The town laments the recent death of a 9 year old boy who – as I understand it – collided on his bicycle with a school bus driven immediately nearby the school. The tragedy is an unparalleled misfortune and isolation at the end of the school year and at the beginning of the summer.  It is too a lingering heartbreak for the family, the school children and the community. Everything by comparison is trivial, vaguely irrelevant and confusing, forcing disparate philosophical conclusions – all impossible to reason.

Sitting on the balcony, facing directly into the mid-afternoon sun, poised to receive the rays with my collar open and polo shirt sleeves rolled up, I soon began to suffer the intense heat, comforted only briefly by a sudden passing wind. I went inside, stunned, awaiting the cooler air to restore me. The balcony chairs are now in the avenue of shade cast over the apartment building by the revolving orb.

The provocation of loss is the analysis of its own deficiency. The stimulation of living isn’t found in the acknowledgement of life’s precipitous change. Nonetheless today I felt the need to proclaim the inequitable advantages, the crinkling chirps of birds, the balmy air, the yellow sunshine and the blue dome above. it’s a brilliant summer day. A holiday atmosphere prevails in anticipation tomorrow of Canada Day, July 1st. There will be festivities in nearby Riverside Park. From our balcony again this year I expect as well that we shall see the distant fireworks launched from a nearby farm house into the midnight sky above the burgeoning verdant corn fields.

In the on-going research of things to do and places to go, we have stirred an eye to Lac Mont Tremblant, Québec. Perhaps an autumnal visit. Years ago we visited friends there, people who have since crossed the globe to the South Pacific. The proximity of the site is an immediate attraction. Knowing that it is an appealing resort for the Montréalais inspires a predictable quality. By coincidence today casual communications aligned with friends from Ottawa to Longboat Key to New Zealand, directly or indirectly concerning Lac Mont Tremblant and Rachmaninoff. Once again it all blends together, reinforcing life’s sometimes impenetrable meaning.

We have – that is, my partner and I – together succeeded to an unanticipated perfection. It is my unshrinking conviction of fortuity and favourability that governs my bearing. Once again I excuse my happiness by blaming its history upon focus. I look neither back nor forward; instead upon what is at hand. Every day is to me a reminder of artistic expression, the vitality of which buoys me through tragedy and the diminutions of old age.