The oddest thing I have discovered in old age (and before you guffaw I admit in advance I am slow to learn) is that, in spite of the mist that so often surrounds life, it is but a diaphanous impediment to comprehension. Granted perception requires a modest degree of aptitude but nothing hysterically bright to highlight the discrete features upon life’s canvas. It boils down to little more than believing what one sees.  And, yes, I know of course that that is an old and now tiresome adage but nonetheless it constitutes the only words I have to capture the so-called discovery of mine.

As I look back upon my past, with the benefit of retrospection, I perceive the reality hidden behind the gauze. But the further truth is that the awareness was a long time coming. In short the sheer that disguised life was, though flimsy, near impenetrable. Though it resounds of being a sad confession to childhood magic, I believe there are less insulting reasons for the obscurity.

A mist of powdery grey upon any landscape – whether geographic or facial – is always softening. To characterize the cosmetic effect as intentionally deceitful is an inductive leap. It is for example not unnatural for any one of us to shelter ourselves from attack or deception or disapproval; in fact, by whatever dialectic to improve the veneer of our being. But a further definition derives, as with any image, from the viewer himself.  And it is for this latter purpose that regard of life mandates a willingness to accept what one sees. For which cause – and bearing in mind the instinctive reaction to confound what one sees in order to synthesize with one’s preconceptions – we must be critical of the elements of notability.  Again this means attention to detail.

Thus it was this morning as I tricycled upon the smooth subterranean garage floor, back and forth to fulfil my 30 minutes of requital, I encountered a chap who had just entered the garage and parked his vehicle.  As he strode along the basement floor to the elevator, and I tricycled towards him, we stopped to chat. Critically (because for me this was important information) he was born in Toronto (let’s say in 1946) and, in an event for which he says his mother never forgave his father, moved at four years of age to McNab Township in Renfrew County near Arnprior.  He informed me his mother’s objection arose from having to move from a house in Toronto with indoor plumbing and electricity to a farmhouse in Arnprior with neither. There he spent the remainder of his life until his wife died last year and he moved to the apartment building where we now each reside.

This then is the preamble to my thesis.  He was a farm boy and he had to my mind (cultivated as it is by a half century of practicing law in the country when many of my best clients were farmers) all the bearing of an honest, unassuming, kind, charitable gentleman. Except one thing.  As he and I preserved our confab in the garage (he standing alert while I sat upon my tricycle), I noticed on the left side of his head (the side angled away from my direct line of sight) what seemed to be something glistening.  On closer examination it was unquestionably an ear ring, a small relatively thin (dare I say in the circumstances, modest) gold loop. The sort of thing you’d expect to see worn by a pirate.

This discovery was to me abundantly curious.  So, not willing to allow the opportunity for enlightenment to evaporate, I said to him, “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” He agreed.  It was a willing, unqualified consent to interrogation.  He clearly had nothing to hide.

He confirmed it was an ear ring.  From the sixties, he said, a product of the hippie movement. Well, I was alive in the sixties, but all I could recollect from that era was the Beatles. However, the significant point was that this farm boy, living in what was then I am certain considered a remote country location, on a farm (further with what I fully suspect was a religious upbringing) has an ear ring.  Which he wears to this day, the fulfilment of which today was building a bird house in the garage of his daughter (who lives nearby) and who has a 14-month old son who is pride of the grandfather.

Now you tell me.  How does this happen?  There is a great deal more to this story than the trifling detail of its opening paragraph. My mind reels.  Too often in the past I have encountered similarly innocuous detail which turns out to be the proverbial tip of the iceberg. There simply is some information in life which is not to be whimsically discarded or flippantly discredited. Beneath the glaze of implausibility lies a trove of evidence and mystery and discovery. Nor is it to be confounded by insinuation. Like any medicine the improvement is singular. And likely just as complicated.

What however survives even from this putative insight is not the direct discovery; rather it is the indirect assertion of the paramount implication. That is, what is the overall effect of the moment?  It is rather like interpreting the layout of a drawing room.  One mustn’t confine one’s investigation to one painting in particular; nor the colour of the drawing room carpet; nor the crystal beaker nor silver jug on the sideboard. It is the accumulation of detail whence the final image is created. And it is there one must conclude.