Essays in Idleness

I had intended to take the whole month of August off — from any participation in the meejah, of which my Idleposts are an example. A couple of my friends do this, devoting the thirty-one days of the eighth month to re-sanitization. “September will be work. Get ready for the crazy. It’s an annual cycle. We toggle between the usual nonsense, and right up the wall. Set August to ‘off’.”

They disconnect themselves from all periodical input, especially electronic. I would myself avoid print generally, except books published before I was born. (Anything since, I count as “too recent.”)

But I kept putting “off” off. Suddenly it was August 31st, only one week prior to North American “Labour Day.” Perhaps I would declare seven days’ rest, a bit late. Gentle reader might, if curious, look through the approximately 1,500 Idleposts I have left up, though none were written before I was born. (Some of the worst have been deleted.)

Too, I invite him to meditate, on the theme, “We are not fragile.” Over-informed readers may catch the reference. I first used it, as a headline, over an advertisement I wrote in 1988, during Canada’s “free trade election.” I gathered more signatures on it, and more impressive, than the “Liberal” culture marms did on theirs, for their ad declaring that the Mulroney government’s Free Trade Bill would eviscerate the Canadian culture and economy. My thought was, if it could, it should; that what’s truly not worth having is not worth having. But let us proceed on the possibility that, even in a slightly more competitive environment, we could hold our own. That we might even flourish. For, “We are not fragile” — not afraid to be alive, not pathetically inferior.

(Perhaps I was wrong.)

This morning, turning the meejah back on, I was made aware of an assertion by the Pope in Rome. He was affirming that the Batflu was good for the Environment; that it enabled the old thing to take a rest. We all need a rest sometimes, I suppose; the pope most urgently.

But Catholic idleness is a different thing from not getting up in the morning. Since God made the world, in anticipation of man, He probably designed it to be durable. The evidence I’ve seen, suggests it is robust.

So on behalf of the Environment, I would like to reply: “We are not fragile.”