Beautiful Days

To Begin the New Year!

We’ve had a string of beautiful days here in Houston to begin the new year. Yes, unseasonably warm, which may portend doom in the macro climate context, but have been a joy to live through in my micro world. And sometimes joy has its appeal, even to masters of 2 AM doom-and-gloom, like me.

Photo by Rick Bebermeyer

We’ve been able to have our afternoon coffee in our garden.

We’ve taken long walks in the park, stately enough to make even London proud, where the camellias are in bloom and the clouds have done blissful and dramatic dances.

We’ve strolled the Rice University campus at sunset, always an appealing place for strolling, but especially sublime (and calm) now, between terms.

Coming back from a party in the suburbs, we got a mysterious glimpse of this OZ in which we live.

We’ve celebrated with friends, and I’ve cooked, so we’ve eaten well (if not entirely healthily.)

Tarte à l’Oignon Alsacienne - quiche by another name.

We’ve taken down the Christmas decorations, which did their service beautifully, but now it’s time they go.

I’ve been able to get a good start on my next needlepoint piece, which I see as a riff on queer domestic interiors – this time a pastiche set in London in the 1950s, drawing elements from Irish and English artists, Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) and Keith Vaughan (1912-1977), American Edward Gorey (1925-2000) and arts philanthropist Peter Watson (1908-1956). I’m sure I’ll have more to share about this as the stitching goes forward.

The glorious weather has set me to remembering (I’m at that dangerous thinking-back time of life), and I’ve written the first paragraphs of one of my definitely NOT autobiographical memory pieces, set 50 years ago in St. Louis, where I lived then. It may or may not grow into a finished piece, and I include the current fragment here for no other reason than that I enjoyed writing it (JOY!), and it may give you some pleasure, and distraction from distressing current happenings:

It was a splendid April Sunday afternoon in the Central West End, St. Louis, 1976: the sun shined spring fresh; the heavens breathed out a gentle breeze from time to time to swirl the pink petals, beginning to fall from the flowering trees, into a pink froth; only a hint of the summer heat ahead infused the atmosphere as the hours mounted toward five; and I strolled Euclid from West Pine to McPherson, looking in the windows of closed shops and crowded cafes, on the off chance, and the hope, that love might find me on such a glorious day - though it had managed to miss me on so many days, and nights, before. 

That afternoon I wore my snuggest navy blue Lacoste, even though some, no doubt, thought I gauchely pushed the season, like wearing straw hats before Easter, or white bucks after Labor Day. I had both, and wore them when I  pleased, not so much as fashion iconoclasm, as fashion oblivion. But that day the straw and whites stayed home, convinced as I was that the snug navy showed off what assets I had to offer so much more fetchingly. Love, real love could not be tricked by such trifles, but lust (sometimes in my circles then, love’s first step) just might be. Worth a try, at least. Why not?

Others strolled the avenue too, singles and couples and little groups on their way from brunch to cocktails – and who knew what later on? A pansy passeggiata that I (and they) had been taking for years now, on gorgeous Sunday afternoons, and also on dreary ones...

The days have been so beautiful that I even managed not to be sucked in by the New York Times weekend supplement, which sounds as though it could be one of my own 2 AM Substack pieces.

I’ll read it, but later on. Yes, I agree that many things are bad – and quite likely to get worse. But for now I’m going to keep living in these glorious days for as long as I can while they last.

Thank you for subscribing to my Substack space. I appreciate you more than I can say – which is to say, A LOT. It’s one of the great things of my life that you’ve joined me in this adventure (or venture, anyway, if the “ad” part seems too much). I look forward to going into the new year with you, and finding more beautiful things to share, even as we don’t put our heads in the sand about the rest.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!