I’m all out of sweet tea today – all that’s left is bitter dregs, so if you’re seeking something positive and upbeat, you’ve come to the wrong place. Case in point: this person’s parking job last night, which took up not one, but two parking spaces.
This is the definition of a dick.
Don’t be a dick.
Be better.
Happy Tuesday.
Just a few more days of Mercury in retrograde to go…
At this turn in the seasonal year, my attention turns to living rather than notating things about life, and so my posts of late are lighter and less time-consuming – both for you and for me. To that end, this is the weekly recap, quick and mostly painless.
It’s been a full year since this haunting.
The evening song in the morning.
All about the men of the Met Gala.
A cultural shift seen through the sparkle of a coat.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Thirteen years ago today Andy and I stood in the Boston Public Garden and proclaimed our love for each other in front of some of our closest family and friends. The year was 2010, and we had been together for almost ten years, so a wedding felt like a formality, but as with most weddings the words transformed the day into something more meaningful and life-altering. I didn’t understand or believe it would happen to us, and after being denied such a simple rite of passage for so long, it meant something more to me and Andy. That’s the reason I always make such a big deal of our anniversaries – and why I look back on this day more than any others.
Most of them were enshrined in this comprehensive anniversary post from 2020, when the world was at a standstill and our tenth anniversary was held at home rather than our usual return to Boston. When we started moving forward again, we made up our tenth (and eleventh) in this series of posts.
Boston Wedding Anniversary 2020/2021: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Boston Wedding Anniversary 2022: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
The lilac forms an integral part of many childhood memories; its perfume is enough to bring back any number of magical spring moments. This is the third installment of our purple-hued trilogy, following the violet and the tulip, and it is by far the most gloriously fragrant.
This is the single-flowered non-hybridized variety, and its simplicity is part of its rustic charm. For all the love so many of us have for excess and frills (guilty as charged) I find my own style preferences leading toward the simple and streamlined the older I get. The love I felt for the ornate Victorian house I once visited as a child has been supplanted for a love of the latest Japandi craze – a cross of Japanese and Scandinavian design. The same thing is happening in my garden. The double-flowered heavy-headed blooms of some plants feel too ostentatious for these times. The pendulum swings back to the simple, and spring should always be uncluttered.
Our purple celebration continues from this violet post with these tulips – one of the emblematic flowers of May. This one come with a song, a song that should run over the end credits of our latest episode, which involves changes and shifts in houses and homes and our steady traipse toward older age. Life advances, no matter how much we may want to slow its irrevocable cadence forward.
It’s a good song for the last full month of spring, and the color of these tulips may be a harbinger for the coming summer (there’s also a golden orange hue that Gloria Swanson wore in a photo shoot that I will be using as another inspiration color for the season of the sun). These trifling concerns distract from the heaviness that has engulfed us for the last few years.
So let us find joy in the little things – the tulips, the purple, the song – and the Saturday at hand.
This little beauty is hardy as hell, and can be invasive and pesky, but when it’s this early in the season – a season that has stalled in rain and cold – I appreciate its color and stalwart power, its insistence on blooming through the gloom. The white and violet version of these flowers are much more ubiquitous, so this pure violet version of the violet is simplicity and grandeur at once.
Looking around the internet for another song about violets (it’s mostly just ‘Violets For Your Furs’ – a grand song, but surely there were others?) I ended up finding this deep Enya cut, which the singer expounds upon in the notes for the album below. I like the sentiment, and I love when someone does the writing for me once in a while.
The lyrics for Sumiregusa were inspired by a Hokku, or Haiku, written by the Japanese poet, Basho, while he was traveling to Otsu.
He says that on his way through the mountain road the sight of a wild violet touched his heart.
We have all been moved by the beauty of nature, so I am sure we can all relate to those seventeen syllables that Basho wrote. We have all had a moment that pulls at our heartstrings. One such moment for me was when I was walking in the woodlands and I came across an old, broken, dying thistle. He was such a sad sight. There was a small history in him that would soon be lost. And yet he struggled on. I called him Don Quixote. I went every day to see him until he wasn’t there any more. The following year his children bloomed, he did not return. Even today, although that place has been taken over by the ever vigorous bramble, and there are no signs of any thistles, I still pass by and remember him.
Perhaps these moments are an epiphany.
Perhaps it is our own acceptance of the world and the way it is.
Perhaps it is a celebration of life, or just a moment that is ours alone. In Sumiregusa all of nature is equal in its power to inspire, to move, to touch – from a small pebble to a great mountain, from one green leaf to the many colours of autumn, from the song of birds to a purple flower.
NOTES BY ROMA RYAN
A view from the walking bridge at the Boston Public Garden, this shows a swan boat out on its typical trajectory, rounding the island that forms a home for all sorts of waterfowl. This seems a wonderful as weekend as any for a visit to Boston, and so I’m listing a few links that exemplify all the Boston love I’ve been feeling of late. It is a most magical time in that fair city…
Our residence in Boston actually began over a quarter of a century ago, which for a city as old as Boston is a mere drop in the bucket.
The city has been through a lot since then, and it remains in constant change and flux, which is part of its ever-growing appeal.
Having a home-base in Boston has been a blessing for us. It is both respite and get-away – a perfect little escape, and possible retirement pad.
Boston was where I found my first job as an adult on my own (in retail, of course, and I absolutely adored it).
A home-away-from-home has grown into a home in its own right.
More links on Boston love can be seen here. It’s Friday and the weekend is at hand – get out and play!
On a recent cool spring day, I went deep on the cologne selection, daring to trot out Tom Ford’s ‘Plum Japonais’ – a decadent blend of plum fruit and plum blossom for a fruity, warm, holiday-like devastation. It’s not a light, ephemeral fragrance; it leads with a punch of fruity power and lands strong, lasting for hours and warming the air around the wearer. There’s some spice to its fruity sweetness too, and a bit of smoke that lends it a coziness ideal for a chilly spring spell.
These plum blossoms carry the tender, delicate essence of spring, when it’s barely strong enough to hold onto the warmth of a day. Our fleeting sessions with the sun prove equally weak, yet still the blossoms stand, fluttering in the wind no matter how cold it gets. The plum blooms brave every end-of-winter, honored in a fragrance that lends some heat before the sun returns.
Jaxon Layne and Uncle Andy are already forging a bond that is adorable to watch and witness – in the same way that Jaxon has forged a lovely connection with all of us, bringing a family together when the state of the world is questionable at best. Seeing two of my favorite people getting along so swimmingly is a soul-enriching happy thing, and I’m feeling all kinds of gratitude and thankfulness.
This year something happened to our previously-majestic Kwanzan cherry. After last year’s boffo-bloom, this season there was literally one single bloom on the entire tree. I noticed all the other Kwanzan cherries were bereft of blooms as well, indicating that some climate event had diminished the blossoms. There may have been a stretch of late cold weather that killed off the flower buds – that does happen sometimes. Or maybe it’s simply an off year for them, similar to the way lilacs occasionally take a year off from heavy blooming.
Instead, we look to the hothouse blooms to cheer our chilly days. Warmth in hue, warmth in the greenhouse. And soon, warmth in the outside. Have faith.
When I first wore this coat out in public, it was on a Broadway weekend with Mom, where we dined with Suzie and her Mom and then took in ‘The Cher Show‘. That was back in 2019, which in many ways feels like a lifetime ago. It merited the sparkle from the crystals I so painstakingly sewed on. Beneath the lights of Times Square, it made an especially dramatic impression, but garnered only a few compliments, almost all from women.
When I made a recent trip to Boston to see my spirit animal (shout out to Riley and the snack batch!!) I donned this spring beauty for her sake, and after walking through the city with it on, I collected a wide range of accolades, the majority of which came from what seemed to be straight men. That was a cultural shift in my experience of fancy coats and sparkle, the effect they had, and on whom the effect made an impression. Back in Albany, the same strange thing happened. One guy driving by my office building on Broadway actually slowed down to shout out the window that it was a sharp coat.
For far too many years I averted my gaze from straight guys in fear of how they might take it, and how they might attack. Maybe it’s ok to let down my guard. Maybe there have already been changes made for the better in spite of what the news and the media would have us believe. Maybe I need to be open to accept the joy that exists in the world.
Somebody’s finally singing my song, as this year’s Met Gala seems more notable for the men walking the vaunted steps of the museum than the women, who traditionally steal the spotlight. While I usually spend this evening feverishly clicking through links and videos and photos of the red-carpet arrivals, frantically trying to see everything as soon as it happens, I’m no longer in such a silly headspace. Not to knock those who still thrill at such events – I’m simply ok with letting it all play out and catching highlights of it later. Fuck FOMO and give me a calm night. Here are the looks that struck me from fashion’s biggest night, inspired by the theme of Karl Lagerfeld. Featured photo is Lil Nas X, who wore body glitter and crystals and not much else, but more on that below.
Pedro Pascal continues his year of doing no wrong in this ravishing red ensemble (and showing a bit of leg to boot).
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs strikes a Lagerfeld pose and carries the basic structure of that style, like a sartorial soldier gantry striding into fashion battle. I’m torn on this one, and I think it’s because the cape isn’t working for me – and I usually adore a cape.
Conan Gray stays true to Lagerfeld obsession with black and white, and a pearlicious twist on that ubiquitous fan.
Gloves were another Lagerfeld trademark, here brought to brilliant life by Simu Liu.
Maluma said it all with a simple fringed scarf, which is more than he was wearing in these naked shots.
Taika Waititi mirrored that gray look, in hair and wardrobe, and I think this was my favorite look on all the men – it’s like less than one step away from a robe, and my love for a robe will never die.
Bringing up the rear, literally, is the king of the year’s ball – and while it’s nothing I could pull off, kudos to Lil Nas X for upping the ante yet again. This is what the Met Ball is all about, like it or not.
With Mercury in retrograde and a full moon coming up later in the week, things seem to be a little topsy-turvy, and I’m doing my best to lie low and stay out of the wrecking ball’s path. Putting on ‘Evening Song’ first thing in the morning, on a Tuesday that already feels burdened by clouds and rain, is how I will endeavor to begin. Philip Glass has a way of lulling one into a state of hopeful resignation through his undulating patterns, and that’s the sort of vibe we need today.
A sense of transformation informs some of his work, the way the world changes from shades of gray to full color when certain people enter and exit during the course of a day. Some speak more in their absence than with their presence, and I’ve always wanted to be one of those people. The ones who leave an impression so astounding that they are talked about more when they are not in a room than when they might be in it. The ones who elicit a sigh or a click of consternation when you catch their fragrance. The ones who matter when so many of us simply don’t.
A year ago I wrote this post which ended up setting free a ghost that had haunted me for thirty years. At the time, I didn’t realize what I’d done, and only now on this anniversary do I realize that the ghost of my childhood friend hasn’t visited for the duration of the entire last year. That post is worth a revisit, and since I no longer feel the need to write about Jeff those posts are all I have to offer for the moment. Revisiting such items, when thoroughly investigated and worked through, has the power to heal the past. The magic of words, the magic of writing…
