Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

“I am therefore a ready believer in relics, legends, and local anecdotes of goblins and great men, and would advise all travellers who travel for their gratification to be the same. What is it to us whether these stories be true or false, so long as we can persuade ourselves into the belief of them and enjoy all the charm of the reality?” â€• Washington Irving

There is a sign on many cemetery entrances that they are closed at sundown and no one is allowed in beyond that time. 

There are also many cemeteries that don’t have gates or watchers to make sure no one enters beyond sundown. 

On the cusp of the day when the veil between worlds is at its least substantial and most permeable, this post recalls a recent visit to a cemetery overlooking the Mohawk River. At the entrance was the warning that it was closed at sundown, and I was cutting it close a little after 5 PM. But the sun was still strong, the wind has quieted, and there was such beauty that I ambled the Mini Cooper slowly along the leaf-littered path as a few ancient, drooping pine trees closed their curtains of boughs behind me. 

It appeared I had just missed the main foliage show and most of the leaves had already been ripped from the maples, but a few still clung onto their branches despite the lofty breeze. The golden hour was at hand, and as the temperature began to descend I stood mesmerized by the falling sun. Such a brilliantly tricky fellow, he shone his rays behind the trees and over the river, peeking from behind bark and branches, all in a game that would end with his disappearance. 

The wind picked up. Whispers were heard like the rustling of dry leaves, and I told myself it was just the wind, because what else, or who else, could it be? Behind me the cemetery and its headstones made their own murmurs. More whispers on the wind, I reasoned. 

It’s rather remarkable how much power the sun holds – more remarkable perhaps when that power is suddenly taken away by the winding river, and suddenly we were plunged deeper into shadow. I did not wait for the chill to arrive, though I had an appetite for the edge of danger, even as I drove a little quicker than was necessary to make it out before total darkness fell. 

The forest had me hooked. 

I would be going back the next day, to a longer path, a deeper path, and I’d start a little earlier to catch the light. 

“He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.” â€• Washington Irving

One of my perennial favorite colors, purple has always held a special place in my heart, and all of its varying shades have held fascination and allure for this weary eyes. A color of royalty as much as of wisdom, purple feeds the soul with its soothing reconciliation of fiery red and watery blue. Lessons of color wheel science rekindle in the mind and I travel back to art classes filled with rainbow recitations and the pleasant perpetuity of the light spectrum. 

Nature knows here way around the color purple better than any of us mere mortals, as evidenced in this post where varying shades of it show off in floral and foliage form. 

I love how variable purple can be, how the slightest nod toward red or blue changes its mood. 

I also love how yellow or green can set it off so brilliantly. Once again, Nature knows what she’s doing.

… the farther from the path.

So goes a bit of ‘Into the Woods’ and as there is no more enchanting time to be in the woods than the fall, let us take a moment to pause at the start of a little journey that will bring us from October all the way into November by way of All Hallow’s Eve. 

It is whispered among those who whisper about such things that the veil between the physical world and the spirit realm is thinnest at this time of the year. If you believe those tales, you may be prone to flights of fancy, the flotsam and jetsam of fairy stories, and precisely the sort of hexed writings you may stumble upon in the next few days. 

For now, though, there is only the perfect beauty of the start, because only at the start can there be any hope of perfection. We will stumble and we will fall, and the only thing we can hope for is a big pile of leaves to blunt the impact. 

Bruised and battered, we limp into the final few days of October, wary and quite frankly frightened of what might be on the next horizon. We need to stop saying it cannot get any worse because we all know, thanks to the bulk of 2020, that it absolutely can and in all likelihood it will. On with this recap – the sooner we finish, the better. 

It began in happy if subdued fashion as we celebrated Andy’s birthday in the way we do birthdays now – quietly and happily, grateful for the passing of another year, grateful to still be here. 

A scarlet visitor wished Andy a happy birthday. 

An October poem. 

Sexual reconciliation in motion. 

These are sexy days.

October turned a ghostly shade of pale. 

Ben Cohen’s beefcake calendar returns with a bang. 

Another October poem. 

A kid with no crown, bring him down, down.

A pair of low-hangers.

The Hunk of the Day returned with Chris O’Dowd.

Fall berrydom. 

The days of Club 69: Adults Only.

An aspect of human existence.

This hawthorn tree stands in a little gated court on the corner of Broadway and State Street in downtown Albany, right across the street from the very first state agency at which I worked almost twenty years ago. Its branches reach over the iron confines of its boundary, hanging low enough to afford these photos. In the spring it’s covered with little white flowers, and over the summer the berries develop into green and now this lovely persimmon color. I don’t often find myself passing it these days, with remote working and the increasingly inclement weather, so the changes in its seasonal garb feel more prominent and pronounced. Time moves quickly these days.

The berries are indicative of the irrevocable turn we have taken into the depths of fall. We’ve been pretty fortunate not to have had a deep hard freeze yet, and so we may have been lulled into a false sense of security. Make no mistake, and take no great comfort: winter is indeed on the way.

Autumn

By Joan Mitchell

The rusty leaves crunch and crackle, 

Blue haze hangs from the dimmed sky, 

The fields are matted with sun-tanned stalks — 

Wind rushes by. 

The last red berries hang from the thorn-tree, 

The last red leaves fall to the ground. 

Bleakness, through the trees and bushes, 

Comes without sound.

Suzie has totally ruined my view of the fruit of the dogwood tree when she likened them to testicles, and this scene, caught in our own backyard, points out that she was not totally wrong about it. This was rather a shocking find in the afternoon sun, because the majority of dogwood fruit had long-ago been ravaged and pillaged by the naughty band of squirrels currently roaming the neighborhood. Those marauders have performed miraculous feats of acrobatics, hanging upside down, twisting and turning from the very tips of the flimsiest branches, to reach almost every single fruit. Except this pair. Somehow they escaped the clutches of those fluffy thieves. 

Maybe they’ve disguised themselves so well as the similarly-mottled foliage that the tree displays at this time of the year that they’ve gone unnoticed – as seen here, they do look remarkably like the leaves just above them. Maybe they are just on the unreachable edge of a stem too thin to support a squirrel along its entire length. Whatever the case, they’ve managed to hang on this long, and I tip my hat to that kind of resilience. 

A floating crown made of oak and cherry leaves swirls in the pool as we near October’s end. When the sun shines on a fall day, and the forest is lit with a multitude of fluttering lamps, I take in the beauty and the moment, mindful of the gratitude, grateful for the present. We have had a beautiful autumn season. Some years it’s already done by now, but this season has decided to linger, acting as a balm for all that’s wrong with the world these days. That’s quite a charge, and I’m not sure it’s fair to put the weight of such trauma all on these fragile days of fall. But that’s when you put your crown of fallen leaves upon your head, tilt it just so, and in just such a jaunty fashion, then make your way into the deeper forest of autumn. Tread lightly upon wet leaves and moss, listen carefully to the signs and the way the wind rustles through the lanterns still lit, and inhale the earthy life that is all around us. 

Merry Autumn

By Paul Laurence Dunbar

It’s all a farce,—these tales they tell

     About the breezes sighing,

And moans astir o’er field and dell,

     Because the year is dying.

Such principles are most absurd,—

     I care not who first taught ’em;

There’s nothing known to beast or bird

     To make a solemn autumn.

In solemn times, when grief holds sway

     With countenance distressing,

You’ll note the more of black and gray

     Will then be used in dressing.

Now purple tints are all around;

     The sky is blue and mellow;

And e’en the grasses turn the ground

     From modest green to yellow.

The seed burrs all with laughter crack

     On featherweed and jimson;

And leaves that should be dressed in black

     Are all decked out in crimson.

A butterfly goes winging by;

     A singing bird comes after;

And Nature, all from earth to sky,

     Is bubbling o’er with laughter.

The ripples wimple on the rills,

     Like sparkling little lasses;

The sunlight runs along the hills,

     And laughs among the grasses.

The earth is just so full of fun

     It really can’t contain it;

And streams of mirth so freely run

     The heavens seem to rain it.

Don’t talk to me of solemn days

     In autumn’s time of splendor,

Because the sun shows fewer rays,

     And these grow slant and slender.

Why, it’s the climax of the year,

     The highest time of living!

Till naturally its bursting cheer

     Just melts into thanksgiving.