For what seems the first time in weeks – or even months since our return to Canada at the beginning of April – I awoke this morning with nothing to distract me but the sunshine and the chirping of the birds. My only duty was to lower the blind over the patio door to shield the brightness from the morning sun as I sat at my desk looking at the spiralling greenery in the nearby farmer’s field. While I am surrounded by the turmoil of people coming and going – readjusting to their new digs as they sell and buy or renegotiate lease arrangements – I have the indescribable comfort of nowhere to go, nothing to do.

For a fleeting moment this morning – after having completed my reinvigorating ablutions (with cold water shower as heartily approved by my erstwhile physician) and while tying the inventively fabricated laces of my Sebago deck shoes – I contemplated what I might do to authenticate myself in this narrow of indolence which has uncharacteristically befallen me. It was, as I say, a swift and dismissive scrutiny only. There comes a time when, by any account, the race is over, the machinery no longer operates as it should. Though I don’t imagine that I have completely lost my scope and intelligence, there are inarguable signs of deterioration, those repeated battles for the right word or the name of the person to whom one is speaking or the murmured memory of something which once would have been unforgettable but no longer is.

Balancing that declension is the equally indisputable delight of sculpting my daily agenda with my modest but exceedingly harmonious absorptions, things which all my life have dominated my spare or casual time – those admittedly vulgar but edacious consumptions such as cycling,  driving, staring at things I adore and polishing them, winding clocks or fiddling with watches, listening to music (including the radio – CBC FM on the Tivoli Audio masterpiece), sitting in the blazing sunshine, reading Country Life and Marcus Aurelius.

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Necessity lingers however, the need to accommodate and the attempt to understand, perhaps to forgive and to forget. The mercurial record of one’s inescapable personal life is further imitated outwardly by the popular protean evidence, sometimes buoying our stamina, other times plunging us into despair.

Economists are quick to note that there’s often a disconnect between. how consumers feel about the economy and the way they actually behave. They will tell pollsters that they’re unhappy about the level of prices or their job prospects, for example, and then go buy a couch or a new pair of jeans. It’s tricky because consumers often do not consume as economic models say they should: by carefully evaluating risk/return or cost/benefit tradeoffs. Sometimes they splurge in order to assuage their angst about life in general (post-pandemic revenge travel, anyone?). Sometimes they rationalize spending as “fulfilling their civic duty” in order to support an ailing economy (confessing for a friend). Sometimes they trade down or make substitutions (private label versus name brand, oatmeal instead of a three-egg omelet). These varying and conflicting motivations can make it difficult to assess their influence on economic outcomes.

His Majesty King Charles III attended the State Opening of the 45th Parliament of Canada, delivering the Speech from the Throne and outlining the government’s agenda. The speech, which is written by the party in power, is used to articulate the government’s priorities. Ideally, a budget would have been presented, but Prime Minister Mark Carney has indicated we must wait until the fall for that. His Majesty reiterated that the government is aiming to build the strongest economy in the G7. It intends to dismantle all remaining internal trade barriers, speed up projects of national significance, help Canada become the world’s leading energy superpower and deliver affordable housing. Additionally, the government plans to cap government spending growth to 2% annually by cutting waste, ending duplication and deploying technology to improve productivity.

These often heady matters are intertwined within my trite and repetitive worldliness. With confessed smugness though I relish the complication. But never have I imagined that by some description I have risen above the immediacy of my tactile world. Mine is not a devotion to things that are to come; rather it is a brass-necked sponging up of the moment. If I were to attribute to the resource any contamination it is this: I have yet perfectly to adduce the prescription for change.  Is it moderation? Or maybe alteration? Perhaps it is expansion?  Might it be merely attention to detail (that focus which all my life has both plagued and saturated my being)?

How foolish of me to have thought of removing myself from the imperative of detail when I closed my office door! The mantra that, “what’s bred in the bone will out in the flesh” isn’t only a biological trait, it is a psychological and emotional instruction. So to say that today is just “another day” contains within its orbit generations of accomplishment and development. It is a day as always loaded with unanticipated direction, transformation and recasting. Small wonder I am happy to watch the flow of the river, the breeziness of the trees, the movement of the clouds.