You can’t shovel sunlight off a driveway. But you can let it warm your heart and heat your hormones as spring spreads its imperatives. Newness, freshness, hope and optimism will sweep the streets of your mind if you follow the light; and there’s a draught of magic elixir in each potent breath of young air you inhale. Take two breaths and every outpost in your body will awaken, three and the sexual contagion all around you will kick-start your heart. So know that you are free to leer at buds bursting into bloom under the kiss of our star as it snuggles closer to us here in the northern hemisphere.

My mailbox too recently teemed with fresh fervor as I knew it would after posting a Q&A selection in March. Those ubiquitous questions which have taken on a life of their own from a discussion of character development in fiction are especially thought-provoking this time. Still don’t understand why relationship questions have been so popular, but admittedly your candor has informed and grown me as a writer, so I’ll post a few and I’ve answered the rest privately:

Q [Englewood, FL, paraphrased for brevity]: Have thought about your description of attraction at first sight. I am a visual “Artist” (oil painter) and it is the physical attraction that catches my attention first. Must confess that it is primordial...LUST that attracts me to Ladies. You are an excellent “Artist” using words and perhaps are attracted to ladies intellectually?

A: Tut, tut, no reason to limit our feelings here. Lust and brains are not mutually exclusive. “How do I love thee, let me count the ways…” There are women you only meet in a library, women who cry on your shoulder, and women you only speak to on the phone. The Holy Grail of Romance for me is knowing that a soulmate in my life is actually possible – there she was in that library of life, shelved between romance and fantasy but – alas – on “held” status! You might think that’s an unhappy ending, and on the highest level it is, but once a romantic idealist experiences non-fiction, that dream is rescued forever from remaining forever fiction. And if non-fiction is on reserve, circulating fiction is the only alternative to never reading for the rest of your life. So now I’m freed up to browse the library catalog for light reading and whatever jumps out at me from the gender genre. And since it’s something less than that soulmate relationship, sizzling beauty and sexuality top my list. Cupid knows which one of my organs to aim at first. Naturally, women shun me, but if I’m valued at all, it seems to be for – in no particular order – advice, humor, aforementioned lust, conversation and massage. Not saying that females don’t relate to me intellectually. I believe sapiosexual attraction plays big for many intelligent women – just read about the 25-year old Princeton valedictorian who recently got engaged to the head of the English department in his 70s. But with no matching commitments, I can relate to women however they come at me, simple to profound. Confidant, friend, whatever – it’s the unclaimed fallout from life’s lost-n-found.

Q [Peoria, IL]: I think I’m a good writer, but I’m nerdy when it comes to dialogue. Any advice?

A: One of the employment benefits of being a writer is that you don't have to be spontaneously cool to write spontaneously cool dialogue. Some very uncool writers create superb dialogue if given enough time. Some very cool writers do the same in the moment. But the writers who write amateurish dialogue are often the ones who think they are cool but are not. So, if you know it’s a problem, you’re ahead of the game. Take your time and work through it. Get out of who you think you are and become who you imagine. If you can recognize and appreciate good dialogue, you can create it.

Q [paraphrased]: My parents are getting a divorce, my sister is divorced and most my friends are divorced. Why do people bother to get married at all?

A: You’re asking somebody whose forever ended at 23 years. I do think it has a lot to do with expectations and habits, though. I’m guessing that you have strong romantic views, and I can agree as a romantic idealist that there is little in today’s relationships that attracts me personally. Even perfectly matched attractions get battered by contradictions that are lethal to the person who believes in love as a category-of-one. But in practical terms, the desire to raise children still survives as the tie that binds most marriages. The couple commitment itself may dwindle into something like an endurance contest that strains the family bond, and often marriages that survive only do so by compartmentalizing into separate lives. Your question is dismayingly relevant, but nothing can stop you from defining your own relationships however you wish.

This month’s photos below contrast the same views taken before spring arrived and after winter left town. #1-12 are all taken from inside my house looking out at the lake and Sullivan Acres.

And I’ll close with a few words in defense of the most neglected group in our society – one which we will all belong to in the fullness of time. I find it intriguing to listen to older adults who have had time to connect the dots in their lives and understand the patterns and the parallels. But I also see their frustration if they aren’t particularly articulate, or if they get ahead of themselves when speaking, giving the appearance of gaps in logic. They are prone to jump to conclusions that others don’t see, because they take for granted that whomever they are speaking with sees the same patterns or parallels.

These elders are a resource whose perspectives and knowledge spans decades of change – particularly changes in values that have been spun 180 degrees. That process of reversal is itself a fascinating study. Media and education – the pillars of indoctrination by which we imitate and internalize radical shifts in values – are like spinning color wheels that mix the pigment-of-the-day, while the rest of us are like chameleons who burst into obedient copy-cat tints and hues.

But getting back to the elders whose experience spans those transitions. They are the true repositories of facts and often the most resistant to social engineering. Histories can be rewritten, traditions expunged, role models destroyed, data revised, villains sanitized, heroes demonized, but witnesses to the past must be censored or silenced or marginalized until attrition takes them away. That is how change happens. It used to happen slowly, and the feeble rantings of the out-dated were simply patronized until they were gone. But fast-mass communication along with demographic displacement has changed that. It happens rapidly now. Toffler’s 1970 classic FUTURE SHOCK has turned out to be disturbingly prophetic in many ways. And tomorrow…tomorrow will shock us all.   

Thomas "Sully" Sullivan