Roads wouldn’t normally be considered memorable. Yet I find myself wistfully recalling the roads down which I have trod or driven or been driven. The recollections are astonishingly acute. I can easily hark back to a road connected with every period of my life! This warrants attention akin to discovering a feature which has insinuated one’s life unawares. The detail goes far beyond pavement. The thrust of each road is unequivocally emotional or psychological or both!

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In 1963 a voyage to Europe was considered far-reaching and chic. Granted the normal limit of the compass was London, Paris, Zürich and Rome. The allure of the Black Sea was yet unheard of. The Baltic Sea was only occasionally pronounced. Almost sixty years later it is not uncommon to hear of people venturing to the South Pacific, the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand, the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. In the time between these two polarities people in North America tuned into short but indulgent jaunts to the Caribbean, the Mayan Riviera, Costa Rica, Panama and South America.

Several days ago we noticed a trail of tiny ants each less than the size of a pin head on the march in a uniform line along the lower periphery of the dining room wall streaming upwards to the top margin and then down again approaching the kitchen area. The precision of their military performance was commendable. There was no obvious attraction for the ants such as food. The only noticeable difference of late was the drop in the ambient temperature which we speculated may have encouraged the ants to come indoors. We have naturally arranged to have a pest control company look into the matter.

The triumph of egotism is not as you might imagine its willing admission but rather its flagrant denial. Trump and his sycophantic minions have proven the success of the posture. But before you or anyone else gets too enthusiastic about defeating this demonstrable display of engineering it is first wiser to recall the universality of the contamination.

We haven’t exactly got a lot to do here on Longboat Key – a combination of our own inactivity and the lack of anything beyond the gated residences other than the open sea. Nonetheless arranging something as formidable as lunch requires a measure of calculation. If not that totting up then at the very least the benefit of serendipity. Assuming going to lunch isn’t something we’ve already planned (a superfluity which seldom overtakes unless we’re going with others) then we have to ensure – or hope – several preconditions collide.

Not every day on Longboat Key is a classic subtropical experience. With a high temperature today of a mere 60°F under predominantly cloudy grey skies the flavour approached a decidedly more northern ambience. Many of the few people walking or cycling were wearing long pants and jackets, apparel normally unimaginable. After I cycled from one end of the island to the other and back (a total of 32.31 km or 20.08 miles) the atmosphere began to brighten somewhat, revealing a faint pink on the western horizon over Sarasota Bay and patches of blue scattered about, altering the overall character above the palm trees swaying in the wind from the NNE to the more traditional combination of blue, green and white.

Statement of Facts:

There is not a lot I view as having failed. Yet some I feel are best abandoned. Recognizing as I do that human relationships constitute the real sway I have to admit therein lies my most earnest reservation. If I were to speak critically of myself it would be directed at what has proven to be a relentless and often pointless ambition to cultivate or preserve relations which are either overvalued or doomed (sometimes from the outset). Part of this toxic determination isn’t the laudable drive to persevere in the face of difficulty but rather the bloody mindedness to win. I hate to confess so bluntly but it is that succinctness more than anything that captures the deeper motive – not for example some more glamorous goal to understand others. Indeed if I were to be entirely candid I’d admit there are just some things that do not or may never work. While that is a trite admission from someone such as I with undeniable self-esteem the confession of inadequacy is a severe blow not to mention a rude awakening.

Changing the Philips Sonicare electric toothbrush, while not the highlight of my day, represents an undertaking at least as significant on my agenda as tilling the garden in the springtime is no doubt for some. It’s one of those trifling but meaningful intervals, in this instance especially apt to the mid-point of our six-month winter sojourn in Florida. Coincidentally this preoccupation coincides roughly with another quarterly dental obligation; namely, a visit to the hygienist which I accomplished last week. It’s all part of the fundamental attention to the six senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch. Less than a month ago I went for an eye examination with a local optometrist (part of what my ophthalmologist recommended as a three-month corollary to surgery late summer). The visit to the audiologist is more of an annual thing as is the family physician’s attendance (though recently the traditional one-year rule has been replaced by the “as-needed” imperative). The family physician adequately covers the generic issues of physiology (“the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts“). All this is to say that, aside from having gassed the car and had it washed today, everything is in ship-shape repair! Oh, I had my hair cut as well! That – and our recent tour at the nail spa -definitely complete the cycle.

Yesterday we went to Best Buy the consumer electronics store for modern gizmos, gadgets, toys and necessities – televisions and home theatres, computers, smart phones, tablets, portable sound systems, cameras and camcorders, headphones, wearable technology, GPS, drones, collectibles, etc.

It sometimes requires a low mist to capture a picture in the correct light. The brilliance of sunshine – like any other advantage – can paradoxically diminish the view of other things around. I am the first to rhapsodize the value of contrast – that enhancing difference awarded by something or someone else of equal effulgence. Yet as a stratagem of contemplation the lapse into and absorption of limited visibility is consoling and informative.