Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Et Seq. – The Continuing Saga

After tossing and turning unremittingly since after midnight and having changed my dampened nightshirt at least once, I finally succumbed to the futility of staying in bed and got up. Apart from having weighed the options I was resolute to address head-on the demons which had arranged to torture me for hours. It was barely 4:15 a.m.


As always, the demons seemed far less commanding when once upon one’s feet, and as I struggled to find my socks and get into my morning togs I even had trouble recalling what all the confusion had been about. Nonetheless I knew there were crevices to be explored, leaves to be overturned and things to be uncovered. As it turned out, over the course of the day one after another of the knots of my nuisance dilemmas became unravelled, though not so much by design as by accident. Inexplicably I would recall some urgency about this or that from the previous night’s contortions and upon exploration discover to my entire relief that the matter was in hand. To me it only proved as I have always known that one simply cannot rely upon one’s memory in the conduct of a business as small and uncomplicated as one may think it is. There is a purpose for pad and pencil (though I admit the real reason behind the paranoia is simply the unexpected debilitating effect of estrangement from the subject). Unless one is “on top of it”, it is all too easy to overlook or forget where when was when you left off.

The preliminary expiation of the day was a brief bicycle ride around the neighbourhood on my trusty Electra cruiser from California. The air was completely still; the sun had not yet succeeded in surmounting the crest of the clouds on the distant horizon. As I rode silently along, I imagined the horrible things that might suddenly jump out at me from the dark ditches, but I pressed on, flashing light on my wrist whizzing quietly along the pavement. The only automobile I saw was a slow-moving vehicle in the great distance, a seemingly purposeless medium considering the time of day. The rear-end lights were surprisingly red and bright, even gem-like, in the early morning light. I was glad that I hadn’t had to confront the enemy of privacy, that this unidentified coparcener of the morning was remote and disengaged.

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