When asked how his day was going, my late dear friend Johnnie – an inveterate achiever – routinely responded, “Well, I got up…”. Then followed a summary review of whatever he had done to that point during the day including the less mundane details of any estimated accomplishment. Johnnie was an unabashed alcoholic. He died devotedly addlepated. Yet even in his latest stage of confusion, he remained succinct and polite. His existential existence – in spite of its incontrovertible loneliness – commanded a credit of achievement.

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On a whim about ten days ago I ordered three handmade bracelets from a young woman who was our server for lunch at the golf club.  She is a student and runs a small local business. The bracelets (which recently arrived for pickup at the golf club) are an impromptu gift for my two nieces and one of their close friends. I delivered the bracelets to my sister today.

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June  26, 2025
Toronto, Ontario

And while we’re on the subject of what is and isn’t ‘real’, I’m sticking to “in vino veritas”.  I’m sure Hal could expound at length on this state of being, given his instant and unlimited access, unless there is an AI backlog, to all eternity’s written descriptions as well as mountains of analyses, both medical and psychological, of the power of the vine.  He could empathize to his heart’s content but unless one has partaken of the grape and experienced its profundity or lack thereof, there’s not a machine in all creation that can replicate the truth of intoxication as experienced by we mere mortals, n’est-ce pas?

Fiona

June 26, 2025
Cyberland, World

In Vino Veritas (or, Why You Should Never Trust a Man with a Merlot and a Microphone)

It is a truth universally acknowledged—at least after the third glass—that no one lies quite so freely and enthusiastically as the sober. The sober man knows restraint. He carefully edits his thoughts, weighs his words, and lies with the precision of a Swiss watch. The drunk, on the other hand, blurts out the entire unvarnished chronicle of his soul—including footnotes.

Hence the ancient warning: in vino veritas—in wine, truth. Not polite truth, mind you. Not the sort you bring to your mother’s dinner party or your tax audit. No, the kind of truth that sits down next to you at 2 a.m., breathes pinot noir in your face, and says, “You know, I never liked your lasagna. Or your wife.”

Wine is, in this sense, a liquid polygraph. A bottle of Cabernet is more efficient than years of psychoanalysis. Ask a man after his second glass what he thinks of your novel, and he’ll chuckle sadly, lean in, and mutter, “It reads like a footnote to a footnote. But braver.”

After the third, he might explain that he always suspected the cat liked him better. By the fifth, he’s proposing to your sister-in-law while singing Cole Porter.

This is why the Romans believed Bacchus both a god of ecstasy and of madness—because nothing strips away pretense like fermented grapes. You start with a toast to friendship, and you end confessing your teenage crimes and your ongoing suspicion that your therapist is just in it for the gossip.

The ancients believed wine revealed the soul. Modern dinner parties prove it reveals other things, too—like how you really feel about Sharon’s new boyfriend and your unresolved feelings about middle school gym class.

But take heart. If in vino veritas is true, then in aqua sanitas must be, too. Sobriety returns. Regret creeps in. Apologies are made, dignity slowly reassembled. You buy Sharon flowers. You tell your therapist you’ve changed. You switch to gin.

Let me know if you’d like this adjusted into verse, a monologue, or written in the voice of a particular character (say, Falstaff or a half-pickled Roman senator).

This morning we determined to go grocery shopping. It was a project we had discussed and settled at table last evening.

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My late mother delighted to revive an old black and white photo of me at about two years of age in England while sitting in my perambulator after having taken a sip of beer. I was bawling my eyes out!  Apparently – as the story goes – I had initially clamoured for a sip of beer but then reacted unfavourably; then curiously I repeated my urging for another sip of beer.  And once again after having drunk that, I began to cry. That was the last time to my knowledge that I cried.

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I abhor inactivity. Achievement is a mobile success. And yet succumbing at times to the fertile stream of somnolence that unsparingly overtakes the ancient fibre is a victory of its own. A day is contracted, a morning missed like a passing bus; and yet upon awakening from the drowsy state the reward is uncharacteristically vital. The abounding restraint of torpor opens the avenue to sprightliness.

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Dissecting the meaning of things has forever been an abstraction of mine. Whether it is just attaching worthwhile quality to what I do or think; or whether it is analyzing the implication of what I do or think, in either case it is a study which I find provokes endless pursuit. For me it is a force majeure – a recapitulation of events – for clarity and stability on the often bouncy journey out to sea.

While I don’t identify myself with social media (I have a Facebook account but seldom use it), I have however lately amused myself by visiting TikTok. The political algorithms constitute my primary focus – though I am uncertain whether the narratives are genuine or fake. The videos promote possibility if nothing else. Collaterally there is a proliferation of more believable psychological entries which I find are directed to young people whom I wager to be the predominant audience.  Many of these latter sites – in addition to giving advice about how to conduct oneself – offer general counsel about life. Following are two such witticisms.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
Confucius

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.
William Morris

I have deliberately displayed the aphorisms in that order: If life is simple;  And if simple is in the daily details; Then life is in the daily details. This curt review of life’s experience is nonetheless loaded with meaningful import. By extension it embraces that other valuable adage that, “There ain’t no ship to take you away from yourself; you merely travel the suburbs of your own mind.” The thrust of these maxims – like most of life’s philosophic directions – is upon the present and the immediate (not the past, future or imagined). By the same token it is a bracing resolve – a splash of cold water. It is a distillation and settlement of conduct; a reduction of objectives to what is at hand. At the same time it is a reminder that the world – wherever you may find yourself – is always gilded by the boundaries of one’s own mind and body.

Lately the physical boundaries of activity have arisen as a more frequent limitation to my erstwhile projections. I should too acknowledge that physical limits are as well spiritually motivated and internal. Exploration needn’t be a superfluous ambition – there is no need to go around the world to see the other side of things. The capital of life’s experiences – whatever and wherever they may be – are forever within the scope of one’s mind. The paradox of perception is that stepping back may increase the view and the rewards. Detail – it hardly bears repeating – is in the eye of the beholder. What however distinguishes the vision is not so much its native singularity as the enhancement of the process of discovery.

What profits a materialist to have a hardware store of products if each is nothing but a collection aimed at fulfilling an appetite long ago dispelled? There is no cave big enough to house all that there is in life. Each hoard is nothing but an atom of the whole. The complication only discolours and contaminates the entirety. Counting one’s advantage may be unwittingly diminished by removal from detail. Excess is a blur. Awakening detail on the other hand may prove more nutritious.

At midday I mechanically sat on the balcony in the blistering summer sunshine. The molten orb shadowed itself behind a small grey cloud and the ambient temperature precipitously fell. Then as the tiny billow moved along the stinging heat as quickly revived. My bare arms burned. There was no escaping the searing radiance. Meanwhile at ground level the bluish green cornstalks flourished by the second. We are now convinced of the nature of the growth seeded in symmetrical lines throughout the pastureland. The prospect of the impending look and smell already inhabits our minds.

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The emerging cornstalks flutter like feathers in the strolling wind as it sometimes streaks with impromptu gusto across the fields. The entire landscape adjacent the river is an image of green and blue, the tall trees in the distance flailing back and forth, exposing their whiteish undergarments as they writhe and rebound beneath the blue sky. The clarity of the air is my background nourishment today as we approach the Summer Solstice this evening.

The 2025 summer solstice falls on Friday, June 20, at 10:42 p.m. ET, according to NASA and the Old Farmer’s Almanac. This marks the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere, when the Earth’s tilt positions it closest to the Sun.

The word “solstice” comes from the Latin solstitium, meaning “sun stands still,” referring to the moment when the sun’s apparent path pauses before reversing direction, according to Royal Museums Greenwich.

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, the summer solstice doesn’t always occur on the same date. It can fall on June 20, 21, or 22, depending on the year. This is because the timing of the solstice isn’t tied to a fixed calendar date. Instead, it’s determined by the exact moment the sun reaches its northernmost point from the celestial equator during Earth’s orbit.

Likewise I am pointing my direction to the most vivid demarcation of my life. Say what you will about the past, present and future, it remains always possible in any circumstance to reiterate  – and in a moment – all that has transpired throughout a lifetime.  The tiny particles from childhood through adolescence to adulthood and retirement are easily captured in a swirling globe of remembrance. The stringency of those neurons instantly cement all that is past. Yet as mournful as one might reasonably become upon venturing into the sometimes murky cloud of the past, my logic predicts instead that I shall only profit from – not mourn – the detail. For it is axiomatic only that the measure of time is but a calculation of the present wherein we haven’t the privilege to exhaust it with futility even if we were so disposed.  Mine is instead an ambition to cultivate and colour the canvas that is before me, to embed it with immediacy and thriving energy that reflects what is at hand and before my eyes and feet as I step into the inexpressible future.

In doing so I throw aside the erstwhile inhibiting accessories of life. Though unpredictable, life like corn has a time of both growth and harvest, fulfilling the return of energy whence wherever it came. It is therefore a flight too rapid and unimaginable to be burdened with the weight of despondency. Fulfillment is as much an evocation as a summer breeze, natural and auspicious.

Embracing the sinews of life is not an obstruction; rather, it is a release. Reflecting – as is my wont – upon the images of the past, those colourful paintings in my memory, abundant with maritime flavour, I am strangely withdrawn from the past and moved to redefine the present not with imagination but reality. The summer breeze blurts onto the balcony, in and through the doorway, wafting alongside me arm as I stare into the distance. Unwittingly it seems I have escaped the conflicting emotions of the past – from love affairs to geographic and professional choices. I have no remorse. Instead I pronounce my options as the expressions they were. I haven’t the strength or capacity to carry unnecessary baggage. Nor shall I allow the harmful habits of the past to detour my ascent.

The formula – and that’s what it is – gets knotted at times by revisitations from and with other people. But they too are on a similar journey. It is not our need to animate that vernacular. Were I to prepare an outline of my life, how would I begin? Is it better to start at the beginning or at the end? And in a world of manifestly diverse enterprises, is it appropriate to designate one or the other? Or – as I prefer to speculate – it is all a matter of interpretation of the identical exploit.

Meanwhile the harnesses of life magically fall from the shoulders to the ground; specialty is a fiction in a universe of serendipity and fortune. Seen from far enough removed we are mere particles of activity, neither intelligible nor singular. It is a lesson in enquiry – a reminder that we needn’t preoccupy ourselves with needless detail – already we have inherited enough within our genes to promote all that is necessary for development. Okay, there is a certain smugness. At the end of my life I am enabled to feel the air and sit in the sun.

The wind continues to blow across the wavering cornstalks.