It is, I find, useful to remind oneself of the frequency of a popular social dilemma: I can’t live with you; but I can’t live without you! The apparent contradiction is common among partnerships of any description, whether unwed, married, bisexual, unisex, short-term or long-term associations. The broader universal truth may be more poetically rendered by the now famous observation that, “No man is an island…” by John Donne.
This morning, upon reading the Diary of Samuel Pepys (1660) I encountered the most peculiar statement especially in the context.
22nd. To church in the afternoon to Mr. Herring, where a lazy poor sermon. This day I began to put on buckles to my shoes.
As was so often and as meaningfully remarked dimissively by my late and much esteemed friend Louis de la Chesnaye Audette QC OC, “The best sauce for any meal is an appetite!” It is a blunt but distinct adage requiring an incontestable gut reaction. I won’t therefore attempt to dignify today’s hankering as anything more artistic than primordial need.
The beginning of the season today at Mississippi Golf Club in the Village of Appleton along the Mississippi River could not have been favoured with more agreeable circumstances: brilliant sunshine, cloudless blue sky, a Sunday weekend morning and ideal temperatures. In preparation of our departure to the club for breakfast – we briefly sat at home on the balcony absorbing the astonishingly radiant heat. Looking upriver over the placid water, the southern shoreline reflected like a mirror.
Coincidentally – sipping my “quad” espresso this morning at Equator Café whilst in conversation with Denis Secundus (recently nominated for a Deputy Minister’s Award of Honour) and Joy and Gary B.Sc., EE, MBA – I touched upon my current literary replenishment “The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ESQ., F.R.S.” by Samuel Pepys from 1659 to 1669 with memoir edited by Lord Braybrooke, wherein the author frequently mentions the “great confluence of gentlemen” at the coffee-house. We at table, slumped in generous lounge chairs, concurred that the unbeaten historic status of the coffee-house is revived. Instantly I formulated in my private catalogue that the coffee-house (accompanied by a similarly restorative and redeeming tricycle ride thereto) shall hereafter constitute an indispensable ingredient of my sphere.
It never occurred to me years ago during my frantic working days that shopping would prove to be so enviable a detour. Now retired since 2014, no longer venturing to the beach for six months annually, having exchanged the bicycle for the tricycle and having confessed the implausibility of 20 Km hikes, it cannot be ignored that the once mundane enterprise of shopping is an unrivalled diversion.
I am in a state of euphoria today.
There are different ways to narrate euphoria. The manner of doing so depends first upon the nature of the ecstasy itself; then upon the candidate making the proclamation. For example, there is a difference between the elevation of a new car and the joyousness of a new born child. My rhapsody is a mixture of those palpable extremes. It is partly a new substantive thing and partly an organic addition; that is, a dental implant. What however I find to be more persuasive than the implant is the settlement of the frustration surrounding its arrival. I like getting things organized, my affairs in apple pie order.
There are few things I would readily imagine to be of any material (as in retail) interest to me. This is not because I am either above or below the mooring. Indeed I delight to recall what a devoted profligate I continue to be (though admittedly now with a degree of restraint and reasonableness); and, there are few things in life which surpass the pleasure I derive from the things I already own (which I hasten to add is a daily venture on my part – that is, I relive the moment regularly).
Contemplating the performance or completion of what is noted on my calendar; or anticipating the fulfillment of all that is buzzing about in my head, I stopped to ask myself, “Then what?” This is not to say that there is no value in planning or organization – most certainly we need objectives to ensure direction and achievement of purpose. Yet there remains the haunting consideration about whether the success of reaching the goals entirely refreshes one’s state of mind or whether it merely advances one’s interminable edification.
The British weekly magazine Country Life has a regular feature called Country Mouse and Town Mouse. They are binary reflections upon rural and urban themes. Notwithstanding notable similarities there remain indisputable distinctions between the two. Not all of the differences are without an element of sharpness – the summary of which tends to favour one or the other. While it is perhaps more sustainable to have an urban haughtiness, the rural residents are not entirely spared a thread of arrogance. I have always dismissed the rivalry as a purely competitive enterprise, the type common among schools clans (the character of which amounts to a distinction without a difference). Yet the parallel tracks of both maintain a formidable direction, one that preserves the close but separate nature of each.