Commensurately as I age and as my experience of necessity (or fortuity) widens I am more and more inclined to reservation. What were in youth considered unqualified thrills have again and again suffered the unarguable and sanitzing limitation of what I now unhesitantly express as a flourishing disdain for the corporeal universe.  Gone for example is labidinous peril! And Rolex watches (although for that particular deprivation I have more properly to blame the people at Apple™). As an old man I am content with the most immoderate physical constituents or what my late father figuratively summarized as “peace and quiet“. This curmudgeonly costume is by no means a spiritual abstraction. Rather it is no doubt a predictable descent more often and less disparagingly acquainted with the vernacular branded as downsizing (that temporal devotion to simplicity and substance).  Perhaps too it is an illustration of the philosophic adage of Freemasonry that “Nature teaches us how to die” though I would understandably prefer not to regard my dissolving appetite as entire extinguishment.

Indeed I have preserved my reservation from complete despondency. The object is not to prepare for my funeral. We’re not addressing decay but transition. Instead it is a matter of clarity – as in the poetic analysis of fine wine; that is, distillation not annihilation. The thesis in fact derives its legitimacy from its comparable evolution, refinement not confinement.  Nor will I foolishly advance that the choice of that reconstruction is either unique or singular.  More likely than not the progression of each of us is marked by similar strategy in spite of its diversity.

Permit me to introduce the background to these heady assertions by recalling the inexpressible joy I have to look out the drawing room window each day upon the meadow and upriver view. Forgive my acknowledged repetition.  For me it is the highlight of my life not just because it mellows old age and its often irreversible decreptitude but because it represents for me completion of the full circle (with the added mathematical ingredient to the fractionation).  Or, if you like, I’ve squeezed all I can out of it!

This evening I reached the acme of my desirability.  Following an afternoon of assiduous investigation of the latest production of one of my confessed material succulents, I returned home to an unparalleled chance occurrence. Embellishing my private rejuvenation for having synthesized life’s advantages and limitations (note the dichromatic configuration) was an unforeseen as well as an unfolding drama at table and thereafter in the drawing room. For all of this, without exception, I am indebted to my life partner (approaching 30 years) who, in addition to stimulating me for my trifling colouring book accomplishments, enriches me with the indescribable bounty of comradeship and allegiance.

In botany, succulent plants, also known as succulents, are plants with parts that are thickened, fleshy, and engorged, usually to retain water in arid climates or soil conditions. The word succulent comes from the Latin word sucus, meaning “juice” or “sap”.