A RECIPE FOR PERFECTION

He was awakened by the musical jingle of his telephone and after patiently nodding to his mother-in-law’s instructions, he placed the receiver down, blanching at the thought of doing her troublesome will. It was time to shake a leg so he stripped for his shower and put the memory of that shrill voice on his back burner. The warm water cascading down his back and legs, across his chest and through his hair had the desired effect - deglazing him of the week’s trivial worries. It was easier now to contend with his tribulations retiring them, taking them as importantly as grains of salt. He enjoyed a dollop of a warm, chocolate pastry downing it with his fresh-brewed ‘ethical’ coffee. He remembered why he first bought it: he was searing with anger at the treatment of the labourers by multinational companies soaked in their own greed. His was a minor contribution but it helped restrike his moral compass; as did practising as he was wont recently at resisting all temptations, learning to covet nothing and desire little. It was an awakening of its own sort: realizing he could actually be free of anxieties and fretfulness related to these illusions of joy.
   This was his day off and he resolved to enjoy a walk alone in the  quiet park before joining his wife for lunch. Lunch with his lover was all the luxury he would indulge today and later as he strolled under the canopy of autumn leaves he was to experience a peacefulness and a kind of tactile pleasure quite privately, as though the Creator had written this day his name only. And he saw something else that afternoon before lunch that inspired him. In all of this natural upheaval given continuously by an intelligent and loving force for naught but his edification and enjoyment, that it behooved the aware man to tend this garden he called earth. It wasn’t enough to be a gentleman. Well-mannered and considerate. Not anymore.
   Every living thing in the park that day, the flocks of birds and even their songs, were beseeching; the myriad, multi-coloured leaves; the squirrels and the swans in the small lagoon all cried out for his protection. This he knew he could not retire to the  convenience of a back burner. This brew he would let boil.
   It was necessary now, incumbent upon his humanity, to reverse the hands of the doomsday clock and herald a new age of an earth at peace. Though he was approaching his senior years he knew this challenge belonged to him now; to defy the global rapists, the wealth-addicted.
   And it became obvious to him that once a man knows that which is right then that man is called upon to conduct himself righteously. Even if this meant a radical departure from his cozy lifestyle, an abandoning of the mundane. And now, as he was making his way to lunch, he was enjoying a new aroma, the scent of a meaningful departure from the listless. And the profound pleasure he was experiencing was affirming him; every aspect of creation was assuring him that he indeed was on the verge of knowing a recipe for his
perfection.