Reservations often attest a defining moment (such as a gathering) or a material qualm (such as a persona). In my experience reservations – whether bookings or scruples – mark engagement or disengagement of significant rank. A dinner reservation customarily signals a matter of especial social significance usually more than putting on the nose bag (“groups of ten or more should make reservations“). It is a practice we’ve frequently adopted over the years for family gatherings at the golf club when our numbers (with friends included) climbed surprisingly. Its substance clearly contrasts with those “dining” places which purposely do not accept reservations, itself a demur expressing an unqualified and vulgar dedication to retail advantage (not to mention snapping one’s fingers at those who are so equally selfish to abandon a commitment). In the result the dinner reservation is preserved for those instances which are anticipated to involve nutrition of more than the fleeting visceral imperatives.

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When I was a youngster living in Red Deer, Alberta my sister Linda and I frequented the nearby farm of one Mr. Brandt for horseback riding lessons. We were initiated on bareback then graduated to Western and finally English saddle. Although I haven’t ridden a horse for decades, I recall that my preferred animal was a Quarter horse which was between 16 and 18 hands high, not insignificant to a wispy child. I also spent summertime vacations at so-called “dude” ranches where the horses tended to be less agile (though I recall on an outing to the hinterland having hobbled our team during a violent rainstorm so they didn’t evaporate into the bushes overnight).

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Overnight during what was at times a restless and disturbed sleep marked by ephemeral interruptions of seemingly astonishing insight and creative flair, I forecast in my then inventive mind a production of indescribable consequence. One must always move forward; or, as my erstwhile physician is wont cryptically to observe, “Keep moving!” Period! There is simply no other way to calculate life’s productive motives whether physically, intellectually, psychologically or emotionally. Thus I too find the succinct denomination not entirely beyond relevance. It is a perfunctory mandate of the simplest instruction.

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I have just returned from my ritual afternoon automotive drive and purge. The car performed smoothly and reinvigorated my plaudits for General Motors. I’m now in our apartment blankly staring out the drawing room window. The black metal balcony railing is conspicuously covered in shimmering blobs of rain water. The railing is directly ahead of me as I sit at my desk, intermittently writing, glancing at the flourishing fields and the sallow river. It is a misty damp summer day. The railing is parallel the edge of the grey flooring of the balcony (the outer lip of which I can barely see); and, likewise parallel the upper edge of my mahogany desk. It affords a uniformity to the spectacle, framed by the triple perpendicularly configured balcony posts which are also black metal.  The balcony armchairs as well are black and covered in shiny blobs of rain water. Between the two chairs is a small grey foldable table smeared with pools of rain water and upon which we set whatever we wish when inhabiting the marvellous view.  I customarily frequent the balcony in the morning or early afternoon for a discrete moment of sunbathing; and, in the evening we foregather for dental flossing and cultivated private after-dinner conversation.

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The disparate congregation this morning on the dry concrete floor of the subterranean garage was as you might expect not unlike the collection of old fogeys who live here in the apartment building. Over the course of an hour, as I mechanically pedalled on my tricycle from one end of the garage to the other, people drifted in and out. Some were of course removing or parking their automobile; some were attending to conspicuously noisy matters in their caged locker; all of them said hello and some paused to chat.

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A lonely cow is mooing plaintively in the wet grey distance, somewhere beyond the burgeoning crop of verdant soy beans, somewhere on this side of the drizzly foggy river, somewhere perhaps beyond the distant trees that separate the feudal swaths of land from the Quarter Sessions road that tumbles down to the river’s edge.

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Lucan’s daily routine consisted of breakfast at 9:00 am, coffee, dealing with the morning’s letters, reading the newspapers, and playing the piano. He sometimes jogged in the park and took his Dobermann for walks. Lunch at the Clermont Club was followed by afternoon games of backgammon. Returning home to change into black tie, the earl typically spent the remainder of the day at the Clermont, gambling into the early hours, watched sometimes by Veronica. In 1956, while still working at Brandt’s, he had written of his desire to have “£2m in the bank”, claiming that “motor-cars, yachts, expensive holidays, and security for the future would give myself and a lot of other people a lot of pleasure”.

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The words detached and detachment are not the same.

Detached: showing no emotional involvement

Detachment: (philosophy) the state of lacking material desire

Neither word in my opinion captures a comfortable state of being, either empirically (demonstrably)  or logically (intellectually). It isn’t merely a balance of participation and neutrality or emotional and physical. In fact in both instances it is more a matter of caring or not caring, whether viscerally or logically removed.

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Although it takes me longer every morning to engage my mind and anatomy (I’ve intentionally taken to doing so with moderate acceleration to overcome the lack of intellectual and physical exuberance), I nonetheless hold fast to my lifetime ambition of having a fresh start. It reflects the product of a night’s rest and the sense of reinvigoration prompted by any new day really but for whatever reason I always feel the necessity to start afresh. It is a native invitation to paint a new image on the canvass of life. One must dress accordingly. Which means wearing clean clothes and cleansing one’s spectacles, to see and to be seen.

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The way people are talking these days you’d think we were doomed. The current blather among pundits is that right wing conservatives are overtaking the communist leftist pansies. The objective is cleansing the masses and restoring the 17th century monarchical supremacy. Maybe finally we’ll get rid of those damn people! And then get the world back to where it should be!

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