While I was gone, trains derailed. England rioted. Going on the third century, Washington’s still a mess with inarguably the worst after school special nerdchild as president. I am awash in post-vacational disinterest.
I’m at work.
“Are you one of us?” an email of a collegue asks.
I pretend happy theater, but really, the soul’s left the village. Me? I’ve the best of jobs. I work 40 feet from my bedroom. Still. I grumble.
I am Vacation Man.
My legs are hiding under this metal box our forefathers named, “The Stocks.” The Politically Correct term is, “A Desk.” Middle of the day, and, disconcertingly, my knees are nowhere to be found because I’m wearing long pants. Long pants. At 2 in the afternoon. I have a meeting in a while. How perfectly vile. How recreationally impure.
Where’s my hammock? The birds singing along the shore above Bodega Bay? I glance over at my right hand. The meaty palm is resting on the desk, thumb and fingers encircled to hold a beer. But there’s no beer can.
No ice chest, either. No well-worn road map. No babbling brook. No sea breeze crashing joyfully against me off the Mendocino coastline. No kind concierge at the Mark Hopkins to gently nudge me awake in the lobby after I’ve been out drinking all night in San Francisco to kindly ask: “May we carry you up to your room and help you into your jammies, sir?”
Just paper clips holding meaningless words together and a 12-pound dayplanner measuring forever unfinished business in Sisyphusian tonnage.
I am wearing shoes. Dolphins don’t wear shoes. People on vacation don’t wear shoes. I am neither dolphin nor Vacation Man.
How sad.
My chosen profession — The News?
Bombings. Lies. Trials. Military build-ups. Investigations. Beheadings. The Oval Office once again self-righteously declaring war on half the country. I hear a newscaster on the radio, frantically warning that mating trucks have shrunken a significant major Southland freeway from 74 lanes to one. Traffic is backed up to Peru. The radioman is jabbering, weeping, as helicopter blades whir dramatically in the background. Tres Vietnam.
The traffic. The horror.
A few days ago, I was sitting in a canvas chair, bundled up on a bluff near the Russian River. My daughter was sitting in her chair. We were sketching the coastline and making each other laugh. We ate clam chowder. Walked along the beach. Checked out some elephant seals. Talked about the cartoon movie, “Bolt” and what kind of shoes she was going to buy in San Francisco for my godson’s wedding.
Back just a day at my job of inventing opinions, I can’t find one. No outrage. No shoulds. No shouldn’ts. No calling for creation of some Blue Ribbon Committee to investigate the yada-yada. I’ve a website to build. A company to run. A book to edit. A novel to get back to. The gods of vacation have melted time. They’ve taught me there is no delineation between history and news. The names are just different. Personal inventory is nearly impossible. The clothes and boots are here. There’s a body in them. Best I can tell, it’s mine. But I’m not in it. I’m still staring into a campfire in a quiet and cool Northern California wood, watching the moon rise smilingly over a strand of trees. The shadows dance orange just for me.
It’s a good thing I don’t work on an assembly line. Widgets would be backed up, grinding against one another in a sickening noise of which I’d be totally unaware.
Couldn’t be a bank teller. “Oh. Whatever. Just keep the change.”
I couldn’t be a cop. Catching skateboarding Twinkie thieves right outside a 7-Eleven, I wouldn’t have the will to drag them in. Rather, I’d point out for them: “There’s a real nice babbling brook two canyons over that makes a real swank picnic spot …”
I scan the stacks of newspapers and magazines. “Country’s going to hell in a handbasket,” the pundits scream. A sound byte graphic gives me the latest partial score: Crime, Drug-Use & Sexually Transmitted Disease 67 — Morals, Education & Health Care, 3.
I’d like to tell all the reporters, editors and columnists, really, the world’s not such a bad place, when you’re on vacation.
I stare at nothing and sigh a lot. Not from stress nor repression, but from tranquility. I’m in 99.99 percent of all possible cosmic parts except for Right Here. I’m still washed by sea breezes, still Ulysses seat-belted to a green pick-up truck, delighted to pleasant madness by rural highways.
I may be here. But I’m not back yet.
John Boston has earned 119 major awards for writing stuff. Besides The Mighty West Ranch Beacon, his work appears in the prestigious thebostonreport.net just about every darn day. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon. Read Boston’s daily blog, his Daily English Muffins, the Adventures of Job Hunter and more of John Boston’s award-winning commentary on thebostonreport.net
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