I call it the 30-mile miracle. It’s one of my regular bike rides through the cold fire of blazing red and shimmering gold leaves pelting Minnesota’s autumn trails. When our trees get naked, they do it with panache! What puts the seasoning in your seasons?

It’s Q&A month for my column over on StorytellersUnplugged, and the balance scale shows the Q side weighted to the floor and the A side lighter than a white feather in a hurricane. But that’s because your questions are so profound and my answers are so superficial. Admittedly, I underestimated responses after the February, 2012, column [ http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomas ... carousels/ ] when I thought I had answered bone deep what I was going to answer about “what single star did you find to steer your ship?” And neither my emotions nor perspective are different going now into the seventh year – as no one who knows me will be surprised to hear. So I’ve been blindsided by the many threads and connections this has formed for readers. Your opinions and speculation in particular have been touching and enlightening to me. But while most of the email asks me to enlarge upon that column, I have to believe the underlying interest is for relationships in general. I’m not trying to cop-out here – look for more personal specifics in some future writing – but for now I’m taking on the most broadly appealing of your thought-provoking Qs. So here is a challenge hurled straight out of Michigan as it appears in this month’s SU column.

Q [from Michigan Troublemaker]: OK, Sullivan, define marriage.

A: Einstein said marriage was the unsuccessful attempt to make something lasting out of an incident, and Freud called love the overestimation of the sex object. Just a wild guess here, but I’m gonna say neither one of them ever experienced true, altruistic love all in a blend with the passions of instincts for fulfillment of the self. It happens now and then. Sometimes it even lasts. Sometimes it only flickers on the circuit boards of two people trying to be a self-sustaining power grid. More often, sad to say, Einstein and Freud seem to be spot on. Speaking of that vast majority of marriages, then, I think I could wake up five days in a row and go with: two people with the urge to share sex and intimacy each hoping the other one will match up with their agenda (i.e expectations outside of sex and intimacy). Usually the guy has little serious agenda except sex, going in (so to speak). But he fakes it, because he knows the female of the species has been in group training for a life plan since she was about six. Sex vs. six. No contest. It’s The Agenda, Stupid! So, in response to her agenda, the guy sort of develops his own, which is a mix of default, countermeasure, and an attempt to mollify, on account of most of the items in his lover’s agenda, especially romance, are afterthoughts to him. Now and then a woman marries with the agenda that she just wants to please her man, but that never works either unless she wants to become a serious nonentity and maybe a victim. The possible drivers of agendas are varied and endless, of course. A skeleton list of underlying motivations and needs might include: aforementioned sex, Einstein’s def. of marriage, Freud’s def, of love, making babies, legitimizing babies already in-production, locking in a companion of choice for new experiences or old, trophy and testimonial love, finding emotional security, finding financial security (ha-ha-ha-ha), narcissism, sheer loneliness after trying a turtle/cat/dog, finding a candidate who minds well or yields on critical stuff, meeting society’s expectations, meeting friends & family expectations, seeking a practical way to go through life, codependency, self-image. …and let’s not leave out fuzzy, tingly feelings and the heart-surging thought that “someone I think is valuable wants me!” The fact that half of marriages go under suggests that quality control fizzles. It also suggests that much of the surviving half of marriages is probably endangered. Wet cement doesn’t have a whole lot of time to decide what it wants to become. New love is like wet cement. Old cement has no choice except to patch the cracks or break up and start over. Yes, Michigan Troublemaker, I do believe in true love, because I’ve seen it, experienced it; but soulmates and marriages made in heaven are rare, rare, rare. And for most of the survivors in the marriage-go-round who – choose one – actually reach the Promised Land or merely hang on past their shelf life, love seems to morph into a species of gratitude. Gratitude for shared experiences, perspective, history, and giddy bewilderment over the fact that they are still standing. Romance becomes a soft echo, a chuckle. Passion becomes more like consolation (hopefully not a chuckle). That’s my take on what I see. T’ain’t enough for me. Whatever the love was that brought two people to a marriage, it wasn’t gratitude (mail-order brides and easy riders excepted). Beware, in particular, of early onset gratitude. That’s like premature burial. I can’t think of anything more demeaning to receive or condescending to give. For me, ruling out the magic of romantic idealism is a lethal downgrade. I’d rather have the search and the passion. But I can see why most people wouldn’t want to wait around in the hope of seizing a shooting star that might soar past once-in-a-lifetime. You have to ask yourself whether your soul was designed to build skyscrapers or could you settle for something reasonably north of a mausoleum. But, hey, what do I know? My grandfather bought a fire engine red Buick when he was 86, drove to Florida and married for the third time (outlived the first two but the third was 40 years younger). … And an afterword for those currently searching, bless y’all. May I suggest a checklist for evaluating a candidate’s agenda, sort of a connubial conjugation of the odds in your favor? You might, for instance, ask yourself is your candidate’s agenda honest, sincere, motivational, inspiring, insightful, and does it understand/cherish/respect the real and total you? Or is it sedentary, superficial, manipulative or ultimately going to bore you to tears with arrested development? Does it have a strong enough CIA component – Communication, Imagination, Adventure – or is there too much CIA for you? And here’s the most important thing in my OSHO: do you understand your agenda?

For more info and additional Q&A, here’s the link to the full SU column: http://storytellersunplugged.com/thomas ... dral-gold/

No, it isn’t nepotism! I’m not related to Nick Sullivan, who does the top-tier audio, but I’m proud to announce the release of my novel SECOND SOUL in that format just in time for Halloween! This is my apocalyptic thriller about a man who skis into a waterfall and survives clinical death…but comes back with baggage (based on a real accident that happened in Norway). You can download a copy here for any reading device, including a computer: http://www.amazon.com/Second-Soul/dp/B0 ... 242&sr=8-3 And may I add that the audio of THE MARTYRING, read by Bob Walter, is selling in the TOP 10 at Crossroad Press! Links to all formats are on my web page.

What a photogenic month! For those of you following the Great Pterodactyl Rescue & Stegosaurus Hunt et al on FB, you’ll recognize some of the first six fall color shots below taken from canoe & bike. Doc Foto weighs in with #7 – if that’s in my wardrobe, looks like I won’t need a Halloween costume! And yeah, I forgot the Blast from the Past photo last month, so here’s two: one before I started shaving my head (WAY before), the other with India ink kickboards I once enjoyed drawing. The last couple are from a Crow-Hassan hike.

Note: if this is a mirror site and you don't see photos, you can find all Sullygrams archived on my author's web page>Sullygrams & Columns. My webmaster Ed Picard in California usually has the latest one up within a day.

Photos are such great bookmarks for memories. Hope you have your own library of them. Now don’t tell me you never revisit the past. If you’ve ever heard an echo, you’ve been there. If you’ve ever seen a ghost, you’ve been there. If you’ve ever known regret, celebrated a memory, or been thrown away without going away, you’ve been there. Welcome to the magic mists of time in the rearview mirror. Or through the windshield, for that matter. Big Secret: rearview mirrors and windshields are interchangeable, especially if you need to turn your life around (why do people leave their magic on the table – I’ll never understand that). It’s never too late to find your own true path. You mapped it all out when you were full of dreams, so maybe it’s still there wherever you put your fearless youth. Check your heart, check your unencumbered consciousness. Aha! There it is, obscured by the scars and wrinkles of living. It’s fear that makes us grow old, until we finally regain our courage too late to reach for everything we could be. Procrastinate if that’s your strategy – let time settle it by default – but know that not choosing is nevertheless a choice. Much better to refuse Last Rites and reprise life itself. Daring dreams never age.

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com
http://twitter.com/thomassullivan
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1219261326

_________________
Thomas "Sully" Sullivan

You need more white space, i.e., more paragraphs. It's tough to read that Q and A without eye strain. : )

Yeah, I appreciate that feedback, Tony. Have wrestled with this. Since I use a spacer line between paragraphs, using paragraphs within a section like that pretty much dictates that I have to use a double spacer line between each section, each Q & A, etc. I suppose there really isn’t anything wrong with that, except that it looks very stretched out. Plus, it makes the column looks a lot longer that it is, and I think some people shy away from starting anything that looks long, or else they skip through it. Guess I’ve been kinda in denial about just doing it. On my own computer keyboard I have a toggle switch that instantly zooms the print. Most people don’t have that (though they could zoom – it’s a hassle with centering and everything). Maybe the lesser of evils is just ignoring the use of a double spacer line, even though this might make it harder to decide whether you’re starting a new section or just a new paragraph within an existing section. Sometimes I’ve tried using an ellipsis in the middle of a long unbroken section to give the reader a little respite as gearshift, but I don’t think that does anything for the eyestrain. Again, thanks, Tony. Please keep that me about this, if I don’t present a solution. Appreciated.

_________________
Thomas "Sully" Sullivan