Perfectly emblematic of the year that is 2020, these are about the only blooms that the mockorange clumps produced this season – a sad, sorry, and lamentable situation, especially considering we once had four strong and healthy shrubs that towered up to and over the roof of the house. When we first moved in almost twenty years ago, I planted two little mockorange plants. I didn’t know then the house already had two clumps of it – so neglected and forgotten had they been. I noticed their leaves as the season progressed, and gave them a healthy dose of manure. The next year those old plants came back strong, blooming and filling the yard with their sweet perfume. One was a double version of the traditional mockorange, and the other was the typical single version. Both were equally glorious in fragrance. The two new specimens took a few years to bloom, but once they began they too filled June with their delicious scent. 

Unfortunately, as lovely as the scent is, the blooming period is criminally short, and the shrubs themselves tend to revert to a weedy form, with unremarkable foliage, and a thicket of half-dead stems after a few years. It seemed they ran out of steam, as did my enthusiasm for them. But now, absent their big blooming explosion of perfume, I regret not working a little harder on their care. 

The temperatures are scheduled to climb in the next few days. Our pool remains unopened with no prospect of hope for a new liner this month. The idea of the country sliding back into the throes of this COVID crisis has everyone I know rightfully on edge. Yet somehow, I manage to remain relatively calm. Part of this I attribute to a regular meditation regime – twenty minutes a day, usually after my work hours. I’ve only missed it two or three days in the past three months; it has quickly become that intricately woven into a necessary and actually enjoyable habit. 

There’s also my therapy sessions, which I’ve scheduled once every two weeks, a good timeframe to keep things on track, especially in such troubling times. It feels almost like an afterthought by this point, but eliminating alcohol from my intake has likely helped raise my mood too – the removal of a depressant I’d relied on for years has gradually lifted a bit of the haze of middle age. And our imposed social isolation has actually worked to help me overcome some social anxiety – not in the obvious isolated aspect, but in the quiet I’ve had the opportunity to focus on eliminating the underlying reasons for such anxiety. 

There are also some mind tricks that help with the wayward turn the world has taken of late, well, maybe ‘mind tricks’ is the wrong term – this just something I focus on when things feel claustrophobic or stifling, the way an overly-hot and humid day can physically work to crush the soul. It’s a practice I put into play when I would occasionally find myself in Boston or New York on an impossibly hot summer day, when the heat got wedged in the concrete and sidewalks, emanating from brick and glass and the very sky itself. It was difficult to cool down, especially when walking was involved, so I’d go slow, keep to the shade wherever available, and conjure the cooling sound of trickling water and the fragrance of a mockorange or neroli to quell the restless agitation. Envisioning simple blooms like the ones shown here, and memories of cooler spring days seemed to help. It took me out of the heat of the moment, which is a strange notion now that I think about it. So much of mindfulness is about staying in the present moment, but it’s also about clearing the mind. I might finally be finding the balance that works well for me. 

In the middle of a harried week, I seek the solace of this respite, like a fountain in a hidden garden. 

We are due to hit the 90’s this week, which is lovely weather when you are absent a pool liner! Such is the Year of our Lord 2020. This godforsaken wench is doing all he can to remain sane, and cool, but there is probably a breakdown right around the corner, so gird your loins and fire up the smoke machine because the greatest show on earth is about to fucking begin. First, a recap! Pop it like it’s hot…

I could jack off to this any day.

Painting the fronds of ferns. (These have since been ravaged by a rabbit, because 2020.)

Happy birthday Suzie Ko!

Genus: Paeonia. (Not genius, genius.)

Behind our masks, a moment of connection, something I apparently needed. 

I do my June bouquets a little differently. 

This parade went by too quickly. Always does. 

Life is best looked at from different windows. 

Missing my abs, among other more important things. 

A rare bucket-list item gets checked off after a quest that lasted four decades. 

Making an omelette with Andy.

Revisiting the surreal dream-world of Bardo.

The Hunk of the Day shall return…

Bardo is a term used in Tibetan Buddhism to describe the intermediate state between death and rebirth. That also coincides with the time between life and death. In some places, bardo is considered that fuzzy border between sleep and wake. In others, it is considered a state of suspended life. For the purposes of this project, bardo is taken to be the place between a dream and reality, where the limits of the physical world are bent by the fantasies of the dream world. It sounds like a lovely place of dreamy other-worldliness, and there is that fantastical element of limitless possibility, but there is a much darker underside of a dreamworld. The very limitlessness of hopeful possibility extends to the nightmarish as well: the more you can dream of something beautiful and charming and good, the more you can dream of something ugly and disturbing and evil.

The crux of dreams and reality is where we locate the tension that runs through this project. There is a bird motif that carries its own set of metaphors, with egg references and feathered tales and a gilded cage that offers the freedom of imprisonment. There are animals that talk and sing, stories that defy logic and reason, and a merman who cannot miss the limbs he never had.

Mostly, though, there is the tension of the unresolved fuzziness of the border between being asleep and being awake. Once upon my youth, there wasn’t 24-7 television broadcasting. Some stations simply went dark at certain hours, with that weird color-banded screen and a strange one-note tone that rang until they resumed broadcasting the next morning. That was the land of bardo.

A state of suspension. A state of the in-between. It was a place in which you didn’t want to get stuck, but it was interesting to visit now and then. One got the sense that it was a land where monsters dwelled, and while monsters may seem exciting from a distance, when they get too close it can be terrifying.

…And in the end the birdcage descends, its bamboo bars now gold, now melting away, now revealed to be… a pretty ornate gate closing off the open sky. Protections against what is without. You, pretty bird, have sung for Kings and Queens through the ages, your plaintive coos unanswered, your shrill trills unheard, your splattered shit veined with gray. You dribble urine down your talons and dream of digging them into your masters. One day your beak will be unleashed, macerating all in its path, only your wings won’t work. You won’t remember how to use them, even if they’ve never been clipped, even if they spared you that one indignity.

{See ‘Bardo ~ The Dream Surreal’ in its entirety here. Also see ‘StoneLight‘, ‘The Circus Project‘, ‘A Night at the Hotel Chelsea‘ and ‘A 21^stCentury Renaissance: The Resurrection Tour’.}

I miss Boston.

And travel in general – just the simple option of going somewhere new and different.

I miss our pool.

It’s still here, it’s just unopened and in a state of swamp.

We are waiting for a new liner.

At this rate, we may be opening it for May 2021 if we’re lucky.

Finally, my abs.

Yes, I miss my abs.

They’re still here too.

Just buried a bit.

I love the interloper who susses out a person’s home by peering into photos and deciphering the layout from the background. There’s dedication in that. There’s a show or respect and honor there that goes unexhibited by even the closest and most well-meaning of friends. Oh sure, some would cry stalker, but as a former-stalker myself I say in the words of Suzie Ko, ‘pshaw!’

Here’s another glimpse of the bouquet from yesterday, because when you bring a bit of the outside in, you want to draw it out and let it linger. Positioned in various points throughout our living room, it brings a little bit of calm and beauty to my most favorite room in the house. I’m one of those annoyingly fidgety design people who will move a vase to wherever it best suits the moment, where it will get maximum exposure, or where it will stand slightly hidden, knowing that the glimpse is more powerful than the full reveal.