Being as I am momentarily relieved of the arm-twisting to perform any exercise or heavy lifting during the first week or so following my recent surgery, and similarly being proscribed to vacate domestic territory, I sought today – the 2nd day of the new year – to promote as much efficiency and as many advantages as able to be done. The overriding principle was to milk as much as credible from the currency at hand. This – in less abstract terms – is simply the function to act favourably and to devote oneself to the immediacy of life (not its future, nor its past).

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We’re only into the first day of the new year. Yet how soon the seasonal revelry fizzles and evaporates – contaminated by sobriety, resolutions and fresh air. Thereafter the erstwhile wassailing – at least for us Canadians – is as quickly replaced by the more proximate concentration of escaping below the 49th Parallel.

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Happy New Year!

Herewith the theft of a missive from my beloved friend Fiona who has once again said it better than I might have done.

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There is the temptation to jump to the next year’s numeric.  But we’re not there yet.  We’re still within the year 2025 for at least another 3½ hours.  I am intent upon recording this narrowing gap because it is the celebration of the coming year that is at stake.

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Recording good times constitutes good reporting. There is much to be gained and emulated from life’s unreported and putatively mundane but plainly happy events.  Learning the simple truth that a soft landing makes for great nutrition is – surprisingly – for many an awakening! We need not believe our instinctive absorption is mismatched with bad news or bullying; there are other heroes and models of behaviour from which to derive equally persuasive yet contrastingly improving energy.

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Although I’ve enjoyed a great meal at other restaurants, it is not often I feel compelled to share the experience. This evening’s meal at Westwind’s in Pembroke (“The heart of the Ottawa Valley “) is the exception.

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Exotic doesn’t begin to capture the allure of a roadmap abbreviated as Vancouver – Fiji –  Australia. Across one continent to another, a distance from Ottawa to Australia roughly 15,300 km (9,500 mi). By comparison the earth’s circumference measured around the equator is 40,000 km (24,900 mi).

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A blurry day is Nature’s way of reminding us that not everything is as it may first appear to be. Hidden beneath the layers of multi-coloured overhead complications and under the rampant growth of foliage on the ground, and even within the mottled blotches upon the surface, there is a distinction which survives the ambiguity. Clarity is a gradual process, combining not only lucidity but also simplicity. It is a matter of, first, removing oneself sufficiently from the topic to trim the definition to a fully perceptible level; second, to engage in a summary of the entirety to look for flaws and to appreciate shades; and, third, to summarize the totality to afford a synopsis by which to assess the view. Much of this happens unknowingly within our casual regard and mindfulness of what transpires around us. Just as the detail of our regard percolates the whole, so too we gradually penetrate the vision.

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There are many ways to look at life. For some the scrutiny is purely analytic, a matter of dealing with things whatever their nature, a combination of investigation and logic, what might be called almost scientific. There are others who are satisfied to look out the window and gaze upon the scenery that lays before them, dispelling any immediate preoccupation with what is going on. Depending upon the view, this may be other than purely metaphoric; that is, the particular manner of looking at the world may be sufficiently diverting that one needn’t escape the look or ponder it fancifully or figuratively such as I for example recall having done in my first year at law school when looking out the kitchen window of Domus Legis onto the pouring rain and the nearby splintered rooftops one gloomy Saturday night.

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I take it as accepted that Christmas – for some at least – can be a moderate though palpable emotional burden. It is an open door for mawkishness of every description, involving the always rousing traits of ardour called loneliness, old age or generally any other form of psychic or material decomposition to be contrasted with the exuberance and plenitude of Santa Claus. Meanwhile the images of a flying sleigh and tiny reindeer and the sparkling star in the East nourish the lustre of one’s tears.

The acme of the difficulty normally surrounds Christmas Eve and Christmas Day after which there is customarily a united though precipitous roller coaster return to clarity and the usual patterns of temperate living on Boxing Day.  It is this triumvirate of fervency and sentimentality which occupies the weeks of preparation and anticipation leading to their fulfillment. It is especially difficult for mothers, grandparents, religious fanatics and children to endure the events leading up to and including the three days (a numeric significance common throughout the period though for very different reasons but all equally speculative).

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