The storm I smell wafting through the screens is going to be huge. You can bet on a virulent green sky coming with flickers on the horizon, and then very quickly a cool wind and tongues of lightning stabbing the earth as it passes by. I love those violent explosions of light, be it the righteous and unfathomable scrutiny of God or an x-ray of something demonic and vascular, brambles of a brain, a schematic of the electric utility behind the universe.
Spring is like that. Ambivalent. As if winter and summer are arguing and spring is the truce. Whichever way the weather goes, I max out the variety spring brings. Biking, hiking, canoeing, snow skiing, roller skiing, playing the T-sax outdoors – every day is newness and choices. And every night. Haunting songs from the dashboard on nightly drives seem to tease wisps of luminescence out of the darkness in the car – as if someone is almost next to me. Moons cast long shadows on phantom blue snow; memories cast long shadows on passions past. The magic is breathable. It fills me from my soles to my soul.
And I think: Am I the only one awake? How can the world be asleep? Who would have guessed that celebrating magical midnight moons and witnessing the white magic of dawn was a one-person job?
It isn't, of course, but fostering that delusion, I took pictures of everything with a cell phone cam one night: the sharply etched shadows from the lattice-work of winter’s slender willows; the tapering perfection of pines; massive oaks huddled in stands on rolling farmland or marching in lines from mailboxes to barns; modern neighborhoods of cold dark houses; bedrooms like cages of silence; the occasional "living" room lit by TV light paler than death and just as deadly to thinking and communication; a churchyard on a hill whose silent community seemed somehow less isolated and more alive than the people in the houses...
But alas, arriving home revealed that all the camera had captured was my headlights on those cemetery crosses and the paleness of the moon. The rest was uniformly black. Even Photoshop couldn't summon forth the light that had danced between the stars and the snow. Still, maybe it was appropriate that the rest of the magic defied capture. There are things that belong to the night and cannot be brought to day. This is what memory is for. This is what a writer's imagination is supposed to collude with in order to create the bright substance of art. How can you make something that is already bigger than life bigger than life?
So I go on driving at night sans camera now, and the haunting songs that inhabit the dashboard seem to come from a place where the past still lives. They aid and abet memory. It is almost painful. Almost wonderful. Foolish to think a camera could have preserved it. Life needs to be savored in the moment, else it is gone and you missed it all.
I savored many exquisite moments traveling from Norway to Oregon over the last two months. You can read the second half of that journey in my new column on StorytellersUnplugged. It's mostly a people story, and I've included pictures of a few friends that you won't find below. Some of you have asked to see more photos from the personal side of my life, so I hope this fills the bill. Here's the column link: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2011/05/15/thomas-sullivan-studying-corpses-to-learn-characterization-vs-unplanned-lessons-in-reanimation/ What you do see below are, in order: 1) Me crossing a log backwards over a cascade on Mt. Hood (let’s just say I got off on the wrong foot); 2) my daughter Colleen & grandson Seamus on Mt. Hood, w/son-in-law Dave in background; 3) Melissa, another remarkable friend with an inspiring story whom I met at Grizzly’s in Brainerd/Crosslake area where the Aussies took me for dinner, and moi; 4,5,6) a trio of shots from the Mt. Hood climb; 7) Seamus & Sully; 8) Seamus tailgate celebrating after climbing Mt. Hood; 9) Sully playing air guitar on a ski pole & Aussie friend Grant singing lead in the middle of a frozen lake (hey, it was the only gig we could get); 10) Sully & the tortoise – I was racing on a bike, and the tortoise won; 11) Sully holding up Mt. Hood – or maybe it was the other way around – at the top.
Answers to questions in my mailbox: yes, I screwed up the video links last month, and yes, that's my infamous sax on the soundtrack. My Aussie friend Grant cleverly dubbed it to the surprise vids he made. However, I disclaim the naked body wrapped in a feather boa at the end of the clip. Like the inimitable Doc Foto, Grant has a talent for transplanting heads! We are currently planning a trip that will involve flying to China, training to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, taking a 4WD into the trackless Gobi desert, then using yaks to follow one of Genghis Khan's routes. The vid links I screwed up are now live in last month's Sullygram. Here's the link: http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/newsletters/04162011.htm And for those who have steadfastly asked for a White Feather update, yes, to that one too. As of April 28th – fully three years after it was placed – it is still there, ravaged but visible…an indelible avatar.
Finally, I’ve been trying to post more things on Facebook (link below), so feel free to check in there regularly, as well as on Twitter. May you have a magnificent spring! Having such great friends and fans makes my year transcendent in any weather!
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://twitter.com/thomassullivan
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326
