Things change quickly. I am not now talking about losing one’s hair or putting on weight. I’m talking about life in general. It’s impossible to keep pace with the overall speed of things. One day you’re starting your own business; the next, you’re leaning on a Rollator chatting with former clients. In the interim we’re intent upon accomplishing everything we can before it all ends. The speed of things is unsurpassable (if you’ll forgive the pun).
It has been a recurring theme of our recent transition from the other side of the river to here that I am positively tickled by the fortuity. Today was yet another case in point. This morning as I rode upon my tricycle along Spring Street parallel to the river, I encountered an elderly lady hooked to a mobile walking device similar to my own Rollator. She was accompanied by a younger woman. I asked if they were related; and indeed they are, mother and daughter. Immediately their respective beautiful and abundant gray hair sanctioned the relationship. To my discredit, I slowly recalled that I already knew the daughter (though in my defence I had not seen her for a very long time). I mention all this because it was shortly thereafter upon my return home that I chanced upon my elderly neighbour with her similarly constituted daughter from British Columbia.
Shrews are fiercely territorial, driving off rivals, and coming together only to mate. Many species dig burrows for catching food and hiding from predators. The saliva of these little beasts packs a potent punch to its prey in the form of a neurotoxin. Shrew is an offensive word for a woman who is considered to be unpleasant and easily annoyed, and who argues a lot (Cambridge University Press).
The adjective volcanic is suggestive of or resembling a volcano; potentially explosive; volatile: a volcanic temper.
It is I reckon a stretch to dub today a Family Day if one were to assess the entitlement by the number of family members who figured in the day’s elaboration. There were only I, my partner, my sister and her husband who were the components. Nonetheless this narrow focus was sufficient to inspire the goodness and spirituality which inevitably are summoned by the most modest conversancy with family.
The Indian Curry Pot was not what I had expected to see mid-afternoon today on this brilliantly sunny Friday in the Ottawa Valley as I nonchalantly drove up the hill from Burnstown to Renfrew. Yet in spite of having been arrested by the unanticipated sign I blankly continued driving past the property where the sign appeared. Moments later however my curiosity overtook me. I turned back. As I prepared to drive onto the property – which looked suspiciously abandoned – another car from the opposite direction also turned into the property. The driver of the other car alighted and approached. She explained that she was the owner of the property where the Indian Curry Pot had formerly been housed. The retail venture, so she informed me, has since relocated to nearby Calabogie. She spoke glowingly of the food and kindly detailed further contact information for the eatery.
The mirror image of the shoreline trees upon the polished surface of the river is obstructed by an indifferent butterfly. The air is incomparably still; the sky is lucid. I luxuriate in unaccustomed reconciliation.
It is a privilege of old age unapologetically to query the day of the week. In fact I confess a degree of smugness in doing so. It has been eons since the intelligence was mandatory. I find my perception is hindered not only by incremental memory decline but also by the added distortion of the bygone characteristics of highway traffic, church attendance and retail activity among other indicia, all of which have been (depending on your point of view) contaminated or enlivened by so-called modern kindling including such precipitous custom as working from home and on-line shopping. Living as we do in a secluded rural town, overlooking sprawling farm properties and the river, nearby an 18-hole historic golf course, surrounded by elderly people who have moved here with their Audis and BMWs from urban environments as far abroad as Toronto and the perimeter provinces of British Columbia and Nova Scotia, my temporal knowledge is predicted not by the minutia of the regular week but rather by the distinguishing marks of the seasons such as the flock of geese we overheard chattering nearby this morning as we conducted our own sidewalk confab with a riparian property owner.
Commensurately as I age and as my experience of necessity (or fortuity) widens I am more and more inclined to reservation. What were in youth considered unqualified thrills have again and again suffered the unarguable and sanitzing limitation of what I now unhesitantly express as a flourishing disdain for the corporeal universe. Gone for example is labidinous peril! And Rolex watches (although for that particular deprivation I have more properly to blame the people at Apple™). As an old man I am content with the most immoderate physical constituents or what my late father figuratively summarized as “peace and quiet“. This curmudgeonly costume is by no means a spiritual abstraction. Rather it is no doubt a predictable descent more often and less disparagingly acquainted with the vernacular branded as downsizing (that temporal devotion to simplicity and substance). Perhaps too it is an illustration of the philosophic adage of Freemasonry that “Nature teaches us how to die” though I would understandably prefer not to regard my dissolving appetite as entire extinguishment.
Years ago, when I was about 15 years old, I traveled from boarding school at St. Andrew’s College in Aurora, Ontario to visit my parents and sister for Christmas in Stockholm, Sweden where they then resided in the gracious residential district Djursholm. As I recall, I included with my travel luggage a pair of skis (a luxury – or burden – I would never think of repeating for a shedload of reasons). On the flight to Europe the first stop was Düsseldorf, Germany. Normally a stop such as that would have been confined to the limits of the airport while I awaited the second leg of the journey to Stockholm. If that had indeed been the case, I would accordingly never have acquainted myself with the city. Things however transpired quite differently. I was told that because of bad weather and the recent snow storm in that part of Europe, my Air France flight to Stockholm would be delayed by nine hours. Although I was not equipped at that moment with anything but the basic winter apparel (I was dressed in my school blazer, grey flannels and a coat), I decided that I couldn’t bare to sit idly in an airport lounge chair for nine hours. Instead I took a taxi into the centre of the city where I proposed to look around.
The day began not at all well. This, in spite of the welcoming morning sunshine, blue sky and bracing atmosphere. It was an ideal September morn. Last evening as I had prepared myself for the usual late afternoon bustle at my withdrawing room desk, I chose for a switch – and as a conscious effort for clarity and refreshment – to avoid THC completely. Instead I contented myself with only the usual mug of chilled black coffee, abandoning the measured milligrams of the other stuff (which in my defence I fashioned not as a psychedelic but rather as a painkiller).