It’s been a fun point of contention, debate, and occasionally-serious attempted-reconstruction over the past several years. We’d narrowed it down to a few films, and finally two finalists: ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ and ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’.  One of them would have been the first movie that Skip and I saw together, and we have spent way too many subsequent movie nights trying to figure out which one it would have been.

The truth is we had known each other for a few years prior to that fateful evening. I’d started working with Sherri in the summer of 2005, so it must have been the holiday party of later that year at which I first met her then-boyfriend Skip. Sporadically seeing each other at parties and work events, it was always a fun and easy camaraderie we enjoyed, but we didn’t hang out on our own until that first movie, casually agreed upon, likely at some party or gathering where we would have been talking and plotting a future plan.

Our first salient memory when we began to look back was of a guy, one of the only other people in the theater that night, who fell asleep repeatedly during ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’, and gave up a very loud series of snores which left us both in hysterics. But while that made for a memorable outing, I wasn’t sure it was our first, but when the memory popped up on Skip’s FaceBook from January 2012, it seemed like that might have been the case.

However, on my third day with a flu that had me housebound, I wandered unsteadily into the guestroom where my date planners were roughly organized on a shelf, and I pulled out 2011 to see if I wrote down anything prior to 2012 about seeing a movie with Skip. Once upon a time I kept detailed notes on the daily events of my world (I’m a Virgo through and through) so I perused the pages and days of 2011. It took the whole year, but eventually I found the very first documentation of that first movie night, on December 27, 2011.

It made sense – we would probably have been talking about the new David Fincher film at a holiday party, and our shared love of dark and disturbing directors and their films instigated the movie date a couple of weeks later. I didn’t know then that one of the best friendships of my life was emboldening itself, gradually becoming a happy foundation and fundamental part of my adult years.

“Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.” ~ Paulo Coelho

Way back in 2003, when I first put this website up, I didn’t have any notion of how long it might last, but I certainly didn’t envision the year 2020 and a personal website’s endurance for such a stretch. That said, I’m happy to have had such an outlet. Artistic and creative expression is worth years of therapy – really good, intense, helpful therapy – and I will always find a way to express my artistic ambitions. Yet to the observant visitor, my posts have generally been on autopilot of the past few months, perhaps years, and my heart may not be in it as much as it once was. It began a few years ago when I took my first summer off from daily blogging and it was so wonderful. Reconnecting to daily life and living each moment as it came without thought of documentation or blogging about it reminded me of what we should be doing. Ever since then, it feels like we’ve moved into the fall, and now winter, of this site’s grand trajectory. It puts me in the mind of this music – ‘The Malady of Elegance’ by Goldmund. Do give it a long listen.

Winter is good, no matter how much of a bad rap it gets, and I’m as guilty as others have been in condemning it. Its stark harshness, its unrelenting viciousness – it all has a purpose. Yet as much as I know how necessary it is for the true enjoyment and health of a proper spring and summer, I still dread and recoil at the horror of its frigid days, its icy winds, its way with chilling the heart. But there is beauty in the cold, a beautiful crystalline truth and clarity that only comes when you strip away the leaves and foliage and flowers and examine the bare bones and structure of the world. It’s frightening, and I can admit that I’m a little scared, but it’s absolutely necessary, and ultimately it will prove beneficial.

And so we enter the wilderness of winter for this website. I’m not sure how it will all pan out, whether it will simply fade slowly away with diminishing posts, whether it will go out with some big glorious bang, or whether I’ll simply disappear without a word, vanishing into one of the hidden corners of the anonymous world wide web. I’ve been pondering my own mortality of late, wondering what might happen if I suddenly got hit by a car, my life instantly and unexpectedly snuffed out by some freak accident or tragedy. This blog would sputter out a few more pre-populated and then posthumous posts, a ghostly trick of our technological world. Those who only knew me here might think I was still alive, still writing and creating, when I would have already gone.

Such pondering of my own life found a focus in the past week when I was stricken with the flu, missing a couple of work days, a therapy session, and limiting the usual three-posts-per-day schedule this blog has managed to maintain. It put all those things into perspective, most especially the latter, and it suddenly dawned on me that the only person putting pressure on myself to do three a day, to maintain this pace and volume, was me. As I get older, and hopefully wiser, I am learning to let go of such perfectionist goals. I’m also learning to look ahead to the eventual end of this website as we know it. As far as personal blogs go, or websites in general for that matter, this one is a dinosaur, and I say that and own it with pride. Name your favorite blog right now and I bet I have it beat. This site is older than Twitter and FaceBook and Instagram. Think about that for a moment. 

At 44 years of age, I’m way older than those social media sites as well, and some would, not inaccurately perhaps, proclaim that I’m too old to be doing a blog, and that blogs are all but over anyway, and that’s a fair take on the whole scene. The idea of a blog has likely passed its highest point of potency. There are too many easier outlets to make a creative name and channel for oneself. I’ve also grown a little too comfortable with the format and limits of this site, and any time the hint of stagnation rears its still head, I get a little restless and look for a new challenge. At this point in our technological history, that new challenge may be a return to a mainly off-line existence, an unplugged life not lived for documentation or recaps. Where not everything must be noted or annotated for future reference. When I think of the freedom involved in that, I get a little giddy. I almost want to slip away without word of warning or notice, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary night, never to return again, never to explain or say goodbye. Yes, that appeals to me as someone who has always preferred an Irish goodbye. 

I don’t intend to go out in such a way, if I do in fact even have a say in it, so I’m hopeful I’ll get to design my own exit strategy, and we have a few more months or years to figure that out. It’s good to have a little preparation though, a plan of how this journey might go. The best thing about winter is that it is the springboard for spring, for the next rebirth. We will honor that in the snowy world. We will honor that in our slumber. We will rest and prepare for the next igniting of the phoenix.

A disturbing term when you really think about it: adult porn star. I mean, is there another kind of porn star? There really shouldn’t be.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. ~ Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

One of the more noble-minded holidays we have in this country, this is the day on which we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for all the work he did in helping us move toward equality for all. While it may seem like certain people are doing their damnedest to erase that work, it lives in anyone who carries on Dr. King’s dream in practice or in heart. We need to be a little louder now.

As for the past week, it was calm in reality, but somewhat tumultuous based on the blog posts. Some of them were written a couple of months ago and are only now being posted, while others are more vague ruminations on things that have been in the works for weeks. That sense of distance and detachment from the time that events happen to the time they get posted here is a necessary safety buffer for me, and once that I embrace. On with the recap…

Justin Trudeau grows a beard. 

Beginning the tumultuous path to forgiveness.

My defining GIFs.

A place of winter peace, filled with flowers. 

A quick hit of shirtless hunks. 

The end of the party era?

Life is happiness indeed.

A peaceful entry to the weekend.

Grieving a dear friend. 

Dreaming of that lost friend. 

My mother’s birthday.

Catching the buzz.

Just fresh and like that. 

Hunks of the Day included Hunter March, Brooks Laich, Jeremiah Buoni, Oliver Jackson Cohen, and Curtis Hamilton.

January 6 has been reported as the saddest day of the year, and for a lot of reasons that’s tough to dispute. Everyone is throwing out their Christmas tree carcasses, the blush of the holiday season has long since passed, and the endless winter lays ahead without much hope or promise. For me, though, early January is filled with a freshness that’s not present at any other time of the year. I find early March or mid-to-late November the periods that strike me as the most depressing. In March, one is keenly aware of the length of winter, and it often brings its worst storms then. By late November, the trees have all turned brown and mostly discharged their leaves, leaving the landscape stark and barren, and the skies gray and dirty.

In January, there is still the freshness of snow, when it drops its white cloak on the ground and lights up the surroundings when sun or moon reflect their glow. It’s still possible to embrace the cold, to find wonder and beauty in the formations of ice, and to enjoy the winter wonderland. That won’t last long, and I see and hear a lot of complaints already. I suggest we find the good in what is at hand. The alternative is bitterness, and that won’t make the winter pass any quicker.

Between winter slumbers, we bide our time until the weather turns palatable again. This is when my attention shifts to the cellar, where the creative process finds expression and fruition, near the warmth of the fireplace, on the mid-century sofa, ensconced in a fuzzy robe. There are several projects on the horizon, but not on any grand scale. In fact, I’m starting with the embellishment of a favorite coat for an upcoming Broadway show. Nothing ould be simpler, nor more spectacular at the same time. My fingers have been aching from all the beading and needlework, but the coat will sparkle more brilliantly in New York City than anywhere else in the world. (Trust me, I have experience with beaded coats in the city.)

There is also planning afoot for the multitude of spring events set for 2020 – a year of anniversaries and milestones that will be done in a quieter manner than previous extravaganzas. An anniversary should be a lovely echo, a reminder of the original but not anything to match those early moments. A diminished set of expectations lends for greater magic.

Still, there is a hum happening already – a buzz, if you will, growing in intensity and excitement, and I will do my best to keep it in check. The bees are still asleep; the rest of us are quietly at work. All good things to those who wait.