Making money is not something that directed me in the way you hear someone on the television proclaim that they intend to go out and make money, to fulfill the so-called American Dream, as though it were the only lifetime objective.  By contrast I am far more acquainted with the talent of spending money, not bargaining, rather knowing where to spend it for desirable return (which usually means perfection of some description).  But making money was always for me survival, getting by, but aligned with value (in the same way I spent it).

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Anything – including me – eventually needs a bit of polish.  Polish is what brightens things up, maybe straightens the parts or removes a scuff or scratch. Everything material – and perhaps the immaterial – occasionally requires a moment’s attention. The undertaking, while not wasteful, is guaranteed to be deliberately indulgent and more dutiful than restorative.  We know that wear and tear is expected.  Indeed the more romantic description of age and oxidization as patina is commonplace. Having a jeweller “buff” a trinket of gold to restore its original sheen or gloss is a fleeting remedy. Soon further polish will be de rigueur. Again the need will arise to discharge the dust, the film; the need to reanimate the initial scope and attraction, to put things in order, the detailed car in the garage, the accessories in the walnut box with the velvet layers, the cameras and binoculars in their soft leather cases, the rest can go back on the desk or the shelf where they will gather more from time and the air, as we do ourselves after a shower or an evening in fancy dress.

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Early this morning, only moments after having thrown off the duvet and having resolved – admittedly dithering – to get at it, I knew that my topic of conversation (for that’s what these entries are) was going to be “Wishful thinking,,,” I am obsessed with almost plaintive absorption in pleasantries and impracticalities.  It is the fertility of pure amusement, seldom having any basis in more than conjecture at the outside, more likely tumidity on the inside. Wishful thinking is the source of meandering thought, unshackled contemplation, vivid characterizations void of the reality of space or time or a physical nature.  There’s a reason it is called wishful thinking!

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Earlier today, while driving my car, a moment developed which, in its most colourful camouflage, is best entitled “road rage”. Normally I do not react to such encounter. But today I did. Nothing serious (I honked my horn at the perceived culprit).  But it’s more than I should have done (the horn blast may have lingered a trifle). And now I am here to crawl, to expiate my guilt.

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The first of the month, the second of the year, 2026. I purposively iterate the year lest I mistake it for another. Reanimation after exhaustion of the new year’s rigours. Our drive home south of the city was along the old highway through tiny farming communities. Muffled in our cabin, listening to Beegie Adair, The Mantovani Orchestra and Baroque music, streaming along dry roads, passing endlessly white fields glistening in the slanted blue mid-afternoon sunshine.

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For the past decade and a half I have avoided reflective surfaces.  We previously had a full-length mirror in which I routinely glanced at my overall appearance from top to bottom, particularly when wearing a suit in preparation for an outing to the office.  But when we sold the office building and the law practice, then precipitously sold the house and suddenly had no place to live – forcing us immediately to downsize to an apartment and get rid of tons of stuff, my regard of the corpus withered to a square look at whatever confronted me in the bureau mirror from just below the chin to the top of my thinning silver hair. In retrospect it was Nature’s evolutionary way of affording a digestible and less superfluous image of self without the added gall of the declining – and expanding – fuselage.

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Finding what you’re looking for has never been easy.  The technical revolution of on-line shopping has not in my opinion made it easier.  Oh, yes, easier to spend your money; but, not easier to get what you want. And what makes it an even greater contest is that shopping in the ordinary way of going from one store to another hasn’t really got any easier either. The point is: shopping is a task, a real chore, a piece of business. You may think you can circumnavigate the exercise, but you cannot.  Shopping will forever remain a burden.  Though having said that, if one were lucky enough to have a successful shopping outing, then, Okay, you may convince yourself it hasn’t been an effort.  But it was work, you’ll have to admit, balancing calculation and enquiry. When it is over, there will be relief at the end of the day – whatever the outcome.

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Today we received welcome news from our dear friend Bunny on the east coast of South Africa in Simon’s Town. I marvel at the brilliance of such exotic travel! The venture to the area illustrates one-quarter of her life. The memories – both good and bad – stimulated by this compelling recall are no doubt unsurpassable. I suspect much has changed no matter where one goes, but the antiquity of Simon’s Town likely preserves much of what has always been there.

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There are good and bad knots.  The good knots secure your shoes upon your feet; or, straighten a silk about your neck. The bad knots are the events which obstruct a purpose. Very often the bad knots are merely the uncomfortable consequence of living. No matter how the knots are portrayed, tying them up is an alleviation.

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For some reason whenever things go particularly well in my life, I find myself thanking a mysterious creation of my mind, sometimes called Lord, sometimes God. If it were imperative to have a specific religion associated with the nouns of address, it  is Christian because of my adolescent indoctrination.  Otherwise my reference is oblique at best; it could as easily have been a Star Wars reference to a Hollywood fiction, just something distant and beneficent to which attribute thanks. I simply felt the need to render thanks – beyond an implausible gratitude to fortuity or myself though I often conjoined my parents in the same breath (but always subordinately to the principal or primary recipient – the Unknown).

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