Did you ever have a moment that, upon remembering it later, you can’t be entirely sure actually happened? Christmas moments are especially strange like that. The child-like part of me has always considered those times a magical key to the season. The adult side of me just thinks I’m actually, and finally, going completely bonkers. The reality is likely somewhere in between the two.

I was having a contemplative pause in Michael’s – the craft store – while shopping for gifts for the Boston Children’s Holiday Hour. A text from my Mom came in, which reminded me that our last Christmas Eve at my childhood home might have been the last Christmas Eve at my childhood home, and I was seized with an unexpected wave of melancholy. Losing track of what I was even looking to find, I wandered in haunted fashion, lost in some icky space between past and present. In an empty corner of the expansive store, I heard a little voice.

“Excuse me,” someone said. I looked around, wondering if I had lost my damn mind at last. Lowering my gaze, I saw a boy before me, just half my height, staring up at me with pleading eyes. It wasn’t the fact that a child was talking to me that was jarring, it was that he looked rather like me – or what I looked like long ago. His dark hair, a little too long and unruly, only the top of which was pulled into a messy ponytail, was slightly different – I never let mine get that long – but his eyes were very much like my own. He was slight, and his clothes hung a little too loosely on him. He held my gaze and started speaking softly but clearly.

“Have you seen two women? One is older and has red hair, the other is younger with long straight brown hair,” he began. He continued with a lengthy description but I wasn’t listening.  So shocked by his appearance and his composure, I didn’t hear his words. Disconcerted by his earnestness, I initially wondered if this was some scam designed to distract me while the aliens or the criminals snuck up behind me and did whatever they were going to do.

Soon enough, thanks to a pause in his tale, I came to my senses and realized he lost whomever was with him. Not wanting him to panic, I asked if he was ok and if he wanted me to find an employee to help him find his party. Quickly he said no, and then hurried away.

Unsure whether I should follow him, look for the two women he described, or tell one of the many inept employees at Michael’s, I ultimately mistrusted what might have even happened. He seemed more like an angel than a real person. Maybe this was just me spiraling into ‘Black Swan’ territory. When I finally thought of following him to make sure he found who he lost, or who lost him, he was long gone. Attempting to set my mind at ease, I reasoned that he was relatively calm, and so maybe this was normal for him.

Instantly I traveled back to the traumatic moment in the Amsterdam Mall when I let go of my mother’s hand for a minute or two, transfixed by some sparkly object or scene. I kept her in my peripheral vision, so didn’t think much of it until I reached up and grabbed the hand of a stranger. When I looked up and realized my mistake, I pulled my hand back, out of embarrassment and surprise. I didn’t see my mother anywhere, and I instantly panicked. I wasn’t more than six or seven years old, but I remember it vividly. Just as I was about to start bawling, she appeared. Relieved yet inconsolable, I’d felt terror for the first time in my life, and never forgot it. To this day, whenever I think of what fear is, I think back to that moment. A split second of abject fright. A startled heaving and the feeling of not being able to breathe. But somehow I held it together, and perhaps that’s what the boy was doing.

I picked up my pace and hurried down the aisles, trying to find the boy. Rushing and darting about like an animal sensing entrapment, I scanned the store, wondering if I should tell an employee. I searched for an older woman with red hair, and a woman with straight brown hair. I searched for a little boy with a wild ponytail. I searched for a day in the past when I reached up and found only a stranger’s hand.

Near the front of the store now, I found two women pushing a cart, unhurried and walking with a shared annoyance. “Josiah,” the older woman with dark red hair yelled. “Come on!” as the boy rounded the corner, also relatively unconcerned. Apparently I was the only one who was the slightest bit worried. Glad of the denouement, I still couldn’t shake the notion that I lost a bit of myself again.

In a goddamned craft store.

I wanted to cry.

Falling Leaves and Early Snow 

BY KENNETH REXROTH

In the years to come they will say,

“They fell like the leaves

In the autumn of nineteen thirty-nine.”

November has come to the forest,

To the meadows where we picked the cyclamen.

The year fades with the white frost

On the brown sedge in the hazy meadows,

Where the deer tracks were black in the morning.

Ice forms in the shadows;

Disheveled maples hang over the water;

Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.

Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.

The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,

The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,

The olive, velvety alder leaves,

The scarlet dogwood leaves,

Most poignant of all.

In the afternoon thin blades of cloud

Move over the mountains;

The storm clouds follow them;

Fine rain falls without wind.

The forest is filled with wet resonant silence.

When the rain pauses the clouds

Cling to the cliffs and the waterfalls.

In the evening the wind changes;

Snow falls in the sunset.

We stand in the snowy twilight

And watch the moon rise in a breach of cloud.

Between the black pines lie narrow bands of moonlight,

Glimmering with floating snow.

An owl cries in the sifting darkness.

The moon has a sheen like a glacier.

Some days are longer than others.

When you wake long before the light creeps out.

When you have appointments before your work day even begins. 

When there is not enough time to finish what needs to be done

and too much time not to worry about it. 

When long after it’s dark you’re too mentally exhausted to sleep. 

When no one has heard the things you’ve said and shouted and whispered and hidden over and over and over again, and you take the the first steps to walk away.

When you’re really ok with it and doesn’t matter.

When you finally go to bed, trembling with cold, and pull into yourself, into the only safe haven you’ve known, embracing the darkness and the quiet and the spark of something you’re just beginning to see.

The faces and bodies that so many of us put forth on our social media accounts is usually not the reality of the situation. It makes sense – why show off anything less than perfection when it’s within the realm of photoshopped possibility? That’s resulted in a dangerous disconnect, however, between what the world thinks of us versus what we feel about ourselves. Simon Dunn, seen in his glory here, here, here, and here has recently been bravely defying the notion that our Instagram accounts are entirely indicative of who we are. He made a powerful post revealing what he had been going through, and it was striking both in its honesty and the way it upended all that some of us had thought of him.

“The online persona I show you is all photoshoots, parties and magazine covers. This hasn’t always been entirely the truth. Earlier this year, I found myself back in Australia, living in a country town in my mother’s spare room and financially broke.

Having to rebuild my life at the time felt like a monumental task. I honestly didn’t think I could do it. I stopped looking after myself, drinking most weekends away, stopped training, all things which compounded the low point I was in. It honestly felt all the years of hard work had only led me back to where I began. For the first time in my life I’d felt anxiety, which was something new, scary and very overwhelming at times…

The Simon you see online is the Simon I want you to see, may it be my pride or the influence of social media, but it’s not always as it seems. Life is a series of ups and downs, just remember – there’s always light at the end of the tunnel no matter how dark it may seem!” Simon Dunn

It’s a vital reminder that even the most seemingly perfect people can use a check-in now and then. It doesn’t need to be a full-blown intervention or 5000-word hand-written letter – just a simple reaching out to ask how someone is doing can make a difference. The world needs more of that – and much more of Mr. Dunn in all his inspiring form.

Swatch watches were all the rage when I was in 7^thgrade. It was the dawning of my sartorial awakening, when I first started to pay attention and refine my sense of fashion. I’d already had a few quirks and skirmishes with what I liked to wear versus what I was expected to wear versus what everyone else was wearing. I longed to fit in just as much as I wished to stand out, to be part of something as much as being popular for being different. The right Swatch would be a sign of status, and a sign of knowing what was in style. I just had to find the right one.

Studying the Swatch catalog, I pored over the more colorful selections – and on each page they showed one large one paired with one smaller one. I didn’t even know that the difference was that one was meant for men and one was meant for women – that’s how young and uncultured I was. The ways of the watch were as foreign as the gender connotations attached to each. Maybe that’s also how genius and untouched by cultural sexist norms and restrictions I was as well. Such gender distinctions were not part of my cultural vocabulary. If I liked something it had nothing to do with whether it was designed for a man or a woman. (And everything I liked tended to be traditionally feminine.) Children don’t see such things until society imposes its ugly and onerous design.

When it came to choosing which Swatch I wanted, part of me was drawn to the garish Harajuku models of mashed up colors and designs – the gaudy embodiment of the neon-saturated 1980’s – but I worried that such a selection would not wear well with the passing of time. For all my budding love of crazy colors and flamboyant statements, I was (and remain) a pretty simple guy when it comes to everyday accessories, particularly for something like a watch. A simple black option, with a white face and simple numbers in the smaller size was what I ended up choosing. I liked the smaller one because it fit my slender stick of a wrist better. It was also more elegant and unobtrusive, and would work with any and every outfit.

Like my first and only pair of saddle shoes, I was excited to wear it. That excitement was short-lived, as a classmate asked if it was a women’s watch. I couldn’t tell if she was making fun of me – she had only the slightest smile which I couldn’t determine to be sinister or sweet, and I didn’t know what to say. She left it alone when I said I just liked it better than the big one. But the shame spread over my reddened face regardless, and, more insidiously, crept into my heart where it took root and sent out an invasive vine of inhibition and shyness, like some pretty but destructive wisteria. It joined similar vines, intertwining and creating an impenetrable mess. I’ve never forgotten that moment. There aren’t many times in life when you can actually experience and realize the end of childhood innocence as it’s happening, but that was one of mine.

Kira and I held our first Friendsgiving in Boston this past weekend – a pleasant reminder that we can still start new traditions even at our advancing age. Having both been through a few things this past year, mostly we were just thankful to be together again, and when I hugged her goodbye, I held it a little longer than I usually do. I may or may not write a more detailed post on what we did – nothing too spectacular, but that’s the beauty of our time together – what’s simple is true, and good. At this time of the season, and in such a roller-coaster of a year, we arrived at a few major and sobering realizations, but that’s another story for another time. For now, feast your eyes upon some pretty berries we found along the way, and indulge in this weekly recap as our holiday season takes off. A lot can happen in a single week… good and bad.

First, the fall went up in flames.

A glimpse of my ass in the front door. 

Pineapple upside down disaster.

November chill.

Licking the cream off my finger. 

Shirtless male celebrities & some Speedos. 

The big event was our trip to Savannah, which began in bittersweet fashion, haunted with its charm and beauty, and concluded on an ambivalent note. 

Vivacious Enchiladas Verdes via Pati Jinich.

A meme fit for Andy.

Madonna breaks her own record.

A few choice words from a favorite author.

A variation on Gram’s walnut cookies ushered in the holiday season in quiet yet sweet form.

Hunks of the Day included Thomas Doherty, Fabio Fognini, Jamie Dominic, and Sam Heughan.