From the moment I awakened this morning – which is to say, 2:30 am, 4:46 am, 6:40 am and lastly about 10:10 am – I have harboured this inexplicable hesitancy about the upcoming day. It’s not as though there were any particular oddity or singularity about the day.  In fact it was just one of those elemental days on which I was scheduled for yet another medical appointment, this time with Dr. Sameer Dedhar (optometrist) for my annual check-up and prescription review. We’re clearly lucky to have the opportunity to visit upon these and other impending medical issues.  Yet the rising urgency of the need resulting from contemporaneous aging, decomposition and susceptibility has jaundiced the unpredicted repetition of the allotment. Now that it’s over, that I have achieved this further pinnacle of medical complascency, I’m feeling it’s almost Friday.  Clever of me to have booked today’s appointment in the middle of June, late in a burgeoning summer afternoon on a Thursday, close enough to week’s end to preserve application and assiduity in the workplace while signalling the entitlement to early evaporation for another of those agreeable long weekends in the summer. Evaporation and exhaustion from all that compels our purpose.

As I was wont to say but a moment ago when sending an email to our long-standing friends Ian and Pierre now wintering in the South Pacific Ocean in  New Zealand, I am thrilled to anticipate the relief from interminable medical appointments. Quite honestly, when someone asked me with whom we had lately socialized, my unbraced response was someone in the medical profession. In an era when every physical movement begins with a grunt, when walking 100 yards is considered athletic, I hesitate to characterize my current state as Herculean.

Contrary to what might appear to be my languid devotion on a warm summer weekend, the truth is that I am anxious to get onto my tricycle, to enable myself to pedal along the walkways parallel the Mississippi River. For many years the routine cycle ride has provided me with welcome daily preoccupation and quality absorption of leisurely time. Yet in spite of my present ability to cycle, it is a strength attributable to a limited time only before my new left knee begins to struggle beneath the burden of exercise.  I have accordingly opted for but a brief interlude on the tricycle each time I give it a go.  There is quite possibly exposure to abuse. I am nonetheless convinced that each time I attempt the tricycle, there is moderate improvement.