It is an odd inclination that many of us appear to share; namely, the proclivity upon reaching a destination to get on one’s horse and to ride off in all directions. The putative desideratum seems to spring from the urge to consume everything possible for fear of starvation or other metaphorical inadequacy. I have concluded that the violation stimulated by this anxiety is ignorance of what is before one’s eyes.
Just as there is no ship to take you away from yourself (“and you travel the suburbs of your own mind”), seemingly there is no escaping life’s daily annoyances howsoever remotely anchored. Now with the benefit of near-instant communication by email and Message, the sometimes unwelcome news from home reaches us wherever we’re moored. The complaint is assuaged by the philosophic knowledge that, with a degree of application and good intention, things may be sorted out. In the end the greatest disruption of one’s universal agenda is likely confined to a temporary nuisance or momentary interference with sun bathing. Neither of which is assured to attract any sympathy.
Since I was 18 years old (when in 1967 I attended undergraduate studies at Glendon Hall on Bayview Avenue in Toronto, Ontario) I recall ritually cycling on Sunday mornings whenever possible. The occasions were likely unwittingly prompted by a gentleman friend of my sister. He introduced me to a Garlatti Campagnolo 21-speed racing bicycle. The bike is now vintage but when I bought it from Foster & Byles on Bank Street, Ottawa it was considered state-of-the-art. My summer cycling habit in Ottawa, Ontario (where I lived at the time with my parents) predominantly focussed upon the Ottawa River Parkway and the nearby Gatineau Hills. There was a seemingly endless trail of paved bicycle paths with equally magnificent vistas. It was nothing for me to bicycle 100 miles per week.
The blithesome nature of the new year is for some everlasting. Only as recently as this morning for example, as I lounged by the Island swimming pool beneath the celestial radiance, I overheard a bubbly greeting of “Happy New Year “ from one resident to another, a rapturous salutation that was generously reciprocated.
I cannot recall feeling so censurable about having nothing to do. It’s not as though my current model of behaviour is especially different from what it has been for some time now. That is, I breakfasted as usual at a befitting hour this morning; I bicycled about 5 Km today; I sunbathed; I chatted with several people in the neighbourhood; and, finally at the end of the day I consigned myself to my routine hobby enterprises. The most notable difference in my day is that I did not drive my automobile or go to get it washed. This I agree sounds a trifling contrast. It does however signal a material polarity. When I am at home that pallid undertaking normally consumes 2 – 3 hours each day. The transaction involves travelling a considerable distance from my hometown Almonte to nearby Stittsville, whence I swing northerly to Renfrew County and back around through White Lake and the Township of Pakenham. The length of the journey is prolonged by my time-honoured old-fogey style of driving, which is to say I am not in a rush. I take time to enjoy the bucolic scenery while passing through the expansive farmlands and over the numerous riparian tributaries.
Twelfth Night (also known as Epiphany Eve) is a Christian festival on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, marking the coming of the Epiphany. Different traditions mark the date of Twelfth Night as either 5 January or 6 January, depending on whether the counting begins on Christmas Day or 26 December.
Adopting a shiftless approach to the day hardly qualifies as traditionally acceptable behaviour. Yet such is the nature of my ambition today; that is, an insouciant outlook upon life. It is an unruffled and serene composition, one devoted not to achievement but rather to slap-happy leisure and apathy. The provocation of this aspiring indolence is nonetheless characterized by more than an element of purpose. If one truly wishes to absorb the velvety cool southern breeze, there is with this initiative, as with any preferred objective, a degree of accommodation required. Even enervation, I sadly report, predicts a degree of effort to accomplish meaningfully. Indeed one must disincline oneself from the usual convictions of adult behaviour and adopt instead a near waggish posture, spiriting an acquaintance with one’s erstwhile childish pioneering such as casual sunbathing and idle swimming. No need to presume the mature gravitation to consult one’s Fitbit or Apple Watch for Workout Details, Active Calories or Elevation Gain. Instead the capitulation is to indolence, uncaring and uninterested.
It isn’t often that one meets a man of many parts; and, it is less often that one is aware of having done so. The collision of both the privilege and the benefit are infrequent and fleeting; and they are as easily and as swiftly mistakenly overlooked. I have today upon modest reflection exceeded that social ignorance, a transcendence which no doubt will prove as ephemeral as its accidental appearance and my unwitting absorption. It is nonetheless an excess I welcome with uncommon satisfaction. The approbation likewise derives from both its nutrition and its singularity. In short it invigorates me to make the gentleman’s acquaintance. In one’s daily life, either because of its anesthetizing mundanity or its blind devotion to repetition or its undervalued frequency of novelty, the occasion for the charm of a box of chocolates or of a man of many parts is truly unique and sophisticated.
While my diary makes no mention of it, an event occurred in the summer prior to my return to St. Andrew’s College for Upper Sixth Form (1966) which I have never forgotten. One of my friends from St. Andrew’s was Ricardo Schmeichler, whose family was Austrian, but they lived and operated a business in Caracas, Venezuela called PAR (named after their children, Pedro, Alfredo and Ricardo). Ricardo told me that he was going to be in Paris, France for the summer, and since I knew I would be returning to Europe for the summer to spend a month on the Spanish riviera (Costa Brava near Barcelona) with my family before making our way eventually through the Pyrenees to Paris, Copenhagen then Stockholm, I told him to wait for me to arrive in Paris before going up the Eiffel Tower (which he had never visited before).
Mid-afternoon a vigour overtook me to go to the sea. It is peculiar the violence was so apparent because I had as is my wont been contentedly lounging by the pool since before noon. Of a sudden however I felt the inner yearning to feel the sting of salt water and to absorb the psychical panorama of the open sea upon the glistening water, unobstructed to the horizon by nothing other than sail boats, fishing vessels and yachts. The sun was yet high – or at least strategically positioned for late afternoon regard, an imperative for languishing in the sea.