The dry, numb pain in my lower extremities is draining.  It is a dull repetition, an interminable obstruction, insignificant on the whole but perpetual. It is too soon to take another round of analgesics following my 4:00 am contribution to the cause. I have nonetheless thankfully succeeded to remove myself from the lair and to complete my morning ablutions, the sanctity of my routine. Meanwhile the full round sounds of a bass violin churns behind the staccato unison of a piano and a violin (Maran Mozetich: Joy and Sorrow).  I blankly stare out the floor-to-ceiling windows upon the lush meadow approaching the flat, unperturbed blue water of the Mississippi River as it wends its way peacefully downriver from the Village of Appleton toward Scotch Corners and McCullough’s Landing on the basin of Mississippi Lake below.

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Mid-morning today as part of our routine purgation we initiated the galvanizing flavour of motion and travel by conducting a regimental 4 Km cycling drill along Spring Street and back adjacent the Mississippi River. This athletic endeavour hastened the fulfillment of my recurrent afternoon vehicular outing. This time however I determined to extend the jaunt beyond the extremity of the car wash in Stittsville.  I directed the snout of the trusty Aviator northward along Hazeldean Road onto HWY#417 parallel the Ottawa River towards Arnprior to the hinterland of Braeside/McNab Township. It was an ideal day for a country drive on a sweltering summer afternoon in July with the temperature peaking at 32°C. Nonetheless I drove with the windows open.  I wanted to feel the soothing air!

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As we begin our burnout stage of re-entry into the atmosphere following the heady explorations and novelties of youth, love and profligacy it soon becomes apparent that the number of our professsional advisors outweighs that of our friends and acquaintances.  The overwhelming statistic of human relationships has descended from the mere buoyancy of commonalty to the executive relevancy of accountancy, financial advice, legal status, medical and dental burgeoning necessities perhaps on occasion to encompass a travel agency or car dealership.  The professionals are the third parties to whom we entrust the management of life’s recast critical ingredients.

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It is one of the more popular credits of dwelling as we do on a meadow by a river that on occasion (most commonly early in the morning) one hears the distinctive call of a loon, reminiscent of what in childhood we mistakenly thought to be the howl of a coyote. But the mournful cry has become the irrepressible identifier of the loon.

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With the advancement of my chronology (I am now a mere puff away from ¾ of a century) and with commensurately increasing physical immobility (I never did appreciate walking), it is perhaps alarming that movement and motion should become more and more an assimilation of mine. I speak here in particular of the art of cycling (which in my case has been amended to include the now more topical craft of tricycling). Indeed I regard the venture now as a prerogative to the fruitful enjoyment of the day. It may seem curious that the most resplendent of my private amusements is one of the most palpably robust (though I hasten to tranquillize the effort by a confession of simple application without especial object, favour or statistical reward).

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Shamefully I have come to acknowledge (admittedly by my own tribulation) another of life’s passports or identification credentials; namely, recovery. Upon the most blasé assessment it is readily and at times as squeamishly apparent that a number of people whom I know as friends have suffered and continue to endure what as speedily qualifies as outstanding recovery from an unprovoked or unanticipated incident or from an existing and hitherto prolonged condition. These atmospheric elaborations of psyche and physical states are nonetheless of such treacherous detail that their avoidance is by consequence a peril to their publicity.  These calamities are not subjects about which we enthusiastically conflate. Some for example involve critical accidents; others hazardous cancerous malignancy or seeimingly irreversible addiction; others are putatively confined to materialistic corruption or erosion; but in each instance, the friend has unequivocally confronted a life-altering obstruction (including one instance of self-induced and professionally authorized suicide).

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Travel (whether an excursion, voyage, expedition, backpack, roam or cruise) has forever been a nutritious and inspiring element of society. In the summertime in the northern hemisphere – when the possibility of prolonged locomotion is both realistic and preferred  – the attraction is especially beguiling. Whether it is the wintertime blues or the mere delight of adventure which promotes this instability and insatiability I do not know. There are so many provocative varieties of travel; viz., a weekend outing, a jaunt to the other side of the world (such as to the South Pacific Ocean), an investigative enterprise (usually with a hidden objective for unparalleled discovery) or an aimless sailing trip. Whatever the objective it can be assured that the protagonist (that is, the champion adventurer) has a kit of credentials upon the basis of which he or she proposes to unfold the desirability of the circumnavigation.

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Listening to the daily news can unwittingly become a disheartening project.  This I find to be an especial peril when failing to analyze the logic (or, what often proves to be the lack of it) associated with the despatch, scandal or scoop. At times the headlines can impose a sudden and quite unanticipated damper upon one’s spirit. Nor is there any assurance that any one of us, for whatever reason, is above or beneath the daunt and dismay. As my late father so regularly adjured in the interest of irrepressible clarity, it assists the calculation of the deductive element to have not only the general law from which to draw particular inference but the added benefit of prediction and estimation based upon those pre-existing details, the paramountcy of which normally paints a broad empirical scope on its already enlarged canvass. Maintaining a singular image within such a vastly abstract vision is both unlikely and infrequent; that is, from a remote outlook the commonality is the regular stroke. We’re very much alike no matter what the alleged differences or difficulties.

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Undeniably it soothes the languid persuasion of sustained contemplation and meditation that today is Sunday, a day traditionally devoted to what might more aptly be called the private adherences of the week, including for example select (perhaps sacerdotal) music and literature (such as Jane Austen). I am foremost engaged in the opening act of breakfast, a superior event which to me is as common and repetitive as matins and vespers once were. Curiously my selection of breakfast and Sunday morning domesticity has altered over time (but only the nature not the substance). The paramount absorption of my immediate environment – an immersion of both topical and temporal singularity – is the view upriver across the meadow.

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Maintaining as I do an overall idle distraction throughout the day – a civility and mental avidity which I reluctantly confess is wont more often than I care to admit to commence as late as 11:00 am after the appearance of a good night’s rest – it is no enormous deprivation on occasion to encounter a prolonged rainy day. This at least would be the standard accommodation. When however the day about which one opines is more than a mere midsummer’s day but instead Canada’s National Holiday, the hardship is somewhat less dissoluble. Watching the combined effort and effect of the wind and the rain amounts to a dramatic and strategic attack upon the evident nature of the coast-to-coast celebration of higher estimation.

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