Summer Morning

Promptly at 6:10 a.m. this morning, after a respectable night’s sleep and the welcome absence of fermented potato juice contaminants the evening before, I hopped onto my trusty Electra 9-speed bicycle and headed towards the Village of Appleton along my customary route. There was a great deal of early morning traffic, mostly large, noisy vehicles like dump trucks, school buses and half-ton pickups, the trades making way sometimes at alarmingly high speeds to their respective destinations. As I ride against the traffic, whenever one of these mountains of steel comes hurtling towards me, I make sure to drift onto the gravel shoulder, as far to the left as possible, sometimes having to slacken my speed considerably if there is a prevalence of loose stone, since otherwise I might easily lose my balance. It merits observation that many of the drivers go out of their way themselves to move over from the shoulder of the road as they pass by me. When this happens, I raise my index and third finger together (in the manner of the “peace” sign) as a token of my appreciation (though I might add it doesn’t deter me in the least from taking my precautions). Sometimes it is impossible for them to move over, when for example another vehicle is coming in the opposite direction. The younger automobile drivers, especially young women, seldom deviate an inch from their lawful territory, whether or not there is on-coming traffic. When that happens, I find myself muttering some philippic or other under my breath, though I suppose I have no right to expect any courtesy whatever from them.

Victory Day

As though to punctuate the importance of this day (and to purge myself of regret for all that is miserable within), I began by riding my bicycle at 6:30 a.m. this morning to the Village of Appleton and back. The air was extraordinarily still. The sun was at times hidden behind small clusters of ominous grey clouds, but for the most part it is a sunny, hot and humid day. Because today is a holiday, there wasn’t much traffic along the ribbon of road. As I pedaled, I reflected upon the state of affairs within my private domain. The prospect of personal renewal is never lost on me, likely because it is so worthy of consideration. I have once again set upon today as a day to mark my victory over all the demons which so regularly plague me. I should of course be laughing at myself instead, because this is hardly the first time I have done something like this. However, I persist. There was after all a time when I thought I would never be able to quit smoking, but I did. And I have never revisited the habit, not once.

Get Back to Work!

I listened with interest this morning as two CBC radio personalities agreed with one another that they have never got over the anxiety which accompanies Sunday evening and the prospect of Monday morning. As one reporter said, he was awake throughout the night wondering whether he had overslept, regularly checking the alarm clock to be sure that he got out of bed in time for his early morning appearance on the show. This, even after having done it for years. I found this all terribly encouraging, because it illustrated that I am not the only one in this world who obsesses about Monday mornings. And as hackneyed as it is to say it, the plague is distinctly peculiar to Monday mornings (especially rainy Monday mornings, as today), rather than any other day of the week. Once, however, I am back in the proverbial saddle, and the work week is under way, my discomfiture invariably dissipates quickly.

Life 101

When a friend of mine (in earnest or not, I cannot be sure) invited me to speak to the members of his Toronto golf club (presumably as the dog and pony show at a tournament or some such other event), my immediate reaction was that I couldn’t imagine myself having anything of interest to say to a pack of linksmen. First, my foray into the rarefied atmosphere of golfing was so long ago as to be little more than a faded memory, and since then my brush with the denizens of the club house has been limited to that of a social member of our local golf club, where I host annual luncheons and dinner parties for family and friends who profess to enjoy an outing to rural Ontario by the cool waters of the slow and meandering Mississippi River. However, upon further reflection on the subject, the more fundamental question of what I might have to say to anyone (either by way of entertainment or wisdom) occurred to me. Golfers after all, notwithstanding their pretense to singularity, are still mere mortals; and surely they could profit as easily as any others from a bit of general conflab on one subject or another. One of the relics of advanced age has to be the possibility that, having endured a lifetime of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, one must surely have something of consequence to share with others, be they golfers or not.

Saturday Night

It was a raucous foregathering last evening in the subdivision! The lights, the fireplace and everyone in between were ablaze!

Things began innocuously enough, as they always do in these casual Saturday social circumstances, with a frozen vodka martini, nourished by some salted roasted pecans. But the pace picked up steadily, accompanied by asparagus spears wrapped in smoked prosciutto crudo, then surprisingly followed by an equally tantalizing and quite unexpected serving of spicy grilled prawns in the shell.

Spring Cleaning

It wasn’t a pretty sight to see me in my smalls at 6:15 a.m. this morning, valiantly pulling upon the cords of the Concept 2 stationary rowing machine in the dreary basement beside the washer and dryer (how unlike the television ads for the product), staring straight ahead (as if there were any other choice in the matter), intent upon completing my 30 minutes of exercise. My protuberant belly all but squeezed me uncomfortably on the forward pull. The CBC radio morning show in the background (at least what little of it I could hear over the whirr of the fly-wheel) did nothing to distract me from the half-hour eternity which stretched before me, as I disparagingly eyed the seconds ticking by with glacial speed on the mounted performance monitor.

Getting Religion

It is inescapable, especially to the Christian observer, that the arrival of Spring is about more than the awakening of the seeds in the ground. It is also about the rekindling of the fires of religion within one's mind, or should I say within one's heart. The debate about the intuition or rationality of religion is never ending, all the more so at a time when it is fashionable to blame religion for all the world's problems. In an increasingly educated society, it is considered lower class (perhaps heralded by Karl Marx' conjunction of religion and the masses) to adopt traditional religious models. Moreover, as the world's religions are thrown more and more into the face of one another, it seems just plain unfair to suggest that one man's god is better than another, and thus to reject them all. However, as someone who has had a blocked heart and lived to tell the tale, I am not as clear about the rejection of some of the possibilities of religion. I don't for a minute suggest that my survival was a religious experience (it was purely medical), but it reminds me of the importance of matters of the heart and the free flow of the cardiovascular system. Sometimes one's heart can be blocked by more than material matter.