Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

My friend and webmaster Skip has been admired by many for his way with words, as well as his way with wisdom. I didn’t need to be reminded of it because it’s one of the things I value about his friendship, but it’s always nice to see something like this recent FaceBook post he wrote because then I know others are getting to witness his genius. He manages to cut through the current political situation with a sports parable that is powerful and insightful. It speaks for itself, and it speaks volumes:

Say what you will about hating the Yankees, and boy do I hate the Yankees. But I can’t say that I’m not sad about what happened to Mo Rivera. He’s a class act and I respect him as a player. I hope it’s not the end for him. The greatest closer the game has ever seen deserves a better exit than that…

This post from 8 years ago got me thinking. I have been a Red Sox fan for as long as I can remember. But I have never shied away from giving proper respect where it’s due. As was the case with Mo. He deserved respect because of the way that they played the game. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t ‘rooting’ for him. But I admired him nonetheless and wished him the best and the respect that they earned. I can reconcile this and still dislike the Yankees and all that they stand for. At the same time I can say, as a Red Sox fan, that Jonathan Papolbon was a gigantic douchebag and wasn’t worth respect from a Red Sox or Yankee fan alike. Sure he had a couple of wins but that didn’t change the fact that he carried himself like a tool and disrespected the game and the fans.

So why can’t people be like this politically? Let’s be honest here … Most of you are just rooting for “your team.” That’s the god’s honest truth. You can oppose someone and be civil to someone who has earned respect. And you can also realize that you can still love your team and realize that a player on it hasn’t done anything to earn your respect and supporting them because they are on your “team” makes you blind to the fact that they don’t give a shit about you regardless of whether or not you are a fan. ~ Skip Montross

[Insert May the Fourth Be With You stupidity here.]

This week marks our 10th anniversary, and Andy and I will have to find a way to celebrate differently this year given that we won’t be making it back to Boston just yet. Love has faced greater hardships – we will simply do a proper Boston celebration later. As for recapping the past few days, get ready for the roller coaster. The last week knocked me down and helped me back up in hair-pin turn fashion. It began in rainy mode and stayed there more often than not, before ending in a gloriously sunny weekend that completely restored my spirit. We’ll get into that happy ending this week, so come back for sunnier entries. In the meantime, we shouldn’t forget the rainy days, because there will always be more of those too. On with the recap, and then the new week.

Escape to a Floating World, at a time when escapism is survival.

This is how I Zoom.

The easiest, quickest, and most dangerous recipe for shortbread ever.

I’m wearing black underwear (bats eyes). 

Our Awakening to Awareness series nears its last entry. 

A new song by Rufus Wainwright is always a happy thing. 

A grapefruit spritzer: simplicity and refreshment incarnate.

The post I wrote when everything finally hit me.

It’s ok to be an ass.

And it’s ok to show your ass, especially when it’s World Naked Gardening Day.

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up! Revisiting The Circus Project from 2008. 

An assortment of shirtless male celebrities. 

A parting ass shot, for good measure.

Hunks of the Day included Irving Peña, Tommy Dorfman, Evan James Betts, Dennis Rodman, James Rees, and Tarek El Moussa.

… and every morning it goes away. 

I’ve had to remind myself of that this past week, when rainy days matched difficult circumstances, as work and Andy’s health issues came to a head and kicked my emotional ass. I did my best, and I faltered a few times. The state of the world is bearing down on us all. It can be, and has been, a bit overwhelming. For the most part, I thought I was doing all right – and I still think I am – but this has been a tough few days. The rain didn’t help matters, even if it did help the garden. And so I take the good with the bad, remembering that it’s all right to fall down now and then, as long as we can pick ourselves up again. It’s a cliche, and normally I’d cringe at using such a phrase, but when you’ve never felt that way before it means a little bit more. 

In the past, every little failure was a life-stalling disaster. Every flow or foible along the way was reason to dip into a stultifying state of immobility. Aloofness, shyness, sadness ~ name the ‘ness unless it started with happy and I’d embrace the chance to revel in the awfulness of it all. Each setback was compounded with a resulting mind-trap, and while the world generally, and genuinely, did not care what missteps I made, I took each and every mistake to heart, and I took everything personally. It took forty years to realize the grave error of such small ways. Hence this post. 

It’s ok to trip up and stumble. No one is perfect. The new trick, for me, is learning to embrace these setbacks as opportunities to learn and challenge myself, to grow and become better, because I very much believe it will lead to happiness. We shall see…

WHEN KIDS ARE DIFFERENT, YOU JUST KNOW. YOU CAN TELL ~ ADULTS CAN TELL. AND THE QUIET KIDS WERE NEVER, WELL, YOU KNOW, THEY JUST DON’T FIT IN. AND IF YOU DON’T FIT IN AT THE BEGINNING, YOU NEVER REALLY FIT IN, EVER, DO YOU?

“The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous may happen.” ~ Claude Debussy

‘Under the Big Top’ gained a whole new meaning for me with the advent of ‘The Circus Project‘ in 2008. Fascinated by the abstract notion of a circus, and how it had historically been an occasional refuge for so-called freaks and the dwellers on society’s fringe, I wanted to explore the idea of being different in a world that treated difference with both wonder and disgust. That icky element of human nature that revels in finding things grotesque and monstrous while being unable to look away or diminish its fascination with them.

Apart and belonging, two sides of a dangerous coin, a trick coin really, as if the world was only ever made up of two choices. Very few things are truly binary. There is too much room for shade and nuance and varying gradations of just about everything. The circus exists in this in-between area of gray, though it disguises its flaws with garish color and death-defying acts to draw attention away from its problematic underside.

We seek the solace of a smile and think we’ll find it in a car with clowns. We seek the reprieve of a laugh in a prancing pony. We seek and we seek and we seek, and all the while what we seek proves ever more hidden and elusive, as though the very act of reaching for it perpetually moves it further away. Is there a string attached somewhere that pulls as we push? Some trick mechanism that results in an equal and opposite reaction, making the very act of our quest a nihilistic end unto itself? The Circus Project posits such challenges while making no motion to resolve them.

THERE’S ONLY TWO TYPES OF PEOPLE IN THE WORLD:
THE ONES THAT ENTERTAIN, AND THE ONES THAT OBSERVE.

~ BRITNEY SPEARS, ‘CIRCUS’

“I unconsciously decided that, even if it wasn’t an ideal world, it should be so and painted only the ideal aspects of it – pictures in which there are no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers . . . only foxy grandpas who played baseball with kids and boys who fished from logs and got up circuses in the back yard.” ~ Norman Rockwell

“Damn everything but the circus! …damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won’t get into the circle, that won’t enjoy. That won’t throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence.” – e. e. cummings

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.” ~ Ralph Ellison

{See ‘The Circus Project’ in its entirety here. Also see the first Project of the Past: StoneLight.}

Part of combatting a pesky strain of perfectionism I’ve been unable to completely shake for the past forty-four years is in gleefully accepting my own flaws, failings, mistakes and ridiculousness. I’m much better at that now. And I’m better at being wrong, apologizing, and moving on. That said, there is nothing wrong with this happy outfit. It’s not here for any reason other than I found it in a folder I was excavating, and since Andy and I are discussing a new pool liner, it felt right to put it up here. Has absolutely nothing to do with battling perfectionism. Which makes it absolutely imperfect!