Often I’ve felt the molten heat and witnessed the white hot glare of sunlight behind closed eyes while on the deck of a ship to sea. I’ve sat at the bow upon the hardened expandable lounge chairs and dried wooden benches greyed by the sea salt spray. I’ve waited for the early morning mist to arise from within the sky, to look beyond and see nothing or everything to the horizon.

Riding my tricycle this morning, an idyllic autumn morning of crisp air and dazzling sunshine through the windy burnished trees, I encountered several people along the way, walking their dog, exercising themselves or merely taking in the air. Each of them immersed in their own model of behaviour and casual acquaintance. Some greeted me cheerfully, expressing their personal embrace of the lovely day. Some were more clearly absorbed in their cosmetic appearance than anything or anyone else, having produced an extraordinary measure of lips or metallic coloured hair while detracting from their natural appeal. Some were blatantly uninterested in sharing either the time of day or the weather. These profitless minions were succeeded by others who by contrast noticeably sought to share the nutrition of daily intelligence, to engage, to commit.

Still others may be excused their profound lack of breeding by performing only the domestic chore of walking the dog (which I assume interrupts the greater diversion of watching TV or flitting on a smartphone). The social ineptitude of these communal perils is in my opinion inexcusable for whatever hollow reason. These uncouth Neanderthals need to rise to the occasion!

It is Thanksgiving weekend.  A time to wind the clocks, to read a book, to withdraw a homely coat from the closet, to go for a pleasing drive in the country, to await the aroma from the kitchen. And to linger upon the balcony or patio, blinded into vaporous dismissal and abandonment, reckoning with vacant thoughts those fleeting images and distant memories. In my mother’s arms I’ve been upon the bow of the RMS Queen Mary to London. As a teenager I sat upon the bow of the SS Arcadia to Le Havre and cruised a sailing yacht in the Baltic Sea.  As an adult I’ve taken a catamaran across the Gulf of Mexico and a yacht upon the St. Lawrence River. And always with the glimmer of sunlight upon the glistening water.

Sitting on the bow I close my eyes and permit myself to dissipate into the flexible world of unconnected recollection, stimuli of sensibilities once carefully concealed or secreted. It is a voyage of undetermined ambition or destination. How then is it any different than any other objective? The millefiori sits resolutely and quietly before me, immovable, perpetual, another casual encounter.