Oasis of Refreshment

As much as I might prefer to avoid the characterization of a hopeless addict, the frozen truth is that I am uncommonly comfortable with habit.  This is especially so when I have succeeded to adjust to conventions which I find both healthful and beautiful. In my present circumstances it is undeniable that the amenability of which I speak is no accident, a triumph which exponentially adds to both the pleasure and the propensity. Granted my congenital dislike of novelty buttresses what some might call my narrowness of practice. I on the other hand rationalize the foible as a ready willingness to embrace what by and large is a good thing - without the necessity to prosecute tireless alternatives and wistful objectives.

Nemo dat quod non habet

Everyone has heard the quip about weddings and funerals, something to the effect that they both bring people together and afford an opportunity to reconnect. There is another less popular adage about funerals in particular; and that is the unspoken attention to the Will of the deceased, more specifically what if anything one will inherit. In the broad delineation of estate administration the over-riding consideration is captured in the maxim, "Nemo dat quod non habet" - that is, "No one gives what he does not have".

Carmen

"The depictions of proletarian life, immorality and lawlessness, and the tragic death of the main character on stage, broke new ground in French opera and were highly controversial."

"Carmen" an opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet

More years ago than I can now safely recall - when I still qualified as a young man - I was introduced to the opera "Carmen".  My mentor - whose name I also shamefully forget - was appropriately either Italian or French. He may even have been from Montserrat, the multi-peaked mountain range near Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. I remember distinctly that he had an accent. He was visiting a mutual friend - my erstwhile physician - in Canada at the time. He was clearly captured by the opera.  While I wasn't able to identify the opera, there was at least one of the songs which was familiar to me. The introductory acquaintance shall forever remain impressed on my mind as an example of how I have been affected by what in retrospect I consider important.

Midnight Pass to Casey Key

We rallied briefly with our friends at their digs on Siesta Key then headed down the coast to a fish shack for lunch. The season is still not upon us and the traffic was tolerable as a result - though the tiny waterside restaurant, hidden among the subtropical trees along a dusty narrow road, was remarkably congested. And noisy with chatter and clatter. Seated on the deck above the water we strained to hear what one another said, bending our heads alternately in search of the sound waves, sometimes pretending to understand though not caring a damn, it was just too pleasant to confound the tide with detail.

Collection of Daily Anecdotes

Today's tales don't qualify as shaggy-dog stories but they are reminiscences, a sketch of life on Longboat Key. When traveling abroad there is an inclination to latch onto events which rise above the mundane occurrences of living. But with only infrequent exception that is precisely where the action is. It is besides these seemingly uninspiring episodes which provide the real fodder of account.

"Longboat Key is a town in Manatee and Sarasota counties along the central west coast of the U.S. state of Florida, located on and coterminous with the barrier island of the same name. Longboat Key is south of Anna Maria Island, between Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico."

All is vanity

Given my advanced age, protuberant belly, heart by-pass and Pacemaker, it flabbergasts even me that I have anything surpassing the remotest regard for matters sartorial.  But apparently the "Preacher, the son of David, king of Jerusalem" knew of what he spoke (as related in Ecclesiastes 1). Astonishingly my curiosity concerning clothing extends beyond what is purely functional. I am certainly not yet confined to the irresolute quandary, "What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?" Instead I regularly find myself animated by garb especially as exemplified in the American vernacular. Evidently my interest is further promoted by the proximity of the sea, the balmy weather and the fragrant flowers.

So where do we stand?

At an uncertain juncture years ago I cultivated the all-consuming practice to recapitulate the entirety of my existence in order to assess what had transpired and where I was headed. While the fixation smacked of penitential dialect I privately considered it pragmatic in the same way one reviews a document before signing it. The summary and reiteration seldom embraced more than the currency of my being which, if I were to put a limit on it, captured only the predominant features of my life as then expressed. I never felt the exigency to re-evaluate my childhood agenda (if indeed I recalled any of it with accuracy); but the contemporary salient features of domesticity, productivity and foreseeability certainly mattered. My guess is that the obsession began 40 years ago when I opened my own law practice - an occasion which accentuated a multitude of disparate parameters that weighed upon my survival. That at least is my apology for the mania. The sobering collateral of this phobia is the admission that much of the detail was meaningless, a trajectory which I nonetheless fashion as a useful motivation to dwell instead only upon the present and what is pleasing. Perhaps the initial objective is the same in the end, being simply a justification. Let's face it, no amount of hindsight will do anything to change the past - though in fairness it may have a bearing on the future.

The Nautical Theme

From the moment one crosses the bridge separating Sarasota Bay and the Gulf of Mexico on the John Ringling Parkway from Sarasota to the Gulf of Mexico Drive on Longboat Key there is an immediate nautical theme that insinuates the barrier island. The isolation of the island ensures the survival of this romantic narrative. From almost any perspective on the island the maritime tincture is inescapable. Even now as I write I hear the crashing waves.

James Desmond ("Des") Houston, deceased (1933 - 2018)

Des Houston died on Tuesday, October 16th, 2018.  He was the former Clerk-Treasurer of the Town of Almonte, the former President of the Mississippi Golf Club and the former President of the Mississippi River Power Corporation. Those three hallmarks of association were for me and for many others the very foundation of the past, present and future of the area in which we all live.  If anyone were ever entitled to a showy send-off, it was he.  But typically for Des - and I have no doubt whatsoever that this happened entirely upon his unqualified instruction - there was no public service following his death.  That's just the sort of guy he was, exact and modest to a fault.

It's the little things that count

"Little things console us because little things afflict us."

Blaise Pascal

No matter how extravagantly one describes anything in life, in the end what matters most is the little things.  Very often it is those same whispers of contentment which go virtually unmentioned - not because they don't count but because it's almost impossible - or maybe even commonplace - to verbalize or quantify their distinguishing elements.  How for example do you portray in a meaningful way the delight of a morning bicycle ride in the yellow sunshine while sailing under a banyan tree and listening to cicadas and the shrill of a tropical bird?