Playlisting can be a significant factor in the career of a recording artist. I can’t imagine the algorithms which govern the royalty payments from Apple Music! From the vantage however of the listener the object is as forceful, as complicated and as prophetic. Though the listener’s commercial interest does not compare to that of the artist, the settlement of what constitutes one’s personal playlist is not meaningless nor any less expressive. From my perspective playlists evidence an anchor of all that is preferred in one’s life. The evolution of the preferences is gradual but perceptible.  Many of us no doubt flatter ourselves to conclude that the process resembles distillation; that is, refinement and clarity, elimination of garbage and inadequacy, achievement of purpose and ambition. And for the most part, I’d agree that it is. But whatever the transition, identifying its singularly beguiling characteristics is always relevant. There are two ways to get down a river; viz., either you know where to go or where not to go.

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We stalwart adventurers of the Northern hemisphere enjoy but an attenuated expression of superlative summer weather!  Today was one of those magical golden days with fluffy white clouds clustered beneath the azure dome, a light wind at times almost still, emerald green corn stalks wavering in the fields and the site of laden passenger vehicles with attached trailers carrying boats and canoes. Though I always recall with fervency the advent of the summer solstice on or about June 21st each year, it is more probable that the most popular mark of summer’s brilliance surrounds the two national holidays in Canada and the United States of America celebrated almost contemporaneously (by no coincidence I am sure) on July 1st and 4th respectively. Those latter dates convey recognizable clarity to the holiday and temperate purpose.

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Bartley McGregor

When I was a boy aged 10 years approximately I met a chap of about the same age named Bartley McGregor. His family in addition to having a large home at the top of the hill also had a colony nest for Purple Martin birds.  One of the hatchlings fell from the nest.  Bartley – who had been looking for the chick before we arrived for a visit – led me to an ancient wooden shed near the colony nest.  There was a slopping boardwalk into the shed.  I looked under the boardwalk and found the chick. When Bartley and I howled into Dr. McGregor’s drawing room to share the news of our find he referred us to his neighbour Nobby Wood, a naturalist who lived next door.  Mr. Wood took one look at the chick and pronounced its doom because there was no way to mount the height of the pole on which the colony nest perched; nor he said could we possibly feed it because it had to be fed constantly. He said the bird ate bugs.  I took the chick home with me and my mother spent a good part of the night by the outside porch lamp collecting bugs and moths to feed the gaping yellow beak of the chick.  The chick thrived. I would take bicycle rides with the chick on my shoulder.  I returned to Mr. Wood and showed him the chick.  He wrote an article about it in the Red Deer Advocate called “Billy’s Bird“.  We agreed it was best to release the chick among the hundreds of other Purple Martins about the property.

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Though we haven’t fully succeeded to escape the sobering desideratum of humanity – namely, interminable and seemingly incremental medical and dental attendances, renewing debit and credit cards, health cards and driver’s licence and getting a haircut – we have however shifted from that tedious zone into a moderately less constrictive one of muted desperation. We’re not out of the corral but with the advent of the sun reaching its maximum declination on June 21st, the horizon outlook is now fully visible. I’ve decided that the date aligns with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s anticipated opening of the Canadian border for non-essential vehicular travel on July 21st. It affords further though hesitant anticipation. Meanwhile there is nothing to do but languish in the summer haze.

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Today is July 1st or Canada Day! And it’s time for merrymaking! Unquestionably I am proud of my numerous blood, familial, friendship and social alliances within both Canada and the United States of America. Though I once lived in Washington DC and though we have since made a routine of wintering part or all of the season in Florida, the only memorable occasion I have of the Fourth of July or Independence Day is a trip we took to Fort Lauderdale years ago when I was still practicing law.  We mistakenly imagined that Florida would be isolated in the summer.  Indeed based upon another trip during a different period we had previously taken to Florida in the summer that observation was accurate.  But we discovered it didn’t hold for the Fourth of July.  There were throngs on the beaches and line-ups for restaurants! We anodized the miscalculation with fresh oysters and vodka martinis! The conjunction of the American and Canadian national holidays is particularly trophic as both countries begin to relax from the COVID scourge. It naturally enlivens our prospective.

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On the last day of June – the day before Canada Day on July 1st – the public atmosphere is noticeably clamorous. The opening today of personal service industries – hair salons and nail spas – has as well engendered uncommon activity and with it no imperceptible degree of optimism. The thread of a familial theme promotes a decidedly domestic flavour to the energized commotion. It is an occasion for us to reunite within the sphere of our ambitions. For as long as I can recollect we’ve abhorred the ribaldry of a statutory holiday. So we secure ourselves contentedly within our compass. It has thus inspired the stock nutritious features; viz., literature (Thomas Babington Macaulay’s “The History of England from the Accession of James II“), music (Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca“), food (garden fresh vegetables) and smug anticipation for what is on the horizon.

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It was like Christmas this morning! That bounding thrust to get up and get going! Another balmy summer day! Without dwelling upon the impetus we immediately launched ourselves onto la route précise for a rejuvenating bicycle ride throughout the neighbourhood.

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It has been a frenetic day. Starting at 7:30 am this morning when I got up. Or rather when I had to get up. I had an appointment at 9:30 am with a very capable masseur for some traction control. Followed by breakfast on the patio at the golf club. The admission of having consumed such quantity of sausage, bacon, eggs and cheese made me wonder when my heart will attack me one last time. I can’t say it inhibited my gusto. It was a hot, hot day; and I like the heat.  I am convinced there is nothing  – perhaps other than the now legal vials of THC/CBD – which will erase my neuropathy and limitless other malfunctions and degeneration peculiar to that insipid prosecution called old age, an extremely casual reference to what appears to me at least to be an entirely predictable if not indeed calculated decomposition.

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The wind is glutted today with a dry piercing heat amid the swelling balmy air.  It is reminiscent of an impending storm being tracked across a cresting lake on a summer day while squinting into the distance at mounting grey clouds. Meanwhile the turbulence translates the fields of flourishing corn stalks into a set of chimes, a peculiar rustle adorned by an emerald green mantle. The wind, the heat and the changing atmosphere invite native lethargy. It is summer at last!

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The weather forecast this morning was for rain throughout the day.  The prediction was like a bandage about my perpetually wounded psyche which forever compels me to reach for production and accomplishment, performance and reward, utility and function. Anything to sanctify my purpose. Thus temporarily released from the daily constitutional bicycle ride I regaled in the tranquility of my morning.  Breakfast was the usual concoction of fresh fruit, ripened cheese, prunes and fibre. That painless part of routine had been restored. I prolonged the dalliance at table by engaging my Hemingway devotion to standing at the easel and writing – but admittedly without standing or the customary smugness which follows even the moderate exertion of bicycling throughout the neighbourhood. Inertia is not a talent for which I have developed an especial taste. Luckily for me I have the keen mechanical foundation of the modern automobile to propel me through the shifting zones of bland habit, necessity and existential obscurity.

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