Rain forecasted

Rainy conditions will continue for the rest of the day.  My frame of mind is correspondingly dour. Schoenberg’s “Transfigured Night” is suitable with its “richly expressive late-Romantic tone”. The rain falls heavily. It splatters on the window panes. The sky is an immense dome of grey. The vast fields below are a canvass of softened green and burnished yellow to the horizon. Already the cornfield has changed from gold-tipped emerald to tawny. The mysteries of agriculture for the moment abide as we await the inevitable shift of abundance to fallowed ground. The unadorned purity and colourless sanity of winter approach.

What fortuity it is to be absorbed in idle afternoon reflection. Everything within immediate sight – apart from the implacable river – is an account of change, draped in subdued tones, inspiring wistful thoughts and memories. Puddles of water on the balcony and upon the lounge chairs afford tiny mirrors and random blemishes. Already I have exhausted my daily menu of repetitive behaviour – tricycling in the subterranean garage (and chatting with neighbours); driving the car; punctuated by an early morning meeting and telephone calls to arrange more of the same – attending to business, sorting appointments, buying apples from MacLaren’s orchard on the old Burnstown Road, seeking prescriptions for newly released vaccines. I haven’t any shame. My tiresome enterprises fulfill me. Is it puffed up to be so complacent? I think not. Instead it is gratification. I acquit myself by reckoning the smugness is merely the well-deserved product of aging, an entitlement merited not by performance but by survival. I haven’t the inclination to see it otherwise. Certainly there are toxins in the mixture – necessities and accommodations, transformation and with it moderate replenishment. I marvel every morning – as I lie inert beneath the thick cotton sheet – that I haven’t any longer limiting obligations; everything now is by choice. It is an option at once expansive and conclusive. I do not however deceive myself to think that my modulation is anything but that of an observer. Pragmatism has removed me from society. My qualified pursuits are practical applications.

The sky is beginning to clear. There are scattered about traces of blue. The clouds are no longer uniformly grey. The sunshine struggles to permeate the upper reaches. The rain has stopped.