Cracker Barrel is a regular haunt of ours along the Interstate 95 when coming to or leaving the United States of America. Judging by its signature twanging cowboy music which surrounds the entrance alleyways, permeates throughout the restaurants, blasts across the adjoining gift shops and infiltrates the restrooms (that is, the men’s room for certain), I’m guessing the predominant commercial affiliation is with the former Confederate states.  And it won’t come as a surprise to learn that the owner fought a losing battle against how  “real men” in his employ ought to behave.

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Long-distance travel by car invokes its own peculiarity. I speak of clothing. The issue has arisen as we propose to set off tomorrow morning on April 23rd from Key Largo to Canada. First and foremost is the predominant feature of comfort, nothing too heavy, nothing too light. As one travels northward the ambient temperature is likely to fall.  That means keeping a sweater on the back seat. And if those sunny skies of the Florida Keys translate to rainy clouds then best to have a shell at hand.

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The sea was becalmed today. The placid water gleamed beneath the burnishing midday sun’s rays. There was no one at the beach.  People have gone. The air was motionless and noiseless. I stationed my tricycle beside the sign prohibiting golf carts. Then with my stick I shuffled across the chalky coral and seashell mixture to the empty picnic table.  Somebody had moved the table. It was now in the shade of the tree.  Perhaps there had been an afternoon luncheon. There I ceremoniously unfolded and stored my belongings in my boat shoes which I then haphazardly wound about with my beach towel and white linen shirt atop the picnic table.

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You must believe in spring
Songwriters: A. Bergman / J. Demy / M. Bergman / M. Legrand

When lonely feelings chill
The meadows of your mind
Just think if Winter comes
Can Spring be far behind

Beneath the deepest snows
The secret of a rose
Is merely that it knows
You must believe in Spring

The frozen mountain dreams
Of April’s melting streams
How crystal clear it seems
You must believe in Spring

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The historical consequence of the Glorious Revolution (1688) in England, Scotland and Wales (but not Ireland) was the elimination of the divine right of kings to rule (replaced by a parliament of public representatives). It was a vote against autocracy; that is, against monarchy, absolutism and dictatorship. It was also a mild mannered acknowledgement of the entitlement of religious freedom specifically for the Church of England (Protestantism and its various factions) and the Church of Rome (Catholicism) though the latter was relegated more to the level of tolerance and restriction only.

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Residing – or rather should I say, to avoid the appearance of contravening USA immigration laws – vacationing as we do for about half the year in Florida, we do not normally confine our conversation to either the Arctic or Antarctic regions of the globe. However the improbable alliance of both Florida and the polar regions recently arose during casual communication with my erstwhile physician.

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As I floated on my back, face upwards on the turquoise sea this afternoon, squinting into the blazing yellow sunshine, breathing discriminately through my nose to avoid salt water being pushed into the corners of my mouth by the small waves thrust upon me by the sea breeze, I thought to myself, “I am on Key Largo!” This after six months was my thankful and unassailable abstraction. We made it!  It is affirmed. And now I can return home with a crown upon my head.

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It is inescapable especially to the Christian observer that the arrival of Spring is about more than the awakening of the seeds in the ground. It is also about rekindling the fires of religion within one’s mind, or should I say within one’s heart. The debate about the intuition or rationality of religion is never ending, all the more so at a time when it is fashionable to blame religion for all the world’s problems. To an increasingly educated society it is considered lower class (perhaps enshrined by Karl Marx’ conjunction of religion and the masses) to adopt traditional religious models. Moreover as the world’s religions are thrown progressively into the face of one another, it seems just plain unfair to suggest that one man’s god is better than another and thus to reject them all. However as someone who has had a blocked heart and lived to tell the tale, I am not as clear about the rejection of some of the possibilities of religion. I don’t for a minute suggest that my survival was a religious experience (it was purely medical), but it reminds me of the importance of matters of the heart and the free flow of the cardiovascular system. Sometimes one’s heart can be blocked by more than material matter.

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The adage “Money doesn’t disappear, it just changes hands” hardly passes for scholarly economic theory. It nonetheless captures the universal truths of perpetuity and transformation. All my life has been misspent attempting to secure the sometimes harried edges of existence to impart the appearance of stability and control. Yet in spite of my best efforts I keep hurtling towards new realities, apparently in the throes of swapping today’s provincialism for tomorrow’s unknown. Granted there is some design in the process though I cannot for a moment pretend to see the future. Whatever the ambition or prediction, things change.

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You can’t make this stuff up!

What could be more unimaginable than being born at St. James Palace, London and popularized as a little bastard then ending up living at Louis XIV’s Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye where Louis XIV was born in 1638 and lived until 1682 when he removed to Versailles.  And putatively the singularity all turned on whether one were Catholic or Protestant (though I have no doubt the underlying financial scheme was far less unimaginable).

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