Twice today I reflected upon the stimulating effect of youth.  The second time – the one which will come as no alarm especially at Christmastime – had to do with the irrepressible magic of grandchildren.  As I drove home this afternoon from my usual outing along the Appleton Side Road et al., I recollected how my beloved parents thrilled to preocccupy themselves not only at this high-spirited time of year but throughout the year with their grandchildren.  The sous entendu is of course that I am not a “family man” (as was so often the object of initial and vaguely unsettling enquiry upon meeting a client). I insulated myself from complete fragmentation arising from this interrogative by recalling that most of my friends are sans child. Clearly there exists a forum set apart for those of us who haven’t entitlement to admission to that particular sect; that is, those devoted to or enchained with children by what I can only assume is for me at least an unidentified sinew of Nature.

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We got an email this morning from the chap in the townhouse next door to where we stayed on Key Largo last winter.  He advised the new owner of the townhouse we occupied is gutting the place and that the tricycle I left behind was set outside.  I bought the tricyle within hours of our arrival on Key Largo last year. It cost about US$800.  I felt I would be safer on a tricycle than a bicycle because I had fallen off my bicycle earlier in the summer while stopped at a pedestrian walk.  I just lost my balance.  As a result I was feeling generally precarious.  When we returned home in May I bought another tricycle here; and I’ve been using it almost every day since.  Nevertheless when we go to Hiton Head Island this winter I plan to rent a bicycle instead.  Everyone who cycles on Hilton Head Island knows that, if you intend (as I do) to cycle on the beach, the sand will ruin the gears eventually.  So I rent.  And I’m not so worried about my balance on the beach because I haven’t the need to watch where I’m going or worry about stopping at traffic lights and things like that.  At Coligny Park, getting from the beach to the Park is accomplished best by walking the bike to avoid intersecting the crowds.  Otherwise the bike paths are flat and broad so again there are few if any obstructions.

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I remember the first time I saw a James Bond movie.  Or was it the Pink Panther? Something absurd anyway. It was years ago. In a theatre in a mall somewhere. When I was about 15 or maybe 16 years old. I was visiting in Toronto with my roommate from boarding school. Keith Forsyth. He was on the First Hockey team in spite of being much younger than the others who were in Upper Sixth Form.  We were only in Fourth Form.  I never saw much of Keith after that.  At least not until four years later when I went to Glendon Hall for undergraduate studies.  Somehow, I don’t have the foggiest, he and I reconnected. That was long before email and cell phones. Keith had left the school after his parents divorced when we were both still in Fourth Form, when his mother drove her Cadillac Eldorado to the car wash with me. They cleaned the car inside and out. Keith never liked fancy cars. I did. Keith became a “citizen”, a word he used. Not certain what he meant by it.  He had a motor cycle.  And smoked cigarettes. He collected me on the Wood Estate then took me for a ride on Park Lane Circle behind the college.  Nobody wore helmets in those days. He stopped on Bayview Avenue next to a black Cadillac de Ville, driven by a woman with a beehive hairdo and heavy make-up.  He stopped at the light immediately next to the Cadillac and stared at her behind the window.  Then when the light changed he sped off.  I clung to him for my life.  I don’t think things went well for Keith. The last time I spoke with him was one evening on the telephone at college when I was drunk.  It was the usual serenade wrought by that superfluous condition. We never spoke again.

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It is with no immoderate smugness that I report having done little of consequence today.  Indeed so persuaded am I by my ardor and proportional indolence that I have every hope of prolonging the happy fortuity. As a told my erstwhile physician only yesterday upon his return from Antiqua (several weeks after his sojourn in Sarastoa and three weeks prior to his scheduled departure to Buenos Aires en route subsequently to the South Pacific) I derive unlimited delight in having yesterday concluded the last of my outstanding agenda (coincidentally a rally with a locum filling in for my current physician who was by further chance visiting his family on Longboat Key).  I mention these itinerant details because they contrast so remarkably with our own diminutive plans for the immediate future. Nor am I in the least remorseful to say so.  Age is catching up with me; and, I feel that I am unwittingly though skilfully learning how to deal with the apodictic decomposition and transition.

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The cold and miserable winter sky is muted in dreary shades of grey, a pastel backdrop to the barren tree branches along the river and the arrowed flights of Canada geese leading the way across the withered corn fields. Only the faintest trail of honking lingers in their pathway. Yet what would seem to be a joyless landscape is nonetheless promising, occasion for favourable contemplation.

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There are doubtless many parents who exhaust their creativity at this time of year deciding what they’ll get their children for Christmas presents. Not being an authority on children I haven’t any recommendations though I know enough not to suggest dollar bills in an envelope. The eagerness of seeing a gift under the tree and unwrapping it on Christmas morning is integral to the escapade.

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March 9, 2018 (date of original publication)
The Millstone News
by L. G. William Chapman, B.A., LL.B.
Photo (Featured Image)
‘‘Boston, Ma., 1980,’’ from the series ‘‘Americans Seen.’’
Credit…
Photograph by Sage Sohier, via Joseph Bellows Gallery

There are many things in life which confound me.  Being caught off balance should not however be the springboard from which to leap to improper conclusions.  Following is an account of what I consider a more solid basis for making important decisions.  Foremost – as my succinct introduction implies – one should not feel the necessity to decide something when discomposed.  It is imperative in such circumstances to remove oneself from the fray of the moment to deliberate more keenly upon the subject at hand.  What follows are the specific standards by which I believe one should assess a matter.

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October 5, 2012 (date of initial publication)
The Millstone News
by L. G. William Chapman, B.A., LL.B.

The effect of the passage of time upon others is obvious. Upon ourselves, however, the diminution is less noticeable. Living with ourselves as we must immerses us in perpetual modification and decrement which occurs almost imperceptibly. It is rather like trying to stay focused upon the face of a clock long enough to see time change – inevitably we lose interest and submit to distraction. Oddly the inability to see change in ourselves applies likewise to the inability to see (or at least appreciate) the changes which have taken place around us. There are of course constant alterations to our surrounding environment, living spaces and entire communities, yet the result is more often than not scarcely reckoned. This made me reflect upon what changes have taken place in Almonte over the past thirty-six years since I first came here in June of 1976. Some things, I might add, haven’t changed at all, and that can be a good thing: things like the Curling Club, the North Lanark Agricultural Society, the Almonte Fair, the Highland Games and the Royal Canadian Legion, all long-standing and purposeful elements of our local society.

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Though my humdrum daily customs are the norm, things began more diversely this morning. Perhaps it was alterness to the approaching Winter Solstice or the advent of Christmas (a festivity I routinely indulge from November 25th so that I may partake a full month of seasonal choral music by Handel or schmaltz by Mantovani and Bing Crosby before confessing mutual exhaustion). Or it may have been the squaring of an early morning cycle about the neighbourhood when the air was chilly and clear. Exercise even of this modest portion (6.26 Km) is distinctly part of my every day ceremony. Inexplicably today I had strength to venture to higher ground than usual.

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While my prevailing personal sensations are closer to decomposition than evaporation, the latter is more descriptive of the surrounding than the inner peril. The noticeable penalty is therefore minimally less acute though similarly imposing. At least I haven’t yet vanished from sight in spite of my deterioration. Nonetheless every day I am reminded of the progressive declension in all that I now do or may otherwise wish to do. I am plagued by recollection of the existential dilemma: because we are free, we are also inherently responsible. It’s the proverbial “you are what you do” theory of things. I find it helpful in these existential constructs to recall that, as eagerly as one may pine for the animation of the past, a subdued present is upon analysis sufficient. Clearly the collateral of decay is the removal of oneself from involvement; or, as comically observed in a cartoon in Country Life magazine, removal from the necessity to put on a brassiere.

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