The Last Chrysanthemum

By Thomas Hardy

Why should this flower delay so long,
To show its tremulous plumes? 
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song, 
When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun
Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call
Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
The season’s shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,
Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
Winter would stay its stress?

– I talk as if the thing were born
With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
By the Great Face behind.

Goldenrod

By Mary Oliver

On roadsides,
  in fall fields,
      in rumpy bunches,
          saffron and orange and pale gold, 

in little towers,
  soft as mash,
      sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers,
          full of bees and yellow beads and perfect flowerlets 

and orange butterflies.
  I don’t suppose
      much notice comes of it, except for honey,
           and how it heartens the heart with its 

blank blaze.
  I don’t suppose anything loves it, except, perhaps,
      the rocky voids
          filled by its dumb dazzle. 

For myself,
  I was just passing by, when the wind flared
      and the blossoms rustled,
          and the glittering pandemonium 

leaned on me.
  I was just minding my own business
      when I found myself on their straw hillsides,
          citron and butter-colored, 

and was happy, and why not?
  Are not the difficult labors of our lives
      full of dark hours?
          And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far, 

that is better than these light-filled bodies?
  All day
       on their airy backbones
           they toss in the wind, 

they bend as though it was natural and godly to bend,
  they rise in a stiff sweetness,
      in the pure peace of giving
           one’s gold away.

How we ever got to October this quickly is a mystery to me, but life is good when it moves with alacrity. Sadness and uncertainty are what slow things down. The past week flew by, and there is a backlog of travel and fun events that I’ll eventually get around to posting, or not, as I’ve been spending less time behind the keyboard and more time out in the world. So to keep things brief, on with the weekly recap for this Monday morning.

Transitioning from summer to fall (and September to October) means that there are still hot days to be had, and hot men as well. Let’s begin with Brandon Rubendall, Brenton Thwaites and Colin Brazeau.

It was a week of uncharacteristic laughter (at least for here.) In real life I’m much more gregarious than I allow my voice to be on this blog. I’m not sure why. Survival, perhaps. But I broke down that wall of serious intent with this Auntie Fee post, and a laughter-inducing clip of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader.

It was a week that saw summer slowly slide out of the Cape, but it did so in a way that was subtle and sweet and gloriously simple. The Mermaid of Shore Road was back in effect.

My last single friend got married. (But more on that later…)

Who knew such color could come from Cambridge?

Not one poem for fall, but two.

Finally, there were even more Hunks to keep the warmth pulsating, like David Terzian, Ben Affleck, and Jackson Lombardi.

PS – All right, the week was really all about this: Nick Jonas grabbing his crotch and baring his butt cheeks.

A Song for Autumn

In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come – six, a dozen – to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

~ Mary Oliver

Behind me the Bourne Bridge grows smaller in the distance, and a mermaid swims deeper into the recesses of memory. I am heading West, but I won’t get far. Home is still in upstate New York, just one state beyond Massachusetts, and a relatively short distance, though it feels a world away. The weekends go by too quickly, especially in the fall.

Fall itself feels fleeting, at least at the start, at the pretty part. Before it all goes brown and dead. Then fall slows its march, drawing out the cold and setting up a lengthy preamble to winter. We are a decent distance from that right now, so let’s now dwell on the inevitable. Not just yet. The sun can still be warm. The sky can still be blue. The summer can still be remembered.

Fall Song

Back when I was attending Brandeis University in the mid-90’s (cue age-related shriek) I would occasionally walk from Porter Square to Harvard Square. Though they are but one T-stop apart, the walk was of decent length, and perfect for a bit of mind-clearing and contemplation. At that time, there wasn’t much more than a few stores scattered rather far between one another, but since then a number have moved into the space. I walked this stretch the last time I was in town, and stopped at the space seen in these photos.

As can be gleaned, it was a colorfully eclectic collection of objects from around the world – charming bits of wreckage that, taken together, formed an overwhelming sensation of sensory overload in the best possible manner.

Sometimes more is more.

Crepe paper flowers always make me smile.

Cambridge certainly knows how to make a colorful impression.

Today my friends Chris and Darcey are celebrating their wedding. I don’t have all that much wisdom as a married man, but I have a few ideas that might help in their small quiet way (particularly for someone like Chris, who somehow manages to be tardy all the time.)

1. Don’t be late.

2. You may not mean it, but you’re going to have to say ‘I’m sorry’ at some point.

3. There are no right answers to the question, “How do I look?” Sorry. (See above.)

4. When all else fails, it is never wrong to say, “I love you” – and then do it. 

5. Don’t be fucking late.

When I was a kid, the only time I got into trouble at school was for laughing. There would be times when I was laughing so hard my gut ached and tears were streaming down my face. Usually it happened at the most inopportune mounts: quiet reading, moments of silence, or any other serious time when laughter was frowned upon (church was the worst.) Sometimes it would be laughter that built on itself, and the original trigger wasn’t even all that funny. My friend Ann was the best at bringing that out in me, and to this day I can think of a few moments and still fall into deep troves of laughter just at the memory of them.

These days, those bouts of laughter are fewer and farther between, but they still happen, like when I watched this clip of Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader. It doesn’t matter what’s so funny, and by the end of it I defy you not to crack a smile or crack entirely up. I had to pause and leave the room because my stomach was hurting so much from laughing so hard.

There’s something so intensely satisfying about a hearty spell of laughter. It changes the world.

She’s crass, vulgar, messy, and downright ornery. She adds tequila to strawberry shortcake and seasons her chicken wings in the kitchen sink. She turns ‘paprika’ into a four-syllable word. She is Auntie Fee, and I absolutely adore her. As the living anti-thesis of Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, she drops f-bombs right and left, while cussing out her put-upon camera-man if he misses a beat. I’m not sure how I came upon her series of videos, but whenever I need a quick pick-me-up, I check out a new one and laugh like an idiot at her cooking lessons. (Warning: language is NSFW, but most of this blog is NSFW.)

(Skip to 2:14 for the pap-a-rika meltdown!)

I love her spirit, and her candor, as well as her penchant for being such a potty mouth. There’s an exuberance to her cooking style that makes up for its lack of precision (or wisdom, given the fact that she seems to prefer frying above all other forms of cooking). This sense of living for the moment, and living kind of recklessly, has always fascinated me. Coming from a strict and regimented set of parents, where this sort of behavior in the kitchen would have been unthinkable, I find her to be a breath of fresh air.  She’s appeared on Jimmy Kimmel because she’s hilarious, but it’s her homemade videos that show off her own brand of charm.