I am remiss were I to deny there is no celebrity to be unwrapped in the mundane domestic events which have transpired and unfolded within our immediate family over the past five weeks. It has been a chronology most significantly characterized when examined in the context of our awakening vantage from our new apartment along the Mississippi River. It was five weeks ago today on Thursday, April 27th that we returned to Canada from our winter sojourn on Key Largo in the United States of America. At the time of our arrival home we were full of anticipation. While I cannot say that it has been a faultless reinvigoration, it has most certainly been a period of intense engagement and what in my opinion has been a period of notable accomplishment. A mere glance at our communal calendar reveals a succession of medical, dental, surgical, endodontic, legal, insurance, investment, domain name and website renewals, retail, gastronomic, social and accounting enterprises. Plus a variety of birthday and wedding anniversaries.
What however is unique in this continuing blur of activity – aside from the captivation of the shimmering blue water upon the river – is the sudden exhaustion of the exploits. The more we do, the less remains to be done. It is as though I have awakened from a trance. For the past many weeks I have bounced from one necessity to another, often with no more time for analysis than sufficient to consider priorities. Inexplicably matters have dissolved and revolved and again dissolved. And now I find myself idly considering what it is that has so preoccupied me throughout this period of immersion.
No doubt most of us upon offhand investigation would admit that things go by pretty quickly. Nor does it particularly matter at what juncture you happen to contemplate the burning question. Whether you’re young or old, I think that with few if any exceptions the conclusion is “How did I get here so fast?” Astounding as it may be to acknowledge to the philosophic purist, we’re seldom fully swalloped up by life’s daily events, prefering instead a casual penetration of the future. Not surprising therefore that one quickly loses touch with the ticking seconds of the day. How long does it take to travel into space and back? And still have time for the other stuff.
The distilled refinement of a day may perhaps lie ironically in its evaporation (say not unlike watching the sun set upon the placid river when the silver moon suddenly appears). It seems at times we’re lucky to get but a drift of things before they are swept away into the ether, like poignant wisps of one’s favourite Mediterranean sauce. Howsoever it is that one pretends to describe the fleeting quality of life, it is an obscurity we all share.