I see lilacs in the rain, And you are with me again, When April sprinkles her dreams in my heart. When we parted in the lane, The skies were tearful with rain, The scent of lilacs remained in my heart.
Arriving at the end of April, the two more typically calamitous months of spring are behind us, and the joyous promise of May is at last at hand. Before we leave this month, however, a little look back at the tender pockets of beauty and longing that were found between days of snowy chill and frosty places. Many give March the dramatic distinction of being the most changeable month – lion and lamb and all those animal metaphors – but April has always struck me as the most transformative. This year proved that true, as winter seemed to linger well into the month, wreaking havoc with snow-weary hearts – a final, extended test and trial of how indomitable the spirit could be. We reprise this song that appeared in earlier form here – it rings differently after spring outpaces winter.
A lot can happen in a single month, especially when it’s spring. Hearts break open then, thawing as much from the warmer days and nights as from emotional circumstance and the whims of a capricious universe. And we are nothing if not in thrall to our hearts – even when our heads are screaming otherwise.
Two other arms around you now, Some other love has found you now! But when love forgets to smile, My darling, once in a while, Remember April and lilacs in the rain!
And so we reach the end of this treacherous month, when ephemerals like crocus and snowdrops bravely poked their heads into the early spring world, nodding at each other and saying hello, romancing and entrancing with their all-too-brief dance before going away for another year. We say goodbye to those sweet romances, doomed not to last, as we set up a more enduring element to the summer to come – the fiery, quickly-extinguished flames of floral dalliance evolving into the propriety of friendship to see us all the way through to fall.
When we parted in the lane, The skies were tearful with rain, The scent of lilacs remained in my heart.
Back then I was brave enough to face the pain without trickery – no drink, no mind games, no convincing myself otherwise. I embraced my solitude perversely like it was a partner – and if I’d just met someone in the haphazard way destiny worked in a time before social media, I could work up an infatuation before they even learned my name, and I gave in to that feverish passion with my entire being. I always fell too fast, burning too brightly for it to ever last. I didn’t know any other way to love, and I didn’t care to learn.
I’d thrash out those emotions, giving space and time and obsession to those feelings, because I was desperately starved for connection and companionship. I don’t mind saying now that it was pathetic – honestly, I didn’t mind how pathetic it was then either. What could be wrong about loving someone? So what if it didn’t make sense – the heart doesn’t abide by sense and reason. I was deliberately in command and control over so many other aspects of my life, a little romantic fervor seemed allowable. To this day, I maintain there is no fault in not wanting to go through life all alone. (Nor is there any shame in actually going through the damn thing without a companion, so it cuts both ways.)
Heaven, heaven…
Not one part of me cringes at the way I used to behave – especially in the spring. Boston was too romantic in atmosphere and environment for me to do much of anything other than fall in love. When the cherry blooms danced like ballerinas in the slightest soft breeze, and the sweet scent of apple blossoms and Korean spice viburnum mixed with the nostalgic magic of lilacs and hyacinths – how could anyone resist the tiniest nudge in the direction of romance? It would be a crime against nature not to fall in love on those enchanting nights.
But every morning I woke alone, stomach faintly aching with the muscle memory of my weeping, eyes crusty with tears dried in my sleep. The condo was so quiet on those mornings, and it never felt right for a city to be that quiet. I treated it with reverence, padding silently into the kitchen to prepare a cup of tea and wonder at the ridiculousness of my emotional state.
How quickly I could conjure and conduct a love affair with the young men who so innocuously populated the world about me at the time – the cute barista who spoke broken English in an endearing French accent, the hapless gentleman who came into the store looking for help in putting an outfit together (always in need of tie advice), the classmate who knew my name when I hadn’t even told it to him. I always thought it was something intrinsic and inherent to them – to those adorable men and their soulful eyes – when all the while it was my own inherent specialness that bestowed such a gift upon them – my own willingness to bend and the invitation extended to share a life together. Against all charges of vanity and ego and selfishness, a certain generosity of spirit when it came to falling in love was my one redeeming quality. How unfortunate that it would always be seen and felt more as weakness and melancholy, some sad act of desperation when I really just wanted to play and laugh with someone deep into the night.
Hear the storm dances outside Something set free is running through the night And the dark awaits us all around the corner But here in our place, we have for the day Can we stay a while and listen for heaven? Heaven…
When I look back at the young man I was back then, at how I’d turn the makings of a single spring month into a life-altering love affair that charged and changed my existence for all time, I feel nothing but tenderness for the man I used to be.
And I’d do it all over again – every single goddamned time.
Following an epic two-decade dancing career, John Lam has proven that life after retirement is often more rich than anything that came before it. Case in point is his establishment of Lam Dance Works, a non-profit dance company which is presenting its spring 2026 production ‘Forward’ at Emerson Paramount in Boston this May. Lam earns this Dazzler of the Day for his storied career and an adamant refusal to look anywhere other than forward.
Not in the literal sense – I still know my name, I still know (mostly) my history, I still know what I do in the world – I mean in the sense of forgetting my own worth and value, misplacing them at various points this past month, or perhaps year. The usual doubt and disbelief in myself that can’t be conquered as simply as one would think for someone with my perceived bravado.
Spring doesn’t always aid in building such self-belief, and as the screws tighten on winter’s coffin, the expectation of elation is sometimes only the set-up and starting point for disappointment. So it is that I seek stillness and quiet, sanctuary and respite in a world seemingly bereft of such things.
On lunch, I walk up to the church where I used to go when Dad was dying. It wasn’t a moment of sadness, more of reflection, and oddly enough, comfort. The Easter celebrations had been over for a while – a collection of dead Easter lilies sat sadly in the entryway – no scent or fragrance emitting from the dessiccated blooms, but the foliage was still green. I hoped someone would plant them in a garden and give them a chance to come back next spring. Unlikely, but while they stood in the hall I reserved hope.
Long ago disillusioned by the machinations and patriarchal shadiness of the church, I understood that this wasn’t about religion – this was about a peace and spiritual grace that had nothing to necessarily do with God or saints – one hard look at the human condition in the world should give God-pause to anyone with half a functioning brain. On this day, I looked around at the beauty that man had crafted – in the church, in the way the Easter lilies had been cultivated into bloom, in the overall atmosphere that had been erected in the purpose of peace and contemplation and congregation. I also acknowledged the space for mystery – something unseen or unknown to the human mind, something sacred and religious in a different way. I allowed room for doubt, room for forgiveness, room to weep out of frustration and madness in being unable to be more than just human.
The past few weeks have found my sleep patterns wildly deviant from how they normally play out. I’ve been getting to bed earlier, out of sheer exhaustion, then dropping off quickly, only to awaken at 1 or 2 in the morning, when I remain restlessly awake and heart aflutter for another hour or so. Maybe it’s just old age arriving somewhat prematurely. We get less sleep as we get older, or so I’ve been told. More waking time to do more waking things, I suppose.
To combat the sleepless moments, I’ve been revisiting a favorite book, ‘The God in Flight’ by Laura Argiri. May this excerpt send us off to sleep tonight…
“…And solitude and loneliness are forms of torture, and they also yield some wisdom. I’ll give you what they gave me. The first thing is that there is nothing in the world more important than knowing and loving someone else well. And the second is, know your own nature, accept it, and let no one and nothing alienate you from it. You have as much right to it as anyone else has to theirs.”
Remember when we met We acted like two fools We were so glad So glad to have found it
That love is like a star, it’s gone We just see it shining It’s traveled very far, I’ll Keep a leftover light burning So you can keep looking up Isn’t that worth holding on?
You know I’d always been alone ‘Til you taught me To live for somebody
That love is like a star It’s gone, we just see it shining ‘Cause it’s traveled very far, I’ll Keep a leftover light burning So you can keep looking up I am yours
A girl once accepted my marriage proposal in grade school. She was the first one to love me in any romantic sense – at least as romantic as a grade schooler could be – and I didn’t quite know what to do with it. We went on a date at the local candy shop, sharing sundaes at the counter while I kept a furtive eye on the door to make sure no classmates could see us. She’d share her pizza with me at lunch, and I felt guilty about it, wondering if she would give me everything in all the days that followed, no matter if she was hungry herself. If you’ve been lucky enough to have been loved in such a way during your formative years, you take that with you for the rest of your life, but you will always wonder if you’ll ever be worthy of it.
No matter that love’s gone We just see it shining We’ve traveled very far, I’ll Keep a leftover light burning So you can keep looking up Isn’t that worth holding on?
April runs out of time this week, and perhaps that’s best for a month that was such a wild rollercoaster of weather, a riotous ride of emotional and astrological mayhem. As we careen to the end of such a month, this blog has a few more tricks and treats up its sleeve before the glorious entry of May. For now, the weekly blog recap of all that just happened, where you want it or not…
“If a Virgo in your life seems unhinged, honestly they’re not. They just realized they’ve been doing everybody else’s job this whole time and quit without notice.”
While the wine no longer moves me, the perfume of the lilac holds me in sway. Entranced by its potent beauty, I swoon beneath the influence of its exquisite fragrance and delicate shading. Embodiment of spring, emblem of hope, and enticer of all who seek beauty in this world, the lilac is muse and temptress – promiser of delights, sage of inspiration.
Enrapt by the charms of the season, I fall deeper under its enchanting pull every day. As more buds swell and explode – with flower and leaf and root – I’m reminded of the sensual delights that the warmer days will soon bring. Is it terribly wrong to lazily lap up the indulgence of the sun when for so long it’s been absent?
A rebirth of sorts feels in the stirring, and I’m happily powerless of letting it wash over and baptize me anew. A second coming at the tail-end of middle-age, perhaps, and the lilacs have only just begun to tell their perfumed stories…
Movie-makers are being advised to repeat key plot points at various points in their movies because audiences can’t sit through a fucking movie without being distracted by their phones. My niece and nephew do this all the time – they will periodically check their phone if we are watching a movie at home or in the theater, as if their CEO is breathing down their neck waiting for an update on something. They’re only sixteen, so it looks like the next generation is already gone when it comes to any sort of attention span.
Part of it probably stems from the ten-second window within which people now expect to be grabbed or wowed or impressed enough to retain any sort of allegiance. Part of it might stem from the quick-paced way Tik Tok and social media works – and the way that podcasts and videos offer the option of double or triple speed playback. I’ve never taken part of that because my brain isn’t wired that way. It would seem to suck out all the enjoyment of something – if you are engrossed in a podcast or video, if you’re interested in the topic and loving what they are saying, why would you want to rush through it? It might allow for you to ingest more, but ingesting something is decidedly and crucially different than digesting something. Quantity rarely bests quality – our rush to take in more and more and more doesn’t help in deeper understanding.
That also feeds into the epidemic disaster that is FOMO, currently derailing all sorts of meaningful moments because people are so obsessed with what they might be missing – an overload of possibility, and an inability to make a decision and stick to it without wondering if something better is happening; what a horrid way to go through life.
But I’m old now, and honest enough to acknowledge that this could just be the ramblings of age, the way it’s been through centuries. I don’t entirely buy that – it feels different, and teachers I’ve talked to indicate that there is very much a marked difference in how long a student can focus now than just a decade ago. That’s a little too dismaying to think on for any length of time, and for a Sunday morning I’ve left enough dour words for the final gasp of the weekend.
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.”
– Alfred Tennyson
The garden in spring might be the most romantic garden of all the year. Maybe it’s the freshness, the relief from winter, or the temporal nature of so many spring flowers. Ephemeral delights, not meant to last, not designed to withstand more than a few hot days.
His latest book, ‘The Castle of Stories’ is due to be released in the coming days, joining the pantheon of work he’s already written – ‘One Love’, ‘The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle’, ‘Becoming Ted’ and ‘The Madonna of Bolton’. If that wasn’t enough, Matt Cain also co-founded a new LGBTQ+ independent publisher, Pansy, which solidifies his crowning as Dazzler of the Day. A stacked resume of published writing from years of freelance work, in addition to years of support and volunteer endeavors for the LGBTQ+ community, cement his status as Dazzler. Check out his website here for more of his brilliance.
