Hélène’s Winter Birthday!

Sitting directly across from me – with her watchful mother à côté – at the long celebratory birthday dining table in the common room was three year old Leni-Rose. It wasn’t her birthday – it was Hélène’s 80th – but the child’s native curiosity overcame me. I succumbed to the delight of appreciating a young and obviously capable child as she launched unhindered into the social atmosphere with her sparkling eyes, rich hair and porcelain skin. Meanwhile Leni-Rose eyed me with a mixture of interest and suspicion. I won’t pretend that our conversation was penetrating. But we touched upon her partly eaten cupcake with its alluring icing; and, with the help of her mother, exchanged our names.  Leni-Rose quickly surmounted any barriers.

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Morning Elixir

Already in the new year – but three days into the mix – my sentience has once again been overtaken by custom and habit, the accomplice though faithful resort of humanity, the inescapable fuel of activity, the acknowledged elixir of life. The tendency though both predictable and inexcusably repetitive is not without its worthiness; it is not simply a relaxation from novel ingenuity or prolonged productivity. Instead the deviation from more innovative conduct is an admission of compatibility and utility. Essentially there is quantity to be derived from idiosyncrasy and eccentricity.

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A civilized beginning…

Being as I am momentarily relieved of the arm-twisting to perform any exercise or heavy lifting during the first week or so following my recent surgery, and similarly being proscribed to vacate domestic territory, I sought today – the 2nd day of the new year – to promote as much efficiency and as many advantages as able to be done. The overriding principle was to milk as much as credible from the currency at hand. This – in less abstract terms – is simply the function to act favourably and to devote oneself to the immediacy of life (not its future, nor its past).

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Triple Crown

Recording good times constitutes good reporting. There is much to be gained and emulated from life’s unreported and putatively mundane but plainly happy events.  Learning the simple truth that a soft landing makes for great nutrition is – surprisingly – for many an awakening! We need not believe our instinctive absorption is mismatched with bad news or bullying; there are other heroes and models of behaviour from which to derive equally persuasive yet contrastingly improving energy.

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