An early start

It’s just after 9PM on June 30th here in Ottawa.  The great national orgy doesn’t begin formally for another three hours or so.  It’s rainy and sort of cool, though pleasant enough for me, personally, as that’s how I like it.  Nevertheless, in this great capital of ours one can already hear the frequent explosions of incompetently-administered fireworks and the slurred, drunken singing of someone who’s been at it for the last hour.  Every so often one can even hear the distant sound of that tuneless Spanish soccer chant that is my generation’s poor excuse for joyful noise.  It comes like an infant’s murmur, soft and ominous.

To bitterly mutter that I hope they all die would be uncharitable and wrong, and not a little bit unnecessary anyway because of course they all will.  It’s just awfully hard to work through William Law’s 1728 masterwork exhorting me to a devout and holy life with all these distractions.

I’ll simply keep at it, I guess, and wistfully look forward to my new apartment – to be moved into in August – in which my bedroom is in fact a subterranean cave with no windows.  That should be quiet.  Oh yes it should.