When I awoke this morning the first thing I did was take my blood pressure reading on my BIOS Diagnostics™ monitor. The accompanying energy was somewhat like playing with one’s newest toy following Christmas morning. The device has all the features required of an absorbing accessory – akin to a device of almost any description, whether a smartphone, watch, camera or radio. They are all creations which enable self-expression and which require a measure of adaptation.
As exciting as it was, the diagnostics reading was not initially fashioned by me as anything other than a moderate necessity (fulfillment of a request by my family physician). Having accomplished that imperative, and once having consumed the fried eggs and steel cut oats so kindly and expertly prepared by my partner, I bent to the further essential of a tricycle ride. Preserving one’s health in whatever manner possible is an obligation I dare not refuse.
Initially I had planned only to tricycle back and forth in the subterranean garage which is conveniently flat and dry. And also warm. But I had unwittingly taken the precaution of wearing a shell. So when the garage door opened upon the departure of a resident, I instantly succumbed to the allure of fresh air. The sky was cloudy but there were reassuring shards of blue throughout. So I cranked the electronic button on my Pronto trike and booted up the ramp into the open world.
The chilliness got the better of me before too long. I shortened my ambition accordingly (though not without imagining how pleasant it will be to cycle on a warm summer day). Nonetheless I succeeded to clock my regular target of about 3 Km before relenting to the indoor vernacular.
After stowing my tricycle in the cage, I opted immediately to take my fine automobile for a spin. It was still clean from yesterday’s car wash. And I had already shaken the front mats. Thus redeemed by this peculiar purity – and as quickly absorbing all manner of precision afforded by the modern EV car – I set off in the general direction of one of four possible car washes within orbit of one another.
By that time on the highway into the city it had begun to drizzle ever so slightly. It was a diminishment revitalized not long afterwards by open blue skies. I turned on the autonomous driver “Super Cruise”, appropriately opened the windows and relished the cool bluster. It was during this casual outing that I exchanged text messages with my erstwhile physician and my partner. Google notifies me of incoming messages; and, when chosen by a touch of the Infotainment screen, renders a reading of the message to which one may compose and deliver a response.
Until this point in the day – that is, until my erstwhile physician and I had set a time for afternoon coffee – nothing had been occasioned by anything especially deliberate. I know this may contradict what appears to be the case. After all, the monitor test, breakfast, tricycling and the car ride all resemble intention if not indeed custom or habit. The more specific characterization of the morning’s performance (apart from arranging to meet for coffee) is that it unfolded naturally in the sense of “without intervention”. Certain of our undertakings are strictly repetitive, even if worthy.
If one were closely to examine the catalogue of one’s daily enterprise, there may be curious details to evolve. Each of the items I have mentioned – blood pressure test, tricycle and car ride – embrace what might generically be described as routine. But routine matters do not complete life. Aside from those aligned with Walden Pond, the missing ingredient is people.
The writer, transcendentalist, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau lived on the northern shore of the pond for two years from the summer of 1845. Thoreau was inspired by former enslaved woman Zilpah White, who lived in a one-room house on the common land that bordered Walden Road and made a living spinning flax into linen fibers. White’s ability to provide for herself at a time when few if any other Concord women lived alone was a singular accomplishment.
It is for this reason I have isolated the proposed coffee chat with my erstwhile physician. There is no question that the communication between people adds a welcome ingredient to life.