I dislike getting out of bed later than 7:30 a.m.  Even on a Sunday morning. Sleeping beyond 7:30 a.m. any day of the week is not a habit I have ever cultivated; in fact I have positively rebutted it.  It throws me.  I have things to do.  It doesn’t matter where I am, I have things to do.  Being on the Island is no different.  Normally I would be anxious to go bicycling.  Today however I put that item on the back burner temporarily.  The idyllic allure of a quiet Sunday morning strangely appealed to me. Besides I was still feeling bagged after having bicycled about 20 miles every day for the past three weeks.  I decided to do something “Sunday” by permitting myself the luxury of dawdling over coffee.

The idleness lasted until after lunch.  Then I succumbed to my usual need to do something more constructive than fiddling on the computer or watching television.  Fresh air has always appealed to me.  The temperature had dropped from what it had been for the past several days so I donned my heavy wool cardigan sweater atop my golf shirt and hoodie and pushed off on the bike.

It was evident as I rode along the pathways and through the golf course that it was a Sunday.  A lull had descended upon the Island.  The vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic was all but non-existent.  The wind in the tall sea pines was all that one heard.  And the sound of my tyres upon the pathway.  When I reached the open beach it was vast and unpopulated, almost forbidding.  The grey skies did nothing to enhance the taupe colour of the beach.  It was a deserted aspect.  There was a northerly wind of about 8 mph, just enough to make me feel I was earning the reward of my exercise.  I leisurely pedalled to Coligny Park where there were people gathered in aid of some charitable fund-raiser (though for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was).  A family with small children had congregated at the end of the path leading onto the beach.  The parents were playing ball with the children.  They clearly had no intention of wandering much further towards to the Ocean which was at a considerable distance with the receding tide.

After parking myself on a bench, shutting my eyes and submitting to the tranquillity of the day for a few moments, I redirected myself to the beach for my return sail home with the wind at my back.  The entire outing had consumed about two hours.  I spent the rest of the day puttering before throwing myself into bed where I drifted off uncommonly quickly.

Habit is the poor cousin of tradition and ritual.  Its career has forever been undistinguished.  At its worst habit is an addiction; at its best it is a custom. Normally it is a routine. Habit carries with it the suggestion of lack of self-analysis and maybe even obsession.  It is seldom associated with dynamism or creativity; it tends to be characterized by a fixed way of thinking, one which generally abhors novelty or change.  There are however good habits, such as daily exercise or eating properly. Those habits obscure the unconscious element of repetitive behaviour and are redeemed as active choices. Normally habitual behaviour is not associated with great minds unless of course the habit is Bohemian like sleeping late, chain smoking, excessive drinking, lustfulness and general failure to observe deadlines and commitments, the offbeat social habits of an artist’s drafty-garret existence.

Some habits are just worth keeping.  They provide a tried and tested experience which pays dividends every time it is repeated.  There is already enough unpredictability in the world. Why live in a state of constant turmoil and risk spoiling a good thing?  Granted habit can remove the necessity of contemplation but so what?  Especially if the habit is directed to a relatively inconsequential enterprise such as what you eat for breakfast.  Or the type of scotch whiskey you drink. Or the cars your drive.

Other habits are simply good practice, like flossing and brushing your teeth and other personal hygiene habits, making your bed every morning, visiting your physician, dentist and chiropractor, reviewing a checklist of documents and due diligence, polishing your shoes and calling your mother.  At other times habits are preposterous, like a particular way of folding your laundry, setting the table or parking your car.  These psychopathic peculiarities were epitomized by Jack Nicholson as the misanthropic, homophobic, racist, obsessive-compulsive novelist in the movie “As Good As It Gets“. He avoids stepping on sidewalk cracks while walking through the city due to a superstition of bad luck, and eats breakfast at the same table in the same restaurant every day using disposable plastic utensils he brings with him due to his pathological mysophobia.

Some people on the other hand are obsessed with change, having constantly to do something different as though salvation were to come from perpetual diversity and unfamiliarity.  While it is certainly less glamorous to talk about habit than innovation, habit may however capture a deeper philosophic truth that generally speaking there is really nothing new in the world in spite of superficial change.  You will have to travel a very long way to remove yourself from the suburbs of your own mind. The obsession with change may become its own bad habit, echoing a deeper abnormality regarding fear of stagnancy and impending mortality.

Most habits are tolerated as the personal predilections of another. Where those preferences translate into dislikes which affect others, the going is less understandable and may become toxic. Recall for example the debate about how to eat a boiled egg as satirized by Jonathan Swift in the 1726 novel “Gulliver’s Travels“.  If the criticism of habit encroaches upon what others have dignified as long-established belief or solemn ceremony it is destined to be a mine field fraught with danger.  Bigotry elevates its idiosyncrasies to the height of historical convention.  It would be considered disdainful to relegate prejudice to mere habit.

Allow me to share with you a collection of opinions by others:

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
– Aristotle

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
― Samuel Johnson

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
― Jim Ryun

“The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“A man who can’t bear to share his habits is a man who needs to quit them.”
― Stephen King, The Dark Tower

“Some rules are nothing but old habits that people are afraid to change.”
― Therese Anne Fowler, Souvenir

“The only way we could remember would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered; practice forms habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing; the application is everything.”
― Henry Hazlitt, Thinking as a Science

“A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.”
― Desiderius Erasmus

“The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.”
― Marcel Proust

“Habits are patterns, and even the smallest ones tell a lot about who you are as a person.”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book Title is Invisible

“Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed down-stairs one step at a time.” ― Mark Twain

While I haven’t any way of knowing for sure, I’m guessing that most of us have things we’d prefer to forget.  My speculation is based on what little I know of humanity.  Among the standard human truths is this: notwithstanding our indisputable individuality we’re basically doing the same thing.  And that includes making mistakes.

It is relatively easy to accept the logic of letting it go, where the “it” is something or someone unpleasant to us.  It makes no sense to cling to a sinking ship, to remind ourselves remorselessly of the sadness we’ve endured because of some relationship or some event. The task is however significantly less logical and considerably more emotional when the topic extends beyond mere fact and circumstance and encompasses the thorny matter of conscience.  Conscience is the wild card in an otherwise strictly empirical situation.  Once conscience has insinuated itself into the assessment of the topic it is virtually impossible to ignore it.  Conscience introduces scruples.

The slippery aspect of scruples isn’t the  characterization of right or wrong but whether we submit to our inner voice or let it go.  Nobody likes to be wrong.  Sometimes there are ways of avoiding the condemnation.  Rationalization sometimes affords leeway in these matters.  Conscience is however so insidious that even if one were successful in disproving a wrong, the very real risk persists that you will never sleep until you have listened to your conscience and removed the weight from your mind.

Giving vent to our sense of right and wrong comes with consequences just as avoiding it does. My experience from childhood (when I first lied to my mother but later confessed) is that ignorance of one’s conscience is a perpetual plague and the result of repentance is far preferable to the possible advantage of undetected deceit.  This flies in the face of the facetious adage that honesty is the best policy as long as you’re not in trouble.  Juxtaposed to the counsel of perfection is the pragmatic angle that there just happen to be certain events in life which are best left uncovered where at all possible.  This may entail some active participation in a cover-up, a risky business at best but one which on a balance of considerations may be preferred.

With time even a conscience can be placated, not so much because it is ever really appeased but more because it just gets buried and smothered like the details that we covered in the first place.  Once again however there is the possibility that the tomb will be discovered.  This is a regrettable torment to have looking over one’s shoulder.

The good thing about the popularity of being wrong is that there is also the equally common virtue of humanity to forgive.  In the legal context there are specific judicial pronouncements which allow for an admission of guilt without the penalty of sentence, the so-called “Absolute Discharge”.  To gain such a privilege however the accused must normally plead “guilty”.  It is the very act of contrition which affords the compensatory escape hatch.  The decision about whether or not to plead guilty is obviously a highly charged tactical choice in a forum where one party has an obligation to prove the case against the accused beyond a reasonable doubt.  Where however the context is less formal the choice reverts to strictly personal inclinations.  It comes down to compunction and qualms whether to let it go.

What must Christopher Columbus have been thinking after he slipped his moorings and slid out into the Atlantic?  Probably the same thing kids think when they’re going on vacation – “Are we there yet?”  It’s a persistent concern whatever your future. The simple answer is that we’ll eventually get there.  But the question still remains, “Are we there yet?”

There are some for whom the journey of life is never complete.  This is unnecessarily poetic in my view.  I prefer a dénouement to an abrupt end. It is a popular myth that the journey of life is more important than getting there. Letting oneself down gently from the stimulating tensions of life is the last round and it is a pleasure not to be denied or diminished.  That’s what it means to be there, accepting that you’ve taken care of business and are entitled to relish it.  Sound easy?  Well, it is and it isn’t.  It is easy to draw the line on your current objectives.  Sometimes it is just the most convenient way to jettison one’s self from the hubbub.  But interestingly, once you’ve jumped ship, you’re left wondering, “Are we there yet?”  The problem isn’t the journey, the problem is knowing when it’s ended.  It is in some respects the same conundrum which regularly hounds the profligate spender – “When will I finally have all that I require?”  Assuming we eventually have enough, there is still the time to enjoy it.  But when have we had enough?

The active pursuit of something is considerably different from the passive delight of it.  Fortunately we are assisted in this necessary transition because we will exhaust the aggressive urges peculiar to acquisition. We are then set to relish the benefit.  Then it is time to think about where we have been in life and what we have done.  Astoundingly the recapitulation of life in these broad terms is the work of a moment.  The most casual retrospection will paint the strokes.  Decades of detail vanish with the simplest review.  There may be an inclination to belittle a lifetime of effort when summarily portrayed.  That however is not desirable and it is most certainly not germane to “getting there”.  The goal is to throw up one’s hands and enjoy the view.

It is odd what we recall about the past.  More often than not, it is not the so-called important things that happened.  Rather it is the moments we remember that paint a picture in our mind, a stand of trees, the coldness of a day at school, a pet, a first love, a friend’s distress, the drudge of studies and work.  How often have we afforded ourselves the chance to think of life in such terms?  It is a certain luxury.

Eventually we die.  We all know that.  And, just to be clear, we’re going to do it alone.  Make no mistake, it is a confrontation which no amount of hand-holding will eliminate or assuage. What however we may not fully appreciate in addition to these two certainties – that we will die and that we will be alone – is that everything we do in life is a preparation for that final moment.  Each act and event leading to that fateful day draws us incrementally closer to it. It isn’t merely axiomatic, it is empirical. This calamity does not however render absurd whatever we do until then, nor does it mean that the life that we have is without ultimate significance, value or purpose.  What it does mean is that we cannot escape having to consider our own being.  Alone.

For a social person such as I, the intensity of daily living not only enlivens me but may in fact also sustain me.  The diminution of that intensity likewise has at least initially the reverse effect.  As one’s occupation in life declines for whatever reason the potential arises that self-expression subsides as well and that fact once again brings us closer to the lonely contemplation of who we are.  Eventually there is nothing else to do.

The drying up of the sap of our being is not altogether inconvenient.  For one thing, we  tire.  It is impossible that we will go on doing what we’ve always done forever.  In any event even if one is determined to continue “being productive” it is inescapable that Nature will teach us how to die.  This does not imply that the process will be rushed (other than in the sense that Time slips away inexplicably).  Until the moment comes when we must die and bear death alone, we can begin to welcome the isolation.  All life’s former congregations, communications, couplings and coordinations will dissolve in the face of our ultimate singularity.  If we’re lucky we’ll have time to contemplate that loneliness.

When I rejoined my side-kick after having had my car washed and detailed this morning, he facetiously asked, “Feel better?”  And you know what?  I did!  You see the thing is that getting my car washed, as much as I have endured considerable raillery about the trifling subject, is nonetheless a matter very dear to my heart.  And – I suppose I must confess – it is no small obsession.  I won’t say that I am in the grip of it, but it certainly is true that I devote serious attention to the undertaking and it is a project never far off my regular agenda.  I am keenly aware of the potential for allegations of hopeless materialism, shallowness and annoying fastidiousness.  All true, I have no doubt.  But it does not for a tick diminish my enthusiasm.

The late Hughie Whitten observed, “All you need is a clean windshield and a full tank of gas!”  It is admittedly a compelling adage.  I’m sorry but I’m unable to make that blithely spiritual capitulation.  There’s a reason they call it “detailing”.  It isn’t the equivalent of “Don’t worry, be happy”.  It’s about being picky not abstract generalities.  Like it or not, a car is more than just getting from here to there.

When Petro-Canada began offering a 90-day Season Pass card for once-a-day automatic car washes, I was thrilled.  And when I subsequently discovered that one of their stations was open 24 hours a day, I began getting my car washed at 4:00 a.m. each morning.  Only once did I have to suffer the indignity of waiting in line for another car which was ahead of me!  Granted this particular custom was popular when I was a working stiff and couldn’t afford the time during the day to indulge my obsession.  It was an added and compensating intellectual benefit that I could take in the BBC World News Service while ferrying myself to and fro.

It might surprise you to learn that for me one of the brighter lights of Hilton Head Island is Island Car Wash on the William Hilton Parkway. In anticipation of our journey here each year I ruminate regularly upon the anticipated delight of getting the car detailed there.  The staff do a superb job, including washing the mats and squeezing the water from them through a specialized wringer.  They also use a buffing machine to polish the exterior sheet metal.  And you can be assured that the plate glass is clean when they have finished the job!  The emporium is reminiscent of a spa, well appointed, attractive and comfortable.

 A car wash, like a good meal, is not just about the main course.  There are appetizers to the delectation. I make a point of having the gas tank filled whenever it is down a quarter of a tank or more.  This is something I ensure is done before the wash in the event a drop of gasoline is dripped onto the car when withdrawing the nozzle. It is a faultless indiscretion which can be remedied in the wash.  Additionally, if I am getting the car detailed (which means cleaning the inside as well as the outside) I always take the precaution of removing any surplus items from the cabin.  An umbrella for example is relocated to the trunk.  Superfluous paper work is either stored in a compartment or entirely removed from the car.  This experience is very much about the tabula rasa, a daily ritual catharsis.

When I put the car through an automatic wash I have a tiresome ceremony upon completion.  The complex arose because I once discovered that some moulding had been removed during the wash.  Ever since that event I am fixated upon inspecting the car from stem to stern.  I punctuate the phobia by twisting the caps on the air nozzles of the tyres to satisfy myself they are secure.  It may of course be necessary to adjust the rearview mirrors and to remove some surplus water, a procedure conducted according to strict practice.  A collateral scan of the whole car for possible nicks and scratches is the final part of the checklist. After a personalized detailing I also conduct a general inspection.  The Island Car Wash inevitably exceeds the service of any other institution.  The competitors fall far short of the absolution bestowed by Island Car Wash.

In the result I have a clean windshield and a full tank of gas.  And a whole lot more!  It is partly defensible to observe that I am taking care of my “investment” (though I use the term with measured caution).  The car wash is an act of purification as much as that denomination may offend the sensibilities of some.  It is an experience which uplifts.  And yes I DO feel better!

If I could just locate the telephone I’d say we’d done a pretty good job of getting ourselves settled in this new place, what is to be our home for the next three months. The only oddity is that the stemware and dishes have seemingly consumed every bit of usable cupboard space in the kitchen. There is without a word of a lie absolutely no room for alimentary provisions!  Nothing!  Judging by the contents of the kitchen cupboards, you’d think the only thing people here ever did was drink!  There are glasses upon glasses!  We’ll have to rearrange things in the morning.  Other than that, however, all is well.  Our nocturnal digs are in order, the location of the loos has been mapped out, the computing devices (MacBook Pros, iPads, Bose SoundLinks and Neat scanner) have all been connected to WiFi and we’ve each established our respective perches for typing and surfing the internet.  Of course traditional furniture does not lend itself conveniently to typing on a computer (the antique-style desks are too high) so I pilfered two flat-ish pillows from the living area to prop myself up on the equally preposterous swivel leather chair in front of the desk.  I am thinking it will work out quite favourably!

Before locking the front door for the evening we detoured to Harris Teeter to stock the larder. In addition to all the required provisions for breakfast, lunch and dinner, including a healthful balance of fruit and vegetables, we also collected the standard household items required to sustain a home.  Getting comfortable here for the winter feels rather like an artist commencing a new painting, laying the primary foundation before indulging in the fine strokes of the project.  The bikes were relocated here from our former haunt.  We have our own parking on the private driveway in front of the house so access is immediate and unimpeded.  The tennis court and swimming pool (with chaises longues for lounging in the afternoon sun) are located across the street in this secluded enclave.

**********

We have now passed our first night here.  My bed was satisfactory though it initially appeared to be soft.  The bed is high off the floor; one must literally climb into bed.  As is my custom I stole extra pillows from the third bedroom. During the night on a visit to the loo I stubbed my toe on the entrance to bathroom.  There is a strip of marble between the bathroom and the hallway.  The little details to which one must adjust!

The spacious living area is a bit of a goldfish bowl as there are no curtains on the four patio doors which lead onto the deck overlooking the lagoon.  At this time of year (off-season) it really matters very little in any event though I find it strange not to be able to draw draperies at night.  I have happily discovered this morning that I needn’t close the French doors on my upstairs bedroom as there is no possibility of seeing the room from outside.  From the little balcony I can see the nearby lagoon.

When I awoke this morning I unpacked and put away my clothing.  The suitcases have been set aside for hibernation in the large walk-in closet.  I also rearranged a couple of pieces of furniture to accommodate a more utilitarian approach to interior decorating.

This morning we have both been puttering with our SoundLink devices.  It is a sign of the times that we have so many devices to connect to complete our installation.  This would have been unheard of years ago.  The only thing I carried then was a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.  Something like creative writing was put on hold in those days.

Today we’ll have to discover the most expedient route from here to the beach, organizing the necessary pit stops along the way.  I want to investigate the pool as well to determine whether it catches the afternoon light for sun bathing.

This is the last day of November.  I attach some significance to tomorrow’s date, December 1st, because it will mark the beginning of our scheduled three months on Hilton Head Island before we depart for Jekyll Island.  I am anxious to produce during the upcoming period something in the nature of a “work” which characterizes the time spent here.  I have thought about creating a character “Spin A. Kerr” to play upon the nautical theme I enjoy but I concede I haven’t enough knowledge about sailing or any other Maritime matters to make the account authentic.  I keep coming back to a less flattering decision to relate my own humble thoughts about the Island rather than attempting to manufacture fictional reports.  It should make the task at least theoretically easier.

For breakfast this morning I prepared two eggs over easy, smoked salmon, black berries and some hard cheese, complemented by an English muffin with salted butter, Harris Teeter peanut butter and organic honey.

We’re about to inaugurate our first day here!  Off we go!  After checking the outdoor temperature I have swapped my track pants for shorts.  It promises to be warm!