Parting the palms: it’s the day after Palm Sunday and high Holy Week is upon us. May this one be higher than the Empire State. It’s also a rainy Monday, which makes moving into this week extra fun. On with the recap…

Cody Christian went shirtless.

The thread of threads continued.

Tom Ford to the extreme.

The staggering beauty of Diana Vreeland.

Mad Men Zen.

From a writer who knows Dick.

Our Broadway Weekend with Mother has been finalized. 

Recalling the vintage (and my old goatee).

Returning to the scene of my crime. 

Shirtless miscellany.

Hunks of the Day included Garðar Thór Cortes, Toby Levins, and Gideon Glick.

“Hi!” he said, joining the Customer Service line behind me at Wal-Mart (the same store I had robbed a while back). It was my first time in a return line in well over a decade. I just don’t return things, even if I should. Even if they don’t fit or work. But this time, when a pair of pruning shears shit the bed after three cuts of a hydrangea, I decided to exchange the thing.

“Hi,” I said in my most-unamused tone when I finally realized he was talking to me.

“Been waiting here long?”

I had been. “Yeah, I’ve been here half an hour. Well, maybe 15 minutes, so good luck. I’ve been giving that manager dirty looks hoping she would do something,” I said nodding at the sheepish woman with a barbed-wire wrist tattoo who had been over to help for all of 30 seconds before hiding behind other cashiers and pretending to give important orders in any other part of the store.

“Whoa, that long? Hey, when is a good time to plant a garden?” he asked.

Puzzled, as I didn’t even think he saw the pruning shears in my bag, I asked him what he meant before truly ferreting out his kookiness and realizing I shouldn’t have engaged.

“Like can I start a garden now?”

“Sure.”

“But will the plants survive?”

“You can prepare the bed now and plant later.”

“I guess we can grow pot now too! It’s legal right?”

Now it was starting to make some sense. “Well, I don’t think it’s quite legal yet,” I said warily.

“But they won’t charge you, right?”

“I think if you sell it they will charge you, but if you get caught smoking it they supposedly aren’t doing much,” I said, trying to figure out how to end this inane conversation. He went on about the pot and the garden, and how he had been to Denver where it’s legal and he had a Gummy bear with pot in it only it was 100 milligrams instead of 10 milligrams and he ate the whole thing and ruined his entire vacation because he was lying in bed thinking he was dead.

“That must have been scary,” I said in as dry and dead-pan a manner as I could muster.

“Hey, I got this keyboard here for $53 and then I found it on Amazon for less,” he said, showing me a keyboard in a box.

By the grace of God, it was finally my turn at the customer service counter. I won’t be going back.

Every once in a great while, I’ll dust off a few old photo albums – the actual, physical kind that we once used – and indulge in a brief bout of nostalgic mental meandering, retreading old haunts and revisiting former moments of a glory we never quite realized at the time. The photographs here are from the 1990’s so you’ll have to forgive my goatee – I knew not what I was doing. More moving to me are the expressions of genuine happiness and hope on the faces of people who remain vitally important in my life. We were on the verge of stepping properly into our adult lives. Maybe we thought we knew more than we did; for my part, I always felt like I knew just a little less than these brilliant people I was lucky enough to count as friends. They made me better. They made me strive to be a good person. They still do that.

Back then, the world felt like perpetual summer. It laid before us with verdant avenues and beautifully winding roads, where each path held its pretty mysteries, beckoning us to try this or attempt that. I gingerly stepped with slight trepidation, wading slowly into the pool that so many of my friends were already splashing in, diving deep beneath its sparkling surface and coming up with breathless tales of accomplishment and honor.

Why did life seem so simpler and happier when looking back on then? It certainly didn’t always feel that way at the time, but our smiles and our joyful carefree countenances indicate something else. We were happy then. Life hadn’t rocked us too much, not when you look back at all that was to come afterward. Definitely not when you look at where we are now. Yet we didn’t realize it, at least, I don’t think we did. Not in a deep way. I do remember brief moments when I would stop, literally, in the middle of a Boston sidewalk, when spring was in bloom, and the air was filled with the perfume of flowering fruit trees, and think, ‘This. All of this. Take in all of this – the beauty, the air, the night, and the morning.’ Even though I would invariably return to melancholy and doubt, those moments would harden into a necklace made of memory gemstones, each carved into an exquisitely-multi-faceted jewel that would be lit from within on those dark days to come. Our home is happily littered with such jewelry. It’s not something that can ever be stolen or taken – not by anything other than forgetfulness and time, but all things are obliterated in such fashion eventually.

Looking at these pictures is like rediscovering a treasure trove of those gems – invaluable, immeasurable, inestimable in riches – adorned in beauty, bathed in light, and bound by unbreakable wisps of happiness.

“The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up – flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights seemed haughty dames in jeweled velvets, nursing at home in lonely pride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted suns! For sleeping man, ‘twas hard to choose between such winsome days and such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning weather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward world. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still mild hours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear ice most forms of noiseless twilights.” – Herman Melville, ‘Moby Dick’

Spring invariably ushers in a new season of social events and get-togethers, and as the weather makes for enjoyable outside gatherings (assuming it eventually will…) I find myself in the act of preparation and planning. My favorite place to be.

The gardens are behind, but nature has a way of catching up. Unfortunately, working humans don’t have such a luxury, so if we don’t get some nice days the yard may not be cleaned up by the time it’s ready to sleep again. Again, it will all get done or it won’t, and some years are just about surviving and maintaining.

My fickle side has me undecided about how to navigate this blog for the summer. I’ve enjoyed taking most of it off for the past two years, but I’ve also hankered for an outlet when the days are rainy or the weekend is worth writing about. Toying with a lighter schedule that doesn’t see me completely offline from June to September may be the way to go. Two posts a day, no matinees? That sounds like a plan, with the caveat that it’s all subject to change by wish or whim. That’s what summer should be. First, though, let’s have a proper spring.

Sometimes we don’t get to choose where our talents lie. ~ Don Draper

When the world rocks you for a bit, when you’re hit with realizations that we are only getting older, it’s good to do a few things. First, try a vacation. We just did that in Savannah (write-up coming when I can find a hot minute). Second, try a meditative movie or series. As odd as it sounds, The whole ‘Lord of the Rings’ series has a very Zen-like quality to it, despite the action and tension and occasionally violent moment. Same thing with the duet of ‘Kill Bill,’ which is even more violent, but just as meditative in my warped mind. Add to that the entire ‘Mad Men’ series, which evokes an era so perfectly one feels transported, and taken out of whatever state of worry or concern that might otherwise dominate. Yet it also feels entirely of-the-moment and modern – the very best sort of entertainment that manages to touch on the timeless and universal. 

I have been watching my life. It’s right there. I keep scratching at it, trying to get into it. I can’t.~ Don Draper

It was a time of innocence, dirtiness, decadence, hope, and despair. The sparkle and decay of the American dream. The cruelty of how we try to relate, connect, and love each other. The image. The veneer. The sheen. The danger of going deeper. 

People tell you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be. – Don Draper