Customarily when I am unable to sleep I just toss and turn in bed, likely adding to the aggravation of my neuropathy and my stiff broken ribs which still haven’t fully healed from my bicycle fall on Ponce Inlet, Florida almost exactly three years ago to the day. Early this morning I had attempted to mollify my aching legs and ribs by lying face-down (which I almost never do) but it just made me anxious. I did it because I thought the alternate sleeping position might quell the recovery of my ribs – which I felt was the effect upon them when I lay in the sun at the beach yesterday afternoon. Apparently not. Approaching 1:00 am this morning I decided to get out of bed and do anything other than try to sleep.

When I was still working for a living I regretted getting out of bed after 7:00 am – even on a weekend when vacation time was sparse. Now that I have been retired for five years it is seldom that I get up much before nine o’clock in the morning. Today however we had appointments to have our nails done at nine o’clock so we were out of bed and into the shower shortly after seven o’clock. The awakening was abrupt but I sought to adjust by having at least a sliced green apple with a restorative cup of chilled black coffee. The partial observance of habit succeeded to focus me upon the day without the customary complement of steel cut oats. Besides we had decided last evening to go to the Blue Dolphin restaurant for breakfast after our manis and pedis.

A year ago we resided in a condominium adjacent the Gulf of Mexico. It was seldom a debate whether to lounge by the pool or instead by the sea. If the weather were warm and clear it was a manifest prescription for the beach. This year however we’re adjacent Sarasota Bay. While the scenery overlooking the boat slip and the Bay is unremittingly magnificent, the proximity has removed me from a routine visit to the beach notwithstanding that beach access is conveniently at hand.

Though anyone knows the past is done and over, its texture nonetheless insinuates the present – and by extrapolation, the future. It is however otherwise largely unimportant – possibly barring a criminal theme. To dissect the past from the present is about as easy as removing the salt from a culinary dish. The damage is done so to speak. Or the flavour is there if you prefer a more generous rendition. Either way we’re stuck with what we’ve got.

When one’s régime is abated to breakfast, bicycling, dinner and bed, there’s a need for middling enlargement. Luckily for me the illumination is at hand; namely, the Gulf of Mexico. On almost every level of my sensibilities the sea is paramount. It speaks to my love of nature, to my poetic inclinations, to my physical ambitions and my native senses of smell, taste, sight, touch and sound. I therefore knew unequivocally that the sea was a port of call today. A succinct dawdle overlooking Sarasota Bay was my springboard.

No doubt it is an illness of the obsessive mind to dwell incessantly upon a summary of things as though it were the mechanic to understand the whole, assembling pieces of the universal puzzle, arranging things in random order, to make sense of whatever has been. Riding on my bicycle this morning under the shade of the towering grape trees into the balmy air and yellow sunshine, feeling the burnish upon my face, glimpsing the ribbon of emerald sea on the other side of the road, it was with utter thankfulness that I gazed upon what is here and where we are. There is little other than fortuity to explain it all.

It was a day of relentless debate and hesitation, determinations lobbing back and forth and always with uncertainty. From the moment I finished my customary breakfast of sliced green apple, Brie cheese and steel cut oats I was uncertain about what to do – whether to take a day off from bicycling or lounge in the glorious sun by the pool. I did however succumb to my persistent instinct to start with the constitutional bicycle ride if for no other reason than to combat the possibility of remorse later on for not having done so. It proved to be the right decision.

“To be everlastingly passing through dangers which we know cannot scathe us, to be taking oaths which we know cannot bind us, to be defying enemies who we know cannot conquer us—this is the grinning tyranny of decadence which is called freedom.”

Excerpt From: Gilbert Keith Chesterton. “The Defendant”

Whatever capacity I thought I possessed to see – or to unveil – the happiness of life has vanished in an instant! In the throes of a so-called common cold I have by comparison discovered that being ill takes the fun out of everything. More significantly it would appear that my alleged talent if any was nothing more than my particular mode of expression; and that the substance of happiness isn’t at all my skill to reveal it. In fact it merely comes with the territory – namely, feel good, see good!

Estimating current political activity is an eye-opener. The undertaking confronts humanity’s elemental – or more precisely visceral – features. At the outset I am reminded of the adage, “There are two things you never want to see being made – sausage and law“. The same might be said of our own beginnings in life. Nature is a rude, sometimes disturbingly violent, passionate and marvellous mystery. Like it or not nature insinuates activity of every description. Like it or not nature motivates the politician.