July 10, 2020, Lenox – By the time I left home Saturday mid-morning and headed toward the ole stamping grounds along the shore of Lake Ontario, I was near nuts! Nearly nuts, you may suggest I mean to say, but I say near because I knew I needed to calm down and was intent to do just that.
Absent such awareness, the use of nearly would have implied an inevitable crackup, so I’d be dictating this to a semi-literate medical professional at the nut house, but, instead, I’m tapping these tiny letter keys back home in the Berkshires!
A few days earlier, I had dusted off the old camp stove, and fired it up, and bought fuel, and began looking forward to hot campsite food, especially a sunrise breakfast of oatmeal + apple + maple syrup on the bluffs high above the lake.
Such is the nature of my madness, that simply because something is right and good, then so shall it be! As you all know, not so – seldom is! Damn thing let me heat frozen ravioli before sunset #1, but failed at first sunrise breakfast, and was a mocking green metal clownbox thereafter.
The benefit of proximity to Lake Ontario, as to any other place where the horizon is boundless, is metaphorical: it makes it easy to imagine the membrane of the mind, to see the edge of thought, if not the period at the end of the sentence! By Tuesday, I see that I’ve been in the midst of a temper tantrum, a-simmer since 2015, when a blown gasket laid me low for a while.
Restoration to a condition of physical health was accompanied by a recurrence of the insane idea that I may be of assistance in the conduct of public life in the United States of America, whose very existence owes thanks to my old man, and his cohort, who saved European civilization from the second of back-to-back suicide attempts during the first half of the 20th century.
A few days at the lake – its good for all manner of ache.
Photos from the vicinity of Fort Ontario, including a peek at the new east side beach, Oswego, NY, July 2020 by Dave Read.
