While the weather this season has been mixed at best, the silver lining is that it’s provided ideal conditions for a long and showy performance of the spring bloomers, most strikingly our Chinese dogwood trees. Their buds, formed in the heat of late summer, survived the winter winds, and are now surrounded by the creamy white bracts you see here. (The actual flowers are tiny and unremarkable – think poinsettias.)

The Chinese dogwood has proven hardier than its American counterpart, resisting the dreaded diseases that have taken down so many of the latter. Their blooming time is a little later too, which is nice when the warm weather takes a little longer to arrive. (Ahem, I’m waiting…)

These glorious dogwoods join the peonies and lilacs in a stellar display during an otherwise drab stretch of rain. Like stars shooting through the sky, they provide a necessary dose of pizzazz and sparkle – a happy harbinger of the summer season.

You see them everywhere, but you don’t really see them.

They are all around us, all of the time.

Taking our money, taking our tickets, taking our place in line.

They give too.

Steaming food on hot plates. An icy decaf frappucino. A pile of new clothes, security sensors carefully removed.

Filler people.

People like Lionel Prichard.

You don’t know Lionel Prichard, I’ll bet.

Lionel Pritchard is everyone.

And no one.

He is a monster, maybe make-believe, maybe frighteningly real.

He’s from outer-space.

Or the farm down the road.

In truth (whatever that might be these days) Lionel Prichard is a character in the movie ‘Signs’ – the alien movie by M. Night Shyamalan, which finds one forlorn family making its way through an alien invasion. Lionel Prichard is a blip on the screen – at first they mistakenly attribute the strange alien behavior to him, then he is later seen in the small-town army office filling out some form.

He is background noise.

A nuisance character who in this instance adds to the tension and mystery.

We know his full name, but that is all.

The world is filled with Lionel Prichards. We don’t notice them for the most part, unless they step out of their unconsciously-assigned roles. The barista who forgets you ordered decaf. The sales-person who neglects to take off the security sensor. The server who added the order of fries to your bill but never brought them to the table. As is too often the case, we only really notice when things go wrong.

Once in a happy while, the good comes through too. The unexpected pay-it-forward moment in the Starbucks drive-through. The sweet compliment of a stranger on the day you were feeling so shitty. The exquisite winks of grace from, dare I say it, God. Lionel Prichard is there in those moments.  

They are the people who populate the world, but whom we never take the time to meet. To know.

Each one of them is the main character of their own sitcom or drama or movie or musical.

Each one is the star of their own story.

Whenever I’m flummoxed by someone’s behavior – bad or good – I think of Lionel Prichard. Most of us, whether we realize it or not, are Lionel Prichard. We are nobody to the vast majority of other people on this planet. It is a blessing and a curse to be so startlingly insignificant. But to the few, to the elect chosen ones we honor with a space of import in our otherwise unremarkable lives, we can be everything. The most meaningful and significant star in this small stretch of the universe. For those magnificent creatures, we must shine like the sun. And for all the other Lionel Prichards, we must remember to see their shine too.

Quite a few months before Madonna made the eye-patch all the momentary-rage, I was rocking the pirate look for the promos for the PVRTD project of November 2018. Inspiration comes in fits and rages, lapping like sea water, twinkling like stars. It’s there in black and white. Sometimes it’s bathed in magenta. Always, there is contrast and comparison, destiny and doom. The artist lives to create. To mirror. To unbalance. To discern. To fail and fall and fail again. To rise. 

I don’t pretend to be anything special when it comes to my creative projects. I do what I like and I like what I do. Putting it on a stage like this website is my weird way of confronting social fear, a strange sort of showing off for the introverted side of me that needs to be let out. 

Therapy via world-wide exposure. 

There’s only a little bit of risk involved.

That’s enough.  

The variable nature of our weather this season has many of us in a schizophrenic dance. Hot and sunny one day, cold and rainy the next, then right back up again a few hours later. It’s too extreme, too wild, too wide-ranging for those of us whose moods depend on some barometric stability. At such moments of meteorological oscillation, I find it best to dip into a stalwart sign of a season, in this instance summer, and focus on a memory or a feeling or the vague stirrings of a similar brush with the sublime.

These admittedly non-descript and rather ho-hum photos show off, as much as possible, the little buds of the Linden tree – an inconspicuous tree that is a large part of city landscaping, and whose unassuming flowers go largely unnoticed except when in bloom. Even then, only the perfume gets noticed, not the flowers themselves. In truth, it took me several years to figure out what the sweet scent in the air at this time of the year was. I was looking for something bold and bright and colorful, something like a lily or rose or lilac that would have the power and potency to fill the air with such fine fragrance.

It was a lesson in judging a book by its cover. Or a tree by its perfume. Or vice versa. I’m mixing metaphors and getting all anthropomorphic now, which means it’s time to wind up this quick pre-summer post.

Go out and find a linden tree before the ants get there.

A lot happened this past week – including Albany and Boston Pride (hence the featured rainbow jockstrap photo, ahem), the release of a new Madonna album and my annual Red Sox weekend with Skip – much of which is extensively documented here. Still on a bit of a high from all of it, let’s encapsulate the moments for posterity. This week officially turns the page from spring to summer, and there is more fun to be had. I just don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. On with the recap!

It began with a bit of Madonna excitement courtesy of Andy. 

These #TinyThreads unwound a bit. 

Unfancy some brunch. 

Skip and I set it off in Boston…

… with a Charles River walk…

… some stoop gazing…

… and a couple of Chinatown dinners. 

The anticipation of a new Madonna album.

The exuberant release of Madame X.

She’s coming back – she always does. 

The lone Hunk of the Day: Aaron Libby.

Some other hunks to tide you over until the official HOD returns. 

A summer song by James bring backs San Francisco memories. 

Happy Father’s Day!

BoyCulture introduced me to this bit of Madonna magic.