever been temporary. Then we will be left scrambling to find the next fix, the next balm upon our hearts while the long trek of winter unfurls its endless wonder. That’s when beauty comes into play.
In the false heat and humidity of a greenhouse, these orchids bloom entirely unaware of the winter about to surround them. That winter will lay siege to all of our surroundings, but in the artificial environment of the greenhouse, these orchids will go about their business, happily blooming and growing and putting on a show. They will have no idea how helpful it will be for those of us just trying to make it through another day. Beauty does that.
And so, let us have beauty for the beginning of December, and let it ring throughout the coming winter.
On this last day of November, let’s just look back at the week before and save everyone a monthly recap because there is only just so much recapping one can take. I’ve reached my limit, that is for sure. And the year-end summation is up next month. We’ll see if I muster that one. I don’t know anyone who wants to relive 2020 in any way, shape or fashion. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. On with the last week – it’s all I can handle at the moment.
A sunny Sunday morning dawns, and I steal into the backyard for a quick shot of the fountain grass, brilliantly lit against a blue sky. Looks lovely enough, though a far cry from the sumptuous green straps of summer. The sun deceptively doesn’t betray the cutting wind or chilly temperature. That’s what these words are for. In the background of my screen, a Sunday morning coffee jam by Karel Barnowski plays – the perfect accompaniment for some casual writing.
It’s not a bad way to begin a Sunday on the verge of December. Certainly the sun helps, along with the sky – the sort of blue brilliance that doesn’t often happen at the end of November. Maybe Mother Nature knows there is just so much more we can take in 2020. Doubtful, that. There’s always another level below. Better to be cautious.
But on this particular morning, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I allow myself a brief moment of relief and release. I take a deep breath and appreciate the fluffy seed-heads of the fountain grass, and the way they move in the wind. We don’t get that kind of show in summer. It only comes after a full season of growth, and after the killing frosts of fall have turned the grass into a sun-bleached beacon of tan wonder.
At first there was the idea: a home away from home.
A place where spring might be found in February, and in my mind that’s all I could envision.
It was November, which always felt like the darkest month of the year. Thoughts of the coming spring, even if we hadn’t even entered winter, kept me going. As did the idea of a place in Boston, away from the campus of Brandeis. Having persuaded my parents of the wisdom of purchasing a condo in the South End of Boston, where real estate was just beginning to take off, I’d wasted no time in starting the search. This song led my heart, and I remember hearing it for the first time in the music store on the second floor of the Copley Place Mall, back when such garish haunts still had a home in Copley.
IT FELT LIKE SPRING TIME
ON THIS FEBRUARY MORNING
IN THE COURTYARD BIRDS WERE SINGING YOUR PRAISE
I’M STILL RECALLING THINGS YOU SAID
TO MAKE ME FEEL ALRIGHT
I CARRIED THEM WITH ME TODAY
The fall day on which I started the hunt for our Boston condo began in rainy form. Living on campus at Brandeis at the time, in a castle from whose balcony the city of Boston appeared like some little glowing visage of Oz far in the distance, I longed to be in the middle of the city, longed to find a place there as I’d dreamed all those years ago on one of our first visits to Quincy Market. Somewhere in my head, amid the magical little bull markets and twinkling trees, beside the wavy cobblestone walkways, and the centuries of history, I felt my own history being built.
The year was 1995, and I’d taken my father’s offer to start looking for a place in Boston at face value, hopping on the commuter rail into the city, and walking into the South End to the first real estate place I saw on Tremont. Expecting some introductory small talk, some vague promise of a meeting in a week or two, I suddenly found myself walking out of the office and onto Clarendon with the handsome real estate agent, beneath a suddenly-blue sky and the late afternoon sunlight.
Perhaps it was all part of his master plan, but the first offer was a smaller place right around the block on Clarendon Street. I remember a brick wall in the kitchen area, where a single small batch of dried, almost desiccated flowers, hung in a sad sort of way. It wasn’t ideal, and there wasn’t a T stop nearby, but the notion of waking up in white sheets, when the sun poured in and illuminated every crack and crevice of brick, was rustically appealing in its simple way. The idea of sharing that small space with someone suddenly imprinted itself upon my mind, an idea of making a home, and of finding love there.
The second home we saw was deeper into the South End. Even further from any T stop, it offered the most space, but was unfortunately divided into several smaller rooms lending it a claustrophobic feel, where no light reached some of the inner-rooms. That old real-estate adage about location, location, location ran through my head, and as we walked the long way back to the real estate office, I felt a little despair that we were down to one more option.
NOW, AS I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
THIS I PRAY
THAT YOU WILL HOLD ME DEAR
THOUGH I’M FAR AWAY
I’LL WHISPER YOUR NAME INTO THE SKY
AND I WILL WAKE UP HAPPY
It was dark when we visited the condo at Braddock Park. Located on the border between Copley and the South End, it was in a brick building along the Southwest Corridor Park. Steps from the orange line, and a few more steps to the green line, it was the closest to just about everything. In the night, I could locate where we were based on the twin hotels of the Marriott and Westin nearby, and the John Hancock Tower slightly beyond them. Their lights broke the blackness around us. It felt like we were on the doorstep of Boston. More than that, I somehow felt like I was home.
The condo was on the second floor, which rose even higher than a typical second story based on the fact that the first floor actually started about a dozen steps above the sidewalk. Coupled with high ceilings, we were indeed at the doorstep of Boston, and somehow looking down over it. Even without being there during the day, I could sense there would be good light. It was a floor-through unit with bay windows in the front and the back. A bit foolish to make such an investment without seeing it at both day and night, but something just felt right about it. There, in the darkness of a Boston evening, it felt right. Just me, and the city, and the night.
When November arrived, and the cold days settled in, it was time to close on the condo. My Boston dorm had taken on a decidedly dreary aspect ~ both in its suffocating communal shower, where a house centipede was lurking around every corner, and in the coldness of its painted cinder block walls, the sad little sink and mirror by the tiny window.
I WONDER WHY I FEEL SO HIGH
THOUGH I AM NOT ABOVE THE SORROW
HEAVY-HEARTED TIL YOU CALL MY NAME
AND IT SOUNDS LIKE CHURCH BELLS
OR THE WHISTLE OF A TRAIN
ON A SUMMER EVENING
I’LL RUN TO MEET YOU BAREFOOT
BARELY BREATHING
On the day we closed on it, the wind was strong and the air was chilled. It was November, and we’d turned past the point where warm and sunny days could still heat the earth. For such a transformational event, it felt oddly uneventful, and as my parents signed all the papers, and the condo became our second home, the little set of keys hardly seemed like they could open the portal to the next part of our lives.
It would be a couple of weeks before I moved in, and in those weeks I steeled myself for a life alone. Now that the deal was done, there was no reason for the real estate agent to hang around, and I was left by myself, with all the trappings of an exciting single life in Boston, but none of the happiness or excitement or hope. Gradually, by little and insubstantial bits of furniture old and new, I furnished the condo, in minimalist fashion by necessity, and sparsely by tentativeness. In those first few days, I wanted to take it all in in its most simple and basic form ~ the warm, newly-refinished hardwood floors, the bit of exposed brick wall in the bathroom, the little counter that separated our small kitchen area from the rest of the front room, the marble mantle around the fireplace from who knew how many long years ago.
While the main room had lovely recessed lighting in its ceiling, the bedroom was bereft of such luxury. A little fringed lamp was all I had to illuminate the space at night, and I slept on the thin almost-mattress of a cot we brought in until a bed could be ordered and delivered. There wasn’t a television or a stereo in the place, and I didn’t need or want for any. In that stillness and quietude, I forged a love for time spent alone. Somehow I knew it would be the singular love affair we all need to find to be ok with whatever ways our journeys wound.
AS I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
THIS I PRAY
THAT YOU WILL HOLD ME DEAR
THOUGH I’M FAR AWAY
I’LL WHISPER YOUR NAME INTO THE SKY
AND I WILL WAKE UP HAPPY
The idea of sharing this space with someone, or sharing a life with someone, was the way I romanticized in those days. And especially those nights. I played this song over and over, longing for such a scene, longing for companionship, longing for the fix that would heal my heart. I wasn’t quite sure how it had been broken, there simply came a day when, upon examining it, I realized that yes, there were cracks, there were fissures even as I didn’t recall the jolts that did it.
Was it the man who scraped my face so viciously with his stubble, the first man who ever kissed me, the man who took that special moment and in his alcoholic madness in turn took my innocence? I honestly didn’t think he had broken it ~ even when we saw each other randomly a year prior to that, when he told me it just wasn’t working out before I even realized we were actually dating. I was so young and naive, I didn’t even know that.
Was it my favorite Uncle who laughed at me when I was a kid, when in a rare moment of excitement I showed him a flower arrangement I had made and he asked with a smirk if I was gay? I couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve, and still I remember the sting of it, the way I hid in my room and cried until my Mom asked me what was wrong as I was avoiding my favorite Uncle and I just blurted it out in pain and anguish.
Was it when one of my only friends in college jokingly and derisively said he hoped I wasn’t going fag on him when I innocently pointed out the moon on our way back from dinner one night?
I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t any single event, maybe it was the gradual erosion of our lives, the mean stuff and tough stuff of life that eats away at all of us, some more than others, some much more harshly than others, until we reach a point where our hearts are so delicate and worn that they break at the silliest and most trifling of things. A culmination of continual little heartaches resulting in a break that is, at that point, almost a tender sort of relief.
IT’S NOT TOO NEAR FOR ME
LIKE A FLOWER I NEED THE RAIN
THOUGH IT’S NOT CLEAR TO ME
EVERY SEASON HAS ITS CHANGE
AND I WILL SEE YOU
WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT AGAIN
Then, at the not-so-ripe age of twenty, in that rather lovely year of 1995 ~ a loveliness I would come to appreciate more and more as the other years went by ~ those little breaks and cracks had forced me to rebuild a stronger fortress, a defiant set of armor that would steel me against future heartbreak. I needed that whenever I descended and entered the city. Only within the brick walls and the lofty vantage point over Braddock Park did I feel safe enough to let down my guard, to be myself and to be ok all by myself. It was in that way that I shaped a new sense of home.
My adult life was forged there, for better or worse, and it prepared me for hardships and celebrations and love and loss and loneliness and betrayal and redemption and survival. All those facets of living the fullest life, when we are brave enough not to shy away from those feelings.
AS I LAY ME DOWN TO SLEEP
THIS I PRAY
THAT YOU WILL HOLD ME DEAR
THOUGH I’M FAR AWAY
I’LL WHISPER YOUR NAME INTO THE SKY
AND I WILL WAKE UP HAPPY
Home is a habit, and sometimes you have to make it up as you go.
Home is stability and safety, even when your own heart invites in all sorts of dangers.
Home is a quiet place of refuge when the wind whirls in wicked ferocity, when the rest of the world deserts you, when you have to face the demons all by yourself.
Home doesn’t have to be a physical space bound by wood and clay and windows, but when that place forms the background and base for those moments when you realize what home is, it can’t help but take on some of that history, to become imbued with some of that spiritual matter that we shed as we grow.
There, in that Boston wilderness of a heart tamed by a solitude and stillness, protected from another brutal winter by centuries of brick and mortar, buffeted by the history of a city defined by its singularly American story, of revolution and rebellion, of defiance and devastation, I made a home a quarter of a century ago.
I WONDER WHY
WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT AGAIN
I WILL WAKE UP HAPPY
With cross ventilation, social distancing, and separate eating areas, we managed to have as safe a Thanksgiving as possible in this pandemic era, and still spend time with family. It took some planning, but there was joy and fun in that process too, hours spent in the Ilagan garage, where we staged a dinner with some creative lighting and curtains, and a floral ladder hung over the main table.
This year our bounty wasn’t in the delicious meal, or the extravagant flowers over our head, it was in the simple company of family. Andy’s parents haven’t been with us for a number of years, and every Thanksgiving we are reminded of their absence, as happens with most holidays. I was especially glad to have Mom and Dad still with us – something we appreciate more and more with each passing year.
That’s why this was so important for us to do, and I’m grateful we were able to make it work. Company is good for Dad – and this year it was good for all of us.
It doesn’t always, but this time Thanksgiving lived up to its name.
Oh, and I got to wear a hat with a bird in it! (I’ll get better pics of that another day.)
Shortly after I entered Massachusetts, I saw it swoop right over the turnpike, soaring through the cold air. Its front and back blurred into the bright sky, giving me a certain glimmer of hope and excitement which was soon confirmed as I watched it alight in a tree: a bald eagle. A fortuitous sign for the day ahead, in which I was scheduled to check on the condo and do a quick walk through Boston. The car sped by the eagle’s raw magnificence.
The forest teetered on the edge of holiday celebration. It was always slightly more interesting when the threat of snow was in the air. Maybe it lacked the obvious mystery that full canopy of leaves would provide in the depths of summer, but the woods held a different sort of allure now.
I finished my quick visit to Boston and found myself back on the turnpike driving through the Berkshires. The day was coming to its early close, and as I closed in on New York State a sudden series of squalls came upon us as such squalls in such places often do. Deciding to wait for a bit, I pulled off at the nearest exit in Lee, where the outlets had begun their holiday sales. The snow was coming down heavily, but there was light in the distance so I knew it wouldn’t last. Instead, the effect was thoroughly enjoyable. Some gift-buying seemed a festive way to pass the squall, and as I climbed the large hill where the outlets were nestled, it felt like one of those surreal holiday moments that’s part magic and part make-believe.
The snow soon lifted, the clouds parted, and the sky lightened again. I caught these photos of a little crescent moon. A day that begins with a bald eagle and ends with a crescent moon is a magical day indeed.
The House of Creed provides the fragrance that kicks off this year’s holiday season. A birthday gift from this past summer, I’ve held onto it, keeping patient and calm as much as I wanted to break this bad boy open and spritz away ~ it is such a delicious scent. But don’t take my fumbling words for it ~ read what the official literature says about ‘Royal Oud’, from the House of Creed:
Wood, leather, marble, and gold. These luxurious elements of a Persian palace are the inspiration behind the architecture of Royal Oud. Precious, sweet oud is carefully extracted from agarwood trees, a carefully-guarded resource that grows only in certain parts of India. Oud’s rarity lends to the expense of the fragrance’s coveted raw materials, prized by both the men and women who wear it. A fashionable favorite amongst today’s royals and heads of state, Royal Oud’s universal blend bottles the splendor of palace life across continents.
Oddly enough, it’s not the oud that hits hardest with this one. It opens a bit dirty for me, in as elegant and royal a way as dirty can sometimes be, and for that reason alone I was instantly in love with it. In a year when we remain stuck at home for the most part, this is the time to wear something polarizing, to try and experiment, to challenge one’s olfactory comfort zone in an environment not bound by office courtesy or public decorum.
‘Royal Oud’ is a big banging bomb of a scent in the best possible way, and it’s absolutely sublime for the start of the holidays. With its woody and musky heart, which I get from the opening blast as well, this is a glorious doozy. The beginning is sparked and softened by a warm spicy element with some lovely pink pepper brightened in jewel-like splendor with lemon and Sicilian bergamot.
Sumptuous and refined, with that sparkling kernel of underlying dirtiness lending it a little wink, ‘Royal Oud’ is a warmer offering from Creed, which often veers a little cold and clinical for my liking. This one smolders in dramatic fashion, a little messy and a little opulent ~ royalty reborn.
