Though we haven’t fully succeeded to escape the sobering desideratum of humanity – namely, interminable and seemingly incremental medical and dental attendances, renewing debit and credit cards, health cards and driver’s licence and getting a haircut – we have however shifted from that tedious zone into a moderately less constrictive one of muted desperation. We’re not out of the corral but with the advent of the sun reaching its maximum declination on June 21st, the horizon outlook is now fully visible. I’ve decided that the date aligns with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s anticipated opening of the Canadian border for non-essential vehicular travel on July 21st. It affords further though hesitant anticipation. Meanwhile there is nothing to do but languish in the summer haze.

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Today is July 1st or Canada Day! And it’s time for merrymaking! Unquestionably I am proud of my numerous blood, familial, friendship and social alliances within both Canada and the United States of America. Though I once lived in Washington DC and though we have since made a routine of wintering part or all of the season in Florida, the only memorable occasion I have of the Fourth of July or Independence Day is a trip we took to Fort Lauderdale years ago when I was still practicing law.  We mistakenly imagined that Florida would be isolated in the summer.  Indeed based upon another trip during a different period we had previously taken to Florida in the summer that observation was accurate.  But we discovered it didn’t hold for the Fourth of July.  There were throngs on the beaches and line-ups for restaurants! We anodized the miscalculation with fresh oysters and vodka martinis! The conjunction of the American and Canadian national holidays is particularly trophic as both countries begin to relax from the COVID scourge. It naturally enlivens our prospective.

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On the last day of June – the day before Canada Day on July 1st – the public atmosphere is noticeably clamorous. The opening today of personal service industries – hair salons and nail spas – has as well engendered uncommon activity and with it no imperceptible degree of optimism. The thread of a familial theme promotes a decidedly domestic flavour to the energized commotion. It is an occasion for us to reunite within the sphere of our ambitions. For as long as I can recollect we’ve abhorred the ribaldry of a statutory holiday. So we secure ourselves contentedly within our compass. It has thus inspired the stock nutritious features; viz., literature (Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “The History of England from the Accession of James II“), music (Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca“), food (garden fresh vegetables) and smug anticipation for what is on the horizon.

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It was like Christmas this morning! That bounding thrust to get up and get going! Another balmy summer day! Without dwelling upon the impetus we immediately launched ourselves onto la route précise for a rejuvenating bicycle ride throughout the neighbourhood.

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It has been a frenetic day. Starting at 7:30 am this morning when I got up. Or rather when I had to get up. I had an appointment at 9:30 am with a very capable masseur for some traction control. Followed by breakfast on the patio at the golf club. The admission of having consumed such quantity of sausage, bacon, eggs and cheese made me wonder when my heart will attack me one last time. I can’t say it inhibited my gusto. It was a hot, hot day; and I like the heat.  I am convinced there is nothing  – perhaps other than the now legal vials of THC/CBD – which will erase my neuropathy and limitless other malfunctions and degeneration peculiar to that insipid prosecution called old age, an extremely casual reference to what appears to me at least to be an entirely predictable if not indeed calculated decomposition.

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The wind is glutted today with a dry piercing heat amid the swelling balmy air.  It is reminiscent of an impending storm being tracked across a cresting lake on a summer day while squinting into the distance at mounting grey clouds. Meanwhile the turbulence translates the fields of flourishing corn stalks into a set of chimes, a peculiar rustle adorned by an emerald green mantle. The wind, the heat and the changing atmosphere invite native lethargy. It is summer at last!

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The weather forecast this morning was for rain throughout the day.  The prediction was like a bandage about my perpetually wounded psyche which forever compels me to reach for production and accomplishment, performance and reward, utility and function. Anything to sanctify my purpose. Thus temporarily released from the daily constitutional bicycle ride I regaled in the tranquility of my morning.  Breakfast was the usual concoction of fresh fruit, ripened cheese, prunes and fibre. That painless part of routine had been restored. I prolonged the dalliance at table by engaging my Hemingway devotion to standing at the easel and writing – but admittedly without standing or the customary smugness which follows even the moderate exertion of bicycling throughout the neighbourhood. Inertia is not a talent for which I have developed an especial taste. Luckily for me I have the keen mechanical foundation of the modern automobile to propel me through the shifting zones of bland habit, necessity and existential obscurity.

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I have long ago abated my erstwhile gusto for Christmas. And birthdays or statutory holidays. There are no clients about whom to concern myself. Nor parents. We’ve downsized and utterly abandoned any thought whatsoever about new furnishings, accessories or ornaments.  There are no parties or invitations on the horizon. Even Trump appears to be evaporating. Instead we have lapsed into calculated contentment and agèd habits and customs. Perhaps also into that much derided absorption of the Rastafarians into purposeless maintenance and cleaning, “Care it good, Boss, for soon it will be mine!”

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It is but a distant and distracted regard I have of things on my daily calendar; viz., lectures, massage, webinar, medical exam, dental appointments, Amazon packages, 2nd vaccinations, blood test, birthdays and the recall of one no longer whinnying among us (an abrupt and unfair loss). It is an uncommon inattentiveness at this time of year since my retirement on March 31, 2014 when we first headed to Florida in July on an exceedingly open road, buoyed by unparalleled novelty and pioneering, when we summarily reversed the standard course of conduct and abandoned public service for the trifling scope of bicycling and laying in a secluded corner of a beach along the Atlantic Ocean, when in a trice the record of school, education and employment crystallized and drained precipitously off the edge of the map proving the earth is flat as far as one can see. Years later it melted down the coast into the Gulf of Mexico and then the Florida Keys. And now it is like a dream from which I am barely awake, uncertain whether the dream is over or whether new horizons await.

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As the pandemic appears to be rounding the corner, many of us are by now accustomed to measure our well-being by the narrow standards of vaccination and the varying restrictive levels of retail customer service. We have for example recently negotiated our 2nd dose of Pfizer, something that affords enormous satisfaction and sense of accomplishment. And just days ago we boasted our first breakfast on the patio at the golf club. But I am still awaiting my barber to reopen.  Nonetheless our private medical insurers have lately offered coverage when traveling abroad for prolonged periods in excess of 40 days. What remains however is critical for advancement out of the COVID sanctuary; namely, the opening of the Canada/US border for other than “non-essential travel”. Until then we’re like the deaf, living in a glass cage.  Meanwhile we continue to investigate venues up and down the Florida Keys and within numerous barrier islands along the Gulf of Mexico.

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