It is a privilege of old age unapologetically to query the day of the week. In fact I confess a degree of smugness in doing so. It has been eons since the intelligence was mandatory. I find my perception is hindered not only by incremental memory decline but also by the added distortion of the bygone characteristics of highway traffic, church attendance and retail activity among other indicia, all of which have been (depending on your point of view) contaminated or enlivened by so-called modern kindling including such precipitous custom as working from home and on-line shopping.  Living as we do in a secluded rural town, overlooking sprawling farm properties and the river, nearby an 18-hole historic golf course, surrounded by elderly people who have moved here with their Audis and BMWs from urban environments as far abroad as Toronto and the perimeter provinces of British Columbia and Nova Scotia, my temporal knowledge is predicted not by the minutia of the regular week but rather by the distinguishing marks of the seasons such as the flock of geese we overheard chattering nearby this morning as we conducted our own sidewalk confab with a riparian property owner.

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Commensurately as I age and as my experience of necessity (or fortuity) widens I am more and more inclined to reservation. What were in youth considered unqualified thrills have again and again suffered the unarguable and sanitzing limitation of what I now unhesitantly express as a flourishing disdain for the corporeal universe.  Gone for example is labidinous peril! And Rolex watches (although for that particular deprivation I have more properly to blame the people at Apple™). As an old man I am content with the most immoderate physical constituents or what my late father figuratively summarized as “peace and quiet“. This curmudgeonly costume is by no means a spiritual abstraction. Rather it is no doubt a predictable descent more often and less disparagingly acquainted with the vernacular branded as downsizing (that temporal devotion to simplicity and substance).  Perhaps too it is an illustration of the philosophic adage of Freemasonry that “Nature teaches us how to die” though I would understandably prefer not to regard my dissolving appetite as entire extinguishment.

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Years ago, when I was about 15 years old, I traveled from boarding school at St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, Ontario to visit my parents and sister for Christmas in Stockholm, Sweden where they then resided in the gracious residential district Djursholm.  As I recall, I included with my travel luggage a pair of skis (a luxury – or burden –  I would never think of repeating for a shedload of reasons). On the flight to Europe the first stop was Düsseldorf, Germany. Normally a stop such as that would have been confined to the limits of the airport while I awaited the second leg of the journey to Stockholm.  If that had indeed been the case, I would accordingly never have acquainted myself with the city. Things however transpired quite differently. I was told that because of bad weather and the recent snow storm in that part of Europe, my Air France flight to Stockholm would be delayed by nine hours.  Although I was not equipped at that moment with anything but the basic winter apparel (I was dressed in my school blazer, grey flannels and a coat), I decided that I couldn’t bare to sit idly in an airport lounge chair for nine hours.  Instead I took a taxi into the centre of the city where I proposed to look around.

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The day began not at all well.  This, in spite of the welcoming morning sunshine, blue sky and bracing atmosphere. It was an ideal September morn. Last evening as I had prepared myself for the usual late afternoon bustle at my withdrawing room desk, I chose for a switch – and as a conscious effort for clarity and refreshment – to avoid THC completely. Instead I contented myself with only the usual mug of chilled black coffee, abandoning the measured milligrams of the other stuff (which in my defence I fashioned not as a psychedelic but rather as a painkiller).

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I am looking upriver.  There are two flat-bottomed boaters plying there way upon the placid dark water. It’s late afternoon and the setting sun has amplified the dome of azure blue reflected in the riparian mirror below. The air is pleasant, warm and dry. Notwithstanding I haven’t at the moment anything burdensome to accomplish, I nonetheless maintain the rigour of discipline by strength of habit and routine (among them no more distinguished than cycling and car washes). If I were to analyze my life it has been reduced to a confession of looseness (were it not for custom and tradition). There is upon analysis little if anything of a mandatory nature to my existence. I am not exactly detached but lately there has been a feeling of being at sea. Tying the knots requires more than fiction.

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It isn’t often that I am quite so enthused about a retail purchase.  Even more appreciable from my perspective is that the subject of this particular immersion is an automobile, that domain of unending gravity to both the racer and the Sunday driver. What pleases me especially well in this instance is what I perceive to be a fruitful combination of size (and style), manufacturer and price.

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You’ve found me at my desk. I am as usual fulfilling my late afternoon precedent to the evening meal and all that that entails. My preparation in addition to my Bose™ headphones is a strong, black, chilled coffee (this for intellectual stimulation), a reasonable measure of THC (this for pain) and a moment’s reflection upon the good of literature in general and this platform in particular (I am reluctant use the word “blog” as it sounds so hopelessly vulgar). Meanwhile as I prepare myself I can hear the rain knocking on the floor-to-ceiling windows in the withdrawing room overlooking the now desperately soggy meadow and the faded complexion of the river as it wends its way through our town. Whither it goes and whence it comes I have no certainty. It is nonetheless a fitting and exceedingly gratifying end to our afternoon venture to the city where, in spite of the traffic and numerous modifications to accommodate the Light Rail Transit, we succeeded to complete all appurtenant communication with the endodonist, dentist and car dealer. There is nothing of value deriving from less than a myriad of ingredients. Today we reached the fortuity of that combination.

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A moment ago I intuitively proclaimed the success of another thing done. And while I cannot honestly now recall the details of the favourable result, it was nonetheless an instant emotional reaction to what must have been a perceived prosperity. I can only speculate why I am in the least concerned about getting anything done. We’ve already achieved the imperatives of humanity; namely, food and shelter.  Whatever else it is that engages itself seems beyond life and death and therefore less than critical. At this particular juncture in my life it is a given that one shouldn’t worry about things that are done. Yet the prevalence of the virtue (that is, “getting things done”) has made its effect memorable to the point of psychotic. At the very least habitual.

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My recollection is that when I was about ten years old living in Washington, DC (and while attending Horace Mann School coincidentally in the same classroom as Julie Nixon whose family lived in the area) I was given a cardboard piano keyboard. It appeared to have all 88 keys (painted black an white naturally); it folded in the centre to reduce the portable size.

A typical full-sized piano has 88 keys. However other pianos are shorter and have 44 to 72 keys. Some are even longer than the standard size and have 97 keys such as the Imperial Bösendorfer Piano that is 290cm long. The largest piano has 108 keys (the 9 octave piano) but these are rare.

Why anyone would have given me such a preposterous thing as a cardboard piano keyboard I will never know!  I can only presume that I was caught messing with a piano located somewhere in the school. Or perhaps I had inadvertently reported having tried playing the piano of our neighbour Lottie Gordon when my mother visited her for a chat. All I know is I eventually played something on Mrs. Gordon’s piano.  And I did it by ear (probably “Mary had a little lamb“).  While I subsequently studied piano (up to Grade VIII of the Toronto Conservatory) to this day I cannot read music except painfully.

More recently when we sold our house in 2013 one of the first things to go was the Steinway salon grand piano. The size of the piano was too much for most modern apartments. By utter serendipity the person who bought the Steinway is the architect of the newly constructed apartment building in which we now reside.

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If I were to take account of everything from start to present I expect I would be overwhelmed.  This afternoon I have permitted myself the privilege of idle reminiscence. How easily I have been distracted! Competing with the plentitude of photographs – the mere image of the past – are the sentimental memories they inspire. As our absorption of detail becomes increasingly distilled, the specifics of historic ventures are commensurately more acute. This keenness of disquisition is the soothing vapour of my career to date.

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