Purple flowers throbbing at twilight are like catnip for my soul! When I see them bunched against a clapboard barn or smoldering above the pinks and crimsons in a ghostly garden, it’s like a magical gateway to the coming of night. My blood turns electric and my heart churns with romantic – make that erotic – passion.

The glow scales deeper with dusk. You feel warmth, and the rainbow phosphorescence takes on an elfin intimacy. Flowers huddle closer in the gloom like the faces of munchkins awaiting “Up curtain!” in a moonlit Oz. You just have to be enchanted by that, have to linger in passing. Driving hidden lanes past quiet ponds and vast fields sweeping up to gnarled forests is addictive for me. I really, really, really love my life.

And you, sir or madam, how do your afterdays go? You may think you’re too exhausted to enjoy the music of the night, but perhaps you are only bored. Feeling that you are merely existing can do that. So can the world coming at you in humdrum rituals devoid of imagination and looking endlessly the same. Tut, tut. It is not the same. You are letting yourself see it the same. Change. Carve yourself a sanctuary or two. Shun the agents of tedium. Whether it’s people or routines, don’t let them rob your 20-20 inner vision blind.

Tell you a story. I had a couple of boyhood friends who were as different from each other as night and day. One was well-off, well-traveled, denied nothing in the way of camps, lessons, after-school events, tutors, group activities, organizations –structured stuff. The other was as poor as the proverbial church mouse, though I don’t think his family ever went to church. If it bothered him that he was pretty much on his own, you never knew it. He played pickup football in the field behind the library and tagged along with the gang to whatever was free. When the price of a ticket came into it or the necessity of something fashionable to wear to a dance or a party, he was a no-show.

Back to the young scion. Almost by default he rode the fast track and gathered all the testimonials of popularity you could list in a school yearbook. He captained the teams he was on and was a class president at least twice. It seemed only fitting that he dated the prettiest girls and had the best toys beginning with a Sears & Roebuck’s treehouse and ending a decade later with a yellow convertible in the high school parking lot. His polar opposite meanwhile ended that same decade still riding the rattletrap two-wheeler he had received secondhand in 7^th grade. I remember being in a bus on the way to a cider mill outing and passing him as he was kicking a football and chasing it himself in Birney Park.

Well, you can probably guess where this is going. My anointed schoolmate with the charmed life was still rich last I heard but paying off his second wife and no doubt providing child support for three heirs. Alcohol and gambling played big in his business failures, and I heard he tried to commit suicide before he found religion.

My less celebrated friend is not rich, but he sells real estate out of a house he shares with a wife and daughter. They tell me he is quite innovative and much sought after as a session musician. He invented a game and has a partner who is supposed to be good at marketing. In his spare time, he fixes bikes that kids bring to him.

Moral: no moral. OK…a little moral, my point going back to paragraph three being that anything that forces you to live by your imagination and individuality can’t be all bad, whereas prescribed paths, no matter how well paved with social sanction and conformity, can be death to the soul. Like I said, carve yourself a sanctuary.

You might find a few sanctuaries in the photos below, beginning with #1 a typical small town church here in Minnesota; #2 and that’s my lad Shane/Sean/the Boy Child back when he was a child actor (I think this still photo is from “Tom Sawyer”); #3 one of the many ranches around the Twin Cities; #4-5 fields and ponds go together, but not people and alligators (‘gator photo taken by Linda Tyldesley); #6 that’s Norby Nation’s youngest – Peter the Great – practicing to become a Steeple Jack; #7-8 and my own grandlad Famous Seamus on his birthday; #9-11 some more nature shots I’m blessed to see; #12  and finally a blast-from-the-past shot of my “cuz” Mary Jo, a.k.a. Wampus, and yours truly, a.k.a. Treesqueak. Have no idea where we were going, but when we ran away from home it was always in style (…for the 1800s).

The sands of summer’s hourglass are rapidly draining away and I have so much left to get to, including some state-hopping that will include Michigan. Must hug those dear to me and let communication perform its magic.

Speaking of which, how is it that communication became a lost art? We have such limited repertoires of creativity these days – so little in the way of wit and imagination. Political correctness has poisoned style. We are dumbed down by decades of indoctrination and paralyzed by propaganda to the point where we do not dare exhibit flare. Sensitivity is our catechism and to become a victim is somehow the highest level of moral purity. Equality of opportunity has become equality of outcomes. The good news is you can always declare independence from conformity and groupthink. You can still stand outside the box alone or flee with a soulmate back into the Garden of Eden where you can step on the snake and grow your own apples certified organic. Peace in Paradise. No groupthink. No Original Sin, just Original Thought.  And if love turns from passionate to practical, you’re doing it wrong.