Today local treasure Ken Screven celebrates his 70th birthday. In addition to that, the Albany Damien Center has honored Mr. Screven as their 2020 Hero Award recipient. Currently making a social media splash with his thought-provoking and continually-challenging posts, Mr. Screven is a pillar of Albany, past and future. Happy birthday Ken!
Out of the three varieties of tomatoes we tried this year, only these cherry tomatoes came to any serious fruition – and boy were they serious. For the two of us, one single plant provided more than enough cherry tomatoes for salads and snacks and even a Virgin Mary. Next year we will do two containers of these, and forego trying to grasp at the elusive glory of the Beefsteak ones. Andy could make some great summer sauce from the cherries if we get a slightly larger harvest.
This year I kept it simple, focusing on their flavor by popping a couple in my mouth on my rounds around the backyard, or slicing up a bunch for an afternoon snack, drizzled with some Balsamic vinegar and freshly-ground pepper. The joys of summer need not be extravagant or complicated.
The picture hardly does it justice, but after sixteen hours of intermittent fasting the chicken sandwich from Popeyes is probably the most foodgasmic moment I’ve had in years. There’s nothing left to say.
Oh wait, fuck Chick-fil-A – who wants to taste hate?
It’s a little before 8 in the morning, and I just finished up my first morning meditation. That’s what happens when you get old and insomnia wreaks its havoc and you wake up at 6 AM for no apparent reason. I know I just extolled the beauty of meditation deeper into the evening, but many people begin their day with a meditation, and being contradictory suits me.
In a lot of ways, the break of dawn is the most peaceful time of the day. It certainly is in our home, when Andy is still asleep and there is no television or radio or coffee-maker on. In this quietude and stillness, I assume the lotus position, light a stick of Palo Santo incense, and deep breathe my way through 24 minutes of meditation. It’s a good way to begin the morning, and for those days when the schedule is packed and there is a chance of missing out on a meditation, getting up a bit early may be worth it. I’ll see if it affects the rest of the day, or if the serenity fades by the time the first work issue rears its head.
While the daylight visage of these angel trumpet blooms is impressive, it’s their nighttime maneuvers that hold greater enchantment, as that is when their perfume comes out in full force, permeating the thick air of evening and intoxicating the entire backyard with their sweet fragrance. A single flower is powerful; taken en masse like they were this year, it’s a magnificently sensual experience.
Traditionally, I’d be stressing out and sendup up all sorts of prayers and voodoo chants to make sure these flowered in tandem with whatever celebratory gatherings we were having in the summer. This year around that’s not even a concern, so I was free to enjoy the natural unfurling of their flowering glory. There’s a necessary lesson in that, and the peace of mind it produced will be remembered far beyond the insanity that is 2020.
“The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right’s unlikely drive for a White ethnostate but the regular American’s drive for a ‘race-neutral’ one. The construct of race neutrality actually feeds White nationalist victimhood by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-White Americans toward equity is ‘reverse discrimination.†― Ibram X. Kendi
That’s the philosophy driving the daily swims I’ve been trying to accomplish. Late to the pool game, we are trying to keep it going for as long as possible. Even when the weather has been overcast and on the cool side, I’ve tried to make it into the pool, because that calm feeling of floating, and the ease and pleasure it evokes by released the pull gravity on tired backs and sore legs, is a fleeting thing of beauty. Inhabit it for as long as possible.
According to the latest weather forecast, this might be it for the sun this week, but I’ve always been leery of a forecast. We will take the days, and the hours, as they come, hoping for the best, prepared for the worst. If there’s a chance to take another dip, I shall take it.
Putting my birthday to bed for another year, I donned a pair of new pajamas and reclined in a new set of bedding while Andy listened to Cole Porter in the living room. Fancy dinners are fun, and loud raucous parties have their place, but this will always be where I am most comfortable, and after 45 years, I’m finally good with acknowledging that. There is nothing left to prove, and there never was. How many years I had wasted thinking otherwise! Oh well, this was and is not the time for regrets – the only space we have is for moving forward.
We slept with the windows open – the first air-out of the condo and the first tease of fall found in the cool and comfortable breeze. Outside, the Braddock Park fountain trickled its soothing sound of falling water – a bit of magic that has remained constant these past few years, and a sure way of lulling one to sleep.
Moments of calm and contentment are here when we are ready to accept them.
Faux-silk pajamas are optional, but I do find they help.
My birthday dawned as it usually does – quietly, calmly, without fanfare or excitement. Technically I didn’t come into the world until about 3 in the afternoon, so birthday mornings have been quiet since way back then. Andy slept in while I took a shopping walk on my own; when solitude is an option, it is made more delicious. Especially on birthday mornings.
I made my way downtown before doubling back and pausing with a slow walk through the Boston Public Garden.
As is typical of all things 2020, the pond was drained due to invasive wildlife. So accustomed to such bullshit have I become that it didn’t even register as disappointing. It was interesting to get this glimpse of how it works anyway – I love a behind-the-scenes, or below-the-water, peek at what goes on behind the beauty.
Meanwhile, the zinnias continued their blooming show nearer the condo. By early afternoon, I returned there just as the sun was growing hot. Like it always has, the condo provided comfort and respite from all sorts of weather, allowing only the best light indoors, and as the time of my actual birth arrived, we sat in the splendor of the space as Cole Porter played on the stereo.
With provisions from Eataly filling the dining table, we made a pre-dinner snack for ourselves, and I took a quick siesta in the bedroom – one of my favorite things to do, and very much a happy way of marking my birthday.
We dined at Eddie V’s, one of the closest restaurants so we wouldn’t have to be bothered with public transportation or an Uber, and on our way there were more flowers to help with the quiet celebration.
Low-key and lovely, my birthday came to its contemplative close. In a crazy year, we made the most of it, and that was more than enough. Anything that’s not a complete bonkers disaster has to be considered a stunning success at this point.
Boston retains its beauty, if you know where and how to find it. If that beauty is more subdued these days, and a little bit hidden, that only makes it all the more wondrous.
The body of a 44-year-old just one day removed from 45 is different from the one I had at half this age, but I’ve been taking a little better care of it now than I was back then. That’s what happens when you get older. Rather than fight it, it’s best to embrace those changes, leaning into ways to live a little healthier.
After returning from a pre-birthday dinner, I prepared to take a quick shower in the hazy nether region before another birthday. Forty-five years ago tonight I did not exist. In the way that birthdays sometimes bring about a moment of melancholy, I wondered briefly if there would have been any discernible difference in the world if I hadn’t entered it the next day. Even the most influential among us have very little say or sway in changing the world in sweeping ways; the best we can do is nudge and cajole in small ways the shifting trajectory of the universe.
Looking back to when I stood in the same bathroom twenty five years ago, I wondered at how much had truly changed. I didn’t feel all that different on the inside, but how unrecognizable the outside world had become from just five or ten years ago. Upon closer examination, I suppose I had changed quite a bit too, and not just on the outside…
After making a solo test-run day-trip to Boston a couple of weeks ago, I knew the city was as safe (if not safer) than where we were at in Albany, so Andy and I made our first journey out-of-state in many months for a birthday trip to Beantown. In Boston, masks were worn all the time – even on the street when no one else was around – and there are sanitizing stations at every store and entrance. Our plan didn’t involve much public interaction – two dinners out was all we had planned, and if we felt uncomfortable with anything we reserved the right to hunker down in the condo and not go anywhere. In the end, our time there was delightfully uneventful, even for a birthday get-away, and it felt good to be doing something closer to normal.
As we pulled onto Braddock Park, my heart leapt a little from simple joy. Oh how we have missed you! It reminded me of friends and gatherings and happiness and weddings and love. In the middle of the island, the fountain was playing and spraying its happy song, the trees were still green, and the gardens of the Southwest Corridor Park were dizzy with zinnias in full bloom.
We unpacked and settled in while sunlight poured into the bedroom and the air conditioner cooled the stuffy space. It hadn’t been opened to any air flow since March, and you could almost feel the condo breathing again. A ZZ plant stood near the window, still alive after all these months thanks to its water-storing tubers, like a little green camel. Hurriedly, I gave it a deep drink of water. Life stirred.
While Andy took a nap, I walked around the old haunts, meandering along Newbury Street and through Copley Square. The city was quieter, even more-so than the usual slumber of summer, and I embraced the change. Oddly enough, my time in Boston has never been to plug into the noise and excitement of a city, but to find the peace and stillness amid all the hustle and bustle.
Our first dinner was at Terra at Eataly – a new restaurant on the upper floor of Eataly. Its glass ceilinged beauty was given a dramatic flourish as a lightning storm descended and gave us a show of strobes throughout dinner; the universe was not going to let me leave the age of 44 without some drama. The storm let up just in time for us to make our way back to the condo. My last night as a 44 year old had arrived…
Let’s begin with the happy ending: this delicious berry crumble from Cafe Madeleine in the South End. It formed the last treat of a birthday trip to Boston, spent largely (and safely) in the condo, where Andy and I escaped for our first joint outing since the world lost its shit in March. One of the things I’ve missed most since then has been sweet treats from Cafe Madeleine, so on our last morning in town Andy walked down to pick this one up for me on the day after my birthday.
Our Boston jaunt will be recounted in the next couple of posts – they got delayed with the calamity that continues to be 2020, but will form a nice final flourish to the summer, and a foreshadowing of the fall; Boston has its act together when it comes to mask-wearing and sanitizing, and our condo can be its own little isolation oasis, allowing for us to visit the city without the worry of a hotel or public accommodations. That’s precisely what happened when we made our way back to our beloved city…
While the world was being rocked by Chris Evans and his naked dick pic, this site remained focused on what was really important: America’s ass. We also eased into the trained of summer, and it’s not only the garden that’s looking a little worn and ragged these days – I am too. Despite the mostly sedentary nature of this summer, it’s still taken a bit of a toll, on all of us. My hair has turned a whiter shade of gray. My stomach has turned a fuller form of round. And my eyes have turned a crinklier tune of tired.
It’s all ok though. Summer should leave a mark, and the best ones do. This may not have been the best one, but we made the most of it as best we could. More on that later, as it’s not quite over yet. For now, we live in the moments of the past week. That will have to be enough. On with the recap…
The place where the lost posts go.
River Garden Studio: an oasis in downtown Albany.
One of my more-ridiculous school photos.
The pinks and purples and in-between shades that make life such a gloriously confusing and challenging journey are what intrigue and appeal to me most in the color wheel. I want more than red or yellow or blue. I yearn for wilder things than such primary basics. And despite what a drunken homeless man once proclaimed to me while walking in Central Square, the world is more than black and white.
In these dizzying times, some of us want to put labels on everything, to make sense of the madness, to find our tribes and feel safe and stable again. Personally, I’ve never felt such stability, so maybe this is an easier time for me to navigate. Maybe that’s wishful thinking – some sort of survival mechanism because the idea that everything we thought we knew might be wrong is a little overwhelming. Maybe the world is overwhelmed and simply trying to right itself.
On this Sunday night in September, the next to last Sunday night of summer, I celebrate these pink and purple blooms, the ones that aren’t yet giving up, the ones that still bloom and carry on despite the coolness creeping into the night, despite the quicker passing of sunlight. They inspire and astound in the smallest and grandest ways, and for that I am grateful.
It is the gratitude of a moment.
Every once in a while social media delivers some succinct explanation of a complex issue that speaks to reason and justice in a rational and calm context. Here’s that find for me in the last few weeks – wish I knew who wrote it:
In case it’s still unclear… 400 years ago white men enslaved black people. And sold them. And treated them as less than human. For 250 years. While white men created the country’s laws and its systems of government. While 10 to 15 generations of white families got to grow and flourish and make choices that could make their lives better.
And then 150 years ago white men “freed” black people from slavery. But then angry white men created laws that made it impossible for them to vote. Or to own land. Or to have the same rights as white people. And even erected monuments glorifying people who actively had fought to keep them enslaved. All while another 5 to 10 generations of white families got to grow and accumulate wealth and gain land and get an education.
And then 60 years ago white people made it “legal” for black people to vote, and to be “free” from discrimination. But angry white people still fought to keep schools segregated. And closed off neighborhoods to white people only. And made it harder for black people to get bank loans, or get quality education or health care, or to (gasp) marry a white person. All while another 2 to 3 generations of white families got to grow and pass their wealth down to their children and their children’s children.
And then we entered an age where we had the technology to make public the things that were already happening in private – the beatings, the stop and frisk laws, the unequal distribution of justice, the police brutality (in the south, police began as slave patrols designed to catch runaway slaves). And only now, after 400+ years and 20+ generations of a white head start, are we starting to truly have a dialogue about what it means to be black.
White privilege doesn’t mean you haven’t suffered or fought or worked hard. It doesn’t mean white people are responsible for the sins of our ancestors. It doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of who you are.
It does mean that we need to acknowledge that the system our ancestors created is built for white people.
It does mean that Black people are at a disadvantage because of the color of their skin, and
It does mean that we owe it to our neighbors– of all colors– to acknowledge that and work to make our world more equitable.
#BlackLivesMatter
