Murky Friday

Unless it coincided with the end of a mid-summer month (when routinely there were numerous real estate transactions closing) Friday would normally have marked a pleasant day of the week for practicing law. It was not uncommon for one of my preferred clients to drop into the office unannounced for a glass of sherry and a casual natter. The disposition of the working classes on a Friday was collectively marked by a buoyancy no doubt in anticipation of the upcoming weekend. The uplifted temperament affected everyone, the trades, independent contractors, developers, private and municipal employees and people like me. While I no longer have the weekly need to recuperate from work (or anything else for that matter) nor as a result is the weekend especially distinquishable or remarkable, I nonetheless continue to harbour whatever it was that caused the synapses to diffuse on a Friday.  As trifling as my preoccupations now are, the end of the week is a notch in the post, a conclusion or dénouement. A time of retrospection. Today is no exception.

Luckily for me I was spared the indignity of not having exercised today by having purged myself of the ennui yesterday when I tricyled several kilometers then afterwards decided (judiciously I thought) to take the day off as an act of design and balance – though of course it is no more purgative than church once a week. That said, I value the privilege to do nothing; or at least to do nothing but what I wish to do. Indolence is an unquestionable privilege of retirement and old age (in spite of their corollary diminutions). I am besides spared the sting of any consequence because there are so many intervening ways I have unfolded to enlarge upon my sense of well-being including for example a chilled espresso café, an afternoon sliced apple with sharp cheddar cheese, writing and the repeated celebration of my overall good luck. Notwithstanding my shameful smugness I never leave unnoticed the challenges faced by those who have to endure medical issues or true deprivation. It is luck or none at all.

Speaking of church and other matters of morality, a serendipitous development on this Friday has been the coincidence of channels on Sirius XM and Apple Music which identify what I believe is broadly labeled  “CALM” music but which to my express delight is primarily classically-based rather than the more popular (and at times somewhat jarring and destabilizing) compositions of the modern artists. It also surpasses the anesthesia of SPA (like being “kicked in the side of the  head with a Jackboot” as Eliot Allen so often quipped). For the first time today I listened to several pieces of the genre as I drove home from the car wash.  The combination of the peaceful and inner-sounding music with the singular cloud formations arising after a downpour of rain produced a number of nutritious reflections I now find impossible to recall with any specificity but which at the time stirred me with a fervour equal to that of a spoonful of dark maple syrup. The backscattering was filled with colours and sounds which embellished the magical portraits on the distant horizon along the highway and the nearby manicured fields covered in multiple hues.

Today is a day for staying inside. Not until Sunday does the forecast begin to show sunshine.  Meanwhile the temperature is abnormally high but the cloudy conditions and the morning’s frequency of rain have dampened any exterior invitation. We’ve spent time today wrestling with commercial obstacles, mistakes and alterations, always a tedious enterprise. The only relieving aspect of the endurance is its reminder that such frustration is inescapable and inevitable.  It has to be one of the motives of anger arising from these unanticipated obstacles (which both involve on-line shopping) that the prediction of smoother times and mathematical correctness spirits the irritation; however, it would probably be better were we instead to accept the hindrance with calm examination and restrained amelioration. Adopting such a cheerful and shrewd posture exhibits the characteristics of those whom I adjudge to be clever. It is however a practice I have yet to adopt. The closest I get to accommodation is to quell the fire so-to-speak; that is, reduce the weight of the burden in contrast to attaching ignominy to the cause. Seldom are these type of encounters anything beyond a backspace or two.