Shortest Day of the Year

The defining characteristic of Canadians at this time of year is survival. Never mind the bright Christmas lights and tinselled trees; this is an undisguised hostile environment. Everything currently conspires against us, the snow, the darkness, the cold, the damp air, the slush and the general mess of the surroundings. It is only the most enthusiastic of our number who contemplate doing anything out-of-doors. The prospect is forbidding, best reserved for those who insist upon taking their constitutional whatever the circumstances “on Christmas Day or Doomsday”. The rest of us keep an eye upon the calendar and measure the days with greater acuity than an alienated J. Alfred Prufrock with his coffee spoons. We know only too well that today marks the Winter Solstice, and that means that things can only get better.

Trust Your Instincts

On a certain level adherence to one’s instincts is almost pathological, smacking as it does of compulsive behaviour and irrationality. It’s as though instinct were a substitute for thinking, not exactly what all that education we’ve had has taught us to do. On the other hand I have yet to meet anyone who dismisses the value of acting upon one’s gut reactions even though at times the practice is elevated to the extreme of psychic analysis (“voices from the past” and that sort of thing). Barring however telepathy and clairvoyance, I have increasingly come to view intuitive behaviour as the best guide, by far more shrewd, insightful and discerning than the alternative (rational deduction). This may at first appear to be an irresponsible vote in favour of impulse but this is to ignore the depth of the morass in which so-called natural feelings operate. Instinct is after all the instantaneous culmination of years of experience, often hard won on the battlefield not in the classroom. To suggest otherwise is the equivalent of saying that it is the key which makes a car run. Certainly a key when properly positioned sets things in motion, but it is all that other stuff behind the dashboard and under the hood which make it happen. Likewise a well-practiced intuition motivates the deeper behavioural decisions. Let’s face it if you start by heading in the wrong direction, you’re done. That’s what instinct does - it gets you going in the right direction, even if you don’t know why at the time or even if it takes longer to prove itself correct. It is for that reason as well that one must train oneself to trust one’s instincts because often there is nothing other than that trust to sustain the validity of one’s hunch.

The Christmas Express

About this time of year things progress fairly rapidly I find. Initially, in the first few days of December, we gradually adjust to the advent of winter weather, an enforced adjustment which becomes more persistent with each passing day. However it is not long before we’re convinced that winter really has arrived and that it is safe to begin counting the days to either the Winter Solstice or Spring, whichever helps.

What abruptly occurs as we approach the middle of the month, however, is the sudden realization that Christmas is upon us and all that that entails. People in the street begin wishing one another a Merry Christmas and many are prompted to shake hands with one another. It is a time of communal outpouring of charity and good wishes. The process is helped along by the trickle of Christmas cards which also materialize with increasing regularity. People commence muttering about the times during which their business offices are closed over the holidays. Some are captured in the post office assembling large packages in brown paper. There really is a hustle and bustle in the air.

Merry Christmas!

Upon arising and drawing the drapes this morning, a heedless glance out my frozen bedroom window reminded me what a desolate place Canada can be in the winter. On these normally cloudy days everything is dull - grey and brittle branches on the trees, forlorn snow on the grass and fields beyond, even the evergreens look faded and bleak, somehow tarnished. The barren and austere appearance is compounded by the mixture of filthy salt and dirty brown sand which now litters our roadways. It is so inhospitable.

A Tiny Christmas

Doc Kelly was well-known for his magnanimity. It was not uncommon for example for him to accept potatoes or corn in payment of his medical services, especially from those who would, as fate would have it, oblige him to travel by sleigh on a blustery wintry night from Town to the nearby Village of Barnhart Mills where several of his more elderly and struggling patients lived. They relied upon him and his good advice, always given cheerfully and without restraint. They would have given more to him in compensation of his professional services, but they hadn’t any more to give and Doc Kelly knew that. It is no accident that if one is good at something in particular, one is often so in general. While it may be considered an odd extrapolation, the beneficence of Doc Kelly was so widely disseminated as to include not only human kind but also animals, particularly the small ones which are so often ignored on the theory that their diminutive size somehow accounts for a greater likelihood of survival in the harsh winter months, an observation which Doc Kelly understood to be patently erroneous.

Your Serve!

Life can provide incalculable annoyances. Because of the enormous variation of personal circumstances, the buffet of trouble which is spread before us is equally vast and particularized. The irritations which vex are strikingly well-suited to our present condition, seemingly capitalizing upon the underlying weaknesses of the moment. It would of course be stretching the point to imagine that there was anything other than mere randomness in this nastiness. The concept of fate and the visitation thereof in unwelcome fiery packages by various gods of the universe has long disappeared from the current vernacular. But at times it nonetheless leaves one thinking...

Late Silvery Autumn Days

We are blessed today with a perfectly blue sky. The temperature is pushing the freezing mark, but the air is so dry and clear that one can hardly complain at this time of year. Very often we’re up to our shins in snow at this late date in Autumn. As everyone knows, the sun, though shining brilliantly at the moment, descends at a rapid rate after midday. When the sun begins to decline, the light assumes a silvery aspect, no doubt pronounced by similar colours on the ground. The deciduous trees for example reveal their grey trunks and branches; the once grassy lawns and verdant fields are now various hues of brown and neutral colours. The grey stone houses project themselves in stately silence against the sky. It is a time of utter softness and unmeasured consistency. The only relief from the unbroken view of the insipid landscape is the reflection of the sapphire sky in the passive waters of the River below.