After this month, I fear every other August to come will never be the same. The month that once held the happiness of a birthday and the last completely full month of summer is now the month in which we lost Dad, the month we got COVID, and the month in which so much joy drained from my world. Still, finding myself at the end of this wretched month, I am suddenly hit with a hesitancy to let it all go just like that. Even amid the sorrowful events that happened, there was beauty here – beauty in every one of those transitions. So much hurt, and so much love, and so much life in the middle of loss. My tears fell as much for sadness as they did for gratitude.
It might be easy to slip into a state of bitterness and anger, and I might have an understandable right to delve into those darkened rooms. Perhaps those moments are on the horizon, but so far I’ve taken the sting out of that downward spiral, trying to be still and quiet, trying to take it all in as it comes – waves of grief, waves of calm, waves of sorrow, waves of hope, waves of comfort – and without any sort of pride in it, I feel I am handling the days as best as one might.
This month will be one that haunts me for quite some time, and I find an odd reassurance in that. It will become part of the tapestry that makes up my lifeline here on earth – the threads of this August will be forever wound and bound into the richness of life that has revealed itself to me these last few weeks. There is meaning and purpose and beauty in our saddest days; I am choosing to believe that, and choosing to carry that beauty with me going forward.
A Renaissance man in the truest sense, Nick Vannello has taken yet another surprising turn in his latest endeavor – a set of coloring books for anyone who loves to color (and coloring is a recent craze as calming and enjoyable as meditation for some). Vannello has been here before, during his reign as a kilt maestro, and now offers a phantasmagoria of coloring books that focus on various fabulous phobias in witty and whimsical form, as well as Day of the Dead creatures – perfect gift ideas for the upcoming spooky fall season. (Check out the Facebook page for ColorBooks.Art here.) Vannello also helms GoNaked Travels, which is as thrillingly scintillating as it sounds. He earns his first crowning as Dazzler of the Day for all the inspiration he supplies, and the fascinating trajectory of his own ongoing journey of self-exploration.
Today, I can pause and take a calmer look at how things got to such a head. Under normal circumstances, I am acutely aware of things like full moons and Mercury in retrograde motion, because they tend to disrupt daily living in tumultuous ways, wreaking havoc on the unsuspecting and unprepared among us. Given all that has transpired over the past month, I largely stopped paying attention to dates and signs and astrological movements, and so I was completely unaware that Mercury had shifted into apparent retrograde motion on August 23. Had I known that, I wouldn’t have taken all the shit the world dumped on me so personally, or been cornered into such a vitriolic delivery of release.
As is so often the case, if I know what’s happening and I’m given a script or at least some rough stage directions and background, I can find my way without making a huge commotion or mess. Only when I’m kept in the dark about such things do I manage to so spectacularly fuck things up. So this one is partly on me for not going with the punches, and partly on everyone who just had to challenge me.
Whenever there is a full moon, I have learned to pause and breathe – to stop myself before going on a rampage or an attack – and really looking at whatever I’m upset about. If it’s not going to change anything in the grand scheme of things, there’s a good chance it’s not worth dredging up like so much pond scum at the bottom of a water-lily-laden scene. It doesn’t always work – sometimes a person can only take so much before they can’t take anything more – and sometimes I still lose my cool. But when the truth comes out, when it all gets laid on the table and examined by everyone involved, I’m not usually in the wrong. My delivery may be outrageous, but the sentiment behind it is rarely without merit.
And so I let the dust settle, and hope that we don’t get so riled up the next time around.
This post draws one in with a song and a cheeky photographic turn from the distant past. The song is ‘Will I Ever Dream?’ from the mid-1990’s, and the pics are from the mid-2000’s. Taken together, they honor tonight’s full Super Blue Moon. This bit of astrological mayhem might also explain the crazy-ass post from this morning, because had I known it was a full moon, and a period of Mercury in retrograde motion, I might have taken things better in stride. Or maybe I would have had the same reaction. Lately I’ve been extremely sensitive to things that normally wouldn’t bother me in the least. It dawned on me late last night, as I was dissolving into a pool of frustrated tears for not guessing the daily Wordle right away, that I was still in the thralls of grieving. My father hasn’t even been dead a full month, and all the little annoyances of life have taken on blame, a substitution and punching bag for whatever anger and hurt that’s still churning away. This song reads and sounds differently now than it did when I first heard it in a more blissful time.
Please all I ask is that you don’t pass me by here that you don’t leave me here drowning in tears all by myself I’m out here in the cold, this love has taken its toll I’m standing so alone it’s over now I know
There is no right or wrong way to grieve. All the books and guidance may offer certain paths that worked for other people, and some of them may prove especially helpful at certain times, but there are other moments that have no solution, no way of getting out of the muck. Going easier on myself, and others around me, is a lesson I’m slowly learning. At first I didn’t see what was happening.
Having maintained my daily meditation, I wondered at my increasing agitation and frustration with things in general. When I had trouble signing onto the computer for work one day my meltdown was fast and furious – I ended up walking away and charging an hour of vacation time to calm down and re-group, then slowly going back and figuring out the problem without the angry passion.
When going out in public to pick up groceries or lunch, I find myself annoyed by almost everyone around me, whether it’s their laughter or their ignorance or their outfits, and it all feels like a personal affront. When driving, I’ve noticed a discernible rise in my own road rage, something that typically never afflicts me – these days everyone is either going too slow, or too fast, or texting. When watching the news that Andy has playing on the television, I feel an irrational flash and flicker of helpless fury, sometimes shouting back at the TV in furious outrage.
At night here in the dark, I just can’t get to sleep its seems It’s just these memories of you are always haunting me will I will I will I ever dream will I ever dream again?
Those spells of anger are usually followed by spells of staring or losing myself in whatever I’m supposed to be doing. A blank, unfocused gaze off in the distance, a meandering walk that has no destination, or an uncharted and unplanned moment in which I stand by the door or window simply staring outside. I’ll suddenly find myself sitting on the couch, for some indiscernible length of time, tears suddenly welling in my eyes, not sure why or where they’re coming from, trying to make some semblance of sense out of what is happening. That’s when the little things get blamed as my brain struggles to wrap itself around these messy feelings.
And it dawns on me again: this is grief. It’s not about the grand fits of weeping and wailing that once constituted grief in my eyes, it’s all the rest of it, because suddenly loss imbues all the rest of it. The struggle to make sense of it, to figure it out immediately only compounds the problem, if in fact it is a problem. Perhaps it’s just the way life will be from now on. Perhaps we all have to turn this corner, and there is no way back.
Why can’t I face these facts why why can’t you see that I I spoke honestly I didn’t want you gone it’s just that I only wanted to be free I didn’t want to be tied to anyone I know that I was wrong
After my last therapy session, I felt good about where I was, mentally and emotionally. I’d explained how I’d been going through the grieving process for at least five years, hitting every recommended stage at one point or another, making every moment these past few months matter, and doing as well as expected for the loss of one of the only people I have known for my entire life. I felt good coming home from that appointment. Slowly, in the days that followed, I felt not-so-good. This wasn’t something that could be addressed and confronted and solved in a day or a month or a year. This wasn’t something that could be perfectly handled and compartmentalized away. There wasn’t anything neat or tidy or definitive about this, and my heart ached for the vast open-ended emptiness that sprawled so terrifyingly before me.
And so I blame the Super Blue Moon. I blame the nonsensical notion of Mercury in apparent retrograde motion. I blame the unintentional slights, the innocent attacks, and the hapless clumsiness of people only trying to help. Mostly, though, I blame myself.
I’ve been telling myself and others the opposite in the hope of forcing it into existence. I’ve been saying things are ok, that I’m ok, in an effort to move on and make it less uncomfortable. That doesn’t seem to be helping, or happening, and I’m putting this down here because it’s ok to say it, and it’s ok to not be ok right now.
Somewhere back in time, I walk across wooden floorboards as a younger man, alone but fortified with the knowledge that my tribe was all still there, even if distant and far. I travel by myself, traversing miles and states and countries, because there is always a home to which I could return, a place and a set of people to whom I belong. My happiness is a result of a lack of fear and the belief that I am whole, if slightly imperfect.
Today I’m no longer whole, and happiness is something that feels elusive and illusory.
I never thought how hard living without you could be I guess I never knew how much of you was inside me…
With the new trailer for the next season of ‘The Gilded Age’ that was just released, I am once again obsessed with this show from the creator of ‘Downton Abbey’. To that end, this Dazzler of the Day goes to Donna Murphy, whose glorious portrayal of Mary Astor is one of the highlights of the series. From a subdued ferocity that belies her formidable social status, to the icy smiles she bestows upon her enemies, Murphy exhibits a lofty untouchable air that is eons from the legendary performance she gave as Fosca in Stephen Sondheim’s underappreciated ‘Passion’. I distinctly recall her work in that seminal production, and it haunts me to this day. Her role on ‘The Gilded Age’ is much more fun, even as she layers it with nuance and studied diction. Seeing her go head-to-head with Carrie Coon’s Bertha is sure to be the dramatic match-up of the fall season.
Well this explains it: Mercury has been in apparent retrograde motion since August 23. No wonder my birthday was a big fucking shit-show, no wonder I still feel physically and mentally like crap, no wonder everything and everyone within my radius has turned into a massive monster cunt. (Yeah, this probably means you. Yes, you. Check the mirror – it’s fucking you.)
This bullshit is scheduled to continue until September 14 and I honestly don’t see myself making it to that date without some proverbial casualties. Fuck around and find out. Try it on me. Do it. I dare you.
Wake. This. Beast.
{This joke of a post has been brought to you by Mercury in retrograde. A calmer explanation will hopefully follow. Or it won’t. Whatcha gonna do?}
Artist Trevor Wayne’s main goal in his work is to make people smile, and the colorful and witty way he conveys ideas is certainly smile-inducing. For that ability to charm viewers of his artwork, Wayne earns this Dazzler of the Day crowning. Check out his website and online shop here for more evidence of his brilliance, and the excerpted bio below:
Trevor Wayne mines familiar references for his paintings, drawing on totems of consumerism and mainstream entertainment that are well-known to American audiences. Trevor’s artist statement is to simply “make people smile”, very often by taking dark imagery and flipping it.
Trevor was influenced into a world of art by Saturday Morning Cartoons, and mass production of art he carried with him to school on backpacks, binders, and clothing. He attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago.?
Trevor Wayne was born in Chicago, lived on a blueberry farm in Michigan, lived in Hammond, IN (the town the classic “A Christmas Story” is based on), NYC, Los Angeles, and now resides in Palm Springs, CA.
One of the first foggy mornings arrived to signal the late-summer hour. I’d gone out to make a quick perambulation of the backyard and was standing beneath the seven sons flower tree, just beginning its sweet bloom, when I looked down at the pool and saw a shadow and reflection moving across the water.
Well, the sky.
It looked like a pheasant – namesake of the street on which we live, and a bird I’d never seen around here. The longer plumage fluttering behind it tipped me off, as did something extra about the head. Scrambling out from beneath the tree to gain a better look at something more than the reflection, I only saw that it had already disappeared from sight. I stood there in the morning fog, peering into the hazy sky and hoping it would come back, knowing that most birds won’t swoop back because they forgot something.
My gaze returns to the reflections in the pool. When the water is still like this, early in the morning, it becomes like a pane of glass. Sometimes it helps to see a reflection of things to gain a better perspective of what they really are. Is a reflection any less real than what it’s reflecting? Touching the water, one can make it all disappear. More mental contortions for which I’m wholly unprepared, especially this early in the week.
It hasn’t felt right to indulge in something that once brought such happiness. Not yet.
That’s ok. There’s no need to rush, and everyone returns to living when and how they are ready.
But there are those of you still out there trying to enjoy every last day of the summer, and for you I offer this 80’s song from some late summer long ago, back when our only worries were getting home before the June bugs swarmed and the street lights came on, back when our parents were there waiting, unconcerned and innocent, the way we all once were, the way that is no longer in existence.
Catch my breath, Close my eyes Don’t believe a word. Things she said, overheard Something wrong inside Hits you in a minute, Ooooo Then you know you’re in it, aah.
It’s been a while since I’ve felt like listening to pop music, and I’m still not quite into it, not like I used to be. All these summer songs carry their memories, and I’ll keep them for another year. This summer will be seen out in relative silence. For those who want a melody to see them through, take a moment to listen to this 80’s gem. May it bring back happier times, carefree moments, childhood freedom and summer days that stretched endlessly into fields bordered by goldenrod and waving grasses, where only the edges hinted at a fall to come, at an end to the sunny innocence.
I’ve been in love before I’ve been in love before The hardest part is When you’re in it I’ve been in love before I’ve been in love before
As for me, I’ll listen just this once, as it brings me back to summer nights of catching fireflies in the little space they congregated at beneath the open window of my parents’ bedroom. A soapy perfume of Mom’s end-of-the-day bath would drift down into the dim night, mingling with the lingering freshness of the grass that Dad had cut earlier in the day.
My brother and I would make homes of empty mayonnaise jars, poking holes in the covers and sprinkling a few leaves for the bugs to feast upon, then try to capture the slow-moving fireflies, emitting their bioluminescence all-too-briefly for us to have much success. I knew I didn’t really want them trapped in our glass walls anyway. It was enough just being near their glowing magic, and in the enchanted backyard of our summer childhood.
Just one touch, just one look A dangerous dance One small word can make me feel Like running away You can’t say you’re in it, no, Until you reach the limit
Summers were safe then, but I suppose every child thinks summers are safe, at least the lucky ones. Maybe we were just fortunate to be shielded from how unsafe some summers could be. For all the lonely terrors that would come later in life, I think if you’ve had a few safe summers when you didn’t have to worry about absolutely anything, you can make it through the more troubling times.
Because you had those moments, you had those memories, you had the emotional access and experience of feeling safe and loved and full. When you get to feel empty and alone, as we all sooner or later do, the emptiness is there because you were once filled with all that good stuff. As upsetting as that emptiness may be, and as lonely and lost as you may feel, it’s also an echo and a reminder of how full we once were.
Suzie made me this glorious COVID-cake/birthday-bundt and it was delicious. I do love a good bundt. And if escaping COVID until this very moment is worthy of celebration, then let us have cake! This birthday week has been largely awful, and the less said about it the better. We have arrived at the final few days of August, and that merits celebration just so we can end it. On with the weekly recap, such as it was…
Fellow Virgo Tom Ford celebrates his birthday today, and I’m almost more excited about his than my own this year. His ‘Azure Lime’ Private Blend has become the fragrance that will embody this sad summer. A gift of Andy for our anniversary, I was originally conflicted about wearing it and aligning it with such a sorrowful time, but then I thought that it was only fitting for a fine fragrance to remind me of this moment.
Now that our butterfly bush is in full bloom, a cavalcade of butterflies has been visiting our backyard, fluttering about from the cup plant to the butterfly weed to the Joe Pye Weed. The seven sons flower tree is on the verge of busting out in its now brilliant bloom – the latest flowers to appear in the summer season, almost after-thoughts since we’ve mentally put the garden to sleep weeks ago. At least I have.
It was an earlier wrap-up, as much a sign of emotional defeat as it was exhaustion from trying to find a regular stretch of sunny weather that wasn’t interrupted by storms of some sort. It has not been a stable or safe summer, not in the least.
Yet still the butterflies have arrived, and the hummingbirds and finches have been keeping us company as well, and on the morning this is being written, the sun is out and summer whispers that she is still here, that she never left, and that she will return again next year.
A beautiful black butterfly, dusted with a bit of blue and dotted with a few brilliant spots of white, alights on a butterfly bush bloom. It poses for only a moment, then flits away in search of more nectar in other backyards. I watch it depart like a little friendly shadow.
Along with his co-star Taylor Zakhar Perez in ‘Red, White and Blue’, Nicholas Galitzine forms an integral part of the combustible chemistry and acting prowess that makes a typical rom-com (with a gay spin) into something so much more. As Prince Henry, Galitzine’s stoically-tortured and ultimately transformative role grounds the film with the necessary pathos to make us invest in these characters and care about how they will navigate their lives. His charisma was in evidence in previous occasionally-princely roles in ‘Cinderella’, ‘Bottoms’ and ‘Purple Hearts’. A star clearly on the rise, he will next show up in ‘The Idea of You’. This marks his first and likely not last appearance as Dazzler of the Day.
The immediate aftermath of a birthday – even the most uneventful and downplayed of birthdays – can feel strikingly quiet and still. The idea of starting another year on earth gets more daunting the older I get. Maybe I’m simply more tired after doing this for 47 years. Maybe birthdays seem less celebratory and more worrisome with each passing journey around the sun; the world has certainly not gotten any easier or more enjoyable, even if my perspective and coping has evolved and advanced. Maybe I’m slowly coming to realize that a birthday is simply another day, and that birth and death are not finite beginnings and endings, but rather a continuation of some greater arc of existence. The mind struggles with such an idea, barely able to wrap itself around the notion. That’s a sizable shift in the way I’ve viewed our place in the world, and how I’ve categorized things in my head. I want to have a better grasp on it, a more stable handle on what it all means, but I’m not there yet.
I fear I’m not even close.
And so I pause, stepping into the summer light, studying the plants and flowers and leaves in the backyard, traversing the well-worn path I usually take, trying to find some new meaning, or some old meaning I may have missed in all these days and seasons and years. Approaching half a century of life on this earth, I allow myself an indulgent moment of weakness, a little bit of rest, especially as that long-ago feeling of wanting to sink down into the earth has been hinting at a return. It’s nothing I don’t think I can handle, but I want to be careful – that’s always when the universe doles out its vicious reminder that none of us are really in command, none of us are in control.
It is at such times I try to remember to act like some long-stemmed water plant rooted at the bottom of a riverbed, my feet stuck and bound beneath smooth stones, my limbs flowing freely and undulating with the current. Letting go and floating freely, secure in my little foothold on this earth, yet allowing the flow of life to go around and through me. The waters make turn wild and icy, murky and muddy, clear and crystalline, warm and womb-like – and still I remain in place, allowing them to move over me, giving myself over to whatever the water may carry in passing.
The first rom-com I’ve watched in the last twenty years or so was ‘Bros’ because certain people said it was worth the watch, and was reportedly the groundbreaking gay rom-com we’d all been waiting for. First of all, I’ve never been waiting for a romantic-comedy – not one of that genre of film has made it onto my top fifty movies. Second, I thought ‘Bros’ kind of sucked. My focus shifted from the lap-top to anything else in the room repeatedly, and I don’t even remember the ending. Did the boy get the boy? Was there a happily ever-after? Did it even matter?
When ‘Red, White and Royal Blue’ was announced as a film, I raised a weary eye-brow and waited for the reception. I’d read the book last summer and enjoyed it on its escapist level, but I didn’t have faith in the rom-com-on-film formula. Perhaps it was the need for something light and fluffy, or the earnest, idealistic tone the film genuinely adopts, or the engaging portrayals of its two handsome leads – and probably because of all of those items I enjoyed it immensely. In fact, it’s led to the start of a dazzling pairing of Dazzlers of the Day, beginning with Taylor Zakhar Perez, who plays the American President’s son. Perez has been wowing audiences for years, in such work as ‘The Kissing Booth’ trilogy and ‘Minx’. Primed for a turn as the next-big-thing, he earns his first Dazzler of the Day crowning here.
