From what I can tell, September 25, 2007 marks the date that I joined FaceBook. Back then our posts were written in the third person, a tactic I loved and still miss. It’s just so much easier to deal with myself in the third person. Crazy people do that, some say. [Alan shrugs.] As for the rest of FaceBook, I’ve taken part and engaged in it mostly on my own terms. Even when they censor my ass – or my dick as is more often the case – I still do exactly what I want within the scope of its admittedly-limited parameters. (I let all of it hang out on this website, so you’ve come directly to the source.)

Twelve years of anything is a substantial chunk of time, and in social media time it feels even longer. There was a time when FaceBook provided a destination and diversion unto itself, particularly in the early years, and a nifty way to cross-promote online projects and such. (To this day, its main function, for my purposes, is to alert people to a new blog post here.) For those without their own personal website, it also could act as a sort of mini-website, where photos and notes and communications could eventually come to coalesce into a monument to oneself. A repository of items that, taken together, comprised a body of work that stood up as some Frankensteinian effigy. Everybody could be a star. Yet in the very egalitarian act of allowing each of us a platform, it worked to negate itself. Everyone was still no one, we just all had bigger megaphones to shout about ourselves. Still, substance and consistency would win out in the end, and quality users who maintained a modicum of originality and interesting content have sustained themselves.

At this point, my use of FaceBook is somewhat limited. I always enjoy seeing what my real-life friends are doing or planning or thinking. In an age where phone calls long ago died out and face-to-face meetings are a quaint thing of the past, FaceBook is where most of us go to keep up with friends and family who have found their way to the periphery of our lives. (And a very welcome reminder of when everyone’s birthday is – the most life-saving feature of FaceBook.) With other social media diversions such as Twitter and Instagram taking up my time – both of which require far less concentration and follow-up – I’m no longer quite as engaged on FaceBook as I once was. That sort of ennui actually bleeds into all of online life of late, which is a much healthier stance, and makes for a much happier countenance. It’s also a sign of summer, when outdoor enchantments take precedence over a computer screen. Fall will shift that a bit, so perhaps it’s time for a FaceBook Renaissance. And perhaps it’s not…

Most people don’t pay much attention to the litter on the street, but that’s where I find a lot of inspiration. At least some fodder for imaginative yarns and make-believe stories. We’ve all seen the errant hair extension or sock, and the other day I found this echo of a shoe in downtown Albany. What is the story behind it? Where did it come from and how did it happen to be in such a state of degradation? What its abandonment intentional or accidental? Ghost items bring up all sorts of deep questions – that’s part of why they fascinate me so much.

As for this shoe skeleton, the merest hint of its structure whispering of pedestrian tales and travails, I wonder at its origin. I’d like to think it was the result of excessive decadence and debauchery, the proof of an evening of glamorous impiety. Yet I fear (desire?) a more sordid and sad tale of hard-won dilapidation. Some sort of fight, some sort of drama – something to make it worthwhile. Something that would have made the life of a shoe matter. Something to mark its expiration with a memory.

So little lasts… least of all a forgotten shoe, no matter how many tales it has to tell.

At the other end of this day, a storm moves in. Bands of dark gray move toward the backyard and the wind picks up. Undersides of leaves on distant trees flutter and reveal their lighter color. The goldfinches of the still morning have disappeared. Other birds are restless, and a group of crows appears briefly, high in the sky, swirling in the clouds before shrieking and escaping.

I take refuge beneath the canopy. It will be the last year for this one – it’s tattered and torn and had a good run. Not unlike the end of summer. We’re all a little bruised and battered. Work hard, play hard, die hard, and hopefully we are better for it. Summer can be exhausting – the heat, the fun, the activities – and it sometimes seems to go against its own rules of relaxation. There is effort in constantly trying to be lazy.

And so I welcome the storm. The rain begins and the wind picks up. Suddenly the air is cooler. Though the summer wasn’t a lengthy scorching one, it is a slight relief. The garden needs its rest. To ask for it to keep up a continual show would be to ask for too much. And really, I’d appreciate it far less if it did this the year-round. 

Some mornings are made out of stillness. In the hour before I have to step into the shower and begin the regimented routine that will run like clockwork and ultimately deposit me at the office, I sit in the dining room and stare out the window at a scene made mostly of this stillness. Without even a breeze, not a single leaf moves, not one blade of fountain grasses twists in this silence. Then a happy commotion: a trio of goldfinches alights on the cup plant, disrupting the eerie scene with happy abandon. They are there for the seedheads which are finally beginning to ripen and fall. I pause to watch the three of them there, their bright-yellow feathers accented with splotches of black, almost like a mirror and camouflage beside the similar color scheme of the fading flowers.

All the beauty of the world, right there in my backyard.

A breeze picks up and the grasses begin to sway. Still, the finches peck away at their breakfast, the towering stems of the cup plant moving gently with their weight and the arrival of wind. I thought it was going to rain today, but it hasn’t started yet. Taking in the moment is nourishment for the soul.

The unofficial demise of summer is said to be today, but screw that – summer has a few more weeks yet. Let’s not rush it off so quickly, let’s hold onto its warmth for as long as possible. It never lasts long enough… whatever enough may be. Rewind to the week before, in this hopeless endeavor to perpetually repeat a summer that I am loathe to leave. 

The cry of these summer trumpets was angelic to say the least. 

A letter of love to Betty Lynn Buckley. 

Who will win this race?

More first world problems for those of us in the first world. 

Grandstanding like the old man I am. 

Sunny surprise. 

Happy ending, fig-style. 

Cuckoo, cuckoo…

18 years ago I was just getting started.

When the truth stings. 

My birthday took place in Boston this year.

(And it was pretty splendid.)

Finally, my naked ass, set to beautiful words. 

I can stop traffic!

Hunks of the Day included Travis Wall, Blake McGrath, Chuando Tan, Richard Fleeshman, and Roberto Bolle.