The occasionally-disconcerting shift of Daylight Saving Time inspired me to do a fall smudging, which was long overdue anyway. It’s a tradition I have embraced, usually performed at the turn of a season. On the Sunday after pushing the clocks back, it felt like the opportune moment to realign things. We are manifesting a peaceful and calm holiday season, and that begins with a steady waving of a burning sage wand throughout the house, opening windows and doors and driving out any negativity from our home.

There is a feeling of cleansing and healing that accompanies a proper smudge, a sense of purification and a chance to start anew. It doesn’t heal all the wounds, nor is that its intention. We need to remember our hurt so that we don’t repeat it. A smudge is simply a new beginning. It banishes bad thoughts and lingering regrets. Ancient mystics used it as much for its spiritual benefits as for its physical purifying of the air. 

Moving systematically throughout the rooms of our home, I wave the burning sage stick in slow, calm arcs, making sure its smoke reaches every nook and corner, opening closets and drawers and releasing anything bad that may be lingering, or that I may be holding onto. As I pass each open window or door, invigorated by the smoke and the cool November air, I feel more and more worry and stress lift from my shoulders. By the time I reach the garage and walk around our cars, the sunlight of the day is pouring in and I feel at peace. May the remainder of fall be a little bit better. 

The only thing ‘noir’ about this post is the fact that November is the month I wear Tom Ford’s ‘Japon Noir’ Private Blend. It refuses to fit anywhere else within my fragrance year. Actually, there may be a few noirish moments from this recap given that spooky nights formed a portion of Halloween week. Read on, if you dare.

Since it was all about the treats and tricks, let’s begin with our usual ending: the Hunks of the Day. Last week’s guy/eye candy included Chris Noble, Pablo Brägger, Ryan Bridge, Shep Rose, Ric’key Pageot, and Sean Doolittle. 

Donald Trump got booed and it was glorious. Freedom of speech is as good as sex.

A pair of October poems to send off the manic month. 

Unhappiness.

A friend says goodbye to her mother. 

Meatloaf: the ultimate comfort food.

No, wait… Soup: the ultimate comfort food.

A black cat, for inspiration. 

Boston days not lost to amnesia.

The parade that killed Barney.

A poem to greet November.

An unexamined life may be worth living.

Chris Hemsworth shirtless & animated.

A view of Albany from up above.

The scariest night of the year, calmed by a storm.

As the temperatures went from tropical to temperate, the winds kicked up and Halloween night suddenly turned deadly. Ever since I had a spat of nightmares a few years ago that people were trying to break into our front door, I’ve never much enjoyed Halloween, when people coming to your door in scary costumes is suddenly ok and sanctioned. Because of that, I’m not the one who hands out the candy, and if it were up to me the lights would be off, the house would be bolted shut, and a warning shot would be fired off every ten minutes or so alerting the children that no one was welcome here.

On such an uneasy night, a surge of stormy weather was, I originally thought, rather unwelcome. How could it do anything other than add to the spooky tension already pervading the atmosphere? How many tales that began on dark stormy nights ever ended happily? Leaving Andy to man the front door with nothing but a big bowl of candy to protect him and our home, I secluded myself in the basement, where I tapped away on the laptop and watched ‘Practical Magic’ out of the corner of my eye. By 11 PM the movie was done and I traipsed upstairs to bed.

The wind had begun in earnest, and the rain had joined in the fun. I was sublimely exhausted, and as soon as my head hit the pillow I was instantly asleep – a rarity these days, when tossing and turning seems to be my preferred method of dealing with end-of-the-day fatigue. Sleep came quickly and easily, but an hour into such heavenly bliss I was scared shitless by the frightening visage of a figure lurking in the hallway and shining a flashlight on me. I screamed like I was being murdered, so terrified was I by this stranger, before I realized it was Andy, who was saying that the power was out and I would need to set my cel phone alarm.

I would never get back to sleep now, I thought, as my mind started racing and doing all the things that usually prevent sleep from coming. The wind outside howled, and I listened as the house was pelted by rain and acorns and who knows what other sort of debris from the oak trees and pines above. I waited for another big limb to come crashing into our attic as it done once many years ago, shaking the house to its foundation, but none ever came. That didn’t mean one wouldn’t, and so I went into a sleepless fit. Resigning myself to a night of restlessness, I thought back to the storms that would hit Boston, when the rain would start dripping onto the air conditioning unit and click and echo through the night. At first it was distractingly irritating, and I thought for sure it would keep me up like some metronome or clock whose ticking doesn’t blend into the background but ends up getting louder and louder. Instead, it began to lull me to sleep, to calm and quell fear with a steady drone and drumbeat.

On this night, the windstorm worked a similar sort of magic. While it first caused consternation and concern, it soon gave way to a distinct sort of gray background noise that turned my own fitful rage on its head. As the storm itself raged outside, the cozy comfort of our bed provided refuge and safety and warmth. There was just enough noise so that the stillness and quiet of our lost electricity did not manage to mess with my head. (It is possible for the world to be too quiet, especially when trying to sleep.) The storm snuffed out the terror, and soon I was happily ensconced in slumber.

Long before I began this blog in early 2003, I’d been documenting the events of my life in diaries, journals, projects, and letters. It began with a Garfield Diary, complete with tiny lock and key, in about 6^thgrade. What goes into a sixth grader’s diary? Sadly, I don’t remember, and I’m fortunate in a way that it was nothing too serious. That’s much too young to have anything worthy of commemoration. In various fits and spurts, I’d add to the little book over the years, much in the way that I would crochet a few more rows in a never-ending blanket (that remains unfinished to this day) from time to time. Eventually the secrets got darker, and at some point in high school I decided it was safer to destroy it than keep it hidden. I don’t recall how I did it, whether I burned it or shredded it or dismantled and spread it around like a serial killer, but by the end of high school, my childhood diary was no more. My childhood had suffered the same unsensational fate.

That was when my creative projects began, and I poured the semi-auto-biographical drama of a teenager into words and images that I’ve been doing ever since. It was 1993, and since then I’ve been a keen documenter of my life in one form or another, sometimes taking creative liberty with things and changing them just so, or simply jotting things down in an old-school Backstreet Boys daily planner. (Oh relax, I had an ‘N Sync one the next year.) Eventually that release and expression took the form of this blog, but the reality is that my life has been recorded in some form or fashion for the past twenty-six years. For the first time, I’m starting to feel the fatigue of it. Maybe it’s the overwhelming wave of social media saturation that has flooded our existence in the last few years. Maybe it’s the work that goes into sustaining a daily blog that been going since 2003. Maybe it’s just finally growing up and out of the need for such self-analysis and introspection. Whatever the case, I’m tired.

I also miss being off the grid. Even when I was writing projects and sharing things with people in the 90’s, there was always the option of shutting it off and disappearing. Those options are sorely limited now. The simple necessity of a cel phone makes it almost impossible to completely turn off, and most of us have too many obligations to be absent for too long. That is taking its toll, whether we realize it or not. I firmly believe that is not a human being’s natural state. We are designed to rest and relax and simply not think for every second of the day. We were made to reflect and take in our surroundings, to be still and quiet from time to time, to fully decompress and allow our brains to settle without excessive stimuli. I look at some young people today and marvel at their inability to even sit still without scrolling through a phone or bopping to whatever is being broadcast in their earbuds. I do not envy that life. I do not envy today’s youth. And I know they don’t envy me. I guess I just miss the days of quiet.

The same goes for a bit of the unexamined life. I miss that. There is an art to simply existing, a certain beauty and skill involved in experiencing something – anything – just for the sake of experiencing it – and without recounting or documenting or telling a story about it afterward. I still manage to make such moments happen. Not always purposefully, but sometimes they are deliberate, and not always perfectly, because sometimes things don’t work out the way you envisioned. They have been moments just between me and the universe, never documented, largely forgotten, and all an integral part of enriching the soul.

I’m aiming to have more of them, and less of this.

Who knew such trauma went down at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1997? I was blithely unaware of this tragedy, and now that I’ve seen it, nothing will ever be the same. The drama kicks into overdrive at around the 1:37 mark. Kids – do not watch without adult supervision.

Black Cat by Rainer Maria Rilke

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place

your sight can knock on, echoing; but here

within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze

will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else

can ease him, charges into his dark night

howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels

the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen

into her, so that, like an audience,

she can look them over, menacing and sullen,

and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;

and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,

inside the golden amber of her eyeballs

suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

– OR – 

Black cat, nine lives,

Short days, long nights,

living on the edge

not afraid to die…

~ Janet Jackson

The last time I had seen so many marigold blooms, and this very same collection of fine people, had been at her wedding ceremony. On that day she beamed and floated on the happiness of the occasion, and I counted myself lucky enough to be included in such elation. Now as she and her sister sprinkled spices over the offerings of the puja, she was putting her mother to rest. At the very opposite end of the human experience spectrum, far from weddings and births, was the event at hand. Anu was saying goodbye to her mother. The incense she had chosen rose into the October air, sweetly scenting the room and swirling around us as a cool breeze crept comfortably in through the open door. For all the somber sadness of the occasion, there was a sense of peace here. The brightness of the day, shared between the candles and the sunlight, elicited a kind of sacred calm. A few people would later remark that rather than pathos or overbearing sorrow, a sense of something uplifting was at work, the anti-thesis of the darkness that often accompanied saying farewell to a beloved relative.

In the center of the crowded room where we all sat in white mourning clothing, I could see the side of Anu’s face as she repeated the prayers being intoned. Her eyes, alternately wet and bright, took in the task at hand. Even on such a day, Anu was strong enough to hold it all together. There was still no clear indication on what might be going on inside, and I worried for her that she was putting on a brave front because it was all she ever did. Her hair was roughly the length it was when I first met her in the mid 90’s, when neither of us had any clue who were we or who we might become. I shouldn’t say that. I had no idea what I was going to do. Anu was decidedly the one with plans and designs, most of which she would build into being. Singularly focused and dramatically determined, she was the Collegetown roommate I would have bet on succeeding at whatever she deigned to do. It didn’t always come easy, and over the years I would watch her with admiration and awe as she worked hard for where she wanted to go.

Their group of friends and roommates, coalescing during their sophomore year at Cornell, had welcomed me into their circle under the protective wings of Suzie. They let me sleep on their couch and become part of their world. To this day I count them as part of my core group of ‘safe’ friends – the ones who have become family, the ones I trust implicitly and don’t have to worry about offending or losing. Anu was an integral part of that family. We’ve seen each other through weddings, births and deaths – and all those life-altering times when grief and gladness were inconsolably intertwined. When you come together at all the major signposts of a life’s journey, you become connected in an unbreakable way. I’m lucky that Anu has been there for those moments. Andy forged a special bond with her, connecting instantly when they met. (I also happen to adore her husband Cormac, who perfectly complements her in every way.)

Those thoughts ran through my mind as I listened to the prayers of the puja. How simple it had been twenty-some years ago. How very much we thought we knew and how little we actually did. How safe the world felt. Maybe that’s the lucky province of all youth. Despite the light and the love filling the room, nothing felt safe anymore. The fear of losing those we love is just too great, and the older we get the more it seems to grow. The only solace is in finding people who will walk along with us on the way.

The prayer service was followed by a feast of food beneath a tent in front of Anu’s sister’s house. At odds with the somberness of the occasion, the sun shone exultantly, perhaps reminding us that the death of our physical shells is only the beginning of something else. There is some consolation in that too.

We made our way back to Anu’s house, where the hubbub of the day was relievedly drawing down. The October sun slanted lower in the sky. Halloween decorations lined the front porch. Suzie and I would have to leave soon to catch our flight but we joined the remaining family and friends while the kids found their own entertainment. The next generation was on their way along whatever paths they were going to take. There was something moving and poetic about it, the way Riley was doing her schoolwork, the way Sona ran about outside, and even how Jaya hid away quietly in her room. These were Anu’s girls. Growing up too fast, hurtling toward their futures and all that the world had in store for them. Looking through a book of photos of Anu as a child, I caught glimpses of each of her daughters in her various school pictures. Soon – too soon really – they would be going off to college and meeting those people who would become to them what Anu has been to me. At least, if they’re lucky.