My dear Patricia,

Thank-you for your email, always welcome.

Normally – at this juncture – I would not engage in prolongation of our internet communication for fear of reducing it to a “Called you last!” jousting. By all appearance, each of us has already exchanged all that needs to be said in the circs. My reluctance is specially so in light of what I am about to say.  And I warn you now this is stuff about you I have silently harboured for years so I have had frequent opportunity upon which to ruminate, refine and reconsider its substance and truth before pronouncing my verdict. However I can no longer sustain my tranquility or withhold my secrecy.

Here’s the thing: you are an exceptionally candid person. My initiation to this Stoic characteristic was years ago over luncheon together at a bistro in downtown Ottawa (somewhere around the old Skyline Hotel).  I suspect I was treating you to lunch for having so generously engineered significant business in my direction. Your reaction to the social endearment was tepid at the very best – betraying, I reasoned at the time, a far greater interest in gravity than gratitude. I confess I rather admired the purity of the trait. Succinct, shall I say.

Then sometime or years later you informed me that you and Horace had sold your lovely home in the Village of Rockcliffe Park.  When I asked if you were downsizing, your reply (quite justifiable in retrospect) was, “Not really.”  If my collateral intelligence is correct, your new penthouse condominium on the Rideau Canal was 5,000 sq. ft. or more.  Not exactly an igloo.  Once again, brevity to a fault!

Today, reading your latest email, you spoke as briefly of JB.  A “character”, you advanced. How about weirdo or crazy!

Even your own AI portrait, about which you spoke so manifestly by innuendo and subtlety. Once again, no betrayal of irrelevancy.

So, there I have laid before the Court the evidence. Now, by way of summary and conclusion, permit me (as one who admittedly has the least entitlement to sparsity) to congratulate you on what I perceive to be a lifetime devoted to clarity. Underlying the apex of us each is frequently (and often unwittingly) nothing more glamorous – nor less attractive – than explicitness. Not everyone however has the benefit of such laudable exactitude as do you.

Every address to the Court – as I have no doubt you are aware – is followed by an alternative (normally, “In the event I am mistaken, then…”).  In this instance, my concluding narrative is not so much an alternative argument as a caveat.  The warning is this: the dedication to unmitigated precision and crispness may inadvertently insulate you from life’s blurriness. After having watched you dedicate yourself untiringly for years to labour and perspicacity, I invite you to enter the world of anomaly and nescience. I foresee the arena as a forum of ultimate retirement for you, excused at last from the ropes and moorings of tireless commitment. Naturally I recognize that you will unhesitatingly dismiss this swagger. But, at my advanced age, I too am learning that I have better things to do than save it for the funeral!

Billy
Hugs & Kisses