It isn’t often we have an easterly wind. Today was the exception. Though the wind was reportedly only 16 km/h it felt much stronger as I proceeded inland up Greenwood Drive to Pope Avenue and across to the sea at Coligny Beach Park. The reason I welcomed an easterly wind is because it means I can sail home on my bicycle with the wind at my back along the beach from Coligny Beach Park to Sea Pines Beach Club, roughly 5 km, the approximate distance from the yacht basin where we reside in Harbour Town to the Sea Pines entrance on Greenwood Avenue. Curiously this favourable direction is not, as I would have otherwise imagined, from the north in keeping with an overall north-south configuration of  Hilton Head Island along the coast of South Carolina. That configuration is however an uneducated one. In fact the barrier island (and indeed the whole of South Carolina’s coast along the North Atlantic Ocean) are predominantly east-west (or at least northeasterly-southwesterly) rather than directly north-south. For whatever reason the predominantly easterly wind is an unusual occurrence.  Obviously it comes flying off the North Atlantic Ocean, whisking the tiny particles of white sand about in sweeps of undulating currents upon the beach. I took advantage of this agreeable wind at my back with pure delight today!

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Upon the way out the condo building late this afternoon on our little outing to have the car washed, we passed two elderly people sitting on a bench in the lobby.  I had seen them there mere moments earlier when I returned from my constitutional bicycle ride.  On that initial occasion I had shared a cheery “Hello!” with them, or at least with the male member of the troop (the woman had her eyes downcast and did not seem anxious to socialize on any level). On the second occasion of our unforeseen encounter, as we were leaving the elevator and headed towards the front door of the lobby, we again extended a greeting.  The response (if indeed there was one) was substantially muted.  Once seated in the car we opined that the bench occupants were having a bad day. It is easy in these casual moments between strangers to misinterpret what otherwise invites disrepute. For me it is also a poignant reminder that we have so little about which to complain; and that the misadventure of others is not our pressing dilemma nor something we should allow to discolour our own buoyancy.

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“The secret presses of London worked without ceasing. Many papers daily came into circulation by means which the magistracy could not discover, or would not check. One of these has been preserved from oblivion by the skilful audacity with which it was written, and by the immense effect which it produced. It purported to be a supplemental declaration under the hand and seal of the Prince of Orange: but it was written in a style very different from that of his genuine manifesto. Vengeance alien from the usages of Christian and civilised nations was denounced against all Papists who should dare to espouse the royal cause. They should be treated, not as soldiers or gentlemen, but as freebooters. The ferocity and licentiousness of the invading army, which had hitherto been restrained with a strong hand, should be let loose on them. Good Protestants, and especially those who inhabited the capital, were adjured, as they valued all that was dear to them, and commanded, on peril of the Prince’s highest displeasure, to seize, disarm, and imprison their Roman Catholic neighbours. This document, it is said, was found by a Whig bookseller one morning under his shop door. He made haste to print it. Many copies were dispersed by the post, and passed rapidly from hand to hand. Discerning men had no difficulty in pronouncing it a forgery devised by some unquiet and unprincipled adventurer, such as, in troubled times, are always busy in the foulest and darkest offices of faction. But the multitude was completely duped. Indeed to such a height had national and religious feeling been excited against the Irish Papists that most of those who believed the spurious proclamation to be genuine were inclined to applaud it as a seasonable exhibition of vigour.”

Excerpt From
The History of England, from the Accession of James II — Volume 2
by Thomas Babington Macaulay

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There are two predicates to my morning activity on Hilton Head Island; namely, the weather and the tides. We’re currently within one of those congenial temperate zones of seemingly endless sunshine.  The tides however are presently locked for the next several days in a state of high tide about the middle of the day – surrounding the time when most people think about going for a bicycle ride upon the beach. For example, the high tide today was at 12:55 pm. Putatively this hinted that the width of the shoreline convenient for bicycling was much diminished.  And it was. It was not however completely impassable.

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There was a peculiar urgency to the day this morning when I awoke but minutes before seven o’clock. I suspect the canon importance requiring swift action was none other than the sunshine unfolding in its lemony majesty upon the golf course. It is as well indisputably heartening to regard a 10-day weather forecast of nothing but yellow sunshine emojis. It is unforgivable to ignore the invitation – nay, the mandate – to circulate in the open air in such amenable circumstance. More fundamentally the predicted sunshine was just another way of saying, “Get on with it!” And so I did.  Though I confess my customary morning rituals were empowered today by having earlier indulged in the relieving percussive massage of my Thergun Mini®. I feel compelled to share this latest discovery (enacted by my erstwhile physician’s high-spirited son) as it charters yet another important technological advance designed to make life better.

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At Cutter Court on Lighthouse Lane the weather is presently 41°F and cloudy.  The 10-day forecast is sunny but lows near freezing and highs below 56°F. The wind today is 18 km/h from the north. High tide was 11:17 am a fact which is averse to but for the adventurous and athletic types not prohibitive of cycling on the beach. For those of us Eskimos who ventured abroad today after breakfast, cycling or walking about Sea Pines, it was a refreshing start to the day and a welcome occasion to wear those garments we brought along in anticipation of this poetically denominated “Wintry Mix“.  If you care to know, the Pressure is currently 1,025 hPa (whatever that means). And I don’t need to be told that the Visibility is “clear right now“. The conditions are not what I consider normal for Hilton Head Island though we are naturally accustomed to this fleeting blend within the six-month compass of a typical sojourn here.

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I welcome the change from a brilliant, sunny day on the Island to a soggy, grey one.  Everything changes. Routine dissolves. Purpose alters. Objectives are recast. Time contorts. It is conducive to indolence, retrospection and choral music. Cycling is off the agenda (my old limbs need a break and I most certainly dislike water walloped against my back). I had an appointment at 12:30 pm today to have my hair cut at Rita’s salon by Elena Shank (she does a splendid job) so I hadn’t time to do anything this morning but consume the butt-ends of the Cranberry/Walnut Artisan loaf with a titch of  Kerrygold Pure Irish butter and two discrete spoonfuls of MaraNatha Organic peanut butter. I shall rely upon the lubrication to get me through the rest of the day.

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Within my coarse and sometimes risqué personal vernacular the expression “Sacrament of Heaven” has no ecclesiastical meaning. Rather it is intended only to capture the thrilling inscrutability of the conjunction of fortuity and beneficence. Never have I considered the concurrence of fortuity and beneficence anything more than chance. As a result it is to be taken with exceeding gratitude and the admission of the incalculable riddle of life. If that makes me reverent, so be it, I could care less.

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Discretion is not only the assessment of tact and diplomacy; it is also the expression of choice and option. Both are compelling imperatives in the performance and exactitude of one’s being. Somewhere between the two is the blend of common sense and desire that preserves the best of both. Life is seldom as meticulous as we might first have supposed it to be. Hence the need for discretion. Otherwise we lapse into a world of rashness; viz., “Discretion is the better part of valour!”

The phrase is also found in Act V, Scene IV of the Shakespearean play Henry IV, Part 1, spoken by Falstaff to Prince Hal when the latter has mistaken the former for dead. Falstaff, who had been playing dead on the battlefield to avoid being killed, tells Hal, “The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.”

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It has taken me a long time to settle my mind. Things have so often stood in the way.  But things have changed. Now that my parents are gone, now that I am at the end of my own rope (we’ve bought the headstone), now that we have discarded stuff we no longer use or need, now that I have sated my appetite for material things (and blithely preserve the ones I have), I can at last abandon the chains of duty, obligation and passion. What remains, the wreckage of years of both calculated and accidental performance and inarguable Hedonism, is a happy complacence.

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