Why must the moments go by in such haste?
Don’t wait too long
Winter is coming, we’ve no time to waste
Don’t wait too long
Don’t Wait Too Long
Songwriters: Jesse Harris / Larry Klein / Madeline Peyroux
Category Archives: General
New Year’s Eve (2023)
As is my custom in the late afternoon, I am seated at my desk overlooking the Mississippi River and the neighbouring farmlands, strengthening myself with a bowl of sliced green apple and a cup of chilled triple espresso coffee. I mention this in particular because it is likely an odd preoccupation on New Year’s Eve. The explanation however – apart from the standard excuse of unforgiving habit and routine – is that we have just come off an exceedingly uplifting late morning and early afternoon agenda. Several days ago we were invited to join a nephew and his children (and the sweetheart of one of the two boys) for coffee and a chat. It was an animated and highly nutritious conference.
“The best mask for a treacherous heart is an honest face!”
Growing up I didn’t often watch television. The common room was not for me a particularly favourable resort as dirty young boys sat about the television, sprawled upon the sofa and library chairs, throwing scraps of paper at one another, rudely joking, stewing (as my late father once so memorably observed) in their own juices. There was a reason I graduated Head Boy (a purely academic distinction). It was indisputably rubbed into me at a tender age that it was all about production and achievement, not idleness and camaraderie. The latter social contact was for me reserved for those now emblematic dalliances upon the Lower Field on a brilliantly sunny day in chilly late autumn with my special school friend Max whose mother we later learned committed suicide by hanging herself with a school scarf at the Royal York Hotel when she was putatively frequenting a continuing learning medical course in Toronto.
The Narrow View
As we critically approach New Year’s Eve I was by chance reminded of the importance of the narrow view of life. While you may think that such a perspective is unfavourable for its putative avoidance of the full picture, instead for me the direction is a reminder of the significance of that which is closest at hand, specifically family and friends. I was prompted to this existential digression upon receipt this morning of charming photographs of members of a wonderful family of friends whom we met years ago on Longboat Key, Florida. They were then, and they remain so now, the model of perfection when it comes to family togetherness and noteworthiness. Indeed whatever may be said of the Americans, the one thing about which they are uncontradicted is their unqualified and oft-times remarkable devotion to family and friends. Meaningfully the lead character in our particular acquaintance is the mother of the family (who in turn is equally devoted to her own mother).
Brush the tarnish!
Two days before New Year’s Eve! It’s rather late in the season to be thinking about cleaning off the grease and grime from the past. But I have fortuitously received an exceptional alternative to wiping the history of my thoughts, for brightening the discolouration and smoothing the deterioration. I cannot enhance the smears but I can polish the stains!
How things have changed!
Inevitably one hearkens back to the past; curiously to reflect upon how things have changed, where people have gone or ended up and how things began so many years ago. And of course to repeat that some are no longer whinnying among us. Plus more acutely confronting where oneself has landed after the fray that is existence.
Pacific day
In an instant everything has returned to normal. The snow has melted, the streets are bare, the traffic is its usual controlled flow, there’s nothing left to do or to plan. It’s a pacific day.
Misty Boxing Day
The social obligations may have cleared with the passage of Christmas but the atmosphere this morning upon awakening was less transparent. A waft of warm air has melted much of the light snow and once again exposed the tufts of grass and field of wild plants below a fog.
“The great gallery of Whitehall”
“His palace (King Charles the Second) had seldom presented a gayer or a more scandalous appearance than on the evening of Sunday the first of February 1685.”
“One Roman Catholic, whose skill was then widely renowned, Doctor Thomas Short, was in attendance.”
“William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, an honest and pious, though narrowminded, man, used great freedom. “It is time,” he said, “to speak out; for, Sir, you are about to appear before a Judge who is no respecter of persons.” The King answered not a word.”
End of Season
Among the many other noticeable features today on Christmas Day was that which was welcome and noticeable for its absence; namely, traffic and retail occupation. The city lights were dimmed on all accounts. Yet precipitously the happy season of private familial absorption and revelry is over in an instant. The lingering Christmas decorations already appear superfluous, inconsequential, even garish. No more is there a burgeoning ambition to prepare for anything other than the New Year which (except for those who cherish a party or yearn for formalized drunkenness) is almost beyond redundancy.