So, which is your favorite sense? Which one would you give up last? I have a friend who says hearing would be the last to go. Boggles my mind. I’m guessing most of us would favor vision, though I can’t imagine surviving without touch. This all came up because Spring is so sensual, and because the sensory bombardment of aromas and colors and sounds is so potent in April. For me, the sensory streams of Spring seem to cross each other’s wires with their intensity (synesthesia). Music becomes silk to the ears and perfume for the soul. Palettes drip extravagant rainbows. Zephyrs ruffle the air. Pearls of poetry roll from nesting throats on high. It is a time of plenty and peace that melts hearts, softens fangs into velvet thorns, and hardens passions.

It is also a time of wanderlust. If you’ve ever been a Knight of the Road, you know that longing can be triggered by things like a shift in the wind or faint songs in a rain of static out of a dashboard radio at midnight. But for me, the winding road to Oz always returns to Kansas – or Minnesota, in my case. Love it here. The Universe is my backyard, and the yellow brick road connects me to everything I value, which includes you. Thanks for all your feedback to these off-the-wall Sullygrams. May this one fill some gaps I’ve been unable to keep up with at length in emails:

This by way of saying that last month’s focus on aging and relationships brought sizzling correspondence to my inbox. Your candor points me to what you most want to read. Very gratifying when something I share has a positive impact on other lives. Your questions too are welcome, and I try to be responsive, but you guys are merciless! Thought I’d given a forever answer to the persistent question posed a number of ways about a relationship, but admittedly it was 2012 when that reply was handled in depth, and so maybe a re-affirmation is needed. Here’s how a Florida reader put the question in flattering but pointed terms: “Am sure your many admirers around the world, including me, are wondering if you have found, and perhaps, made some kind of commitment to…a Steady Woman? We request, no demand, an explanation in your May Sullygram.”

Coy-free zone here. The answer is no. No commitment, if by that you mean someone is faithful to me and so I’m faithful to them. Never say never, but I can’t see myself ever marrying. For one thing, even if someone with bad eyesight and worse tastes wanted me, I’m not looking. Actually, I’ve never looked. My relationships have all been happenstance. For another thing, even if I did get married, it would have to co-exist with the part of me already given to my ultimate inamorata.

There are people who focus every facet of their nature onto an ideal they are quite sure they will never encounter. My father was one – except that he did encounter his ideal, eloped, kept it secret for a couple of years, and then he and my mother lived happily ever after for almost seven decades. Growing up increasingly aware of how rare that single-minded devotion is, I thought the choice for me was to compromise romantic ideals with whatever came along or else live alone. Of course, the gods of irony would have none of it and eventually blindsided me with a living incarnation of those ideals…but in circumstances that were insurmountable. For a romantic idealist, a valid but impossible love is a distinction without a difference in some ways. The knowledge between us of what could have been is still sustaining. So, in practical terms, I am as free as a feather on the wind, bound only by the sweet sting of a star-crossed reality that owns my heart but not the rest of me.

Love doesn’t have any 5-star restaurants serving full meals, I thought for most of my life, and thankfully I was wrong about that. Somewhere between the Promised Land and Paradise Lost true terms of endearment overcame my cynicism, and their demonstrable potencies still whisper with healing intimacy in the dark, still flash silver in the night. Their afterghosts drift like cosmic nebulae through my dreams. Commingled with the clock and the calendar, they’ve become an exquisite zodiac of memories.

Call that what you will. Say I’m a perfectionist, eclectic, an idealist, a purist, a hopeless romantic and a dreamer, but – as John Lennon sang – “I’m not the only one.” The difference for me is that I know what is possible and what is impossible. The magic that eventually caught up to me was the refining touch on what I needed to learn about love and living. Outwardly, I’ve returned to exactly what I was before: someone whose lifestyle is partitioned between single-minded ideals and responsive engagement with the real world. You can divide a banquet for your passions into courses, even though that makes it all fast food. Physical life is not to be snubbed, and neither are the needs of the heart, mind and soul. The former helps me thrive; the singular purity of the latter ones are essential to my survival as a unique individual with a romantically ideal need to give even without getting.

Everyone is unique in some way. My custom-built ivory tower is a livable choice for me, and yet I know countless others who feel trapped in a castle keep of their own design. Sometimes circumstances force you to distance your heart-of-hearts life from your passion life in order to avoid hating yourself. I see many people who run out of road – run out of forgiveness for themselves – and it’s like they got lost and checked into Hotel California. Metaphorically or literally they leave town. They might measure it in fallow years sitting behind a desk, or ticking time away in a gray living room, or they might measure it in miles pursuing activities or vices or singing the stanzas of blue steel rails that promise newness over every horizon. But the memories are waiting when they inevitably return, seeking perspective. And when they do, they may find dust and graves, but not necessarily the graves of their feelings. Which is a good thing. Because it’s only the not feeling – numbness and indifference – that means they wasted a part of their lives. The carousel only goes around once at the start slow enough to get your “ticket to ride” (…can’t seem to stop quoting the Beatles). If you don’t gallop in perfect sync to the music, or plunge and rear like a stallion to keep your blood young and warm, you sit on the sidelines getting dizzy while the ride you missed blurs past ever faster until it reaches escape velocity.

So, there you go, my Florida friend and others who have asked. That’s where I am in this magical mystery called life. Like Cyrano de Bergerac, my soul clings to its white plume of uncompromised perfection, but the rest of me conforms quid pro quo with cues from the ether. “When in Rome, do as the Romans.” And thank you profoundly for the candid glimpses of your carousels. You school me every month…and I hope I never graduate.

Another frequent sentiment in my inbox offers condolences for Winter’s passing, but as I recently paraphrased from Will Rogers to a friend, “I never met a season I didn’t like.” Too busy enjoying Spring just now. So, the dozen photos below attempt to alternate the past month’s seasonal changes with my sorry sartorial responses, ending with kiss-winter-goodby! May you find your joy each day, touch the sky and savor the roses…

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan