While bicycling on the erstwhile railway right-of-way this morning I encountered Ingrid whom I have known for more years than I can accurately recall, say at least 40 years.  I was her lawyer. Ingrid and I have been through many tribulations of mutual interest, primarily revolving around real estate and business transactions. In addition to my specific professional duties I made it a curiosity of mine to enquire after Ingrid’s son Nils whom I have known since he was a mere child.  Ingrid told me that Nils has lost his job and is living in her basement.  This is now not an uncommon situation among many families. Aside from the obvious distress for the both the parents and the child, they are missing the same palliative ingredient we all lack in the current pandemic; namely, hope and prosperity for the future.  Talk to anyone these days and apart from their initial report to being singularly bored, they haven’t any intelligence whatsoever regarding the future.  There are certainly no travel plans. Local clubs have shut down. Education facilities are altering to remote alternatives.  Restaurants and many retail shopping venues are suffering catastrophic challenges from which many of them will not survive. Many of us doubt the expediency of dining or socializing with others – whatever the proximity. The list of terminated employment is endless – and unfortunately now the norm. There is the very real possibility that the fabric of communication among businesses will be strictly electronic. Brooks Brothers is bankrupt.

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Until very recently I hadn’t taken the time to cultivate an acquaintance with the back yard of our condominium apartment building.  The allure of the stone walls, deck chairs and the cobbled walkway throughout the garden amidst the shrubbery and foliage at last drew me to subtle inquiry. Months of having being housebound by Covid-19 and suffering the blunt reality of perpetual inactivity meant that even a languishing recline in the late morning sunshine without interruption or conversation was sufficient and meaningful diversion from the hapless routine. This characteristically infrequent and solitary resource changed today when Marny telephoned and proposed that we rally for coffee on the patio.  I naturally accepted with glee! The indisputable value of society is now considered the nec plus ultra! And well it should.  Society is an envelope of untold size and content – that is, depending upon the constituents!

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It has shamefully come to the point that not only the year, the month and the day of the week are regularly blundered by me.  This afternoon while driving the car I couldn’t recall whether I had already washed the car today!  Now that’s bad!  At least on the face of it, it’s pretty bad. There’s not even a 24-hour window of requital. I confess I nurture hopelessly obsessive conviction to habit and miscellany. By way of partial defence it was but moments afterwards that I recalled having sprung from the lair pre-dawn this morning to prepare for a planned outing to the grocery store. That particular midnight venture was itself part of a larger scheme to accommodate His Lordship’s late-morning appointment at the dentist. After dropping him off at the clinic I drove into Stittsville and had the car washed.  As things subsequently evolved I ended prolonging the day and widening my compass by having to take the car to the dealership concerning some trifling matters. The reward for having withstood these irritations was an earlier than usual return to the hearth where I have since anointed myself with the very agreeable piano-bass duet (1996) of Dave Young (who incidentally is Canadian). This selection is but one more example of the proficiency of Mr. Apple. Through his algorithms he has automatically added this and many other albums of varying genres to my “For You” collection of jazz.

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Sweat pants,  a silk scarf and heavy sweater were this morning the models in which I welcomed my first glimpse of autumn. Because I aimed to be out of the apartment before 9:00 am (in order to escape the arrival of the electrician) I was astonishingly on my bicycle at 8:40 am. The air was decidedly crisp and the sky was crystal clear. The purification was worth the struggle from the lair.

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Who among us hasn’t at one time or another thought, “I’ve heard it all before!” Apart from some blunt truth about the first day of school, so often what rings in our ears are the platitudes of ambition, power and love. The real show-stopper however is the generic annotation that life is short, a distilled and inescapable reduction of life’s jamboree. A corollary to this deduction is the imperative to do whatever one can to glory in it. Pointedly this intelligence is normally slow to percolate among youth and persists as but a stinging reminder to those of us who have seemingly escaped the penalty of age – which is to say a curmudgeonly disposition. I characterize the achievement as one of proclivity rather than the obvious declension of hair length and colour, the loss of teeth and hearing, the poisonous influence of arthritis (whatever that may be really be), neuropathy and the truly vulgar growth of random ear and nose hair. The frozen reality is that even within such vegetative state one is nonetheless able to appreciate the erstwhile endorsements of youth and activity.

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Three events in my lifetime are especially memorable. I recall exactly what I was doing upon learning of each occurrence. Each of them involves the United States of America.  Those events in chronological order are 1.) the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (November 22, 1963); 2.) Commander Neil Armstrong, the first man to land on the moon (July 20, 1969); and, 3.) the World Trade Centre attacks (September 11, 2001). These are clearly inspiring benchmarks for any civilization.

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When I was still a member of the servile classes it wasn’t uncommon for me especially after a long weekend to lose track of the days. The critical absence and palliative effect of Monday instantly altered a settled network and in doing so perverted the equivalent of global regularity. Usually after an embarrassing confusion I restored myself to the currency; but the imperative of the Christian week never vanished. Increasingly I am accommodating that once native though lingering curiosity by assessing the days not by numbers, sequence or months but by the weather.  Today for example was what might fleetingly be called unpleasant. Flat grey clouds, raw temperature, constant drizzle (but never a diverting storm). In all an overwhelming platitude.

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It doesn’t require a studied philosophic bent to succumb to the universal perplexity of substance. Eventually – and more often than not in short order – the deterioration of one’s current affairs follows the disclosure of a lack of depth. If the pith and marrow are missing so too are the clout and the mettle. An intoxicating – or merely stimulating – affluence is directly related to a solid, tangible presence. It would be preposterous to assume that only the initiated with obscure knowledge are sensitive to the allure of depth. Recall for example the scathing insight of the child in Hans Christian Anderson’s fable who so uncomfortably observed, “The Emperor has no clothes!”

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Friday, September 4, 2020

I just spoke with an agent at the Cadillac dealership and she casually echoed my own sense of the burgeoning party mood which appears to have infected everyone as we begin the last holiday weekend of the summer.  Earlier this morning while bicycling among the already thickening mass of weekenders I punctuated the thrill of the moment by chomping with frank abandon upon a crisp and pleasantly sour apple which we bought yesterday at an orchard in Renfrew County. Its newly harvested juiciness was nonpareil! Meanwhile the sky was a cloudless blue, the air was fresh and the emerald corn stalks high in the fields. It cheered reflective contemplation and thriving anticipation!

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The last time I read anything by William Shakespeare – indeed anything even resembling the marvel of the saucy Worcestershire – had to have been in Fourth or Fifth Form at St. Andrew’s College when I was between 14 and 16 years of age. So sometime around 1963. I distinctly recall our English Master at the time was Louis Pitman, Esq. who doubled as Housemaster of Flavelle House. Mr. Pitman succeeded to inspire in us the unqualified joy of language. His polished British accent lent an element of authenticity to what might otherwise have passed for archaic gobbilygook. Whatever it was that enthralled us, its savour lingered until years afterwards when studying Philosophy at Glendon Hall.

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