At midday I mechanically sat on the balcony in the blistering summer sunshine. The molten orb shadowed itself behind a small grey cloud and the ambient temperature precipitously fell. Then as the tiny billow moved along the stinging heat as quickly revived. My bare arms burned. There was no escaping the searing radiance. Meanwhile at ground level the bluish green cornstalks flourished by the second. We are now convinced of the nature of the growth seeded in symmetrical lines throughout the pastureland. The prospect of the impending look and smell already inhabits our minds.

But my mind is elsewhere today.  In concert with my immediate surroundings I am similarly caught in my indistinguishable past. Their union predicts my future. Where have I been? Where will I go? I recall but vague images from my past: crescendos of flighty moments. My future is equally capricious.

Driving along the Appleton Side Road, passing by the majestic and billowy leafy trees, my heart told me that I have a long way to go to surpass this bucolic destiny. It is now a conceit of time and space, a reverie or trope of conflicting themes which – like the past and the present – compete for entitlement.

There are impenetrable repeating motifs that preserve one’s identity. Mine are cycling, the passenger automobile, water (creek, river, gulf or ocean – though maybe not in that order), artistic expression (music, writing and photography) and accessories (platinum, gold, silver, brass, crystal, time pieces, furnishings, knotted rugs, key chains and writing instruments).

Why one should plague oneself with these trifling ornaments is questionable. It seems but a paltry credit to such an inestimable summary. But the pettiness resounds manifestly. I associate a purity with both my past and present. The purity plainly is not my own but my environment (the background setting and circumstances); I derive a freedom from adulteration from my surroundings. It is in that respect a vicarious experience but nonetheless genuine and immediate. Such perhaps is the nature of self-expression, both heated and cooled by shifting dynamics.

But time is weighing upon me. I have to confess an improvidence of composition – a declension of body and mind. Yet the strategic challenge is as always management, the trickery of care and control. The cunning is not chicanery but organization; it is a platitude for confrontation and coordination.

“Yes, please, I think I will have another one!”