The theme of revival at this time of year is inescapable whether prompted by springtime regeneration or the mixed metaphor of legal and spiritual extension of contract validity with the Holy Spirit. Either way the transition from winter dormancy is acute. The awakening this year is however noticeably diminished by the pandemic. The certainty of the natural and spiritual reinvigoration contradicts the pervasive uncertainty of the future.  Already people are starting to talk about foregoing handshaking interminably! The fluidity of global acquaintance is under attack! And with it comes a blunt admission of our mutual interdependence though not exactly the familiarity we had anticipated.

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There are few people who warrant the designation of flâneur.  It initially had the connotation of wasting time but has since acquired the incomparable ingredient of Parisian superfluity. The French have sought to expropriate the singular denomination much the way they have with Champagne.

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Normally my life is undemanding.  That is, there is certainly little required of me; and generally I require as little of myself (other than what is to be expected of moral behaviour generally). There was a time when from the moment of my awakening I contemplated the list of matters urgently or necessarily requiring my attention.  But those days of imperative or what I whimsically call my days of “service to the rich” have thankfully concluded – and beneficially all considered if I may add. Today however I was overtaken by the necessity of detail – most of which was admittedly of no pressing importance. My spectacles needed to be tightened; and my sunglasses (the ones I keep in the car – the Maui Jim’s) needed to be cleaned. As it turned out more than one pair of my glasses required adjustment; and naturally they all had to be cleaned afterwards.  Those obligations alone would have been sufficient occupation.  The further prerequisite was the location of the optical screwdriver which I customarily leave in the front compartment of the shaving kit I use when traveling.  The shaving kit is in turn left in my favourite Briggs & Riley bag. The bag is stored at one end of my clothes closet, at the bottom of whatever other portables I customarily bring back from Florida after our winter sojourn.  This meant I had the laborious task of emptying that part of my clothes closet then withdrawing the screwdriver and afterwards reassembling the lot!  Whew!  So much for trifling detail!

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Who hasn’t gleefully shared their stories of serendipity! Yet as much as I relish a good yarn I am bound to declare upon sober consideration that there isn’t anything attaching to coincidence except  what we make of it. Certainly there’s no metaphysical or abstruse significance. Nonetheless the unfathomable import attaching to commonality is neither irrelevant nor entirely negligible – no matter by what failed reasoning or inspired spirituality it is arrived at.

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As I have unfailingly remarked on numerous occasions leading up to this much-awaited episode, today is the end of our 14-day quarantine imposed by government order upon those of us returning to the homeland from abroad. It has, I can tell you, been a much greater imprisonment than I ever imagined.  And not one I hasten to repeat – in spite of Baker Bob’s enormously soothing Nanaimo bars!  The unaccustomed lethargy over the past two weeks has all but paralyzed me (or at the very least stiffened those once mobile limbs).  I never until now fully appreciated the text-book advantage of exercise. Stretch! Stretch!

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Tomorrow – Tuesday, April 7th – will mark a clean slate, a fresh start following precisely 14 days of quarantine. It is forecast to be sunny and warm. That’s nice! The last time I was out of the apartment was Monday, March 23rd when I mistakenly visited Lincoln Heights Ford to have the air pressure in my tyres increased (and subsequently the same day to have a replacement Sirius radio module ordered). The events continue to this day to be a moderate embarrassment, the punishment of which is relieved by my sincere misconstruction of the current social restrictions v-à-v those we had cultivated in the United States of America as recently as March 19th when we mournfully left Longboat Key to return home. I can’t recall ever having felt so robbed of a month of my lifetime, not even when lying in the hospital for about a month after my heart stopped while bicycling. That at least was an adventure of sorts! Shamefully I have yet to discover how to readapt the comparatively minor vacation interruption to the larger scope of just being alive. There lingers an imperturbable sense of violation and trespass – though without the benefit of having someone to blame. Blame I find is always so conveniently distracting.

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The Times recently posted an article by Lord Plush Bottom that in lieu of practicing self-isolation we should instead all man-up and get out there to spread the virus more quickly. The philosophy is strangely akin to that of the aristocrats sending the boys “over the top” in order to accelerate the defeat of the colonial enemy. The theory is that immunization is paradoxically achieved through pervasive exposure (“herd immunity“).  It is the same theme of conditioning which attends the vaccination process. Presumably most people (which pointedly in this instance includes the tea-sipping members of the upper crust) will have little if anything to endure from exposure. The avoidance is however notably indiscriminate. Certain of the herd will not be so successful. That too has become a tolerable statistic related to people over 60 years of age and especially those with so-called “pre-existing conditions” which is to say, currently contaminated with enfeebling drugs and as a result having an already weakened immune system. The unfortunate destiny may be dismissed as “their time had come” which I can tell you as one of the prospective applicants is not a purely intellectual reflection. I confess to having as yet certain unexpressed ambitions (though in fairness I hasten to add my unwavering conviction that life owes me nothing).

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As the pandemic mounts its surge across North America – and people increasingly succumb to the government’s fiat for isolation – there is a rising needfulness to communicate with one another.  Staying indoors during springtime is itself a high order; then add to that the prescription to avoid contact with others. This isn’t an invitation to move the party into the garage out of the rain. It’s a cancellation of the get-together entirely. As a result we’ve had to learn new skills for meaningful and inspiring exchange. Suddenly those casual rendezvous at the coffee shop seem more impulsive than we may have once credited them to be. There is as well the awakening of erstwhile dormant connections, conveying their own implications and complications, urges and urgencies.

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Being confined to the apartment for the past ten days has revived the homespun diversions of my youth. Nothing like a global pandemic to call for unpretentious entertainment. I was never a fan of Mister Rogers. Perhaps the Presbyterian ministerial history worked against him. He wouldn’t be the first man of the cloth whom I encountered making a 90-degree shift to the profane – though certainly not smutty or disrespectful. I do however recollect with fondness Clarabelle the Clown (the mute partner of Howdy Doody), Mickey Mouse (and to a lesser extent Donald Duck), Dick Clark and American Bandstand, Annette Funicello, Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, Lassie and My Three Sons. Middle-class American boyhood set a high standard! As apparently did Maurice Chevalier for my parents. It was the fifties in Washington, DC. We lived a block from then Vice President Richard Nixon whose daughter Julie and I were in Mrs. McGee’s class together at Horace Mann Elementary School on Newark St NW.

“His heavy French accent, melodic voice and Gallic charm made Maurice Chevalier the prototype of the gallant French monsieur in the American cinema of the 1930s. Before he went to Hollywood he worked as a farmer, circus acrobat, cabaret singer and, starting in 1908, a comical actor in French films, a few times even with the celebrated Max Linder. Chevalier fought as an infantryman in the French army during World War I and was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1914, spending two years in a POW camp. After the war he returned to the entertainment field, and eventually tried his luck in Hollywood. He made his first American movie in 1929, The Love Parade (1929). The film was a success, and Chevalier made more successful films with directors like Ernst Lubitsch (The Merry Widow(1934)). He retired from films in 1967, his last few roles being mainly friendly patriarchs.“

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This morning we precipitously cancelled our reservation on Key Largo for next year’s season. Though at first we were hopeful all would aright itself within the next three months, the current talk on the popular news channels is overwhelmingly discouraging. In particular the United States of America (because of its president’s mendacious treatment of the virus) is reportedly about to see an explosion of contamination and deaths.  If nothing else the pandemic will discolour the general atmosphere and likely limit the availability of businesses big and small. It is not in any event predictably productive of a relieving holiday environment.  We have accordingly drawn in our horns and contented ourselves to contemplate instead what if anything we might do closer to home if and when we’re able to move more openly than at present. The prospect of travel anywhere abroad is now much diminished.

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