Vacations might not have been invented so we would have time to worry our way out of things. They might be legitimate times-out that we take when we can no longer take what we’ve been taking.
I kept a journal of last week’s vacation, and it has only one entry: “Friday, August 6, in the shower with a head full of suds, swatted something off my right hip. Opened eyes through soapsuds. It was a scorpion. Got out, got a shoe, six swift whacks and it stopped trying to change my day. Finished shower.”
There were other matters that popped in and out of my squeaky-clean head during the nine days when I only started my car twice, once to go to the office and water plants, and once to visit a friend out in the woods who’s been there for 42 years. He loaded me up with beans, rice, pasta and protein bars, and vacuum packed all of it. He’s been doing that for 42 years, convinced that The End is imminent.
I asked him if he knows how long it would take to cook a pot of beans by sunlight. Winter sunlight.
A while, he said. “You can do it.”
He and I have the most wonderful conversations yet agree on virtually nothing. He thinks women need to be taken care of. Translation: Women need to be told what to do.
I think women simply expect to be needed. Translation: Take care of yourself and make it fun.
He thinks people need to couple up. Translation: I’ll go mushroom hunting, reload 12-gauge shells, recharge solar flashlights and have an Eskimo Pie. What’s for dinner?
I think when willingness meets chance, it’s good to get together.
He thinks people are duped and stupid. Translation: He could run the world better than anyone.
I think people are brave but easily deceived. Translation: What if we all stopped being victims and started believing that we are learners, explorers and caretakers? What if.
He said that humans, males especially, are capable of organizing and expanding life. Translation: Men have dominion. They were made strong so they could protect or exterminate others.
I said that to aliens, we’re aliens. So obviously, aliens exist and dominion really has nowhere to land.
I told him about a man who stopped me on the street two weeks ago and asked if I lived here and were there any good restaurants? What I knew I shared, but he was asking someone on her way home to a beer and a donut for dinner. By choice.
The man said he and his wife drove up from Dallas and were amazed to find Eureka Springs on their way to Branson. “It’s half Europe and half San Francisco!” he sprayed. He said the only bad part of their trip was so many unfinished highways in Oklahoma. “If the Indians hadn’t fought back so hard, they’d have better roads!” he declared.
I really didn’t know if that was racist or just an incomplete sentence. Either way, it was historically misfiled.
My friend said, “He’s right! Men want to fight, should fight, we don’t want to not fight. Why do you fight this?” His logic made my eyeballs jiggle.
Did you know that even a staycation can go as retrograde as Mercury? Well, now we know.