I call it a Christmas tree, but what’s in a name? Those lone pines have come to stand for good
will, love, giving and hope across the world, haven’t they? Whatever you celebrate or don’t celebrate as
the ultimate author of your being, I’d love it if you’d help me decorate my
Christmas tree. I haven’t done one in
years because it seems pointless to do it alone.
Maybe all we really need to do is admire what nature has
already placed on our tree. Because just
now in Minnesota winter has licked all the emerald evergreens with frost and
hung crystal icicles on their boughs. No
pastry chef or confectioner ever did a more dazzling or literal job of icing. The silver moon tricks rainbows out of those frozen
prisms on the ends of branches, while snowflake angels settle softly on the
tips of needles (how many angels can you fit on the head of a pin). What do you think, is it complete like that –
our little lone pine reaching to touch the face of The Deep? Needs something more, doesn’t it…a bell, a
star, a doodad spire sold at Wal-Mart that supposed to represent all that’s
good and perfect in the world? What
should it look like? The paleness in my
memory is summoning a phantom of what’s missing. I can almost see it, dancing in the swirling
snow – here it comes, here it comes… Uh-oh,
the shimmer of my lashes is getting in the way.
Must have caught a snowflake in my eye.
Both eyes. Give me a minute, please. I’ll come back to this…
An amazing amount of email flowed in about last month’s
photos and what some of you generously call my “poetry.” Even arch enemy, Doc Foto (actually one of my
all-time fav people but don’t tell him – bah humbug!) said the prose should be
turned into a poem. Srsly, Doc Foto is
the one person I can phone and, when he picks up only to hear me beating a bass
drum Salvation Army style and singing “Brighten the corner where you are,” he never
asks why but just laughs right on through it.
Well, all right, it wasn’t a bass drum, it was an empty filing
cabinet. Anyway, Doc (Mark Manrique)
Foto thinks last month’s Sullygram should be poetized:
A quiet
pond will do
Wind
texting ripples on the water
Tall
woods standing at attention
So as not
to disturb
The trail
through the meadow
Where
love is what love does.
…or something.
Been a grand month of exciting adventures, meaningful
context, and priceless communication here in the land of sky-blue waters. And you know, if you think the crazy stuff I
do is the best part of it, well, t’ain’t so.
It’s the conversations. I’m no
good at small talk, but I’m seven kinds of amazing at stumbling into
interesting strangers in spontaneous and unpredictable circumstances. And I’m blessed with friends who love
stimulating palaver. Looking back this
month I remember a lengthy discussion with a friend in a lean-to on a lake in
the wilds of Crow Hassan, and a spirited exchange with someone else standing in
an artificial waterfall, and quantum leaps of imagination in the midst of startled
patrons at Leann Chin’s one night. I’m
never quite sure whether onlookers are entertained or just stupefied with
disapproval; but maybe there is a raconteur
in everyone, even casual eavesdroppers, yearning for escape. No matter how much you have and how
successful you become, you can still be suffocating in silence or drowning in
dullness. Rich or poor, finding
meaningful engagement with other people is the great equalizer in life. I guess we’re all like Christmas trees in that
way: strung with lights and hoping our circuits will conduct electricity when
we plug into the grid.
By jingle bells, it’s time for that ancient tradition of a
Christmas tale. OK, not exactly ancient,
but I did say three years ago that I would do what I am about to do over on
StorytellersUnplugged. That was because
several of you requested the re-telling of a transformative – nay, miraculous –
incident from when I was a teenager living in an old man’s hotel for $7 a week. Here it is, formerly known as EMPTY BOXES I
HAVE WORN aka ANGELS IN THE REARVIEW MIRROR aka ISLANDS OF THE SOUL: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomassullivan/2013/12/15/thomas-sullivan-the-7-christmas/#respond
Below are this month’s photos: #1 cinnamon & vanilla candles – another
tradition going back 7 years; #2 Seaweed Sully in a stock swimmer’s pose, I
think for The Detroit News; #3-4 couple of beautiful Crow-Hassan moments; #5
writer Loren Estleman & moi; #6 my G’pa, Captain Sullivan walking the deck
of one of his enormous ships; #7 sharing a wagon w/MJ the Cannibal (she used to
bite my fingers); #8-9 story here – some wealthy investors invited me to this
site (the first governor of Michigan’s mansion overlooking Echo Lake in
Bloomfield Hills, MI) and offered to build a 50-meter pool if I would coach a
team there, which I turned down but not before I got to play on the trampoline
that graced one of three terraces; #10 don’t know the first woman, but I think
that’s my dad with my grandmother (white blouse) who was killed when he was 6;
#11 Doc Foto is at it again – I’m the lump on the hump. “Hey, hey, hey…what day is it?”
And you knew I wouldn’t leave out the return of skiing,
didn’t you? Here’s a video link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc8bz5KHUzs Actually this was just test footage
for FB/YouTube postings with a new toy (helmet cam) on my first ski run this
year; though last I checked, several dozen people have watched it, so I’ll
throw it in. I am soooooo out of shape
for skiing, but I already have the hot bath après-ski down pat. Cindy Frey (Glenn’s wife) reminds me that,
according to Alobar and Kudra from the Tom Robbins’ novel JITTERBUG PERFUME,
the hot bath is the key to a life immortal.
Spot on. Have a feeling I’m going
to go for a lot of immortality this season.
Thanks for letting me interrupt my earlier thought, but now I can go back to what I was trying to see earlier when my eyelashes began to shimmer. The thing that is missing on our tree. I see it clearly now, coming into focus through the sheer act of communicating with all my friends this holiday season. Like a door opening in the draw of a warm hearth – open, open…there it is, the crowning ornament for our tree, the ultimate gift, shining like a beacon to the future, and it is…you!
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