Winter is over! Today following a 3-day interlude of featureless grey clouds and blustery northern winds during which I wore a jacket and white socks while tricycling and avoided swimming in either the pool or the sea, the ambient temperature beneath clear blue sky rose from a frigid 53ºF this morning to a tolerable 69ºF by mid-afternoon. Poolside (where the sheltered air was warmer still) we lounged in the glaring yellow sunshine inhibited only by bathing suits and sunscreen. As my late mother (God bless her) was wont to observe, “What’s not to like!!” It was a declarative statement, nothing interrogatory about it. Today I find myself soaring to a similar disposition; what Bertie Wooster gleefully described as boomps-a-daisy.
The idiom Pathetic Fallacy is an expression I seldom have occasion to use least of all when speaking publicly. Nonetheless the invitation today for its employment is ineluctable. Every minor detail of the day (whether attending to routine ablutions, nutrition, exercise, social communications or shopping) has evinced the inexpressible glory of the weather in particular and Key Largo in general. As I write, the chilled tea and fresh squeezed lemon juice taste singularly fine!
The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. The British cultural critic John Ruskin coined the term in the third volume of his work Modern Painters (1856).
If the truth be published my lyrical ecstasy derives in no small measure from having defeated in the most effortless manner a tiny but irksome setback of my Apple Watch. The triumph wasn’t a simple reboot. It was a “re-set”, something which normally on a MacBook Pro, iPhone or iPad constitutes a broad (and therefore seldom initiated) reinstatement of one’s entire record of information. Though my Apple Watch is not without its complications, apart from having to reconfirm the particulars of credit cards, there was nothing more required to get things working again. The resulting master stroke is that, when wearing my Apple Watch, I am now able to open my MacBook Pro without the indignity of having either to type my password or to press the button twice on the side of my Apple Watch. This admittedly chimes a small accomplishment but it is illustrative of the several hurdles I’ve lately had to address following the enlargement of my iCloud storage to include 200 GB of space (of which I have consumed to date 6GB). Normally an adjustment such as this would not be expected to distort or contaminate one’s existing technology; but for whatever reason the addition and the subsequent conflicts were contemporaneous though I confess I have no other proof of their relationship. After the required transitions the improved iCloud storage appears to have precipitated an improvement of the features which were punctured and which have now been reactivated and unwittingly improved.
It is unquestionably evidence of my addiction to technology that I am so chuffed by these recent events. The indisputably binary nature of technology (namely, on/off, right/wrong, yes/no) affords to me a neat and tidy assembly, captivating emotional purity and intellectual elevation I am seldom capable of experiencing in any other engagement. Because it is strictly mathematical in nature I acknowledge its remoteness from empirical reality. But it does not stop me acquainting the exuberance with every other verifiable element of my life, whether as I say, the weather, tricycling (over 8 Kms today), the swimming pool (yes, I went for a swim too), getting the car washed, and – oh, I nearly forgot – the Key Lime pie from Key Largo Fisheries! Yes, that superb creation from our local fishery of all places afforded utter satisfaction at the end of an equally divine evening meal of chopped liver pâté, Panera soup. fresh salad and homemade fried potato slices.
Key Lime Pie, a local’s favourite, is made with our handmade graham cracker crust. It is lightly baked and then filled with a sweet and sour mixture of condensed milk, egg yolk, and fresh key lime juice. This product serves eight.