Yesterday, after having mulled over the moderately disconcerting matter for several days prior, I resolved to get my hair cut. I would go to Sports Clips, Stittsville as soon as they opened at 9:00 am this morning, the start of the long weekend. I had become fed up with myself and decided I needed enhancement before our breakfast reunion with Alana and Jay tomorrow morning at the golf club.  I landed in Stittsville in the parking lot outside the hair salon at 8:56 am this morning.  The door was locked. I sat on the stone wall awaiting the opening. Then a number of parents materialized with their young sons (apparently there is a gymnasium or something like it nearby). The families went in ahead of me but Destiny (my coiffeuse) must have seen me outside with my stick hobbling about so she engineered her immediate attention to me accordingly (they don’t take appointments, just first-come, first-served). Though I wasn’t in any particular hurry, I had however got it into my head to do something constructive about the current mane peril so I was pleased to pounce upon the enterprise with vengeful gusto.

The hair salon is located in a mall immediately adjoining Halo™ car wash.  After emerging from Sports Clips, duly clipped, shampooed, massaged, hot towelled and pomaded, I drove from there to the car wash. As I entered the line-up into the cavern of swirling brushes and soapy water, I chatted very briefly with Matt who, in addition to working at the car wash, is also employed on occasion by Hallmark films as a cameraman. He recently had his hair clipped as well and looked the better for it I thought (as I told him so). He told me he has an upcoming film commitment in Ottawa (though in the past he has by coincidence worked for Hallmark in Almonte where its film crew is regularly seen about town). The car was duly refreshed and I proceeded back in the direction whence I had come less than an hour before.

Upon my arrival home and re-seated at my desk overlooking the ineffable riparian prospect, and after having first engaged in moderate (purgative) tricycling in the garage during which time I conveniently spoke with a number of residents who were coming and going, my sister and I gabbed on the telephone. My niece Julia and her husband Matt are planning a trip to Europe.  I believe their first destination is Paris, France. Julia has been to Europe a number of times including two occasions in Switzerland and France when she worked with Roger Federer for Lindt chocolates. Imagining l’Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile on la rue Champs-Élysées reminded me that my sister and I (with our parents) first landed in Paris in 1968 on a summer tour from the Costa Bravo where we had been for the previous month after having driven from Stockholm, Sweden.

The central cohesive element of the Axe historique (historic axis, a sequence of monuments and grand thoroughfares on a route running from the courtyard of the Louvre to the Grande Arche de la Défense), the Arc de Triomphe was designed by Jean Chalgrin in 1806; its iconographic programme pits heroically nude French youths against bearded Germanic warriors in chain mail. It set the tone for public monuments with triumphant patriotic messages. Inspired by the Arch of Titus in Rome, Italy

I vividly recall my first glimpse of l’Arc de Triomphe. Months earlier I had arranged to meet a boarding school classmate who planned to be in Paris that summer as well. We had reasoned that the most central and definable meeting place was l’Arc de Triomphe.  I eventually stood at the top end of la rue Champs-Élysées at a corner looking directly across the avenue at my companion in the distance.  He stood looking in my direction.  He later informed me however that he did not at first recognize me.  He thought I was a black man because I was so tanned from our Mediterranean venture. While my chum Ricardo and I ended spending the summer together in Paris (attending Alliance française), my younger sister returned to Stockholm.  However the night before her departure we dined together then took a horse drawn carriage about the neighbourhood including the nearby palace where de Gaulle was hosting a gathering.

Alliance française or AF is an international organization that aims to promote the French language and francophone culture around the world. Created in Paris on 21 July 1883 under the name Alliance française pour la propagation de la langue nationale dans les colonies et à l’étranger(French alliance for the propagation of the national language in the colonies and abroad), known now simply as L’Alliance française, its primary goal is teaching French as a second language.

Headquartered in Paris, the Alliance had 850 centers in 137 countries on every inhabited continent in 2014. The Alliance was created in Paris on 21 July 1883 by a group including the scientist Louis Pasteur, the diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps, the writers Jules Verne and Ernest Renan, and the publisher Armand Colin.The Alliance française Paris Ile-de-France is a Higher Private Education Institute. It is an association from the law 1901. Located in the heart of the capital, the Alliance française Paris Île-de-France is a genuine international meeting point where more than 11,000 students from 160 different countries come every year to learn French. It is also the oldest one since the school offers courses in Paris since 1894.

Poor Ricardo (my school chum) is no long whinnying among us.  Years ago he was reportedly machine-gunned to death on the steps of his bank in Caracas, Venezuela where his family had a business.

I did not however linger upon these now ancient particulars which have become oxidized and burnished with the passage of time. Instead I profited from the day’s magnificent sunshine by sitting on the balcony deck facing directly into the radiant orb.

Shamefully a good deal of my time now is consumed by what most favourably might be described as meditation. I reckon the self-reflection of a diary or journal amounts to little more. I won’t pretend for a moment that the backscattering achieves any degree of purpose or objective but it most certainly constitutes howsoever inadvertently a catharsis, a deliverance from those nasty internal hindrances which buzz and go round about in one’s head and keep one awake at night. Mixing the theses of hair control and whatever else is currently topical only adds to the confusion.  Small wonder I practically leapt from bed this morning at the ghastly hour of 7:00 am determined to address the demons which had erupted and disrupted me throughout the night. The diverse sinews of the dilemma were not about to flatten me.