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

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Recovery from our ethereal and ephemeral sojourn upon the languid bohemian Florida Keys several days ago was further protracted today, retarded perhaps by a sudden blast of cold air from the west. Like a hibernating bear I withdrew only reluctantly this morning from beneath the billowing duvet. My initial objective was to enlarge my knowledge of Things Universal for which purpose I pointedly began with the sharpest focus as I thought might be afforded by FOX NEWS. But I was disappointed in the gamble as I revealed with but a scratch of the surface the predictable party line. It’s like watching TV shows, always the same entertainment, repeated with the sole purpose of attracting base and urgent sentiment. At this horizon so-called news is merely retail. I thus disbanded my central purpose and disintegrated instead within the scope of my own common habits and preferences.

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The process to invigorate myself upon our wearying return from the Florida Keys to home base unfolded after ten-thirty o’clock this morning as I soothingly withdrew from under the burdensome duvet and prepared to divest all remnant of the textured past; viz., get things ready for the purgative wash – clothing and carcass alike. My spectacles and electronic devices were sprayed and wiped; the ornament duly cleansed and brushed. The devotion doesn’t begin to capture my servitude!

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Mid-morning under cloudy skies today we returned from Daytona Beach Shores where we had nested briefly at The Shores en route from a short jaunt in the past week to Tavernier and Key Largo. Our first stop back on Hilton Head Island was Publix to restock the larder with the usual provisions, then a visit to Island Car Wash followed by a gratifying and compensatory breakfast of freshly baked donuts ornamented with glazed icing sugar, succeeded by extra thick bacon, supreme sausage links, fried eggs, an outstanding biscuit with butter ‘n blueberry jam and strong, black coffee at LowCountry Produce Market & Café. We had much about which to rejoice! The venture to Key Largo was replete with excitement, reaffirmation and uninhibited quenching. Our Epicurean spirit prevailed amidst an equally comforting cerebral and demonstrable satisfaction of limitation. Excess is no longer a springboard of evolution.

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We had planned last evening to awaken this morning at five o’clock. It was closer to 4:30 am. After our ablutions, breakfast and loading the car, we were on the road no later than 6:30 am heading north from Tavernier to Daytona Beach. Somehow we got onto an unfamiliar part of the Florida Sunpass route we had intended.  There was a lot of traffic and a snarl because a transport overturned on the side of the road. After that however – and a propitious stop at a service centre to void our anxious bladders – we rolled seamlessly into Daytona Beach Shores and the resort where we’re staying for the night before going onto Hilton Head Island tomorrow morning . But all was not trifling travel.

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The once unimaginable election of Donald J. Trump as President of the United States of America has prompted the not uncommon observation that farting is normal, period. The latest evolution of this metaphor and once mildly embarrassing reality (at least among his base of alleged “deplorables”) is that it doesn’t matter whether Trump paid hush money for consensual sex with another adult. The argument is that in the minds of the masses consensual sex with others during marriage is either natural, normal, expected, historical, tolerable or irrelevant. That may very well be true though as a matter of fact – actual or alternative – it is conveniently impossible to prove it. I haven’t yet resolved how the diehard Christians rationalize the debate (but they’re generally more vocal when attacking people than when supporting them).

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