A  get together over an espresso is my idea of an agreeable afternoon meeting. I have my friend js to thank for today’s impromptu caffeinated outing.  He is as unassuming as his sobriquet is succinct; but he is, may I caution, no less decisive and, I suspect, similarly anchored. Apart from that broad stroke I shall not assume the privilege to project further analysis or insight into his character.  Indeed it is a reluctance with which I have increasingly versed myself incrementally as I age. In short I haven’t a clue what makes another man tick – as fond as I or any others for that matter may be of estimating people for whatever apologetic purpose.

All that I have learned concerning such opinions is that what another man says, and what he may think, are not necessarily the same; and, it is idle to imagine the reason or implication of either. It is not like watching water turn to ice on a cold day; nor, trees to blossom in the spring – situations in which a parallel between cause and effect is manifest.  Human nature by contrast suffers all the literary servitude of melancholy, anxiety, superfluity and unrestrained conjecture. So profound and universal is the obfuscation that I feel certain few of us, if any, is aware of our unintentional fabrication. We may indeed be the last to know ourselves; our minds are convoluted by the imagery of involuntary fabrication. Words and emotions after all have a purpose and intention. Through them – as in artful expression – we seek to explain ourselves, to lather our own bit of icing onto the cake, to dash a bit of basil or other ornamental ingredient to stimulate the rhythm.

The artistic bent is a sphere of its own. Traditionally we ascribe to the artist as much uniqueness as that of the philosopher or the mechanic. While mulling over the private events of our world today, js touched upon an acquaintance – a jeweller – who became a member of Tiffany’s team in New York City. Reportedly – and seemingly paradoxically given the venue of his retail employment – the chap had no interest whatever in the accumulation of capital. The allusion recalled the history of my partner’s brother who restored art work for the Governor General of Canada, sometimes working alone in the back office of the street front store until the early hours of the morning. His private life was similarly reclusive and withdrawn from the mundane affairs of the business world.

Art survives as one of the few things in my life to which I moor myself unrepentantly.  Already I have disbanded a catalogue of custom jewellery, complicated watches, antique and new clocks, sculptures, pianos (including an historic Heintzman grand and a new Steinway grand) not to mention untold Persian rugs, sterling silver, ivory chess set, solid mahogany furnishings plus custom made pieces.

My profligacy was unlimited. Now I have submitted instead to the captivation of technical resources from Artificial Intelligence both literary and artistic. The deviation is acknowledgement that artistic legitimacy is the product not of consumption but of creation.  Certainly there will always remain the superfluous retail nature of art – that vulgar preoccupation attributed alike to the real estate agent and the art dealer. And I cherish a limited collection of stuff which more often than not appeals to some unwritten emotional element.  But the removal from the material world is undoubtedly progressive and diminishing – an evolution which nonetheless contributes to focus and absorption.  It really is possible to have more than enough. Meanwhile the exhaustion of one’s – albeit limited – artistic expression continues to enhance daily life, somehow coalescing with the higher – less vulgar – features of life. I haven’t any longer the uncontrolled desire for substantiation.  Though if were to be perfectly honest I have my eye on a Bulova pocket watch, the gratification of which I suspect will be fulfilled by its imminent prolongation, not its definition.