You again! [Me, addressing the pandemic.] Didn’t we meet like this last year? Go away, and take your bastard mutating children with you. You are not going to cancel connections between people!

So, goes the season of summer. So goes life. Even in the time of Covid. Even in a time of national and international chaos. The horizon ignites like an Olympic torch each dawn, dazzles the day, and greys to ashes at dusk. In between, life is sometimes a sprint, sometimes a sprint with hurdles, sometimes a marathon. Then September waves the checkered flag, and all things settle back into the earth, dehydrated but taking elegant final bows.

Was going to segue into an epitaph here for the last of summer’s full moons, but I’d rather revisit the joy I felt when the foremost of them debuted three months ago. Here’s how I put it on Facebook:

The first of the full silver soul moons of summer tonight! I watch from the long divan through the window that fronts the lake in my backyard as it glides into view like a schooner from the midnight velvet Port of the East, making slowly for the Port of the West where dreams lay at anchor in the safe harbor of my memories. The June Moon makes me breathless. I strain to catch the legerdemain of the First mate and Captain as they conjure up its precious lunar cargo, but I never quite see the magic. Still, it comes. A paradox of cold molten silver pouring down into my black glass lake. Alive with diaphanous mist, it flows toward me. Directly to me. Straight as an arrow. They say it’s an illusion – this dead-on optic of moonlight on water – a matter of perspective. But I know it is mine alone. Diana the Huntress could fire no surer an arrow so unerringly into the heart of a target. Nor concupiscent Cupid. Bull’s-eye! Passionately erotic and flawlessly romantic, the night is suddenly an enchantment. The soundtrack is the music of the spheres. So, naturally, I listen for the honeyed voices of saxophones. Harmonic tandem was never better expressed than in this classic song… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upbcSPpelzg

Almost as gratifying was receiving so much candid feedback a couple Sullygrams ago when the theme was false aging. The range of response brought home the great disparity between people whose active lifestyles have kept them intellectually young and physically viable, including sexually, and those whose sedentary habits and expectations are exacting a price. The disparity echoed what I wrote about the more complex hurdles post-menopausal women have to face as well. One reader, an 84-year-old male who lives in the south and has been very active all his life, gave me permission to quote him as an example: “Also appreciate / recognize your accurate thoughts on the ageing affect on our sex lives. My 79 year old wife, [----], experiences Post-Menopausal Dryness that causes pain during Intimacy and has stopped wanting Sex two years ago.... while I still have the urge. How to respect her wishes and my opposite needs is a problem waiting to happen, but so many women over age 75 also experience similar pain. When will Science develop a “Pill” that prevents female dryness?” From a woman addressing the same problem (no age given), I read that she and her husband were content to snuggle and caress with no consummation at all. And still another married woman who I know to be closing in on 70 assured me frankly that lust was alive and well in women her age. All by way of affirmation: aging is not one size fits all.

Somewhat less of a hurdle are the difficulties posed by Covid. Not giving anyone advice here, but while the pandemic may have made the ultimate intimacy between singles more challenging, where there’s a will, there’s a way. In fact, imaginative contact can enhance relations. Human expression, both verbal and physical, can be exquisitely erotic and lend itself to role-play and situational fantasies. I’d write you a script, but some of you might drop dead from a heart attack. And besides, you need to customize this to your passion and romantic tastes. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Switching gears here from sex to violence, it’s very troubling to me to read so many fearful and despairing emails about the President and Afghanistan. Nor can I keep up with responses, though I truly hate leaving people hanging. As some of you know, I sometimes reply with a link to things I’ve posted on Facebook. Sharing what I posted on FB seems to be the best alternative here. But what I wrote shares a widespread dismay over our leadership vacuum. If you don’t want to tolerate my honest thoughts, please just skip the following paragraph.

It would be easy to feel sorry for Joe Biden if he had not been pushed into the most important position in the world like a tottering float in a carnival parade. To see him now blindly and blithely blithering through enormous challenges far beyond the blustering hyperbole of Congress where he was entrenched for nearly half a century is tragic. But it is the nation’s tragedy and the world’s more than his. The cues and orchestrations are painfully obvious. Who or what is behind the curtain? Certainly not the Wizard of Oz. I almost dread finding out. One hopes we make it to the next election with enough security and stability to install rational governance. Not saying that clear-headedness is a comprehensive standard of worthiness for the most powerful job in the world, but it needs to be a priority. The #1 criteria for a presidential candidate on either side of the aisle ought to be effective judgment. Maybe we should stand back from media character assassinations that destroy candidates and try first to grasp the simple fact of whether a leader has the common sense to serve the greater good of the nation. Quite predictably, the dominant media trivializes mountains of corruption down to irrelevant molehills for career politicos it favors and mirror reverses that process for those it dislikes. We have demonized strength and made frailty a virtue. We condemn success and celebrate perceived victimhood. As long as we glorify lip service paid to politically correct emotions by candidates, we run the risk of electing weak and ineffective leaders with terrible judgment. Time to recognize that a media-ocracy leads to mediocracy.  
 

Closing with a photo journal below of my recent alien encounter while kayaking. Captions: #1 should’ve heeded the warning when the egret suddenly fled; #2 then the sky got weird; #3 a splash-down in the water dead ahead; #4 closed in on UFO (Unidentified Floating Object); #5 the moment before I’m kidnapped by aliens; #6 tried to fight them off with paddle; #7 escaped through time warp…8 minutes missing on my watch; #8-9 sky gradually normalizes as I emerge from time warp; #10 deadly algae mark on boot shows how close alien acid blood came to flooding over top as I waded ashore; #11 all is well; #12 looking ahead to next adventure…

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan