Finally I’ve got some relief! For weeks I have been frantic! My nights have been sleepless and my back is a corresponding barometer of tension. Neither food nor exercise has placated my agitation. Heated events within and without the perimeter of my personal life have sullied my disposition and made me edgy. I have on occasion cast doubt upon every particle of my existence, draining the customary untroubled resources of their liquor. In a word I have been distraught!
Early this morning – Sunday morning – my cellular telephone rang. I am not accustomed to receive unscheduled telephone calls in the morning much less Sunday morning. As proof of the convention I had plugged my iPhone into its cable to recharge it at the far end of the living area. When the phone rang I moved briskly with a combination of quizzicalness and reserve from my dining room table perch where I had been nibbling orange sections and sipping my first coffee to the end-table where the telephone lay.
For the past week or so I have felt churned up both mentally and physically, anxious, distracted, weighed down and deteriorating generally. There have been choppy waters involving uncommon but pressing personal matters, health, family and friends. This brouhaha has unfolded against a public background of disturbing politics and economics both internationally and locally, the US elections, Brexit, terrorism and municipal wrangling.
Several days ago having nothing to do on a colourless Saturday afternoon and shamelessly yearning for retail therapy, I wandered into a big box store. It required but seconds in my indifferent mission to uncover a proliferation of technological gizmos. Whatever we once knew about telephones, televisions, printers, radios and sound systems has been retired, reiterated and upgraded ten thousand fold in the most unimaginable configurations. The acceleration is akin to a rocket launch. We only barely recall the bygone shelf displays of Gestetner machines, typewriters and fax machines, erstwhile inventions now considered hapless recyclables.
Whether because I play the piano by ear (perhaps promoting a heightened sensitivity to sound) or whether because there are notable reverberations in each season of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, I am enthralled by the characteristic dins, rackets, noises, music, tones and notes peculiar to an Ontario summer. Foremost among these is that of the cicada.
Inventively crafted malicious posturing means little or nothing until there is some fallout. Otherwise it is pointless bravura. Adopting a public position for a private vengeance will amount to windbag bluster unless accompanied by an explosion of some sort. For good or for bad the hostility which stirs up such black-hearted thoughts seldom goes into action; the sentiments just simmer unnoticeably.
Philosophy, a term probably coined by Pythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC), derives from “philosophia“, literally “love of wisdom“. It is “the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind and language“. It sounds rather more grand than it is perhaps because classic philosophical questions include such gripping breakfast-table discussions as, “Is it possible to know anything and to prove it?” However, philosophy also poses more practical and concrete questions such as: “Is there a best way to live?“, “Is it better to be just or unjust (if you can get away with it)?“, “Do humans have free will?“, “Is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy?” Historically “philosophy” encompassed any body of knowledge, investigations related to art, science, politics or other pursuits. For example, “Is beauty objective or subjective?“
Last evening – a glorious Friday evening and a budding start to a hot summer weekend – we dined with a younger couple with whom we’ve been professionally and casually acquainted for twenty years or so. Our social engagement was initiated late afternoon by an impromptu telephone invitation. There were some hiccups to overcome (involving moderate re-scheduling) but the inclination to accept the invitation was there particularly as the couple is quick-witted. The congregation is something about which we had been talking for the past two years so there was momentum as well.
Many in the world are intrigued by the US Republican convention currently being staged. There is a temporary suspension of interest following the proclamation last night by House of Representative Speaker Paul D. Ryan that Mr. Donald J. Trump is the official nominee of the Party. Things won’t reignite until Thursday when Mr. Trump delivers his much awaited acceptance speech (followed naturally by a Benediction from Roger W. Gries, Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus).
It is not of course unthinkable that someone such as I who is precipitously close to 70 years of age should unceremoniously descend into the vernacular of a curmudgeon, a bad-tempered, surly person, a grouch in so many words.