The serendipitous events of this idyllic day combined to produce the most agreeable summer delight which we’re now about to crown with an appropriate late summer dinner – yellow corn on the cob from the local farmer’s roadside stand, baby potatoes and Atlantic salmon cut to order but hours ago by the fishmonger (he having withdrawn the entire carcass from the walk-in refrigerator and gutted and de-boned the piece before our eyes, its severed head displayed on the grey and white granite slab as testimony to its freshness).

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In spite of a patent veneer of respectability the maxim “noblesse oblige” should be regarded with reservation. It is time to excoriate the idealized fluff surrounding it and to dismiss as bumpf its mystique. Like most airy terms, noblesse oblige is capable of double-dealing distortion for the accomplishment of private, hidden purpose. As such we may do well to investigate to see how it may have got there and so on.

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“The Millstone News“, the exceedingly popular e-newspaper of the Town of Mississippi Mills (combining as of 1998 the former Corporations of the Town of Almonte and the Townships of Ramsay and Pakenham) inaugurated June 4, 2011 by Val Sears (deceased) and the Almonte Press Club and now under the capable editorial direction of  Edith Cody-Rice and Brent Eades both of Almonte, is currently running an article about one of the brighter lights of Almonte; namely, James Mackintosh Bell.

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Mickey de Mollusk was an unfortunate creature with no head or backbone who lived in a shell. In spite of his Cambrian ancestry he came from the wrong side of the tracks, a mere accident of birth but it was an austerity which Mickey de Mollusk considered sufficient to afford him the licence of indiscriminate and sometimes venomous ventilation. Meanwhile he resided buried in sediment where he felt safe from predation. He was exceedingly private. Besides he had his shell to protect him and no one would ever see who he really was; on the outside he looked the same from any angle, amorphous. His was a hardened calcified exterior. Inside he was soft, though characteristically less than wholesome and more vulnerable than anything else. This was a regrettable perspective because of course Mickey de Mollusk never came out of his shell so he hadn’t the advantage of seeing – as others might have done – that his exterior though obdurate was nonetheless moderately compelling. But inwardly he seethed with poisonous anger and wasteful notions which from time to time he sought to circulate through his two symmetrical doors (bivalves).

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Forgive me, won’t you, if I say that mendacity is something I know more than a little about?  I of course agree that the proclamation is not at first blush the sort of quality one would normally rush to embrace. Nonetheless the fact of the matter is that in my business I heard lies. I won’t say it was the stock of my daily commerce but the possibility of lying was certainly something to which I was bound to be alive if I were to perform to par.

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Finally I’ve got some relief!  For weeks I have been frantic! My nights have been sleepless and my back is a corresponding barometer of tension. Neither food nor exercise has placated my agitation. Heated events within and without the perimeter of my personal life have sullied my disposition and made me edgy. I have on occasion cast doubt upon every particle of my existence, draining the customary untroubled resources of their liquor. In a word I have been distraught!

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Early this morning – Sunday morning – my cellular telephone rang. I am not accustomed to receive unscheduled telephone calls in the morning much less Sunday morning. As proof of the convention I had plugged my iPhone into its cable to recharge it at the far end of the living area. When the phone rang I moved briskly with a combination of quizzicalness and reserve from my dining room table perch where I had been nibbling orange sections and sipping my first coffee to the end-table where the telephone lay.

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For the past week or so I have felt churned up both mentally and physically, anxious, distracted, weighed down and deteriorating generally. There have been choppy waters involving uncommon but pressing personal matters, health, family and friends. This brouhaha has unfolded against a public background of disturbing politics and economics both internationally and locally, the US elections, Brexit, terrorism and municipal wrangling.

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Several days ago having nothing to do on a colourless Saturday afternoon and shamelessly yearning for retail therapy, I wandered into a big box store. It required but seconds in my indifferent mission to uncover a proliferation of technological gizmos. Whatever we once knew about telephones, televisions, printers, radios and sound systems has been retired, reiterated and upgraded ten thousand fold in the most unimaginable configurations.  The acceleration is akin to a rocket launch. We only barely recall the bygone shelf displays of Gestetner machines, typewriters and fax machines, erstwhile inventions now considered hapless recyclables.

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Whether because I play the piano by ear (perhaps promoting a heightened sensitivity to sound) or whether because there are notable reverberations in each season of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, I am enthralled by the characteristic dins, rackets, noises, music, tones and notes peculiar to an Ontario summer.  Foremost among these is that of the cicada.

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