I feel today as though I am in a glass jar, sustained somewhere in the middle, surrounded by swirls of change by the innumerable particles in the mix. Bunny is leaving. Other tenants come and go. Children of our friends and relatives are aging and recalculating their future. Friendships percolate and some decline. Political boundaries are wiped and rewritten. But we are steadfast and immovable. When the dust settles – as it always does after the least commotion – and the confusion no longer prevails, the vision magically clears and it is possible to regard the fixtures which remain. Our way is cleared both by the removal of obstruction and by the persistence of the fibre to which we’ve attached. Our resort is blessed with clarity and augmentation.

It has nonetheless been an unanticipated distraction to adjust to a scope of containment and alteration. Our erstwhile habits of travel have undergone serious modification and renovation. Meanwhile I have at last exhausted my material indulgences and related psychosis. My immobility defeats the slightest shopping ambition and sparring. And apart from smalls and footwear, I am mostly unenthused by and wary of on-line adventures. What, besides, is the purpose at my age to do otherwise, being as I am on the cusp of estrangement from the corporeal sphere? How frail are now the ropes and moorings!

Yet, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t capitulated. I am anxious to loose that 20lb bag of potatoes about my waist – the key to my physical recovery. And in the meantime I delight in revisiting with regularity the complaisance ascribed to my remaining worldly possessions, everything from the rugs on the floor to the artwork on the walls and the furnishings, accessories and costumes in between; plus the bricks and mortar that envelope the whole. Ours is a visible, definable state of reduction. It is one enhanced not by plurality but by minority. Distillation is an inevitable consequence of prolonged absorption,

Living in a glass jar is precarious indeed. The disturbances come both from without and from within. We’re protected from the rain; but persuaded by our inner reflections and devotions. Occasionally we hide from the sunshine. But today – upriver at the Village of Appleton – we welcomed the season, raising our glasses at table in cheers of gratitude then sombrely winding our way home.