The prescription to awaken early and begin the day is not only a productivity recommendation. It is a temporal alignment of night and day, beginning and end, up and down of the sun and moon. It has been proverbially advanced by Aristotle and Benjamin Franklin. Nor is it in my opinion strictly metaphorical.  Since my teenage years I have arisen by rote and alarm at seven o’clock in the morning. That is at least until recently when I have to confess it instinctively displeases me to sleep late.

“The early morning has gold in its mouth”, a translation of the German proverb “Morgenstund hat Gold im Mund”.

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Things speak to us in many different ways.  It is not only through speech – though even that is so diverse a method of communication to include incalculable meanings of words, intonation, dialect, volume, delivery – not to mention the abiding influence of the appearance of the vocalist. There is too the appearance of whatever surrounds us. The way Nature speaks to us. The way a child’s beautiful face speaks to us. Then of course there is music, and musical instruments (the grand piano being my favourite), musicians and singers, and the types of music (jazz, rock, country, rap, classical, opera, schmaltz). Art of every description (oils, acrylics, pencil, water colours, wood, glass, plastic, steel, bronze, stone, paper, photography, furniture, rugs and those silly accessories like paperweights and millefiori). Literature and poetry. Dreams. Convocations (school, theatre, church, synagogue, temple, boards, clubs, fraternities and sororities). Food and appetites. Architecture. Automobiles. It is easy to become adrift on a sea of impressions and expression.

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The so-called “far-right conservative “ is one who prefers boundaries. The exemplification is national (as in building walls) and international (such as the cooperation in or ignorance of wars) or local (like gated communities). As far back as the Medieval Ages, the definition of land was crucial to the well-being and success of both the Lord of the Manor who owned the land and the peasant who occupied it. It is no accident that the feudal domains of the seigneurs along the St. Lawrence River were mathematically outlined in harmonious narrow strips of land from the River to the nearest concession or sideroad. The creation was hardly Heaven sent.

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Won’t you wish to come with me
Adjoining little gems I see
That occupy me while I be
Agonizing willingly.

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It has taken me a lifetime to discover that retail is aside from the obvious (“the final link in the supply chain from producers to consumers”) a psychological exploit. It is an agenda fraught with palpable exposure. This is so not because of prior insufferable ignorance rather the unwitting acceptance of outcome without consideration of the alternative and its superior value in any event. Depending on the consumer, retail may for example involve animated (sometimes unaccountably hysterical) price differences, questionable size determination, gender suitability, vacillating public appeal, colour or fabric consternation, make or model hassles, stripped down or tarted up versions and even something as lacking in excitement as diameter vs circumference. What however is inescapable and inalterable is the sequence of associated mental and emotional attributes whether psychosomatic or real. All of which can I believe be overcome if unfortunately found to be undesirable.

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As I commented to my partner earlier today, the patently boring review of one’s life is diluted by adherence to the thesis, “Write what you know”. It is a small compliment. Yet for whatever prospective reason I also imagine it is worthwhile to note the specifics of those whom one remembers in particular. Just part of my pervasive angst but otherwise moderately sustainable.

The summary record of my life is boldly speaking a division of childhood, teenage and adulthood of which respectively I remember nothing, some and most in that order. The altering depth reflects the surviving worth of the details not just the diminutive and distancing effluxion of time.

Childhood:

I am informed I was born in Montréal, Québec (1948). At two months of age, my parents and I went to England where my sister was born about a year later. The trans-Atlantic voyage was accomplished on the Queen Mary. Our nanny in England was Mrs. Begg (“Auntie Begg”) whom I only briefly recall because she continued for many years upon our return to Canada to send birthday greetings.

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As I languished in bed earlier this morning, I addressed the issue of productivity. Specifically I examined whether being as I am now demonstrably unproductive is a manifest peril? Having spent the better part of a lifetime (basically everything I can safely recall from the age of ten onwards) devoted to accomplishment of one order or another, I now find myself submerged in a pool of iridescent indolence. It is an achievement of dubious success in spite of the shimmer; the effulgence of the moment is undeniable but I rather feel I’ve done little or nothing to deserve it. Is it the want of orthodox christianity, the absence of punishment for the crime, the reward without the suffering, the summit without the steep climb? As unfamiliar as I am with my present circumstance of inconsolable satisfaction, I am spirited to discover it is a poison which haunts young people as well. This, not because I prefer universal disadvantage, rather because it illustrates universal applicability of the infection and thus softens what might otherwise be dismissed merely as a private neurosis.

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The chronology of springtime is upon us. Its celebrated flourishing performance is as inevitable and unstoppable as its seasonal celestial transition. Everyone whom I know in this hemisphere of the whirling globe is anxious to proclaim to me their overriding occupation of late within gardens, upon meadows and adjacent ponds. As I drove home today from Stittsville along the Appleton Side Road it was evident beneath the azure dome that residents of the glistening county properties have undertaken the enhancement and definition of their rural estate. Things were in pristine order within the rolling boundaries of awakening green.  Its picturesque image was akin to a vast dining table set with silver, linen and Crown Derby awaiting the arrival of the guests. The headtable guest is Springtime itself, the innate burgeoning verdant grasses, hedges and trees, the overnight arrival of duty bound participants who will in turn flawlessly explode.

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If I were asked I would commend jazz to even the most illiterate. The variety sufficiently assures there is little risk of confusing Beethoven and Bach particularly if you haven’t read about jazz or much less have never heard it before. It is not however only the variety that enamours me.  I wouldn’t make a similar generalization about Rap music. As a pure vehicle for the technical examination of sound, jazz excels. Jazz can be dressed up or down.  Made to be happy or sad. Thoughtful or whimsical.

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Reluctant as I am to admit to materialism, upon reflection I suppose it isn’t something for which I ought to feel the least indignity.  Retail after all is at the heart of global prosperity beginning for example on our own shores in Canada with the inestimable fur trade. Indeed my own paternal grandfather was among other things a fur trader, specifically silver fox.

The North American fur trade began as early as the 1500s between Europeans and First Nations and was a central part of the early history of contact between Europeans and the native peoples of what is now the United States and Canada. In 1578 there were 350 European fishing vessels at Newfoundland. Sailors began to trade metal implements (particularly knives) for the natives’ well-worn pelts. The first pelts in demand were beaver and sea otter, as well as occasionally deer, bear, ermine and skunk.

Fur robes were blankets of sewn-together, native-tanned, beaver pelts. The pelts were called castor gras in French and “coat beaver” in English, and were soon recognized by the newly developed felt-hat making industry as particularly useful for felting. Some historians, seeking to explain the term castor gras, have assumed that coat beaver was rich in human oils from having been worn so long (much of the top-hair was worn away through usage, exposing the valuable under-wool), and that this is what made it attractive to the hatters. This seems unlikely, since grease interferes with the felting of wool, rather than enhancing it. By the 1580s, beaver “wool” was the major starting material of the French felt-hatters. Hat makers began to use it in England soon after, particularly after Huguenot refugees brought their skills and tastes with them from France.

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