Think of your windows as picture frames. These are your real-time connections to the world. Whether you are looking out of a bedroom, an office, or above a kitchen sink, a sheet of glass is your news feed, your timeline, your streaming of what’s going on with the seasons as well as with your neighbors and the sky (do not underestimate the healing power of an endless sky!). The possibilities through your windows are endless, but they are – alas – dictated.
Unless you utilize
doorways to go where you want, windows (or lack of windows) inform your day.
Guess I’m pretty much known for wearing out door hinges because I circulate so
readily through nature as well as the urban realm, but I put in plenty of
window time too, especially in my Creatorium (no “m” in the middle, please).
I’m sitting there now in front of the computer and above a lake. Visiting the
world in a penetrating way before retreating to my private lair to assimilate what
I take in makes me feel free at the same time that I savor a fleeting sense of
belonging. As they say, “those who do not move do not notice their chains.” But
the subject here is windows, so let me share some brief notes I’ve been
scratching down this month as I glance out at Mom Nature prepping for a costume
change from summer to winter.
OCTOBER 23: Gluey
raindrops are warping the view as they trickle down my window pane, making the
world look 16th century done in the style of a 19th
century Impressionist painting. The daubs and sprays of color that come through
convey an overriding sense of struggle, a war of spectrums as trees shake their
fists at the wind in a pointless battle for racial supremacy according to the
color of their leaves.
OCTOBER 31: Halloween
looks very much like a drama of zombies, goblins and ghosts – sort of a Wagnerian
opera where bodies are strewn all over the stage and have to be brought back to
life because there aren’t enough actors to finish the tale. “Trick-or-treat!” the
chorus shouts. Do they really expect a treat from me? Yes, of course they do!
They’ll be thrilled to discover I’m giving out lectures on tooth decay instead
of candy this year.
NOVEMBER 10: The trees outside my window have gone Zen, withdrawing into their meditative cores, naked and impervious to pain, annihilating the “self” and thus becoming one with the cosmos. Overhead, winter’s white burial shroud is twisting in a high wind, ready to burst into crystal showers of snow – those atoms of absolution that will wash the slate blank, once again cleansing the Earth’s sins – tabula rasa.
What fills your
window frame...and, more importantly, what is outside your door?
And, yes, there is a #13 photo this month of my dad, owing to the fact that I promised Facebook friends I would include part of the post I made about my father on Veterans Day in the next Sullygram. The post started with this photo tribute:
“My dad...Lieutenant Commander Wilson H. Sullivan. An amazing man and Intelligence officer whose exploits are still being uncovered when I go through his papers. Not so long ago found a personal letter of commendation for an unspecified secret mission from the Secretary of State. He was an assassination target twice when we lived in Argentina. I remember gun crews coming to visit him and have a vague recollection of Evita, who I was told used to pat me on the head at embassy functions, and the head of the Argentine admiralty hiding out in our apartment -- dad went where the adrenaline went. Love you, Pop...”
[…and after numerous emails/messages/FB comments requested more bio, I
added this] “…he really was a remarkable man. Highly secretive by nature and by
both his military and civilian careers. I now understand the ‘nature’ part of
that, because it goes back to something that happened when he was 6 years old.
I don’t want to tell you what that was other than that it wasn’t sexual abuse.
Guess that secrecy is part of my private nature, only I don’t have an excuse to
be this way and I’m trying to change. Nor does my son, who likewise is
extremely private. Anyway, my dad’s official duty was charting Argentine
shipping away from German U-boats in the couple years when we were living in
BA; but we got around the continent, living in a dozen countries for what
purposes I only partly know. My dad only lost two ships. Argentina – and
neighboring Paraguay where the infamous Dr. Mengele eventually fled – was rife
with Nazi sympathizers but Argentina was officially neutral. The ships were
lost because one was over 1000 miles off course and the other stopped at a port
it wasn’t supposed to and someone put a bomb on board. My memories of those
years are those of someone not yet 6, so they are a mosaic of places and events
that I’ve only gradually pieced together with my dad’s biography. What I know
of my dad is – strangely – mostly from the high-drama events and people who
surrounded him. Wherever he went, he took us if it was at all possible. I
remember attack drills when we were ocean bound, and being in a seaplane
another time landing under fire, students shooting down on trolley cars near
the Casa Rosada and my nanny sweeping me off the streets as I marched up and
down imitating chants of ‘Viva, Peron!’ One morning I opened the ‘ventanas’ to
find a horse’s ass staring me in the face, and all up and down the street
mounted horses stood surrounding the girls school across from us which was
supposed to be housing a nest of spies. My dad was not a society person, but he
was well connected despite that. There was a European prince (a charming
alcoholic whose royal family apparently gave him money to stay in South
America) who used to take me places, and down the street I played with the
Bingham children. Hiram Bingham is the Westerner who first discovered Machu
Picchu, and another Bingham was a US Sen. Little Stephen Bingham, a year or two
younger than me, still haunts me, because we tormented him, and he grew up to
be the dysfunctional lawyer who smuggled guns into the courthouse for the
Soledad brother shoot-out in California. I think he’s still an international
fugitive. And there are brief flashes from other places where my dad took us,
unrelated to the war but still edgy. In the mountains of Brazil, I would ride
on the neck of a horse with a gaucho (don’t know why an Argentine gaucho was
there but he was) in the saddle, and one day when we were riding my older
sister Merry’s horse was spooked by an anaconda. My dad used to pull me back
from the rail of a small motor vessel going up a river in another South
American interior (I think the river Negro?), because jacares (?? A sort of
6-ft long alligator or caiman) would slither off the narrow river banks at our
passing. I had platinum blonde hair, and in yet another remote jungle place dad
took us, the indigenous ran out of huts shouting “rubio, rubio!” which I
believe means “blond.” I also have vague memories of, I think, Sacsayhuaman, an
Inca fortress in Peru that I wrote about in THE WATER WOLF. When dad took us
home to Detroit, he had semi-paralyzed vocal cords from peritonitis after a
burst appendix (the Navy had him up on a chart 3 nights in a row to die), and
so his isolated nature became even more private. E.g., my sister insisted I was
two weeks old before anyone told her she had a brother. Dunno how that’s
possible, or who she may have thought I was. It should be noted that the
counter to my dad’s private nature was my mother. She was his everything, and I
doubt there was much she didn’t know. They were married for 64 years, and he
was always telling her how much he loved her and she was the only one in his
life. Stateside, my dad gave up his
career as a lawyer and eventually became head of Alcohol & Tobacco Tax (now
ATF, because their jurisdiction includes the National Firearms Act). Dad was
always bringing home exotic weapons, and he used to take me to the Shrine
Circus once a year where he displayed a booth of guns for the Treasury
Department. He had equally exotic acquaintances there, too, and I was allowed
to sit on the edge of a mat in the center ring (literally ringside seat which I
gladly gave up when a water buffalo let loose with a major pee during a show).
Another Circus entity my dad knew was Sasha Seimel, who used to hunt tigers
with a shaft, getting them to leap and then impaling them. Sasha once tracked
down a tiger in India that had killed 11 people and 36 dogs. Still another was
Andy Palmer, who had the world’s largest gun collection and used to win me
ribbons by shooting backwards over his shoulder into a shooting gallery. Many,
many more stories, but dad eventually had what best can be described as Elliot
Ness’s old job as head of ‘The Untouchables’ – made famous in the TV series and
movie – but after the end of Prohibition. Even in my Dad’s era they knocked over
some 200 stills a year in Michigan! What I know about him after that came
mostly from his agents (soooo many cool things happened). They told me he had
the only conviction of a certain mob boss, and he had bullet scars on his
stomach that he would not tell me about. Another mobster tried to run him down
with a car in an alley, I’ve heard. And I’m way over limit here. Maybe I’ll
come back to this – feels good somehow to share a little, which I’m not very
good at…”
And my October SU column is now archived – a new installment of your always intriguing, often daunting, questions and my feeble answers in which the subjects of bears, outlining, an Australian interview, my greatest fear, a timeless question of time passing, stray dogs, how many times you can fall in love, and a writer arguing with his spouse, are covered. The link to UNDRESSING IN MINNESOTA: http://www.storytellersunplugged.com/2015/10/15/thomas-sullivan-undressing-in-minnesota/#respond
My inamorata once described the life she dreamed we’d have together as spending all the time in the world with each other this way: in winter I’d ski circles around her, and we’d end up in front of the fireplace, and in summer she’d float in the water with a flower in her hair and try to distract me from my workout. That has stuck with me – especially this time of year – because intense recreation in beautiful settings is invariably followed by a serene afterglow of peaceful reflection. The fireplace blaze flickering on the hearth and the cozy warmth of a softly lit couch reverses that window on the world I described at the opening of this Sullygram. It is all right there – the universe. In my living room. The ultimate sanctuary in a life of creating sanctuaries. I wish you as much for Thanksgiving and beyond…
