The Summer Olympics in Tokyo are in full bloom, as evidenced by the plethora of Olympic posts here, and the Speedo shots of some favorite Olympians. The links alone are enough for this Monday morning recap, so go on and indulge. (Special kudos to Tom Daley and Matty Lee on their gold medal, and for sprucing up this post with their Speedo poses.) See more below…
Like fried clams and grape taffy, the majesty of ‘The Mighty Quinn’ soundtrack was introduced to me by Suzie, who at one point in our lives taught me whatever bit of cool I once had, and the collection of songs from a movie I have yet to see became the soundtrack to our trip to the then-Soviet Union in the summer of 1990, even more than Madonna’s ‘I’m Breathless’. How a Russian adventure came to be backed by reggae was a typical Suzie Ko mash-up of unlikely cultural combinations. Having neglected to bring a Walkman along for the endless hours in flight, I begged and pleaded for Suzie to share her music with me. I didn’t care what it was, I just couldn’t listen to the two mid-westerners between whom I was sandwiched, away from my friends for the longest flight of the trip, for one more minute, and Suzie – gracious and generous and selfless as ever – was good enough to oblige. And so it was that I found myself hurtling sky-high toward a continent I had never visited, listening to Sheryl Lee Ralph revisit Bob Marley’s ‘I’m Hurting Inside’, and my fourteen-year-old self wanted to cry from loneliness while being surrounded by a sea of people on all sides.
When I was just a little child
Happiness was there awhile
Then from me it slipped away
Happiness come back I say
And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness
And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness
What pain could I have possibly felt at the tender age of fourteen, and on a trip around the world with some friends, and Suzie’s own father watching over us? I couldn’t place it, couldn’t define or understand what my burgeoning and tamped-down awakening as a gay kid even meant, or even if it was a possibility, and so it manifested itself in various wicked ways, such as winning everyone over to share their most intimate secrets and stories. When a person simply listens, and prompts the next part of someone else’s story, people feel special and impelled to share more than they would under usual circumstances. And so I became the keeper of secrets – secrets which I would later dole out when it suited me. No one swore me to secrecy so I wasn’t violating anything, and it was easier to deflect by letting everyone else’s story take center stage while mine hadn’t even begun.
I didn’t see any of that then, I just felt trusted and liked enough to be the repository for those sacred tales. I also sensed the power of listening and gaining access to a person’s confidence. Curating and keeping such secrets could, when we were adults and those skills could result in information that might actually be valuable, be incredibly useful. For our teenaged group of friends, it was merely practice.
While knowing everyone’s private thoughts and feelings carried its own particular power, it also came with a certain weight, and the concern of knowing things that others didn’t, and maybe shouldn’t. Rather than make me feel more included, it more often left me feeling alone and oddly isolated. Without sharing secrets of my own, I was the dead-end of what was also, impossibly, a one-way street.
I’ve done you no wrong, I’ve done you no wrong
Reveal yourself to me
I say, I say
I’m hurting inside
I’m hurting inside
What I’ve only just begun to see of that time in my life is that by accepting the confidences of others, and offering none of my own, I couldn’t share any genuine sense of intimacy or even friendship – it all rang hollow, and it left me empty and unfulfilled, and always longing for more. The hole in my heart would never be filled that way, no matter how close I thought I was getting to people, no matter how much they seemed to like me. Hiding my own vulnerability was a protection device, but as would so often be the case it worked against me. I did not see that then, and I didn’t see it for many years afterward.
We’ve been together like school children
But then the hurt, the hurt was in vain
Oh, Lord, I’m your weary child
Oh, happiness come back again
And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness
And if you don’t come
I’m gonna go looking
For happiness
Keeping secrets became a way of life – not only the secrets of others, but my own – and only when I was alone did I ever really feel safe and comfortable being myself. Decades of that wear away at the soul like almost nothing else does. Even direct pain and loss and heartache were easier to handle somehow. During my first brush with those secrets, part of me understood that loneliness, and a sense of separation and removal from every situation, would inform the person I was becoming. It was creating a chasm between me and everyone else, a divide that would only grow over the ensuing years. My heart sensed that, and it leaned into that exquisite sadness and tantalizing hurt.
I’ve done you no wrong, I’ve done you no wrong
Reveal yourself to me
I say, I say
I’m hurting inside
I’m hurting inside
When I was just a little child
Happiness was there awhile
Then from me it slipped away
Happiness come back I say…
Widely billed as the world’s fastest man, Trayvon Bromell is, as of this writing, set to burn his way across the tracks of the Olympic Games in Tokyo. He specializes in the sprint, so keep an eye on him, if your eyes are that fast. For this post he gets crowned Dazzler of the Day, which is the very least I can give to anyone – but also the very most.
Having to unexpectedly step up into an Olympic competition must come with a crazy kind of pressure, but the US Women’s Gymnastic team has managed to do so upon the withdrawal of their anchor Simone Biles. We’ve already seen the great Sunisa Lee earn a medal, and now the stage is set for MyKayla Skinner to do similar work. Best of luck to this amazing team.
The Duchess Ivanna mentioned she was listening to Dinah Washington last week, and so Ms. Washington has been on the playlist for these crazy, hazy summer days. Of particular adoration is this classic – ‘A Sunday Kind of Love’ – which speaks to the kind of love that lasts beyond the initial infatuation and Saturday night fun. Perfect sentiment as we cross into the mid-section of summer.
I want a Sunday kind of love
A love to last, past Saturday night
I’d like to know, it’s more than love at first sight
I want a Sunday kind of love
I want a love that’s on the square
Can’t seem to find somebody to care
I’m on a lonely road that leads to nowhere
I need a Sunday kind of love
Summer songs are a dime a dozen in these parts, and music somehow hits more intensely in these hot months. That bodes well for memory-making and memory-maintaining, when scent and sound become our primal methods of rekindling moments from the past. What memories will remain after the summer of 2021? There are a few, but it’s too soon to look back, and there are more to be made. For now, a lazy Sunday mood finds expression and contemplation in the exquisite vocal stylings of Dinah Washington.
I do all my Sunday dreaming and all my Sunday scheming
Every minute, every hour, every day
I’m hoping to discover a certain kind of lover
Who will show me the way
My arms need someone to enfold
To keep me warm when Mondays are cold
A love for all my life to have and to hold
I want a Sunday kind of love
Enjoying an increasingly-rare walk during my lunch half-hour, I passed this little plant growing on Pearl Street right in Downtown Albany, and was struck by how familiar it looked. After sending it around to friends of mine who know about such matters, it was confirmed that this was a pot plant, growing in broad daylight right on one of the busier stretches of sidewalk, and I thought of how far we have come as a society.
Smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.
Light it up.
Take a toke.
It’s all good. (And legal!)
(Oh, I was also informed that this one is not quite ready to harvest, so let’s just leave it be. Apparently we are looking for the buds. In all my years of gardening, there is still much to be learned.)
Trailing right up until the last leg of his race, Bobby Finke made a spectacular comeback from behind to win one of the gold medals in swimming for the American team. Everyone loves a good comeback.
Officially the world’s fastest woman at the moment, Elaine Thompson-Herah is taking the Olympics by storm, bolting to a medal-winning start and setting the track on fire. Representing Jamaica, she has also broken the previous Olympic record in the 100-meter dash. I can’t imagine running 100 meters at a snail’s pace, so this is obviously impressive to me, and should be to everyone. Congrats to Thompson-Herah on adding to her collection of Olympic medals and glory, as well as being crowned Dazzler of the Day.
The relatively cool and wet summer we’ve had this year (courtesy, no doubt, of our new pool liner and the way the universe will always screw you no matter what you want) has a few silver linings (or lilac linings as the case may be) and that comes to light with this Wolf’s Eye Kousa dogwood, still enjoying some creamy bracts that look like flowers this late in the season. In most years, this show would have ended by early July, burned away and forgotten by the heat of the sun and the dryness that summer most often produces. This time around the ‘blooms’ have persisted to this moment, and don’t look to dissipate anytime soon.
Having already been christened a Hunk of the Day, Simu Liu advances to Dazzler of the Day in eager anticipation of his taking the lead in the next Marvel installment, ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’. Born in China and raised in Canada from the age of five, Liu has also appeared in ‘Nikita’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’.
Not quite out of his teens, Daiki Hashimoto has already earned a gold medal at the Olympic Games in mens gymnastics, and to reach such a goal at such a young age is pretty spectacular. My main accomplishment at his age was… let me think… surviving mono? His is better.
This is a deeper, darker variety of the common daylily – that ubiquitous orange beacon currently blooming along many roads and ditches. The plant pictured here has been growing at my parents’ house for at least three decades. For some reason, they always struck me as gorgeously exotic when I would see them in banks and ditches in my childhood. The blooms and foliage would be relatively unremarkable – perfectly fine and pretty, but not of particular note among the variety of grasses and plants that grew beside them – but when they started opening their bright flowers, they were all I would notice.
Andy and I don’t currently have any daylily plants in the garden, and I am always claiming that I’m going to rectify that. Despite the fact that each bloom lasts but a day, they are produced in such profusion that the entire blooming period should last a couple of weeks. Some varieties even deign to re-bloom, extending the season even further. And that foliage remains green and fine for the entire summer.
Maybe it’s all the commercials she’s been appearing in of late, or maybe I’m simply watching more television this week, but Kate McKinnon popped up on my radar, and we needed a comical break from the serious Olympic focus in which this site has been immersed. Hence this Dazzler of the Day crowning of McKinnon, thanks to her hilarious turns on ‘Saturday Night Live’, and in movies such as ‘Office Christmas Party’, ‘Ghostbusters’, and ‘Bombshell’ – an eclectic collection of films which I’ve somehow managed to watch thanks to her presence alone.
Let’s talk about the simple yet epic achievement of making it to the Olympics – all the hours and years and effort that go into a lifetime of dedication to reach such a vaunted place in athletic competition – and then add on top of that all the eyes of the world and the crushing pressure of being expected to perform and exhibit the best that you can do in a strictly prescribed set of hours. I can’t imagine having to simply walk into an arena with that sort of scenario in the works – much less having to put on the athletic performance of a lifetime (or doing anything physical at all for that matter). So when I see someone do anything on that international stage, it’s always impressive, and they deserve all the accolades. This is American gymnast Jordan Chiles, and she exemplifies the power and perseverance required to reach this level of competition.
Does the black-eyed Susan need a new common name? I’ve always preferred its scientific moniker, Rudbeckia, but that goes for most of the plants I’ve encountered. Now I wonder if the common name has more sinister associations, and such ruminations in this politically-charged world are not something I want spilling into the garden. We’ve had enough rain of late literally – a figurative storm on a proverbial parade will just be too much at this point. And so let’s focus on the radial wonder and structural beauty of these Rudbeckia blooms.
A vibrant variation on the quieter colors of the Leucanthemum, the Rudbeckia is a recurving style of the daisy form ~ a classic cornerstone of many gardens. Coming into bloom at the mid-section of summer, and resisting the typical heat that this moment (when summer is performing properly) usually produces, Rudbeckia is a stalwart and reliable garden foundation. I’ve seen swaths of this perennial favorite creating stunning effects in almost any landscape, the way that Miscanthus or hosta can make similar magic – and a good reason why they are all used in so many situations. It’s ok to appreciate such mainstream use of powerhouse performers – and I’m finally coming around to that notion. Life is difficult enough without seeking value in the rare and exotic.
