It’s time to go home. But we’re not running from Hilton Head Island. Oddly leaving this magical subtropical vista feels more like closing the door on a family cottage; a place we’re only leaving behind temporarily. After having come and gone numerous times over the cross-island bridge in the past decade we have begun to blend with this barrier island just as it has insinuated our veins.
What astonishes me more than the glide by of 28 years since we met on February 24th, 1996 at the Château Laurier Health Club and went for drinks with our erstwhile (Cupid) friend Johnnie in the By Ward Market is the unparalleled bliss we’ve shared every day since then. I honestly cannot recall a more sustained and nutritious relationship. And to make it all the more remarkable we continue to delight in being together every day that follows.
JP Donleavy’s book The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B is one of my favourites.
Balthazar B (whose final name is never revealed) is born to riches in Paris. His father dies when he is young and his mother neglects him for her lovers. Instead he is brought up by a nanny and relies for male advice on his Uncle Edouard, who instructs him in the worldly life of an elegant roué. He is shipped off to a British boarding school, where he makes a lasting friendship with Beefy, a similarly displaced laird, who is eventually expelled. On a return to Paris at the age of twelve Balthazar is initiated sexually by his 24-year-old nanny, Bella Hortense. She is dismissed when the brief idyll is discovered and it is only later that he discovers that she had a child by him.
The number of things we have is astonishing. It unimaginable what we’d do without them. I’m reminded how animals live so independently and without electric toothbrushes, sterling silver flatware, automobiles, hair dryers, jewelry, clothing, cosmetics, tables and chairs, pianos, umbrellas, artwork and luggage – to name but a few things!
Already I am back to my old habits, drinking far too much coffee, staying awake until the middle of the night, then – after having taken my pills and dissipated the caffeine – sleeping unrepentingly late until after ten o’clock the next morning. It is unquestionably an unfavourable modus operandi but one from which I was happily able to recover this morning without difficulty or collateral remorse. In the result, by four o’clcock this afternoon we were both shamelessly lanquishing upon the balcony overlooking the sea, meaninglessly chatting and reminiscing about our passage upon Hilton Head Island since our first encounter here on Christmas Eve in 2012.
Long ago I recognized the deceit of euphoria; namely, it is but an intoxication. And like any other fuel, its effects are limited. Barring perpetual enhancement (elation, ecstacy or rhapsody) the cloud-9 effect is predominantly short-lived.
Lying back this afternoon in a deck chair on the balcony with my feet on a footrest while overlooking the glistening sea constituted a sizeable recovery from my early morning angst. I was still feeling the effect of yesterday’s pedal upon the beach. My legs and knees hadn’t yet returned to passable praxis. But seeing the shimmering sunshine upon the sea pines and ocean it burned me up to contemplate spending the day in utter idleness. Yet from the smallest attempt at mobility I could tell it was a day to set aside the usual cycling ambition. I would only end doing more harm than good in spite of the putative psychological advantage of doing so.
When I awoke at eight o’clock this morning and stretched, my first thought was the tide chart. I hadn’t bicycled yesterday and I was anxious today to do so on the beach. My hurried investigation of the tides led me to an internet site which showed a painting of a sailing ship on the cover of an album of sea shanties. My immediate interest in the sailing ship instigated further inquiry. At last I unfolded on YouTube the rendition of a sea shanty which had its beginnings in New Zealand. This in turn led me to an article in the Guardian. All told it was a fascinating pursuit.
Where to begin! Such unbargained for and unabridged expressions of well-being, magnanimity, providence, rich humour and artistry! A vertiable wholesome conglomerate of adventitious disconnected and disassociated events. And all with reciprocal assembly.
It began earlier this morning when a dear friend gushed noticeably (and quite purposively I am certain) for having been remembered on her special day. While I initiallly dismissed the utterance as a pleasantry, upon subsequent reflection I acknowledged the strength of what she had said. I too might appreciate being remembered. But before I had the opportunity to test the prediction (and possibly to my unfolding disappointment) I distracted myself from the brooding by embracing what little forward thinking already percolated within me on this grey, cool day by the sea on Hilton Head Island. That is, the practical though critical resolve to get the car washed.
It isn’t the first time this has happened. Suddenly I am overtaken by a feeling combined with a colour or sound which reminds me of something inexplicable though powerful. Whatever it is, it moves me from deep within. It is always a bland though predominantly favourable sensitivity, a reminder of something vaguely pleasing or reminiscent to me for an unexplained reason. It doesn’t remind me of any event in particular; rather it is a broad though strangely intense recollection of a moment, somewhere, as simple as a laneway or a town we once passed through or a feeling I had somewhere.