– 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.
“I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.”
– Percy Bysshe Shelley
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.
Gazing directly into the eye of the phone camera, I pause for the cajillionth selfie of my life. Worn weary by decades of self-examination, the self finds new ways of renewing and reviewing its existence if we allow it room to grow. Humans get rootbound too, and so many of us are afraid of potting up (people often being averse to great change, particularly in their accustomed environments). I’ve usually welcomed the opportunity to grow and expand, to take the shoes and confining belt off at the end of the day, to spill messily into the next stage of life when we don’t know quite exactly where we’re headed. It’s taken me years to reach this state of relative ease, and countless days of meditation and practice to start being even slightly ok with it, but I’m much more accepting of this imperfect mess of life – a mess we should learn to love, especially with all our mistakes and missteps.
There’s a certain freedom in being so open and honest about where we are and what we are feeling, especially when it’s an acknowledgment that things are less than perfect, that we have failed in some areas, that we didn’t rise to our best at a certain moment. That’s sometimes the key to moving forward – not getting hung up on the messiness of life. For so much of my existence I’ve wanted to avoid, prevent, or clean it up, when all that time getting into the muck might have been the best way of moving through the muck.
Music has always made the people come together, and when certain songwriters access love and loss, pain and jubilation, and sadness and longing that aligns in lovely form with haunting melodies and vocals, it’s the synergy that moves my heart perhaps more than any other art form. No one does that better than Mitski, whose thoughtful and introspective lyrics match the delicate and moving sounds of her songs. She earns this Dazzler of the Day, because her music speaks of spring, of hope, of what happens when humans find each other, no matter how they end up. Check out her website here for upcoming performances.
Cherry blossoms, caught mid-way through their dressing process, have paused in their show, refusing to be coaxed out in such cold, windy weather. Their reluctance is matched by their companion foliage – the leaves also remaining tightly bound, coiled into themselves in the face of such inhospitable iciness. Everything and everyone is hesitant to appear without the promise of the sun – but there is never such a promise, only the hope… a fervid, intense, passionate hope that spring leans closer to summer than winter, even if we are not quite there yet.
Oh joy’s arise
The sun has come again to hold you
Sailing out the doldrums of the whole week
The polyphonic prairies here, it’s all around you
It’s all around you, out here
And if the whole world is crashing down
Fall through space out of mind with me
Where the emptiness we leave behind on warm air rising
Blows all the shadows far away
Once the shadows depart, and the sun lets the sap start running again, a pair of ants will meet in the branches of a cherry tree. Maybe they’ve come from separate worlds, miles apart, finding each other compatible in a sea of millions where no other ant ever stood out. Maybe they’ve been nearby the whole time, simply unaware and unhappily alone without the other. A pair of ants is a wonder – an empire of ants is a metaphor. The human condition longs mostly for connection.
The falling alcohol empire, is here to hold you
Rolling out and haunted ’til it sleeps
Little memories, marching on
Your little feet, working the machine
Will it spin, will it soar
My little dream, working the machine
Soon like a wave that pass will fall
And closing in on you they’re going on
A pair of ants in a world that seems hellbent on stepping on them finds themselves in a precarious position. Two against the masses, two against the world. So many odds stacked against them, so many obstacles standing in their way. Happiness is too often a thing of delicate fragility – take it when you can, before it blows away. Hold tight to each other, see yourselves through the night.
Little memories
Your little feet, working the machine
Will it spin, will it soar
My little dream, working the machine
Soon like a wave that pass will fall
And closing in on you they’re going on
Thalictrum rochebruneanum is the lengthy scientific name for what is more commonly known as lavender mist meadow rue, or just plain meadow rue. It’s an enchanting plant, one I’ve had for well over a decade and one that performs well despite some neglect due to its inconvenient corner location away from the more-frequented areas of the backyard. Its foliage is this beautiful mixture of shades and textures, a somewhat-underappreciated aspect of its overall magical effect. These leaves will evolve and change over the next month, turning more uniformly green with an elegant silvery sheen and almost grayish aspect, like the leaves of a bleeding heart (Dicentra).
When the flowers come later, in tiny light-lavender-hued single-baby’s-breath type blossoms, a cloud of blooms will envelop the tall upper echelon of the garden – sometimes six to seven feet high. I love a cloud of flowers, especially when they are as delicate and demanding of close inspection as the blooms of the Thalictrum. Watching the plant first emerge, cradling some rain droplets from a spring shower, is a gift of the season.
Final indicator of attaining full adulthood: talking bowel movements with the besties in a painstakingly-detailed group text. We just don’t care anymore.
Spanish lavender is not reliably hardy in these rough winter parts, but their blooms are so enchanting I may plant some anyway. With its quirky blooms that look like a cross between rabbit ears and a pineapple, this is a whimsical bit of prettiness, thriving in drier climes and locations, and the perfect plant to lend some cooling aspects to a hot summer garden.
While I don’t drink liquor anymore, I can still make a mean lavender martini, and I’ll make one for you if our paths cross some muggy summer day or night – it’s a delight for the sunny season, and I’ll garnish it with a sprig from a more hardy variety from the garden.
Somewhere in the gauzy shadowed world of Blanche DuBois, this song was sung in her thin, slightly reedy voice. Trapped in the hellish New Orleans cesspool of her only remaining family, she tries valiantly to conjure some bit of beauty in her small surroundings, and in the face of the brutish behavior of others. ‘A Streetcar Named Desire‘ by Tennessee Williams is a haunting work, as is its film adaptation. Humans are cruel to each other, I often realize, yet we still strive to make something of our lot in life, no matter how unbearable it seems to become. That sometimes comes in the form of a paper moon – an apt metaphor for how flimsy human kindness feels when juxtaposed with human brutality. But ahh, the light… the light glows no matter how dark things get – indeed, grows in power the darker the rest of the world falls.
You say it’s only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea
But it wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me
Yes, it’s only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree
But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me
Without your love it’s a honky-tonk parade
Without your love it’s a melody played in a penny arcade
It’s a Barnum & Bailey world
Just as phony as it can be
But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me
Spring’s ephemeral delights are like that paper moon too. They aren’t designed to last forever, but while here they enchant and enthrall with a potency that rivals anything that might endure. Moreover, their power is such that they can change you forever, even if they are already gone by the time you realize it.
It’s phony it’s plain to see
How happy I would be
If you believed in me
When I was a boy, my childhood room looked out over an enormous thorny Hawthorne tree. Its branches softened that corner of the house; its thorns deterred would-be climbers, not that there were any lower branches to gain such a climb. In late spring, it would be filled with white flowers, not unlike the pear tree blooms seen here. Those petals wouldn’t last very long, especially if the weather turned too warm. At those moments, and on those precious days, the petals would flutter to the ground like falling snow – a magical effect that never failed to enchant me. Sitting beneath a flowering tree just as it is giving up its show is always a brush with the sublime.
Spring’s enchantments are usually fleeting – that’s an integral part of their charm. We chase them for their elusive nature. When caught, they are always worth the work, even when we know they won’t last, because beauty makes this world bearable.
When I was a child I wanted to be three things: a florist, an artist, or Wonder Woman. None of them being viable for a boy growing up in the 80’s, I went a very different route, but somehow have managed to retain these obsessions vicariously through others (thank you Lynda Carter). Simon Lycett is another such hero, who’s carved out a name for himself as a florist, presenter and writer, and he may now add Dazzler of the Day to his wreath of laurels. Check out his fascinating website here.
Electric yellow sends a forcefield of energy through the spring air from the sun-reflecting Forsythia blooms. Indelible harbinger of the season, Forsythia doesn’t bother with subtlety or softness. Like its angles and sprawling form, its flowers are almost brutally glorious, shining like a hundred little suns, seen from even great distances, especially at this somewhat barren time of the year.
The palette of spring is not always pastels, and sometimes the most electric yellow combines with the powerful punch of violet, as in the pansy below. That’s when things really get lit.
Not to place any validity on astrology, but here’s something that came over my Virgo algorithm:
“The planners can’t plan, the fixers aren’t fixing, they stopped over explaining themselves, so 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.”
Astrological mayhem aside, these past few weeks have been a rollercoaster to match the fluctuating weather. Rather than rising to take the bait of getting riled, I’ve mostly managed to stay steady, staying true to the direction the universe has been nudging, and relying on comfort reading and daily meditation. The gardens have done their part too – my time spent in amending the soil and tidying up the backyard has been a type of meditation too.
I see the lilacs are finally in bud – the promise of beauty and perfume in the near future, while all the peonies have grown inches within days – more perfumed beauty in store. The ferns are already fast unfurling – once that first spell of warm days hits, followed by some rainwater, they quickly become unstoppable. This is how spring unfolds, very similarly from year to year, give or take a few days, and I’m reminded that there is no need to overthink everything.
Has anyone else ever pulled a pair of pants from the dryer and in complete exasperation realized they’re too wrinkled to iron or steam, and then just chucked them?
Umm, me neither.
Ahh, clickbait. It works every time on me, mostly on retail items I absolutely do not need. Maybe it worked on you if you saw the hint of a jockstrap and wondered if there was more (because there’s always more). In the early days of this blog – and the mid-days too to be honest – hell, to this very day – I relied on semi-clothed posts to get people to visit, and hopefully read, certain posts. The days of counting hits and clicks have long since passed, so I haven’t cared as much of late, but there is still some good stuff to be read here, so before I turn and face the wall, a list of curated links that should be more widely seen:
Revisiting the moon and a lost friendship.
A heart of sequins via a Winnie-the-Pooh costume.
That time Madonna saved my life.
Revisiting the burn to find a way to exile.
A home in Boston, past and future.
Summer adventures showing off my ass.
