On Vacating…

(Audio: link)

[audio:http://www.RunRunLive.com/PodcastEpisodes/Membership/M16-On-Vacations.mp3]

Link M16-On-Vacations.mp3

I’m hanging out at my house down at the cape.  Cape Cod.  That pile of scenic sand that juts out into the Atlantic giving a fig to Ireland.  The jokes on Cape Cod.  The Irish all came anyway.

I sit in the coolness of a morning already bright and close to the sky.  The whir of fans and the grind of the in-window air-conditioning attempts to push the thickening air around my ranch house.  Jim Morrison taunts a crowd on my iPhone.

The internet is down.  Well, not exactly down, more in a dormant period.  I’d have to call the cable company and wade through the punitive, soul crushing bureaucracy of Comcast to get it back.  This Sisyphean task of endless robotic minions, through no fault of their own, misdirecting me is beyond my energy at this point.

Case in point, Word wants to change Sisyphean to Sousaphone and without the internet I am unable to haughtily confirm both my mastery of Greek mythology and excellent vocabulary.
Interestingly; ‘mythology’ is a Greek word but ‘Vocabulary’ is Latin.

Does this highlight the inquisitive nature of the Greeks versus the reductive nature of the Romans?  Does it highlight the natural dichotomy in all of us to on the one hand search for meaning in knowledge yet on the other reduce that knowledge when found to lists of practical use.

I’m alone.  I did not bring even the dog.  His recent surgery made my wife fearful of his safety in these harsh and sandy environs.  Alone is hard.  We all have social and family niches that are comfortable. There is a part of us that feels ripped away and hollow without them.

Is it that we are by nature social animals?  Or is it just our self-serving neurosis that makes us uncomfortable in the absence of humanity?  I don’t know.  But it is there.  Occasionally I’ll glance up and look for Buddy.  I expect to see him curled in the untroubled drowse of dogs somewhere near my feet.  Ready for the next campaign at my whim.  When I don’t see him there is a momentary sadness.  A loss.

I really hadn’t realized how much I had wired myself to be task driven until those tasks are taken away.  The drumbeat of the next thing to be checked off like a security blanket that keeps you from staring into the abyss.  We all have our distractions.  I get stuff done.  It’s what I do.

Now here in this quiet place the addiction wanes and there is a withdrawal.  There is an unanchored ache of loss.  Quiet is good, when you have someone to share it with.  I am not good company within my own head.  Is this why shaking addiction is so hard?  Because it leaves an enormous void in a person’s life?  A gaping hole where there used to be carnivals and unicorns and now sits only the dumpy, dowdy fruits of our own mind?

That’s the thing about vacation.  Or whatever it is I’m doing.  There is an acclimation period.  There is a fade-in or better yet a fade-out where the skin of the snake is painfully scratched off to reveal a new, different animal.

Now I’m going to take my old corpse and go out into the Cape Cod environs.  Not the clam shacks and crowded villages.  Instead I venture on my 20 year old steel friend of to a far flung stretch of sand that the pudgy New York men can’t or won’t get to.

And like Thoreau I’ll walk.  I’ll listen to the waves.  I’ll listen to the thoughts in my mind ping pong around like rabid weasels.  And I’ll do my best to rejoice in the revelations.