Today I want to discourse to the public about a strange man, a man of so powerful and so decided an originality that it is sufficient unto itself and does not even seek approval…

His interest is the whole world; he wants to know understand and appreciate everything that happens on the surface of our globe. The artist lives very little, it at all, in the world of morals and politics.

Let us go back, if we can, by a retrospective effort of the imagination, towards our most youthful, our earliest, impressions, and we will recognize that they had a strange kinship with those brightly coloured impressions which we were later to receive in the aftermath of a physical illness, always provided that that illness had left our spiritual capacities pure and unharmed. The child sees everything in a state of newness; he is always drunk. Nothing more resembles what we call inspiration than the delight with which a child absorbs form and colour. I am prepared to go even further and assert that inspiration has something in common with a convulsion, and that every sublime thought is accompanied by a more or less violent nervous shock which has its repercussion in the very core of the brain. The man of genius has sound nerves, while those of the child are weak. With the one, Reason has taken up a considerable position; with the other, Sensibility is almost the whole being. But genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered at will – a childhood now equipped for self-expression with manhood’s capacities and a power of analysis which enables it to order the mass of raw material which it has involuntarily accumulated. It is by this deep and joyful curiosity that we may explain the fixed and animally ecstatic gaze of a child confronted with something new, whatever it be, whether a face or a landscape, gilding, colours, shimmering stuffs, or the magic of physical beauty assisted by the cosmetic art…

~ Charles Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life

In spite of the fact that Andy gave him Pop Rocks on New Year’s Eve and he vomited shortly thereafter, Suzie’s little tyke MoMo returned to our home for several dinners since then. For MoMo, I think, the best part of any visit is a freeze-pop, and Uncle Andy had them at the ready. There’s nothing more satisfying than sending your friend’s children home on a sugar high. It just lifts the spirits.

(Of course, if you let him out of your sight for one quick moment, you may have to clean up turquoise stickiness from hidden parts of the hardwood floor. Word to the wise, from the wise.)

At this frigid time of the year we find solace in our friends, who have indeed become family. The sound of little kids running around our home can muffle the coldest winds.

Please add dance troupes – well, amazing dance troupes – to flash mobs on the list of unlikely things that make me cry. Maybe it was the morning on which I watched this, or the way the winter so desolately peeked in through the front door, but seeing this performance by Cookies just brought tears to my eyes. Now, as the wind whips through the dead fronds of a fern on the front porch, and the sun glistens on the ridges of an icicle, I once again marvel at the beauty of the world. The heartbreaking, tender beauty of the world.

With the Patriots squeaking out a victory amid one of the crazier SuperBowl races of late, it’s a day of celebration here on this Boston-centric blog. This look back at the week before begins with that SuperBowl insanity, which includes this link-filled post of Madonna, Tom Brady’s ass, jockstraps, and more.

When you’ve digested that doozy, check out the fine gentlemanly stylings of Richard E. Grant, who got all kinds of nasty on last night’s episode of ‘Downton Abbey.’ You’re gonna hear him roar.

Mr. Grant and his fragrance stirred cologne envy, but I wasn’t feeling it from Tom Ford.

Twenty nine years is a long time, but I remember it like yesterday.

Trickery and tomfoolery were afoot, as the Trickster archetype reared his mischievous head again.

Words of love.

At night, I lock the doors, where no one else will see.

The Hunks of the Day were represented by Pierre Vuala, Jose María Manzanares, Jason Rosell and Tom Luchsinger ~ while a former HOD, Andrew Hayden Smith, dropped trou and showed off his underwear.

Most impressively, at least from this inside vantage point, was this post – the first-ever Special Guest Blog – written by my friend Skip Montross. It’s the start of a whole new feature, and I’ve already got the woman who’s known me since birth, a cook who shares my love of Jack Spade, and an actual pussy lined up to helm future guest blogs. If you want to throw your hat into the mix, and I do hope you will, hit me up at alanilagan1[@]gmail.com.

Oh, and Justin Timberlake did NOT give a rim job, no matter what this picture looks like.

“It is possible, if we have real courage, to live all of life as if in play. This does not mean being frivolous or lacking compassion toward others. It means to carry a light, trusting, and open attitude toward ourselves and the world. In Tibetan Buddhism it is said that what distinguishes human nature from that of animals is not intelligence but humor. To experience life as play one must learn to see with the eyes of humor. This helps us balance the tragedy of human existence with the wonder of it. Such an attitude requires courage because it demands that we open ourselves both to uncertainty in the outer world and to the irrational in the inner world.

A truly playful attitude, even if short-lived, can act as a catalyst to synchronicity. Moreover, an attitude of lighthearted openness reduces the shadow to a bare minimum, since the defenses are relaxed. As a consequence, coincidences are often delightful. At times, a positive sense of trust and openness will allow everyday problems almost to solve themselves, as opposed to the more usual sense of struggle against chance events that the Trickster so often throws in our path.

Opening the mind to a lighthearted, playful attitude, we may avail ourselves of intuition, which is a particular kind of gnosis, or knowledge, that seems to come through the now permeable borders of the conscious mind. Intuition is a type of knowledge emphasized in virtually all spiritual traditions. This is not to say that to be lighthearted is to become psychic, as the term is usually used, but rather that we may develop en exquisite feeling for certain situations, a feeling which, if trusted, often proves correct. Intuitive feelings hold a special relationship to synchronicity, a relationship that few people have actively cultivated.”

~ Allan Combs & Mark Holland

“True openness to experience comes via a connection through the Trickster to the archetypal Self. This openness is play, and play is the Trickster’s game – irrational, paradoxical, and creative.” ~ Allan Combs & Mark Holland

Poets have a much finer way with words than I could ever hope to achieve. Here are some choice words by Mary Oliver:

“It has frequently been remarked, about my own writings, that I emphasize the notion of attention. This began simply enough: to see that the way the flicker flies is greatly different from the way the swallow plays in the golden air of summer. It was my pleasure to notice such things, it was a good first step. But later, watching M. when she was taking photographs, and watching her in the darkroom, and no less watching the intensity and openness with which she dealt with friends, and strangers too, taught me what real attention is about. Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness – an empathy – was necessary if the attention was to matter. Such openness and empathy M. had in abundance, and gave away freely… I was in my late twenties and early thirties, and well filled with a sense of my own thoughts, my own presence. I was eager to address the world of words – to address the world with words. Then M. instilled in me this deeper level of looking and working, of seeing through the heavenly visibles to the heavenly invisibles. I think of this always when I look at her photographs, the images of vitality, hopefulness, endurance, kindness, vulnerability… We each had our separate natures; yet our ideas, our influences upon each other became a reach and abiding confluence.

I don’t think I was wrong to be in the world I was in, it was my salvation from my own darkness. Nor have I ever abandoned it – those early signs that so surely lead toward epiphanies. And yet, and yet, she wanted me to enter more fully into the human world also, and to embrace it, as I believe I have. And what a gift [that she] never expressed impatience with my reports of the natural world, the blue and green happiness I found there. Our love was so tight.“

~ Mary Oliver

It was January 28, 1986. I was in fifth grade. We were just coming back from a ‘Gifted & Talented’ meeting (decidedly not my term for the group of loons that lucked out on a certain aptitude test) and our homeroom teacher ushered us back into our usual seats while a television played in the background. Blue – the brightest blue the sky could be – was the first thing we saw. A trail of clouds, then a puff of smoke that was the end of seven lives. Miss Lampman whispered in a stern tone, “The Challenger exploded.”

We sat down quietly, each taking it in in his or her own way. The moment you realize the significance of something happening is the moment you start to grow up. Whether or not we were ready, there was life knocking at our door, in a silent explosion against a blue sky. It felt a little closer because one of our teachers had applied to be on that Challenger flight. The one who was chosen was schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Either way, it was a civilian, and somehow that made it sadder.

It was the first time the news broke through my childhood innocence. Until that point, I never really cared, or was even aware, that anything of import happened outside of Amsterdam, New York. Hell, I didn’t care much beyond what went down in my backyard and bedroom. From that moment I was obsessed with everything to do with the explosion – the twin rocket boosters, the various theories as to what happened, and, most importantly, the seven men and women who lost their lives, including the first teacher who was supposed to go into space. I set up a photo album of news events, and it grew from the Challenger news to anything of importance. I remember the stock market meltdown being one of the last items I pasted into the book – a couple years later I had no need for a book. It was occupying my head. It was an awakening, and while not altogether a pleasant one, it was necessary, it was inevitable, and I had no choice.

The best part of childhood – if you’ve had a decent one – is that for a few years you can pretend that nothing bad could ever happen in the world. If you’ve had that freedom, if you’ve had that moment, you might be ok. At least, you might have a chance. What we do with that chance is another story for another post.