Looking for sanity? Never mind searching outside yourself; it isn’t there anymore. Society followed Alice through the looking glass and now everything looks like the Cheshire cat and sounds like Jabberwocky. Mad Hatters abound, drugs make villains into heroes 10 feet tall, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum are in charge. (Do not play chess with the Red Queen!) But this isn’t the first era when the world has gone mad. And each time has its own unique characteristics. I guess you could say the current insanity shows how fragile we are, how susceptible we are to herd values, social mores, trends, groupthink – fleeting illusions that our laws and standards are the ultimate truth and that all other ages, generations and cultures were at least a little bit nuts. So, maybe you crave some natural perspective now. Maybe you wish you’d gotten off the trolley before it started downhill.

In the Archipelago of Time, it’s very disorienting to swim between islands of stability. You can stay afloat for a while, but what you want is to plant both feet on terra firma. So, if you’re unsettled, consider that something like 94% of America is also unsettled – meaning arable land. Go find a field somewhere, or a valley, or a woods. Find somewhere where you can get down on your hands and knees, smell the earth, and maybe even lay your cheek on the ground. Then, just see what wanders by in the microcosmic worlds that don’t even know you exist. Be invisible. Be anonymous for an hour or so. The searching ant, the towering clump of dandelions, the shadow of a bird, the ever-pliant grass yielding to every gust of wind…each is part of a kingdom, a strategy, a culture. Lose yourself in their perspective and you may find yourself when you return to that world you think you own. Perspective. In times of insanity, it may be the only way to make the earth stop rocking beneath your feet.

You explored such perspectives before, if you remember. As a child, not knowing from adults how you were supposed to view the world, you crossed borders freely. First experiences devoid of context caught your senses and your imagination. Colors were brighter, sounds more nuanced, smells more potent, tastes more tantalizing and textures more intimate. At some point, if you so desire and have a little courage, you can unencumber your mind and experience things as a child again. Call it magic. Include re-examining all those insanities that result from herd values and groupthink mentioned in the first paragraph. You can do that now because you have a third place to stand (or lie with your cheek to the ground) – a point of view free of the doublespeak and the hysteria of our times. Here’s how I put it in another forum about five months ago:

…so where is the magic coming from tonight? Is it from the Full Moon whose tidal rush is felt even though it is banked behind a wall of mist a few hundred yards short of its long luminous journey? Eh. I feel it, but no…that’s not the source. An equally luminous mind-trip, then, that began a few hours ago? Nay. Or fresh echoes of another grand yesterday – simple pleasures, a Minnesota buffet? Soaring on sacred snow, as if the trail was a holy white runner snapped like a towel by a mischievous angel of dawn to start me on my day? Or maybe the interlude of laughs and wisdom spent in a garage bay with a friend? Or the part skipping through stores scattering bits of communication that sparkle like glass in a kaleidoscope or jangle like silverware in a sink. No doubt those memories infuse the mood tonight, but the magic goes back further. Which always connects me with my inamorata, somehow. Only, just now they go back further still. Yes, I think that’s it.

I am a child. Hah…srsly, I’m really a child (see…dinosaurs all over the place). My parents have taken me to their friends’ cottage on Saginaw Bay, a Norwegian couple with whom they have somehow bonded. I love these soirées because the grown-ups play cards in another room, and I am left in a cozy, wood-paneled library to read to my heart’s content. Outside, the wind is howling and the ice is piled several feet high on the shore of the bay. Olga – the mistress of the house – has punctuated my happy exile with a glass of Pepsi that I sip with as much pleasure as those distant card players take in their adult libations. And the book…what am I reading? Did I finish it? My life is filled with books I did not finish, movies whose endings (or beginnings) I missed. I think it’s part of why I am who I am, and why journeys are so much more important than destinations. Magic. It’s how you process life.

Below are the monthly dozen visuals (11 photos, 1 video). #1-8 kayaking the channels behind my house. #9 my Goddess in the Garden statue, posted on Facebook along with this explanation: My Goddess in the Garden statue keeps trying to get a tan, but her alabaster arms stay white as snow. I try to assure her that she’s a Nordic Snow Queen and should revel in her Snow White-ness. All winter long she blushed with passion to keep warm in the embrace of chilly nights, and now she’s eager to dull her dazzle into 50 shades of grey. Why do females want to fry their skin into shoe leather? Not to mention that the blue sapphires encircling her pedestal complement her natural glow, now that I’ve blown all the leaves away (and boy are my lips tired). Bwahaha!…oh that’s funnier than reading Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” to the Venus de Milo. Cancel that. Statue jokes are verboten. Joy and pleasure, on the other hand, are affirmed by my blushing goddess. Nothing is more fulfilling than engaging heart, mind, body and soul in the world that surrounds you. I concur. Hiking and sucking up that good ether on Eastman’s trails just fills me with energy. Magic at every turn. Miracles of newness, echoes of every sacred memory on every secret path, viridescence bursting over shadowed lanes, fragrances that drug the senses, twilit bowers and sudden breezes like coy kisses. There is nothing like palpable intimacy to bring back the blinding flash of what it all means. Makes the arches of your feet tingle. So, let the fairness of your beauty blanch or blush, my Goddess in the Garden. As you animate your garden, I’ll animate my wilderness. Then we’ll share notes to discover universal truths in equilibrium. That’s called living in the here and now, keeping the world in balance, and seeing our shadows in the rain. #10-11 a couple of gorgeous skies behind my house. #12 Click on the link at the end of the photos to see SULLY'S ON THE LAKE video w/audio.

Sully's on the Lake w/audio

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan