Tell me another. You know, a sweet lie. I promise not to believe it down deep. Gild me with predictions of what I will do when the stars align. Where’s the harm?

All by way of saying that I’ve enjoyed the pre-success of wonderful predictions for most of my life from people who should know. Trouble is, no one knows. Commerce is a herd of cattle waiting for the right finger snap to start a stampede.

One thing I do know, I’ve seriously underperformed on life’s big stages. Sometimes I’ve aided and abetted that shortfall for reasons I could paraphrase 142 times and never get right. But the little stages – maybe I’ve done okay there. Not for me to say, really, but I want to believe that. The little stages are one on one, mostly. What you give in those encounters is the true measure of worth, is it not? And if you don’t give there, the other theaters in your life might as well be empty.

Not that the gold standard of imagined success isn’t what it’s always been. Fame is a numbers game. I’m grateful for the attention and sales I’ve had, but to have one’s voice or talents carried regularly to millions is how fame is defined in this world. For that you need more than your art or craft. As every artist learns, being overlooked is almost guaranteed if you don’t enlist aggressively into a network of promotion. And that can be as demanding as your muses on their most fickle day.

For some, promo is a natural fit. For others it is an annoying distraction from creative work, or worse, time stolen from the rest of a complicated life. The eat-breathe-sleep artist may find everything they desire simply through networking, whether it’s promotion or just bonding with a creative community. A less focused artist may have to choose between chasing the long odds of the frustratingly capricious marketplace or pursuing whatever else is in their world.

Chasing things devalues them for me. That said, I do not wish to die having done little but wait for the commercial world to find me. Blessedly, some good things have, in fact, dropped out of the blue into my implausible life. I’ve waltzed with high-roll (high-role) Hollywood deals, including options and renewals, one treatment and one script. But being close only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes, as they say, and the complete financial package has never totally gelled. It rarely does. Meanwhile, though most of what I’ve earned has been under other names, it’s brought me a good living and the freedom that comes with anonymity. And my life being as improbable as it is, I’ll always have a lottery ticket or two waiting in the hand of chance, because books by Thomas Sullivan are out there.

Perhaps more relevant to my take on fame, I’ve had the rarest of privileges, that of seeing over the shoulders of a few legendary people. Some of those relationships have been entirely hush-hush. That can happen when you are in the words-for-loan business. Empathy deepens into trust and then the kind of friendship that shares innermost rooms. Those glimpses are a free pass to the true cost of fame at the highest level. The great divide between fame and respect is a stubborn one. It is not an either/or divide, but neither is it a shotgun marriage. All too easy to have one without the other. And you could probably make the case that respect leads to fame more often than fame leads to respect.

So…back to those little stages I wrote of. Not really little actually. Every person you meet is an unexplored universe. There is something unfettered and non-judgmental about me that I’ve made into a flaw by not joining things or sharing my private life. Hard to engage me, get me to commit – though when I do commit, it’s indelible. Anyway, my peculiar temperament lets me enter a lot of those individual universes. Learning about people, life, the world – everything – is what excites me. Little stages are like portals to other dimensions, and I feel like I have an all-border pass. By contrast, the big stage tells you who you have to be everywhere and forever except when you are using your backstage pass or standing alone behind a curtain.

Here in the US people are coming out of hibernation and little stages abound. Minnesotans look fresh, act fresh. You see them on the trails or strolling along the streets wearing new faces, pausing to smell the roses as if they’ve just learned to breathe again. I hope I’m describing you. And if I am, do not forget how it feels to have magic rushing through your veins! I like to think excitement is as simple as that.

“You look different,” someone said to me in the pool the other day. “Yeah, I’m practically naked,” I told her, “last time we met, it was zero degrees on the ski trail and I was dressed like Quinn the Eskimo.” We tend to equate perspective with wardrobe, but if you look at everyone and everything with renewed eyes you’ll see that life’s reveals are all about energy and light. So, believe in energy and light! The grays you see are the shadows formed by familiar expectations. You can’t film life in Technicolor if you don’t have the right camera rolling in your head.

Speaking of cameras, this month’s photos below dance around the map a bit. Here’s the rundown: #1 the first of May #2 …and a few days earlier; #3 and this was…uh, a long, long time ago when the Earth was flat and I’m sitting on a porch I know not where, thinking great thoughts about pause patterns in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama probably (has to be in the USA before we moved to South America because that looks like our Irish setter Red); #4 the Sisters of Spring undeterred by winter’s encores; #5-6 my friend Linda caught some exquisite shots of the Grand Canyon; #7 Elm Creek in transition; #8-9 my sister Merry, me and dad (and Red) – don’t know where the lake is, but the back porch shot is definitely Detroit; #10-11 a couple off-trail photos of Elm Creek’s awakening this month; #12 and a shot from a few years ago when I spoke at the famed House of Literature in Oslo.

Must write a few words to acknowledge the many emails/messages received from last’s month’s Sullygram. Relationship stuff never fails. Will keep that in mind. Each day adds to your knowledge and your wisdom. Tomorrow you will be able to grasp more than you ever have before. Live large and smell the roses!!!