Light is splashing all over me as I voice record this Sullygram in full flight on one of my fav trails.  In a moment I’ll reach that oak dead ahead and towel off with its shadow.  It really is brilliant out here on the borderless high meadows – a million shades of dazzling!  The fertile smell of grass is cloying, but in the shade each breath will be like a cool sip from a mountain stream.  Hope you are getting your share of sensory stimulation out of summer.  Everyone needs a nature high, if only to scour the rust off their imagination, polish their ideals and infuse their dreams with fire.

My spirit was already soaring through June when it got a turbo boost from lifelong friend and adventurer Bruce Norvell of Idaho.  Impossible to sum up the venues and the sterling conversations that reconnect us like the latest chapter of twin sagas that keep crossing paths.  It’s Bruce’s ranch near Sun Valley where I’ve gone to skinny ski out the last snows of the past three winters.  Our final evening here in Minnesota was a great capper as we dodged a couple of rainstorms to canoe through sunset into a magical twilit marsh.  Gliding past that profusion of surreal beauty, Bruce – who like many of you knows of my indelible inamorata – asked in an awestruck voice, “Did you ever bring the love of your life here?”  Alas.  The romantic itinerary of that shared future becomes an unshared past with every moment of the present I expend without her.  But it was nice to have a witness who could apply the footnotes of some of my words over the past seven years to an actual experience in one of the enchanted settings I frequent. 

Not sharing has been one of the big omissions of my life, but from your many illuminating emails I’ve come to appreciate even more that a worse fate would be trying to share with the wrong person.  And if the right person finds you for even a glimpse of what can be – as happened to me a few years back – you know the difference.  Dismaying how common it is to miss out on that when you are with the wrong individual.  Too easy for the limitations of one person in a mismatch to compromise the magic for both.  One partner can’t see in Technicolor; the other feels as if their rainbows are fading to black.  If you’ve ever looked through one of those pinhole cards to view the sun, thus shutting out the rest of the universe, you can imagine being in a marriage where the other person sees only what is visible through their pinhole perspective. 

The answer, for me, was to accept a partition in my life.  And when I thought about it, I realized that the private lives of oversized souls – perhaps whole ages and cultures – did and continue to do exactly that.  What Nordic countries call “parallel relationships” and the French dub “le cinq à sept” echo through every age and society; while simultaneously the practical necessities within marriage are stretched even thinner in modern relationships.  But none of that really fit me.  There is a unique balance for each of us in our needs and obligations.  Partitions.  Inner truth seems to demand them.  No matter how repressive the façades of a society or a circumstance, whatever defines us as individuals will resist extinction, will fight at some level for survival.  Alone is a partition.  Searching is a partition.  Finding a sanctuary is a partition.  I never expected an impossible sanctuary to happen to me long after I was free again, but like I said, without it I would never have understood the possibility of lasting romantic love.  The histories of illustrious people are particularly fascinating to me in that regard, because I think they are less patient with a status quo, less likely to waste their lives conforming, less cowed or intimidated.

Often it’s a fine line.  There is altruism in service to others vs. discovering that each of us is a society of one.  There is enduring whatever life deals you vs. optimizing your ability to do so by staying healthy and whole inside and out.  For some that means living on an island.  For others it means being no more of an individual than a social insect.  For me now it means the memory of a fantasy and the fantasy of memories that sustain my romantic optimism.  If you told me it’s Divine Providence that gives everyone an outside shot at living the romantic ideals they profess, I wouldn’t disagree with you.  But you’d have to add that the kicker is you have to overcome your biggest fears and weaknesses in order to get there.  You can be sure that it will be inconvenient in the routine of your life and that you will have to risk something.  The gods of irony will accept no less than that you prove yourself worthy when they run that by you.  And if you fail the opportunity, there is no consolation save that for as long as you are able to keep the memory alive, you may re-visit the dream…in another partition. 

I have a love/hate relationship with photos I post here.  Love because they represent what I worship.  Hate because they do it inadequately.  Two dimensional images just can’t cut it if you weren’t there for the original inspiration.  And if you were there, the photos are still only a weak arousal of your sensory memory.  Limitations noted, I hope you can hear the lazy drone of a dragonfly, feel the warmth of a sunset, taste the greening of life, inhale the ether of your own soul, and touch the sky in these captured moments:  #1-3 kayaking in the SS Freedom; #4 Bruce Norvell; #5-10 canoeing in the SS Carousel; #11 Bruce after I “accidentally” dumped him in the lake; #12 unknown pirate.

July’s column over on StorytellersUnplugged is about handling those intrusive telemarketer calls in shameless fashion.  Here’s the link:  http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2013/07/15/thomas-sullivan-uninventing-the-telephone-or-save-the-gay-baby-whales-for-jesus/#respond .  For the record, I only pick up the phone if I recognize the caller ID.  But if you’re legit and just not in my address book, please leave a message so that I can return your call.

Kind of strange to not have Famous Dave’s Bluesfest this year, but playing T-sax is making up for it.  Songs are soundtracks for poignant and magnificent memories.  The summer’s anthem leading the playlist is the History of the Eagles tour now underway.  Glenn Frey & Company are quite simply the metronome of decades.  Like perfect avatars they capture it all, timeless and soul-deep in the consciousness of two centuries.  May you find the rhythms of your heart, mind and soul all in one place as easily as that this season.  A place, a person, or a dream.  Find one and you have access to the other two.

News and Articles