The river is placid today. A mirror stretches throughout as though poured like a shining liquid then frozen in place. The 44°NE wind of 3 km/h is unnoticeable. There is a subdued reflection of the lush growth along the southern shore of the river. In the adjacent corn fields the stalks tower to the heavens. Their preponderance blankets the horizon. Everywhere is green.

The vitality hides whatever competes to detract from the burgeoning beauty and tranquillity (there are always gasps of regret in the day). I am in fact recoiling from a cycle of imbalance wrought by inappropriate conduct yesterday – having wilfully allowed myself to pretend to escape the rigours of routine under the guise of entitlement. As much as I appreciate being reminded in retrospect of the stoic principles of habit – the simplification of complexity, the purity of imagery, the reduction of objectivity, the formulation of goals – its omission (however cathartic) is never easy to endure. But the recovery is instantaneous. Perhaps it is no more than a reflection of my mercurial behaviour. I prefer instead to credit the return to a normal state of mind with the benefit of logic. Adjustment is an active enterprise. Even as the platitude of the river returns to its characteristic ripples, wiping away the immobility of idleness, so I too have rejoined the movement of my diminished ambitions.

My journey now is both immediate and far reaching. The translation of time and place assumes an imperative which cannot be ignored. Nor do I wish to do so. In the face of life’s perpetual misery the smoothly shaped and softly coloured doves restore incalculable sublimity and dynamism. I take my direction from a window of blue from the clouds above. Soon the brightness will shimmer upon the river. The emerald colours overtake the whole. In the distance I hear the chatter of kayakers who have begun to explore, to drift implicitly along the smooth plateau.

In the face of this bounty – and the pacific nature of the surroundings generally – I find myself recalling events of the past, those stirring images which capture a moment in time, relieved of the consequence of actions, stimuli of thoughts and sensations, indicia of an age and era officially gone, sometimes the seconds over which I skipped in the pursuit of goals. And here I have ended, in a crow’s nest looking upriver, the advantage of the entire town at my back, relishing the daily magnificence of sunrise and streaming sunsets along the glassy river. We together – my partner and I – have forged an avenue of enchantment.

Like the birds we flutter to secure our hold on precarious balance. The trees are growing by the hour. The well attended gardens bloom. The calendar is a tolerable agenda, directed to matters of concern though without distress. Thankfully my clothing does not fit as tightly as before – the exhaustion of months of ambition, a slow transformation from Triple XL to casual blouson!

Meanwhile my niece and her husband distinguish themselves in San Francisco, a credit to the industry in general and to our family in particular.