Joining his current ‘Lost Boys’ co-star Ali Louis-Bourzgui on Broadway, LJ Benet earns his first Dazzler of the Day crowning thanks to his moving portrayal of Michael Emerson and a stunning rendition of ‘Belong to Someone’. We are set to see a performance of this on our annual Mother’s Day weekend on Broadway (more on that later). For now, check out LJ Benet’s Instagram page which is a living testament to all that is ‘The Lost Boys’ on Broadway right now. (I cannot wait to see this show!)
A different way of looking at the cherry blossoms in the backyard, these moving images roughly capture the shimmering way the pool water reflects on the branches and blooms. Adding movement and highlights in a way no amount of AI could ever match or muster, it is an exhibition of wonder – wonder at the world, at the way nature accentuates its charms, at how a sunny spring day can instantly transform the mood.
The Kwanzan cherry was in bloom this week – just as the pool was being heated to a glorious 80+ degrees for a few lovely days that justify the pool heater every year. Pink against a sky of blue is always a sight to behold, and in the strong sunlight the colors revived all that had dimmed during the recent long and cruel winter. It already feels far away, and for that I’m grateful. It’s never too soon to start thinking about summer heat, summer sun, and summer fun.
If you have sun where you might be, go out now and enjoy it for a minute – or an hour – or the whole day. Never take a sunny day for granted.
I love a succinct and clever bio profile: ‘a broad, a babe, a mom, a writer, an actor, a comedian, and podcaster’ is how Ilana Glazer describes herself, and that just about covers it. This hilarious comedian and creator is bringing her shows to North America and Europe in the next few months, as seen in this ambitious scheduled of tour dates. Check out her website here for further evidence of her brilliance, where she can now add Dazzler of the Day to her impressive repertoire.
After filling our front pots with everything from arborvitae, papyrus, and elephant ears to palm trees, ivy, and ferns, this marks the first year we are indulging in the ‘timeless tradition‘ of planting rosemary at our entryway. Bestowed with protective enchantments against ill-intending spirits, as well as a more practical magic to ward off pests, rosemary has myriad advantages when planted near the home. Its pleasant aroma rises like lavender when brushed by visitors, and it’s also said to be lucky. A wonderful notion for the month of May – and the summer to follow.
The cultivation of rosemary is simple when you know how to control yourself; these plants actually do better under neglect and duress than with a well-watered and overly-pampered high-maintenance routine. A sharp, well-draining soil on the alkaline side is preferred, and you should let the top two inches of soil dry out before doing a deep watering. A full day of sunshine is desired so branches don’t grow leggy, but you can also prune heavily to retain a bushier shape.
See this summer mocktail for another rosemary idea, or this holiday drink, or this Christmas cocktail for the stronger palette.
Tra la, it’s May, the lusty month of May
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray!
Tra la, it’s here, that shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear!
It’s May, it’s May, that gorgeous holiday
When every maiden prays that her lad will be a cad
It’s mad, it’s gay, a libelous display
Those dreary vows that everyone takes, everyone breaks
Everyone makes divine mistakes, the lusty month of May
Ahh, May – my most favorite month in almost all the ways, but rather than set up expectations (there is a full moon happening after all, and that always derails the most pristine of plans) I’m going with a laid-back bit of appreciation for the day, and I’ll take what joys and delights as they come.
May musical memories are rife with romantic foibles and paths strewn with broken heart wreckage. Happily, there are also lovely memories for this magical month, and sometimes the hand of destiny is kind enough to grant us that which will bring happiness and sustenance through the years.
It’s May, it’s May, the month of yes you may
The time for every frivolous whim, proper or im
It’s wild, it’s gay, a blot in every way
The birds and bees with all of their vast amorous past
Gaze at the human race aghast
Tra la, it’s May, the lusty month of May
That lovely month when everyone goes blissfully astray
Tra la, it’s here, that shocking time of year
When tons of wicked little thoughts merrily appear
Yes, May has a wicked sort of spell to cast sometimes, and it is at such times that I need to remind myself of who I am, lest I lose myself to May’s madness as well. Andy and I will be celebrating an early anniversary weekend in Boston, and I’m looking forward to harnessing full moon magic and letting the stars wreak their havoc. Seeing oneself through the storms is sometimes best accomplished with a partner. We have rings to wash, gardens to revisit, and dinners to enjoy… It’s May! The word says it.
Morning meditations sit differently with me. I should do them more often, as they set the intention and the tone for how things will unfurl, and first thing in the morning is usually the quietest bit of the day. (Today’s may be a bit of an exception, as a neighbor is already mowing the lawn at 7:30 – questionable neighbor behavior at best, something else at worst.) With the windows closed, it’s only a slight drone of noise, so it’s not the end of the world.
The sun is brilliant on this morning, illuminating the first leaves of the Japanese coral bark maple – highlighting the chartreuse of the foliage and the scarlet stems – both glorious against a blue sky. It’s still spring, but the light, and the hum of a lawn mower, hint at summer. To further confuse issues, I’m posting this at midnight, as the calendar ticks over to May – a midnight morning meditation post, because calm and stillness has a place at all times.
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.
All of our love filling all of our room
Your low warm voice curses
As you find the string to strike within me
That rings out a note heard in heaven
How the passing of a month brings me back to the crazed way I used to fall in love – the main province of youth – so cruelly coming when we are least prepared to endure it. Spring, and its exquisite warmer nights perfumed with sweet fruit tree flowers, plants me squarely back in memories of being in the Boston condo, when alone and filled with longing, I’d lie in the bedroom and wish for the ache of loneliness to subside.
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.
In just a few weeks I could convince myself that he was the one, that we were meant for each other, that no one else was so acutely aligned with my own trajectory. Looking back, it was always a forced and awkward pairing, even amid moments of tenderness and occasional passion – and to think it was set and complete in under a month was romantic folly at best, self-destructive idiocy at worst.
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.
Now I bend like a willow, thinking of you
Like a murmuring brook curving about you
As I sip on the rest of the coffee you left
A kiss left of you
Heaven, heaven, heaven…
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.
Everyone is better for having loved.
Always…
Heaven.
I hate that I can no longer tell what promo shots are real and what are AI and fan-made.
This world is doomed when truth and reality no longer exist.
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.
Father forgive me, for I have sinned, it has been three and a half decades since my last confession and these are my sins: just fucking kidding – no way would my sins over the last few decades fit into a single confession, blog post, or even an entire website that’s been around as long. Instead, my confession is only to myself – a confession of not remembering who I am.
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.
Me: I work with someone who loves pugs – is this a pug?
Store Clerk: That’s a cat.
Me: Oh… ok. Thank you.
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.”
Spring fever spell, cast by a benevolent incubus, fells its victims by willing dream-like participation in their own doom. April’s madness winds its tumultuous way through a trance-like state; powerless against its destined arc across the firmament, a star brings heat and hope to the arcane covenant between two people. Pinpricks of light in the night sky like holes in aluminum foil. We were only children once.
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?
A star in the sky or a star in the garden – a star of celestial grandiosity or a star of Columbine.
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?
