I am the first to proclaim that life owes me nothing. To my thinking life is a history of happy fortuity. This doesn’t mean I haven’t encountered obstacles; I certainly have. Yet by my calculation there have been but few times when I have faced manifest impediment or barrier which proved insurmountable or which didn’t somehow work itself out. It is not in my nature to quit; that is, not willingly and not entirely. When faced with an obstruction my immediate inclination is to seek to overcome it or to discover a solution which represents a meaningful compromise. However I am not one to lay blame at my own or another’s doorstep for failure. If after repeated efforts something isn’t working, and if there is seemingly no way around the problem, then it is time to abandon the project. And very often the decision I make to do so occurs precipitously; and, as often with unanticipated redirection and sometimes quite unexpected (though welcome) results. Such is the serendipity!

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It is easy to see why Christmas enlivens us so (and why we are soon saturated).  The razzmatazz aligns all the winning topics of universal sentimentality beginning with motherhood (itself spirited by virginity) set in a mystical pauper’s surrounding with which few of us have any acquaintance except perhaps through Charles Dickens’ prepossessing rendition of Bob Cratchit’s son Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. The immediate follow-up to this unimaginable start (if Kings on camels in the middle of the night trudging after a star were not enough) is a collection of exclusive accessories beyond anything at Bulgari – gold, frankincense (an aromatic resin used in incense and perfumes) and myrrh (another perfume or analgesic).

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There wasn’t frost on the windows when I awoke this morning but there was what I thought to be a disturbing amount of condensation. I accordingly set the windows partly ajar and turned up the heat in an effort to dry them out. The temperature had precipitously dropped overnight to a bracing 42°F and has been sustained there throughout most of the day with an expected high at 6:00 pm of only 50°F.  We’re not predicted to escape this refrigeration until next Saturday, Christmas Day (when highs return to 72°F) although the sunshine will be back bien en evidence on Wednesday next. Nonetheless it is suitably refreshing bearing in mind the inescapable Christmas theme. I too for example am insisting upon listening to whatever traditional Christmas music I can find in Mr. Apple’s library; and, I can tell you, the search thus far has proven highly successful! There’s everything from the customary choirs to a great deal more classical renditions (such as baroque Bach) than I had imagined. I confess that I occasionally interrupt the monotony of Christmas music with the likes of Smooth Classical Jazz just to keep things balanced. But not for long!

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Apart from housing guppies and Siamese fighting fish in an aquarium when I was unrecognizably young, I cannot recall having had a certifiable hobby.  Something, say, like stamp collecting or pottery making. Or, as one of my former acquaintances did, making fanciful and complex fishing flies. I considered the latter both then and now a brilliant leisure pursuit, certainly exotic, capturing as it does an uncommon aesthetic trait combined with the rustic image of a sole fisherman up to his waist in a burbling English stream. His father (himself an Englishman and a man of precision, a medical surgeon) practiced gardening with identical gusto and aplomb, creating enormous blooms of white summer flowers.

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We’re nearing the Winter Solstice, the onset of winter and the darkest day of the year, the day before things go over the top (or hit bottom) and start all over again.  Not everything though. We have to reckon with change. We go in one direction then suddenly alter both our orientation and our purpose. Nothing lasts forever.  Apart from old furniture, things just aren’t made that way; they’re intended from the start to fulfill a purpose, then die (at least metaphorically). It is a cooling off period to be sure.

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Perhaps because of a habit previously constructed here, or maybe we’ve just cultivated it since our return, we cycled again late this morning to Sea Shack on Executive Park Road for some serious down-home low-country cooking; viz., conch fritters, She-crab soup, blackened grouper and an assortment of variable sides like simple green salad (with an astonishingly clever Balsamic vinaigrette), Cole slaw (similarly unique and tasty), Hush Puppies (always satisfying though never entirely free of guilt), delicious homemade fries (ditto), collard greens and red rice.  Today is Saturday which for its own reasons continues to be a recurring weekend motive for singularity from the regular work week. We prefer to arrive at Sea Shack sharply at 11:00 am when it opens though today there was no line-up, just the same gang as last week sitting once again at one of the three outdoor picnic tables (the same one as last time).  We too sat outside but instead at one of the café style tables under an umbrella at the opposite end of the restaurant in view of the backyard dumpsters (which added the further ingredient of commonalty to an otherwise superb dining experience).

The Sea Shack

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With Christmas Eve precisely one week away, the children and grandchildren have begun to arrive on the Island for what I expect will be a week or ten days of holiday from work and school. The weather today was ideal beach weather; viz., sunny and 73 degrees with a light southerly breeze. There were young children adventurously wading into the sea at low tide approaching 1:30 pm this afternoon.

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The appeal of music at Christmas is sous entendu in my opinion. Music is but another manifestation of the instinctive response which overcomes Nature upon its descent into darkness and famine thus marked by brilliance and feast. To preserve it from becoming entirely tarsome or Bing Croby-ish (apparently he wasn’t very nice to his children), I search the Apple Music library (yet another of their award winning services) for something more in line with my interests or at least less saccharin or repetitive. I sustain this seasonal application until December 24th and no further.  By that time I have indulged myself to the point of gluttony upon everything available whether in the drawing room or my car.

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We discipline our lives by the time on the clock. Our working lives and wages are determined by it, and often our “free time” is rigidly managed by it too. Broadly speaking, even our bodily functions are regulated by the clock: We usually eat our meals at appropriate clock times as opposed to whenever we are hungry, go to sleep at appropriate clock times as opposed to whenever we are tired and attribute more significance to the arresting tones of a clock alarm than the apparent rising of the sun at the center of our solar system. The fact that there is a strange shame in eating lunch before noon is a testament to the ways in which we have internalized the logic of the clock. We are “time binding” animals, as the American economist and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin put it in his 1987 book, “Time Wars.” “All of our perceptions of self and world are mediated by the way we imagine, explain, use and implement time.”

By Joe Zadeh
Published by The Berggruen Institute

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We left 1000 Islands, Canada on November 30th last.  Today – December 15th – marks completion of our first two full weeks on this exquisite barrier island, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina beside the roaring North Atlantic Ocean. Already we’ve had so many escapades – trifling though they are – about which to delight. Perhaps the zeal is nothing more than a change of venue, something new to do and see, but whatever it is, I am dead chuffed! Every day we have bicycled (for me between 15 – 20 Kms) and I have reinvigorated my daily car wash cycle as well (a convention I excuse as an imperative to control the dripping sap from the towering sea pines). With the indisputable convenience of Apple Music I subsequently relax with baroque classical Christmas music and the likes of Tony Bennett for the more popular American songbook such as “White Christmas“. It is as usual impossible to escape the fervour of Christmas and its holiday spirit. Red wreaths and ribbons abound! For the moment I do however feel reluctant to proclaim the natural seaside beauty here when wistfully recalling the traditional Christmas themes of snowy lanes, fireplaces and the like.

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