There is excitement in the hum of a dragonfly’s wings and drama in a flaming regatta of sunset clouds racing down the horizon to the finish line. It must be summer! Are you catching your fair share of this miracle planet in its blue envelope?
It’s happening for me hiking at dawn, swimming at noon, biking at sunset or canoeing after dark. And any time in between. It happens from my window or on the lake below or at Elm Creek. I savor it writing at night or playing the T-sax in a garage or at…Bluesfest. Bluesfest socked it to me again this year, saturating the pools at Peavey Plaza with liquid soul from 10 home-run bands over 10 hours. Add street color with all its quirky dance moves, fresh-up ribs & Ben ‘n’ Jerry’s ice cream, and you have a Saturday that marinates in memory. You should never have a day without romance in it, which is to say some kind of magic. Turn on the outposts in your mind. Learn to imagine, dare to do. (Ooh, think I’ll Tweet that.)
It was too late for me to look like Brad Pitt after I got “whupped with a ugly stick,” but I’m closing in on Benjamin Button, the character he played in the movie about de-aging. Karen Manrique’s Age Calculator http://www.sonnyradio.com/realage3.swf gives me a virtual age of 40.4 with a life expectancy of almost 109 (got to do better, as I’m aiming for 113 on skis). Check yourself out at the above link. Karen is the sane half of Doc Foto’s marriage, BTW, and Doc Foto is folkslinger [sic] Mark Manrique, a cherished friend in Lansing, Michigan, who “doctors” the outrageous photos so many of you seem to enjoy (why???), including the two below.
Three of the other photos include a young boy at Bluesfest who could have made the finals of “So you think you can dance,” Big Daddy Cade doing homage to B. B. King, and Katie Craft (aka Ms. Katrine, whose range of styles conjugates the entire history of music) fronting Dean Weisser’s Band. The three remaining photos are from canoeing -- one within arm’s length of unperturbed ducks in a row, and the other two at the edge of a waterfall looking down. It’s a pretty tame waterfall, but you can tell by the angle of the second shot that I am poling one-armed with the paddle to avoid going over the lip.
During dry season, the five Norby Nation kids of my adoptive family and I have climbed up and down that waterfall slope, but when the water is actively flowing it can be treacherous. When I first moved here there was a small gang of teenagers who were always in trouble with the police. I confronted the leader over an incident one day, and to make a long story short, it led to a friendship and a dedication to them in one of my novels as “the lost boys.” They used to come around to see me every day, and one evening the leader confessed that he had fallen on that waterfall and suffered brain damage. He had some dysfunction, but they all thought of themselves as damaged goods -- somehow irretrievable and irredeemable. It reinforced something I needed to remember: that we all need dignity and worth in the eyes of others. When you give people that, you give them the motivation to reach their potential.
Several years ago I received an e-mail from an Australian who is on the cutting edge of just that kind of positive thinking. Grant Soosalu is one of those people who shines a very bright light where others curse the darkness. Recently we communicated again in an interview for his next book and for his blog, which I have found extremely informative and inspiring. If you are interested in a common sense approach to happiness and life enhancement techniques, I highly recommend checking out his whole site. Part of the interview we did is at this link: http://enhancingmylife.blogspot.com/2009/06/life-enhancing-with-author-thomas.html
May I invite you to view the comments of 140 characters or less I’ve been trying to post daily on Twitter? Just click http://twitter.com/thomassullivan It’s anonymous and you don’t have to do anything after that. Even if you join in order to follow me or others, nothing comes to you and you don’t have to utter a peep...er Tweet. It’s just an informal ear to the wall to overhear things on almost any subject. Example of my recent Tweets: “Damn, missed the running of the bulls in Pamplona again. Ah, well, I’ll just jaywalk on a street with a feisty squirrel.” And “Fork in the road: Celebrate, remember, enshrine vs. Block, forget, revise. Yeah, I take the first one every time. Romantic realist.”
My column over on
Storytellers Unplugged for July is about putting spontaneity in your life and
how writers can mine that in an organized way. Here’s the link: http://www.storytellersunplugged.com/thomas-sullivan-stained-glass-notes-from-ringtones-in-a-gopher-hole-or-i-hate-outlines#respond
And if you’d like to get this newsletter sent directly to you free each month
including photos, email me at mn333mn@earthlink.net . Until next time live large, live real...
Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com
http://twitter.com/thomassullivan
