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A Day of Comfort

This fall season has been about boundaries and protection, of fortifying the heart and home against threats past, present and future. It’s strange the way things that have happened so long ago still have the power to hurt, especially when viewed in greater retrospect so that patterns and repeated offenses are seen in their diabolical totality. Perhaps because of the immensity that such realizations occupy in the mind, I’ve had to take things slowly, distancing myself from similar situations and retreating to the people I love and trust.

Thankfully, Andy has been a trooper and pillar of support, even if I haven’t quite shared everything that has been evolving in my head regarding my family. He senses a downtrodden sense of hurt running through my days now, juxtaposed with a sense of freedom that balances things out with a lightness, and I’ve done my best to keep him free of familial drama. 

As I navigate how to work through this without burning it all down to the ground, he’s been a kind and patient husband, and last Saturday he turned a dim day into a warm one of holiday happiness, which is the last thing I expected. It began with a ham and cheese omelette (pictures of appreciation in a later post), and as I spent most of the day writing in the attic, he snuck out to pick up our Christmas tree – something he’s done for most of the past twenty four Christmases. I took a nap, and when I woke not only was the house filled with the delightful perfume of fresh balsam pine, there was an intermingling scent of beef stew boiling away on the stovetop. A day of comfort and coziness, courtesy of the person I gave my heart to all those years ago. 

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Absence Makes the Heart Grow

When Suzie and my therapist give me the same advice, I know it is sound and likely something that I should probably heed. In this case, it was putting some distance between me and my family, something that is directly anathema to the way I was raised, and to how I’ve tried to conduct my life over the past few decades. That’s a long time to indoctrinate the psyche into a routine, and all the more difficult to break because of it.

In the Philippines, nothing is more important than family. You stick together no matter what, bound by blood and living arrangements, and you do for family what you would never do for anyone else. In my own prickly, socially-anxious way, I’ve tried to do that for the past half-century, and it’s taken me all that time to realize that the idea of family has changed. 

Whether it was the example of Dad sending money back to the Philippines and supporting his siblings, or the opposite end of the spectrum of my Mom pining and wishing for a playmate as an only child, the notion of family was drilled into my head. Over the years, the addition of guilt, and the spoken and unspoken responsibilities and expectations of the first-born child, created shadows upon shadows, and I struggled with being a good son and brother in the face of often-disparate treatment. It manifested itself in various ways of acting out and deciphering how to gain unconditional love when I was so decidedly different. That cannot have been easy for any of us, and in seeing that now I am given a glimpse of how to forgive

Part of that is in the decision to step back at this point. While COVID may have contributed to a lessening of time spent with them, I’d slowly and quietly started to pull away from family for several years. After a big blow-out fight with my brother at Christmas one year, and the umpteenth time that my parents asked me to be the understanding one, I remember sitting at their kitchen table and just crying. It wasn’t so much out of sadness or injustice anymore, it was simple exasperation. In a scene that would be repeated again and again, my Mom realized it was wrong and apologized, but the words rang hollow because they’d been said before and would be said over and over in the years to come. We’re always sorry, and we always just keep on hurting each other. 

And so for my own mental well-being, I’ve withdrawn a lot over the last few years, cutting back on planning get-togethers, no longer insisting that I maintain some type of friendship with my brother, and I’ve noticed that no one has picked up the slack, which is its own message, and its own confirmation. If I feel excluded these days, it’s as much my fault as anyone else’s, but I now realize there is purpose and reason for it; people will find a way, no matter how convoluted or bizarre, to protect themselves from hurt, even if it’s all we’ve ever known.

My own head is adept at self-preservation, even when I’m not quite aware of what is happening. Like animals born in captivity, we don’t necessarily know what we’re missing, it just never feels quite right, and fitting into a typical boy’s mold in this world is trying enough for most boys. It was also a long time ago – another generation really, and things were decidedly different. There was so much we simply didn’t know. 

There are deeper things at work here, stories and situations that I’ve mostly held back, as much out of protecting them as for my own desire to move beyond and pretend they never happened. That’s not always healthy, and as much as I want to let it go, I also need to exhume and address them, if only to acknowledge and move beyond the hold and influence they continue to exert. 

The holidays have always exacerbated this; instead of being a healing time, they seem to bring out all the latent grievances, illuminating and highlighting the chasm that has grown between me and a family from which I’ve always felt, and been treated, as different. Too delicate for some, too harsh for others, and no way of winning or even being unconditionally loved or accepted. In turn, I’ve created my own ostracization – for protection, for prevention, for punishment – and for the preservation of my own worth. 

That is going to have to be ok for this holiday season. 

That is going to have to be enough. 

And it will be.

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Basic Snacks 101

There are times when only a Ritz cracker and some peanut butter will do. 

And then years will go by without me eating them. 

Life is beautiful in all its whims. 

(Add ginger ale for extra nostalgia.)

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Changing the Channel for Christmas… and More

Turning off the news has been one of the wiser decisions of our household, and now that all the Christmas programming is in full-effect, it’s been even more of a joy. Here are a few of my favorites – and I’ll always let one of these play out when they happen to come across the screen. Unplugging the news has been something many of my friends have done long ago – we are recent happy converts, and it’s opened up our days and nights in wonderful ways. When that unfortunate regime-change kicks in come January, our old news-watching habits will be a dim, depressing and ever-distant memory. I won’t be at all sad to see it go. 

We’ll ring in the new year with TCM, and keep the old-fashioned cinema rolling into 2025. 

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Words To Live By

“If we can create a breathtaking effect, it’ll be simple to monopolize all the worthwhile men.”  ~ Meet Me In St. Louis

See also, “These things must be done delicately.” ~ The Wizard of Oz

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Bringing Back the Beefcake

Chris Salvatore has been a favorite of these parts for as many years as we’ve been going (I won’t insult anyone by revealing just how long that has been). From his singing and acting endeavors, to his underwear enterprise to his OnlyFans stardom, Salvatore has proven a remarkably resilient entertainer and performer, who is selling out of his calendar for next year. Move fast to get yours at his website here

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My First Glimpse of A Day

This is usually the very first thing I see when I wake up in the morning.

Before even walking to the bathroom to take a leak, I reach over to the bedside table and pick up the glass of water that Andy has delivered in the night, like magic. I gulp most of it down to start the day, and as my eyes adjust to whatever light might be available at the early hour, I begin to discern the bottom of the glass. Taking on kaleidoscopic properties, it offers a jumpstart to my imagination for that day. Sometimes it unfurls grandly, spooling off into all sorts of possible directions – and it’s the possibility that is so intoxicating. Some days it stays put, barely lit by the darkness of a winter morning, and hardly able to make itself into anything more than a simple glass of water. 

Even on the unimaginative days, it offers stability and sustenance, a stalwart embrace of reality first thing in the morning – a necessary reminder to remain grounded, to nourish the basic needs of the body, to heed the basic needs of the mind. 

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FAFO – The First Award

Seeing all these people who voted for Trump now realizing that Obamacare is actually the Affordable Care Act that they’re now in jeopardy of losing…

Seeing all these people who voted for Trump now realizing that they may end up losing medicare and medicaid and social security…

Seeing all these people who voted for Trump now realizing that the cost of their groceries will go up because of his stupid tariff plan…

Seeing all these people who voted for Trump now realizing that people they know and love may get deported… 

Seeing all these people who voted for Trump now realizing that they are not going to meet him at the inauguration because he doesn’t give a fuck about any of them… 

Bless their hearts, and congrats on this award.

No shame in my schadenfreude game.

#FAFO

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A Ho-Ho-Holiday Weekly Recap

We are speeding through this holiday season, because it doesn’t even feel like it’s December but here we already are on its second week, which will bring us to the mid-way point of the final month of this year. Mercury is still in retrograde motion, and I’m embracing its chaotic energy because it gives us all an excuse to lose every last fuck we ever had. Bye fucks! On that decidedly Christmas-like vibe, here is the weekly blog recap:

The official fragrance of this holiday season: Promise. (See also ‘a lot’.)

Everything is fine, even if just two people noticed the shirt.

A lunch made from leftovers.

Ghosts of Christmas parties past.

Finding moments of quiet amid the holiday bombast.

The blue hole.

Snap out of it!

No rest for the unmerry gentlemen.

Naked and gray, then and then.

The holiday card 2024: Shitter’s Full!

Modern humanity. (20 years later…)

Sanctuary.

Not quite the end.

The afterward.

‘Shades of Gray’: the complete project from 2004.

Harry Styles in well-hung form.

Our holiday Dazzler of the Day was Peter Billingsley.

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Harry Styles Is Hung

This Christmas ornament popped up on one of my social media feeds, courtesy of Macy’s. I laughed, almost out loud, at the ridiculousness of it – it’s supposed to be Harry Styles, and if I were him I’d have a little discussion with a favorite lawyer to see what could be done about the matter. Personal, I prefer Styles in actual photographs, wearing striking outfits that get tongues wagging and critical ridicule flying. Or on stage, where his showmanship and star quality are brash and undeniable. Others prefer him in his underwear or fishnets. And some just want to see him buck naked. All are options here. For those who want him hanging on their Christmas tree, go for it. All gratitude to Mr. Macy

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Dazzler of the Day: Peter Billingsley

My seventh-grade Social Studies teacher, Mr. Blinsinger, was largely unremarkable. He was mostly humorless, and I had little to no interest in Social Studies (where was the Anti-Social Studies class my constitution so badly needed?) He wasn’t mean, and he wasn’t a bad teacher, he was just a typical middle-aged man teaching kids who didn’t want to be there. It must be hard to do that day in and day out.

When the day before Christmas vacation rolled around, he was the last person I expected to go easy on us, much less express any sentiment or feeling about the season. When he wheeled in the television and VCR cart, setting it up in the front of the room I fully expected some lesson in history to play; instead, it was as much of ‘A Christmas Story’ as would fit into our class period. Even after it began, I thought it was some joke, that he would dole out a pop quiz after a few minutes of the movie. That didn’t happen, and we watched about half of the story – my first experience with ‘A Christmas Story’. As the bell rang and we got up to leave, he gave a rare smile, and I said thank you as I filed out. 

That’s a long introduction to my introduction to ‘A Christmas Story’, which plays a part in this Dazzler of the Day as it marks the movie for which Peter Billingsley is perhaps best known. A couple of years ago they did a sequel, ‘A Christmas Story Christmas’, which stands up surprisingly well as sequels go, echoing the original in all the right ways, and expanding upon its warm messages. Billingsley reprises his role, this time as a grown up Ralphie, and the all-wise-and-all-knowing narrator. It works crazy well, and this Dazzler crowning is as much for the joy he inspired as a young kid, and again as an adult. 

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Bookmark: Shades of Gray – The Project

“Perhaps you enjoy chasing squirrels, there is great pleasure in the quest of the unattainable. You and I know that wonder is the secret of bliss and that with reason comes the death of the beautiful.” – Okakura Kakuzo, in a letter to Isabella Stewart Gardner

When I wrote the ‘shades of gray’ project back in the summer and fall of 2004, it felt very much of-the-moment, but looking back at those words twenty years later, it is surprising how much remains relevant, and more astoundingly how much was genuinely prescient. While I hope my writing style has improved somewhat, the themes and concerns and critiques have stayed frighteningly similar. I haven’t quite decided if this is good or bad or entirely without judgment one way or another. 

Though this has been presented in haphazard piece-meal and broken-up form, it was designed to be read in one sitting, like a series of vignettes that cumulatively create a single all-encompassing tableau. Here, then, is the project as it was designed to be presented – in its entirety for perusal on a dark and dim winter’s day. It comes with its own soundtrack/playlist, which works as background music to the words found within. 

As for the retrospective look back, I find it better to examine the words used back then rather than nudge you in any specific direction. It exists on its own now – it has no need for further explanation or exposition. 

~SHADES OF GRAY~

Midway Through Life

Gray Ghost 1

A Bagel in Boston

At the Mall

Gray Ghost 2

Squirrelly

Brother 1

Andy’s Mom

Gray Ghost 3

Change

Idle

Brother 2

Mental Replies

Brother 3

The Man in Your Office

Gray Ghost 4

Uncle Roberto 1

Fairy Nursery Tale Rhyme

Dee and the Geese

Uncle Roberto 2

When the Roses Bloom…

Summer Storm 2

Gray Ghost 5

Grand Child

Uncle Roberto 3

Crossroads of the World

Gray Ghost 6

Brother 4

Uncle Roberto 4

The Process

Uncle Roberto 5

A Lost Art

Pictures

Employment

Book Signing

Diane

Modern Humanity

Sanctuary

Not The End

Afterward

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Afterward: Shades of Gray

~ from OCTOBER 2004 ~

There is a love for people, for humanity, that I’ve always hidden and pretended wasn’t there. It’s not a case of lack in feeling, but of feeling something so strongly that there is no way to fully convey it without a sense of failure. And I do love people. I wouldn’t watch them like I do if there wasn’t genuine enjoyment there. We are interesting creatures with infinite variations.

Apathy is our greatest enemy. Passivity and acquiescence are too often evil words. We cannot afford not to care. I tried for a while, thinking it would be easier, less painful, but it’s not. A dull, nagging, relentless pain was always there – the hurt of guilt, the sting of suspicion, and the horrid notion that by not doing anything I could actually be doing something harmful. There is little nobility or grace in turning a blind eye. At the very least an attempt should be made.

And so I try.

 

~SHADES OF GRAY~

Midway Through Life

Gray Ghost 1

A Bagel in Boston

At the Mall

Gray Ghost 2

Squirrelly

Brother 1

Andy’s Mom

Gray Ghost 3

Change

Idle

Brother 2

Mental Replies

Brother 3

The Man in Your Office

Gray Ghost 4

Uncle Roberto 1

Fairy Nursery Tale Rhyme

Dee and the Geese

Uncle Roberto 2

When the Roses Bloom…

Summer Storm 2

Gray Ghost 5

Grand Child

Uncle Roberto 3

Crossroads of the World

Gray Ghost 6

Brother 4

Uncle Roberto 4

The Process

Uncle Roberto 5

A Lost Art

Pictures

Employment

Book Signing

Diane

Modern Humanity

Sanctuary

Not The End

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Sanctuary: Shades of Gray

~ from OCTOBER 2004 ~

It is, perhaps, my favorite room in the house. There is a sanctity to it, a quietude and tranquility not found in any other spot. A place of repose and calm. Our bedroom, with its shades of blue, lavender, periwinkle – no television, no stereo, no distraction, no inlets, no outlets to the rest of the world – it is a meditative Mecca of peace, of sweet slumber. 

In summer it is cool – a light, airy space, and a fan humming in the corner, sending out billows of air molecules over hot skin. In the middle of the night Andy brings a cool glass of water, proffered without thought or request. I didn’t think to ask, but it is always exactly what I want. He places it gently onto the bedside table, beneath a tissue, moving my book and my glasses. I thank him, sitting up and taking a few sips to show my gratitude. The water is cool and refreshing. 

In the winter the bedroom takes o a different feeling – one of coziness and warmth – the welcoming folds of blankets, and Andy, groggy and sleepy-eyed – a haven of contentment, his body emanating heat and security. It is a safeness I don’t ever want to leave on cold winter mornings. 

 

~SHADES OF GRAY~

Midway Through Life

Gray Ghost 1

A Bagel in Boston

At the Mall

Gray Ghost 2

Squirrelly

Brother 1

Andy’s Mom

Gray Ghost 3

Change

Idle

Brother 2

Mental Replies

Brother 3

The Man in Your Office

Gray Ghost 4

Uncle Roberto 1

Fairy Nursery Tale Rhyme

Dee and the Geese

Uncle Roberto 2

When the Roses Bloom…

Summer Storm 2

Gray Ghost 5

Grand Child

Uncle Roberto 3

Crossroads of the World

Gray Ghost 6

Brother 4

Uncle Roberto 4

The Process

Uncle Roberto 5

A Lost Art

Pictures

Employment

Book Signing

Diane

Modern Humanity

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