Because sometimes a single scarf is too lonely.

Because sometimes a solitary color needs company.

Because sometimes silk wants for a bit of velvet.

For all these reasons and more, this is a two-scarf day.

It’s been brewing for a while now, and in my head it’s slowly been assembling itself. It’s different, though, when you finally put it into words and begin the process. A new project is in the works, and for the next few months my creative output will be focused on that. As is often the state of things at this stage, it’s all hush-hush and top-secret. The only thing I can tell you is that it was inspired by a recent trip to the art museum in Chicago, which basically tells you nothing.

Being that it is the earliest stage, I’m not sure how this one will play out. It may be entirely online, or it may manifest itself physically. That’s the best part of this moment – I just don’t know which way it will take me. I do know that it will be darker than some of my usual fare, and as such I’ve been prepping by making our home a little warmer and more peaceful, with the sounds of Japanese Zen meditation flute music, a few sticks of Japanese incense, and a couple of books (and upcoming experiments in) inekana. If there is peace by the hearth, my creative demons can freely roam and no one will get hurt.

Hopefully you’ll come along for the ride…

Most people equate blue skies with summer days, but the truest blue may be found on a clear winter afternoon, when the sheer frigidity of the air lends a crystalline clarity to the sky, and the sun and the atmosphere are free to work whatever scientific alchemy is required to bring out the deepest and most glorious shades of blue known to the eye. Echoed by the fallen snow seen here, the effect can be a double dose of blue sky, where it bounces off the shadows, saturating and challenging the spaces where the ease of gray usually resides.

Jeremy James wrote a great song about traveling the New York State Thruway for his ‘Landlocked’ album, and if you get a chance you should give it a listen. (You should also check out ‘Waiting’ – probably my favorite songs of his from the same album.) Here’s a view of that vaunted road on a typical mid-winter day. Nothing too profound, nothing too exceptional. Just a simple moment unremarkable for anything, but no less beautiful for it. Winter makes hunters of us all – whether it’s a hunt for warmth or beauty or the return of spring.

When the snow is new, when the sky is blue, when rhyming is all I can do, we pause for the slow trudge of winter and nudge it along as best we can. Considering the calendar, we are more than halfway through the wretched season. I detected the slightest scent of a thaw last week, but it was quickly withdrawn by the next morning. It won’t go that quickly or easily.

The Winter Olympics are in full-figure-skating swing, and every year I promise not to get so obsessed with the thing. I failed miserably, and I am once again enthralled with the quads and the triples and the spins and the falls. This site is a bit obsessed with the Olympics, as you will see in this recap. If you’re not, there’s still some fun posts in between the athletes. Watch and see. 

We began with a little Hanky Panky – cause there’s nothing like a good spanky. 

A cleaning frenzy brought about a bout of nostalgia. 

The list of Winter Olympic Hunks was long, and it included a naked Matteo Guarise, a naked Apolo Ohno, a shirtless Chris Mazdzer, a shirtless Andrew Kurka, and a spandexed Tucker West.

A drag queen named Milk. 

My nostalgia kick continued in earnest with this post and that post. 

Mesmerizing.

Transfixing.

Magnificent. 

Words pale in comparison to the enchanting way light passes through the stained glass windows of Washington National Cathedral. It must be seen to be believed and appreciated. 

Stained glass time lapse, Washington National Cathedral from Colin Winterbottom on Vimeo.

Here’s the write-up that explains some of the beauty:

This time lapse video — part of the exhibition “Scaling Washington” at the National Building Museum — highlights the movement of stained glass light at the Washington National Cathedral. Photographer Colin Winterbottom was making fine art and documentary photographs of earthquake repairs at the Cathedral when he noticed the beautiful spray of colored light moving through scaffolded work spaces. He had little experience making time lapse, but thought the phenomenon had to be captured, especially as it moved over surfaces across time.

The final video shows movement of light through areas of the Cathedral familiar to visitors as well as through temporary work spaces with limited access. Most of these vantages could only be accessed while scaffold was in place. The opening and closing images, for example — with the west rose window centered straight ahead within the nave — cannot be recreated now that scaffold is down.

So open up your morning light
And say a little prayer for I
You know that if we are to stay alive
Then see the peace in every eye…

The class of ‘Dawson’s Creek‘ was a year or two younger than us, if I recall correctly, but we’ll use this winsome theme song nonetheless. (We were actually the same age as the fictional class of the original ‘Beverly Hills 90210‘ and practically went through the exact same things. (I almost cut a chunk out of my eyebrows to be more like Dylan. NOT.)

By 1995, I had grown into myself a little bit more. It was pretty much the year I finally began to acknowledge that I was possibly, shock of shocks, the slightest bit gay. (A couple of dicks in my mouth would soon confirm it, as would these lace sleeves.)

I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over,
I want to know right now, what will it be?
I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over,
Will it be yes or will it be…sorry?

Not quite twenty years of age, Suzie and I didn’t do much in the way of drinking or drugging, choosing to get our kicks off Route 66 and in a matching pair of velvet shirts from Bonwit Teller. I distinctly remember this day – it was a sad gray one in March, the kind that personify Ithaca and its litany of suicides over the years. Suzie and I had gone to visit one of the bridges from which students occasionally jumped, and it set a pall over the already-depressive proceedings. March is always a difficult month for some of us, and this day in particular was trying, so we did what we often do: found a shopping excursion, bought a stupid clothing item, and laughed our way away from the crying ledge. Only Suzie could do that (with a little help from Bonwit Teller).

You look at me from across the room
You’re wearing your anguish again
Believe me I know the feeling
It sucks you into the jaws of anger(oooooooh)
So breathe a little more deeply my love
All we have is this very moment
And I don’t want to do what his father,
And his father, and his father did,
I want to be here now.

Sometimes I marvel at how we made it through that time in our lives. Everyone marvels at the past at some point, and all that they’ve been through. We all go through patches where it feels too forlorn and hopeless for there to be much sense in life. Somehow, if we’re strong enough, if we’ve found enough love in the world, we keep going. 

I was lucky enough to have the right friends and family to see me through the dark stretches. 

So open up your morning light,
And say a little prayer for I
You know that if we are to stay alive,
And see the peace in every eye…