The Japanese coral bark maple provides a year-long focal point of interest, as seen in this moment’s brilliant golden foliage. Its spring show focuses mainly on chartreuse leaves, summer deepens into a darker green, and winter reveals the red bark befitting its namesake. I think I like the spring show the best, but fall is a very close second.
The leaves take on a tenderness now that is also part of their appeal – very soon they will drop, plucked by wind or rain or the simple end of this part of their journey. They will flutter down and join the earth again, rotting and decaying and transforming into nourishment and aid for another season of leaves. Tenderness and comfort and reassurance – the very building blocks of fall, and just enough to get us through the winter.
One of my favorite moments of last week was driving home from a family dinner with Andy, and having this song come on the radio. I’m not going to pretend I was ever a huge fan of the Carpenters, but I had a few favorites, and they definitely knew their way around a melody, and a harmony for that matter, so let’s indulge in a bit of optimism. Andy reminded me of that during this darkening fall, so I turned the music up and let it play.
Such a feelin’s comin’ over me There is wonder in most every thing I see Not a cloud in the sky, got the sun in my eyes And I won’t be surprised if it’s a dream
Everything I want the world to be Is now comin’ true especially for me And the reason is clear, it’s because you are here You’re the nearest thing to heaven that I’ve seen
For a Monday afternoon post, a bit of optimism makes all the difference. Go ahead, sing along.
I’m on the top of the world lookin’ down on creation And the only explanation I can find Is the love that I’ve found, ever since you’ve been around Your love’s put me at the top of the world
October’s bright and balmy weather came through this past week, while matters of reconciling the past and turning this fall into a reckoning continued in earnest. It ended with a meditation, which is the very best way to end something – and a very good way to start as well. Before that though, our weekly recap collection…
A neon ghost, to barely kick off the spooky season.
Saving the daily meditation for the last act of the day was deliberate. I knew that tonight’s practice was in part to revisit the events chronicled in this morning’s blog post – to revisit and to move through them in mindfulness, acknowledgment, kindness, and forgiveness. There was still a lot of anger and bitterness there – feelings of being unprotected and abandoned when I needed support most – and then the feelings of guilt for bringing it all up again. I let each of those thoughts present themselves, then move away. Inhabiting those moments of long ago – and all that I felt as they played out – and then examining what I felt, how I felt it, and how it lived inside me for all these years – that is how I am attempting to resolve the dilemma.
Writing about things helps – I’ve kept a lot of backstories hidden, as much to protect others as to protect myself – but there is something powerfully freeing about putting it all down at last, and then letting it go. Once it’s here, it doesn’t need to take up space in my head or heart – I can revisit any bottled-up anger or betrayal, while also realizing that I shouldn’t be bound to that anymore. The healing – and the possibility of forgiveness – is in the meditation that follows, in seeing things through my family’s point of view, seeing things through other points of view, and seeing myself with a bit of leniency too.
No one and everyone is to blame.
And so I breathe in and visualize those days, and then I slowly breathe them out – the exhale a relief of body and mind and heart. I do this over and over with each moment of pain, each moment of hurt, turning them into moments of clarity, moments of truth, and ultimately moments of forgiveness.
This month marks the fifth anniversary of the last time I had an alcoholic beverage. I’ll try to write another post celebrating that on the actual date – this one goes back more than a bit further to explore why I enjoyed the poison so much – or at least why I once employed it so much.
One of the key factors in what helped me to quit cold-turkey, and without any sort of withdrawal, was the realization that I had been drinking to ease and mask and address my social anxiety. On some level I understood that I’d been doing that for my entire adult life, but five years ago I managed to make that connection on a level that finally broke the alcoholic spell I was under. Once that happened, stopping was a breeze – and I realize that’s not the case for most drinkers who are unable to stop.
Having suffered from social anxiety for as long as I can remember, the memorable events of growing up often revolved around something uncomfortable; the brain is conditioned to remember its heightened moments of stress, I assume in an effort to avoid them in the future. In Filipino families, the first anniversary of the death of a loved one is a big deal. Masses and prayer services and gatherings of family are held – as much a celebration of food and life as they are a commemoration of the dead. When I was about eighteen years old, we attended one of these events in New Jersey.
My Mom had been asked by my Aunt if I would do a reading in front of everyone, and despite the many glaring examples of how uncomfortable I was in front of a crowd, and my debilitating shyness that had been evident since I could walk, she said yes and then told me that I would be doing a reading in front of everyone. I asked her to tell my aunt that I couldn’t do it – but she wouldn’t. She merely walked away, leaving me alone to figure it out.
Somehow, I managed to get through the reading, the entire time feeling like I was dying inside, and it didn’t make me stronger. It only freaked me out further, setting a cycle of terror in motion, one that my own mother didn’t seem to want to stop.
More than a few years later, a similar event happened, because getting hurt seems to be a family tradition for me. We were at a funeral for another family member, and once again someone asked my Mom if I would do a reading – and once again she said I would. I think then she said I could say no if I wanted but I would have tell them I didn’t want to do it. At that vulnerable moment, I think that hurt more than the fact that she didn’t even see how it might be difficult for me.
That morning was different, however, as I had a secret weapon – a bottle of orange juice and vodka, which I downed in the bathroom of our hotel room before we left for the funeral. In a haze of drunken confidence I sailed through the reading, and unlocked a key to getting through any moment of social anxiety: alcohol. It also set up a dangerous precedent of drinking to deal with family events – especially when it was becoming clear that I couldn’t always count on my family to protect me or, worse, when family were the people who ended up harming me. More on that as we delve deeper into fall, because no one said this was going to be an easy, breezy season; it’s a necessary one, and this reconciliatory reckoning is long overdue.
Social anxiety, the feeling of being unprotected by my family at key moments, and the crutch of alcohol would prove a triple threat – and a consistent motif through the years. Looking back, I did a lot of my drinking during family gatherings and events, and I’m just beginning to see how the pieces of that puzzle fit together. It’s not a blame game, it’s an explanation destination, and I’m the only one who put the bottle to my lips.
Coming of gay age in the era of AIDS was obviously not without its perils. Just as I was awakening to my own sexuality, the world was awakening to the epidemic of AIDS, and suddenly sex might mean much more than pregnancy or STDs – it could equal death. That’s a bit of a boner killer, even for a teenager who could get it up at the wispiest breeze in the air.
My years of adolescence took place at the height of the AIDS epidemic, and by the time I was old enough to start exploring sex with men, condoms were mandatory and routine, and the wild, hedonistic abandon that called deeply to my primal soul was studded with the prickly warnings and admonishments of how to safely navigate such a scene. Sex suffers when spontaneity requires planning and precaution.
By the time I was old enough to date a man, I was aware of AIDS in a general sense, but for someone so young, it was still a scary time, and I had questions and concerns – all of which were not welcomed or even tolerated by the first man I would kiss.
We made it into Harvard and started to walk to the theater to buy tickets when Tom stopped to stare at a street musician. I just wanted to get the tickets, eat dinner, and get out of the bad weather. But Tom stayed and watched this old guitar player. We were getting along all right no. Mostly it was he and I bantering with sarcastic comment. It was fun. Finally I got him to get up and get the tickets. We were walking away from the theater, looking for a place to eat. I asked him a few more questions.
“When was the last time you were tested for AIDS?” was one of the last ones I dared.
“Yesterday, like I do every day.”
I laughed but asked again seriously.
“When were you last tested?” he asked.
“I’ve never been tested.”
“Well.”
“But I haven’t been with over thirty people either. So when was it?”
“Two years ago.”
I know it shouldn’t have, but somehow it surprised me. That would have been 1992. I thought of his current cold. What if…
“And how many people have you been with since you were tested?” I asked, somewhat afraid of what the answer might be.
“Umm… about ten.”
“Ten?! You’ve been with… how do you know…”
“Look, I told you,” he began sternly and loudly, “I didn’t want this education crap. Now if you have questions, ask someone else, do you understand? I told you that. I don’t want to be mean, but I told you this before and I don’t want any more of it.” And that was it.
In that one moment my world turned form something over which I had some control into something that whirled and whisked me in whichever whim it had. The wind caught up. Before this year I would have been bawling in this situation. Now I just walked stoically with Tom. He looked back at me. It wasn’t a joke. Did he think I thought it was? I just looked back at him, giving him a slight ‘Well that’s that’ smile. And we went into Bertucci’s and sat down for dinner. Then the mending began. I almost hated him for what he had just done. But I didn’t.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the 90’s, I was old enough to legally get into clubs and bars, I wasn’t the club kid that certain people thought for sure I would be when let loose in Boston. In fact, I went to Chaps maybe once every few months, for the occasional wild tea dance, and rarely if ever did I bring anyone back home with me. My social anxiety was too high for that, and if any guy did happen to make their way back to my place, I didn’t do much beyond oral. Usually it wasn’t much beyond kissing. And therein may have been the lifesaving bit of happenstance – my shyness acted as my protection, at a time when many gay men were falling sick everywhere. My inability to be the full-fledged slut I privately longed to be was a saving grace; by the time I really let loose, we had gotten safe sex down to a science.
Whenever I wonder whether I made the most of those younger years, I think back to what our world was like, and I’m grateful to have been so shy. Sometimes social anxiety saves lives.
This little park in downtown Albany opened this fall, and though I drive by it every day, and it’s literally across the street from my office building, I still have’t had the opportunity to stop by and sit there for a bit. My goal is to do that before the weather fully turns. It’s a reminder to take the time for such meditative moments throughout the day – to slow down and stop what we might be barreling through to finish. I need more moments of quiet like that.
{Note: The Madonna Timeline is an ongoing feature, where I put the iPod on shuffle and write a little anecdote on whatever was going on in my life when that Madonna song was released and/or came to prominence in my mind.}
We existed in a land of letters. Furtive messages left for one another on a shared computer, before there was e-mail or social media of any kind. Lyrics mostly, the occasional letter, snippets of songs and poems and phrases we’d heard whispered in a dream. That’s what we were in – the fever dream of being eighteen years old and just beginning to find yourself. Seeing glimmers of who you might want to be in another person was intoxicating.
From the not-so-hallowed halls of high school unimaginativeness, we found each other like weak beacons in a tormented sea. Our lights having been wasted for years amid kids and adults who were always somehow lacking or limited, we found kindred spirits in each other, and when you find a twin flame at such a lovely and atrocious time in your life, it ignites something that can never be fully extinguished.
With you I’m not a little girl With you I’m not a man When all the hurt inside of me Comes out, you understand You see that I’m ferocious You see that I am weak You see that I am silly And pretentious and a freak
She had come from another school, and back in those days I disdained anyone new. She was also outspoken, unafraid to be the center of attention, and brash in a way that intimidated others; for those reasons, and more, she eventually gained my respect. She also had similar taste in music. Embroiled in the typical maelstrom of adolescent angst and drama, we each found comfort and thrills in Madonna, for no one spoke to that more succinctly than her. It was a rare treat to find someone as enamored of the pop star at that time – there was something decidedly uncool for a boy to like her, if not outright offensive. I was just starting to learn not to care about such things. When messages started appearing on the computer I used in an early computer class, I knew instantly who they were from, and in that dreamy period of teenage infatuation and insecurity, I wrote back with similar messages and strings of words. We each needed a friend then.
But I don’t feel too strange for you Don’t know exactly what you do I think when love is pure you try To understand the reasons why And I prefer this mystery It cancels out my misery And gives me hope that there could be A person that loves me
At the time, I was seeing another girl, so my side of things had to remain – and did remain – strictly platonic. Admittedly there were some flirtatious moments, but when you’re eighteen that seems the least of any transgressions, and I never cheated on my girlfriend despite the opportunity. Still, I understood that meeting someone who understood me in a wholly different way was something special, something sacred, and we guarded that. In some way we sensed that we might be each other’s salvation at a point down the road, and in so many aspects we both needed to be rescued.
Rescue me (rescue me, it’s hard to believe) Your love has given me hope Rescue me (rescue me, it’s hard to believe) I’m drowning Baby throw out your rope
We were both confidently assured of our fabulousness and keenly insecure about who we were. It may likely have been no more than youth, but you usually can’t see that at the time it all happens. We spoke to one another in a language no one else would ever understand – at times I wondered if we even knew what we were saying, so complicated did our verbal sparring turn that we would occasionally get lost in woods of words. Being so perfectly matched in wit was as much a blessing as a curse; it made for the greatest moments of connection while proving fertile fighting ground. Our battles were as epic as our chemistry, and when my then-girlfriend and I broke up (in the best way we could manage, which admittedly wasn’t the best), we finally had the chance to see how we would or could work as a couple.
With you I’m not a fascist Can’t play you like a toy And when I need to dominate You’re not my little boy You see that I am hungry For a life of understanding And you forgive my angry little heart When she’s demanding
We shared a chemistry that transcended typical gender and sexual roles (especially seeing as how we would both end up realizing we were more attracted to the same sex in a year or so). At the moment, we came together in combustible and fiery fashion – an attraction built first on the intellectual, followed by the physical, which at our age meant burning up.
You bring me to my knees While I’m scratching out the eyes Of a world I want to conquer And deliver and despise And right while I am standing there I suddenly begin to care And understand that there could be A person that loves me
We would explore every configuration of how our bodies fit together, fucking everywhere from empty playgrounds to station wagons to the middle of a road somewhere after midnight. With the intensity and fervor befitting the verge of adulthood, our lovemaking was primal, animalistic; it was like we were trying to fuck our way through each other to some other place. She pulled me into her, locking her wrists behind my back as I wondered how close we could come to abandoning ourselves to oblivion. Our passion wanted as much to destroy itself as to build itself anew each day. We were both insatiable then.
Rescue me (rescue me, it’s hard to believe) Your love has given me hope Rescue me (rescue me, it’s hard to believe) I’m drowning Baby throw out your rope
Yet somehow I remained removed, like I was going through the motions of what a man’s supposed to do. There was a cool detachment that I thought was emanating from her, when really it was me the whole time; we so often attribute our questionable traits to others, tricking ourselves into believing we are but mirroring the state of someone else. My barriers were constantly erect, even as I was inside her, as close as two people might possibly be, and as much as we both thought it to be love, the clouds signaling the end of a season, like the clouds of our ending youth, rolled in from the horizon. Our one summer together had come to a close, and by the time I was back in Boston she had moved on to her first girlfriend, and I was kissing a man.
Love is understanding It’s hard to believe Life can be so demanding I’m sending out an S.O.S. Stop me from drowning Baby I’ll do the rest
Rescue me (rescue me) Your love has given me hope (your love has given me hope) Rescue me (rescue me) I’m drowning Baby throw out your rope
Even if we hadn’t awakened to our diverging sexualities, we could never have survived in a world of reality. Our drama was too intense, our ways with each other too extreme. We couldn’t inhabit the real world – and we both understood that surviving meant living 95% in the real world – navigating its awfulness, getting down in its ditches, dirtying the very pure realm in which we carved our love. Our final break was a messy, splintered, half-assed affair – and we had hurt each other beyond a point where we might be friends.
Love is understanding It’s hard to believe Life can be so demanding I’m sending out an S.O.S. Rescue me, rescue me
It’s not my business to decide How good you are for me How valuable you are And what the world can see Only that you try to understand me And have the courage To love me for me
Looking back, with the keen sensitivity and wisdom of time unrushed, and with a willingness to acknowledge and own any bad behavior, we may have rescued each other after all. For that brief, glorious, tender time in our lives – a time that would inform all we would ever become, solidifying our souls in ways that remain true to this day, we did our best to save ourselves, and each other. Every once in a while I’ll still think of her, wonder at where she might be, how she might be, what she might be doing – and I hope she is safe and happy. After all of it, I still wish her happiness.
I’m talking, I’m talking, I believe in the power of love
I believe in the power, I believe you can rescue me
I wore all black today – it’s the uniform of this fall season. It also marks a shift from my typical garb of crazy colors and wild combinations; it also fits the mood at hand, which is black as the night.
Before a late meditation, I stepped outside and looked up at the dark sky. An airplane blinked and slowly crossed in a gentle arc, then the stars began to appear as my eyes adjusted. They are always there – sometimes it just takes a bit of effort and patience to see them.
The last time Stuart Price and Madonna were in the studio together something very special was in the offing, in the form of ‘Confessions on a Dancefloor’. That was about twenty years ago, and Madonna is the first one to acknowledge that you can never do the same thing twice, no matter how fierce.
As the musical director from her most recent ‘Celebration Tour’, Price has been a part of a number of Madonna’s successes, so seeing them together in the studio has put all of her fans into a flutter. I’m still in that camp, and this thrills me.
The fruit of the dogwood tree is having a moment. Usually, I miss these in-between colors, echoing the palette of the tomatoes earlier in the season. These are much less palatable to taste, however, and their texture leaves much to be desired.
“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” ~ Stephen King
“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds —justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.” ~ Anne Rice
Once upon a time I lived life like a vampire. Inhabiting the blackness of a castle – yes, a true castle, which is never nearly as romantic as one thinks it is – I roamed cold and clammy hallways, floating down dim stone stairwells, and avoiding the piercing bits of light that peeked into tiny windows of turrets. Castles are only good for their gorgeous darkness – they offer little comfort otherwise, unless you are in need of defense. And even then they can only keep things out of themselves; not once did they protect my heart.
I learned a lot in that castle, and during that part of my life, which should have been far lonelier than I ever allowed myself to feel. Some self-preserving instinct deep inside of me signaled a dire warning that if I had faced the loneliness then it would have won, taking me down entirely, and likely forever. The castle outwardly illustrated how to construct a fortress of the heart, though I may have known that before I ever stepped into such a cruel edifice. And perhaps my heart didn’t deserve such protection. God, if such a thing exists, may not have had much empathy for my existence, and being a vampire was probably a step up from what certain others actually thought of me.
Hate to give the satisfaction, asking how you’re doing now How’s the castle built off people you pretend to care about? Just what you wanted Look at you, cool guy, you got it I see the parties and the diamonds sometimes when I close my eyes Six months of torture you sold as some forbidden paradise I loved you truly Gotta laugh at the stupidity
Vampires have long held a bad reputation. I’m not saying they don’t deserve it, or even that they’re real – I’m just saying it’s bad, and as someone who’s been vilified in ways both just and unfair, I know what that’s like. There’s a loneliness there, and occasionally a stance of sympathy from those who enjoy a dance with the devil, beneath the pale moonlight or not. (You know the moonlight of which I speak.)
Like the vampire, I’ve committed acts of atrocity, mostly in my youth, the way most of us do – being careless with the hearts of others, caring too much for this heart of mine, and behaving in cruel, reckless, feckless, fuck-them-if-they-can’t-take-a-joke form. The unevolved part of me that relishes in such villainy takes a degree of pride in that, the same way that I pretend not to boast about my penchant for making people cry.
‘Cause I’ve made some real big mistakes But you make the worst one look fine I should’ve known it was strange You only come out at night I used to think I was smart But you made me look so naive The way you sold me for parts As you sunk your teeth into me, oh Bloodsucker, famefucker Bleedin’ me dry, like a goddamn vampire
Did I mean to hurt the people that I hurt? For the most part no, and that may be the tragic irony of it all. Because the people I intended to hurt didn’t always feel it – or if they did they never showed it, and where’s the fun in that? It only served to make me try harder, to raise the level of diabolical emotional pain I might inflict, ensuring that the next time I struck the wound would prove viciously debilitating. Innocent people got injured then – the flying shrapnel of my torment an unintentional but mandatory aspect when you’re out to cause pain of any kind. Destruction begets destruction, especially where emotions are concerned. Rarely does one heart get broken without others being affected. Back then I didn’t care. I couldn’t. Caring that much would have been a hindrance and a luxury, and my heart preferred to live in stark, unencumbered fashion; being selfish is always easier than being selfless – and who, in their heart of hearts, really wants to be without a self? “I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit” – and you will always blame me for your own weakness.
And every girl I ever talked to told me you were bad, bad news You called them crazy, God, I hate the way I called them crazy too You’re so convincing How do you lie without flinching? (How do you lie, how do you lie, how do you lie?) Ooh, what a mesmerizing, paralyzing, fucked-up little thrill Can’t figure out just how you do it, and God knows I never will Went for me, and not her ‘Cause girls your age know better
I’ve made some real big mistakes But you make the worst one look fine I should’ve known it was strange You only come out at night I used to think I was smart But you’ve made me look so naive The way you sold me for parts As you sunk your teeth into me, oh Bloodsucker, famefucker Bleedin’ me dry, like a goddamn vampire
It is in the vampire’s nature to kill. Murder, for them, is a means of survival. You can’t blame a polar bear or a hippopotamus for trying to end you if you’ve encroached upon their turf, and the shark that nibbles at your calf and the snake that bites you after a warning rattle are only being their authentic selves. If it was the vampire’s nature to be murderous, it was in my nature to be cruel. Maybe my nature was cultivated from nurture – I’m in no mood to argue that one way or another – I only acknowledge that by the time I moved into a castle my nature was set in stone, like some blue-ringed octopus that only wanted to be left alone.
Well, I’m giving myself too much credit in trying to take away the notion that my choices were somehow an inevitable and uncontrollable aspect of my being when they were, after all, choices; the purpose of this post is to own up to the evil that once entranced me, and may yet again, because once you’ve tasted such a thing it’s hard to not want it when the opportunity presents itself. Those opportunities arise when the heart is weak and the soul is weary; evil often flourishes in the aftermath of pain. A sadistic streak, having once calmed the hurt of a broken heart, might feel good again following similar circumstances of being wronged. The grooves are still there, the path remains apparent.
The surest way not to get hurt is to be the one doing the hurting; they leave you alone after that. They all leave you alone. Then, try as they might – and I am certain they have tried mightily – they cannot eradicate me from their mind. I simply won’t leave. It’s not something they truly want anyway, despite all lame protestations, and we both know that. That may be what ultimately makes me a monster – not my heinous acts, but the haunting that invariably ensues afterward.
You said it was true love, but wouldn’t that be hard? You can’t love anyone, ’cause that would mean you had a heart I tried you help you out, now I know that I can’t ‘Cause how you think’s the kind of thing I’ll never understand
I’ve made some real big mistakes But you make the worst one look fine I should’ve known it was strange You only come out at night I used to think I was smart But you made me look so naive The way you sold me for parts As you sunk your teeth into me, oh Bloodsucker, famefucker Bleedin’ me dry, like a goddamn vampire
“It was as if the empty nights were made for thinking of him. And sometimes I found myself so vividly aware of him it was as if he had only just left the room and the ring of his voice were still there. And somehow, there was a disturbing comfort in that, and, despite myself, I’d envision his face.” ~ Anne Rice
When Suzie and I last visited Vermont, it was still summer – and the 80-degree day backed that up. Still, there were signs of fall on the move, as seen in these photos, capturing one of the first trees to start their transformation. Andy says this looks to be a banner year for fall foliage thanks to a hot, and lately dry, summer. I don’t know how all that chlorophyll magic works, I only know that I appreciate its prettiness.
A SONG FOR AUTUMN
By Mary Oliver
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.
Whenever I doubt whether something greater is at work, I think of this kind of beauty, and gain an appreciation for simply being a small part of it.
