Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

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

PS – Follow me on Twitter. Everyone else does. 

Panicked, they raced from the front yard to the backyard throughout the day. Jumping from limb to limb in the oaks, sometimes scurrying across the roof, then down through the coral bark maple, they made the whole yard their workspace. The squirrels were making their final search for acorns and seeds, storing and hoarding them high in their nests, before the earth went into its winter freeze. They will persist and be seen scavenging throughout the next few moths, when it’s easier to spot them without the benefit of camouflaging foliage. But these are their busiest days, when things are simpler to find without a foot of snow obscuring their location. 

Only once did one manage to find its way into our attic one cruel winter, and it was quite the scene to eradicate, or so I was told. No way was I going to battle with a squirrel up close and personal. I can appreciate them from a distance, where they look fun and slightly cuddly, a puff of gray fur slightly skittish and slightly playful. I can admire their resilience and persistence in the face of the coldest winds. But there is no way they are invited in. Sorry, squirrels. Your madness must remain outside. You deserve to be wild and free. 

In another week that saw Donald Trump losing his election for the fifth time, the November clock ticked into decidedly dreary territory, closing the door definitively on those magical fall days that could be lit by sunlight and golden leaves. Most of the deciduous foliage has fallen to the ground, and the sparse barren limbs we see now will be with us until spring breaks her chartreuse glory again. Already we are counting the days… on with the recap.

The moon finally backed off. 

Flaming November. 

A view from the office.

25 years ago I had an unfortunate ponytail. 

Rugged, relentless beauty.

A different kind of drunkenness.

November roses for Andy.

Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone. 

Beautyberry brilliance.

Like a Canadian bobsledder.

A cray cray cactus.

Mars exits retrograde and sanity is restored?

My Interview with the Vampire phase. 

Hot soup for a dreary day.

Hunks of the Day included Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, Michele Morrone, Osiel Gouneo, and Ben Lawson. 

Yesterday Mars left retrograde motion behind, resuming its perceived correct direction, and hopefully cooling the battles it tends to elicit. I’ve had a fair share of moments when I’ve wanted to scream and yell about some very obvious wrongdoings, but I held off for fear of sparking a war. We can afford a battle now and then, but not a war. Never a war. Wars are not worth the cost. 

And so I’m focusing on the peace, and the calm and centeredness that I’ve located within myself over the past year or so. That also makes the maelstrom of others’ emotions more easily managed, or in some cases not managed at all – I’m just better able to walk away, at peace with the truth. That may be the greatest superpower. With the holidays right on the horizon, that skill-set may come in quite handy. 

Such a perspective arrives just in time, as fall limps into winter, and outside beauty slowly loses its vibrant color. I have a difficult time when that happens – the diminishing light, the faded hues, the way the gardens go to sleep and don’t want to be bothered. There’s a difference this year, however, in the awareness of that, in the refusal to allow it to get to me the way it usually has. I’ve got a shiny new toolbox of coping mechanisms, an arsenal of weapons designed for peace, and a suit of emotional armor whose clever secret of strength is in revealing the truth of the heart and owning up to its vulnerability through honesty and honor. 

There is work to be done. There will always be work to be done. And there’s no better time to work on the soul than the winter. 

The Harvest Moon

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes

  And roofs of villages, on woodland crests

  And their aerial neighborhoods of nests

  Deserted, on the curtained window-panes

Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes

  And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests!

  Gone are the birds that were our summer guests,

  With the last sheaves return the laboring wains!

All things are symbols: the external shows

  Of Nature have their image in the mind,

  As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves;

The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close,

  Only the empty nests are left behind,

  And pipings of the quail among the sheaves.

Skip and I enjoy taking the piss out of each other, which is often what happens when you’ve known a friend for a decade and a half. And so my main comment after a touching FaceBook post he wrote was focused on the one line that struck me most out of the whole thing. Since it deserves more eyes on it, and because the sentiment is real, I’m going to post it here, with the simple proviso that I’ve been shopping with Skip a number of times, in a wide-ranging assortment of places – from Macy’s to Muji, from Wal-Mart to Sephora, from Trader Joe’s to Shreve, Crump & Low ~ and I can emphatically affirm there was nothing Canadian or bobsled about any of it. On with his post:

Does anyone else have a favorite cashier at the supermarket? The kind that you don’t mind waiting in a slightly longer line for? I do. I couldn’t tell you her name but she’s a black girl in maybe her mid-thirties. She’s always bright and chipper, never rings anything up incorrectly, offers me a coupon if I don’t happen to have one that pertains to something I’ve bought, and she’s always happy to chat with me. Last week we talked about Hall and Oates. We share part of each other’s Friday mornings every week. This week she looked and me and said “I can’t believe Alex is gone.” I looked at her puzzled and said “Alex?” To which she replied “Trebek.” I told her I was sad as well, how I recently tried out for Jeopardy and how much that show has meant to me over the years. We continued chatting as she rang and I bagged. Eventually we had come upon the fact that we both lost our grandmother’s over a decade ago. Grandmother’s that we both recalled enjoying watching Alex Trebek and Jepoardy with. We finished up and both wished each other a great weekend as we always do. As I rode my cart back to my car like a Canadian Bobsledder a thought occurred to me… what a small intimate memory we had in common. I think that’s true of everyone. We are all on this planet for a short few trips around the Sun. And while we each have our own unique stories, we also have so many similarities. These past few weeks we have been bombarded by the media about how much we differ. In thoughts. In feelings. In values. But it was nice to be reminded that as people, as a species, as human beings, we also share so many things in common. We could all do with a reminder and take care in how we deal with one another. We are more alike than we are different.

This Friday the 13th needs a jolt of something brilliant, a pop of color to remind us how much glory is still out there. In service of that, here’s a bit of beautyberry taken several years ago in the Southwest Corridor Park near our Boston place. A photo like this requires very few words. Take in its color and design and let’s have a wonderful weekend.