One cannot ignore a vagueness, nostalgia and dreaminess – even melancholy – on a balmy sunny Sunday afternoon in the middle of July when one’s corrupted gusto is so egregiously tranquilized by lethargy and reverie. It is a singular moment, no pressing imperatives, no prerequisites, no interruptions of one’s placidity. The arguments and indeterminants of the week have gracefully faded from view or departed by design to await further enhancement in the upcoming week. I began immediately after breakfast by reclining in the blistering warmth on the balcony looking upriver. My vocation was clear: indolence and avoidance.

Later this morning – following our constitutional cycling tour of the neighbourhood and after having connected with family and friends – we settled upon a late afternoon foregathering at the golf club. The concluding narrative of the day was then predetermined. Already I see the long shadows across the fairway and aside the river shoreline of monumental trees. Sedation and limitation at its best!

The interlude between our cycling reparation and anticipated social call to the golf club was predictably fulfilled by a dutiful adjournment to the Stittsville car wash whence we thereafter sailed northwesterly along the Ottawa River towards Renfrew County and the Greater Madawaska. The gnatty political diversions from Vice-president JD Vance et al. continue to attach methodically to my device as though I were an unheralded Patriot living in Alabama. I am teased to engage (to discover by what manner I have seemingly endeared myself to the political Right); but I refuse to distinguish the prodding stimulation by any evidence of curiosity or interest lest I inadvertently remove myself from the parallel arraignment of seeping toxicity of failure, anger, alarm and mounting national objection. We have long passed the substance of performance, the realm of which awaits the American people for public manifestation.

In the meantime we are happily poised before this unimaginable rustic scenery, blessed with the benefit of country living and its inexpressible beauty at our door. Our passage along the immediate roadways today was punctuated by brief moments of recognition from neighbours.