Out of Office: Vacation as Imagination
For the next 11 days I’m taking my version of a vacation. A neighbor, for whom I’ve happily house-sat a number of times, went on her own vacation, to a destination much farther afield than the single driveway I’ve crossed to arrive at mine.
In two trips, I carried the essentials I’ll need. My neighbor left a note to say they’d forgotten to eat a prepared salad before they departed, so there was a start of dinner waiting for me when I arrived.
I’ve never been great at vacation.
Since my first book was published in 2006, while I was working in a restaurant, I’ve generally used time off to do something literary: to give readings or to be a poet-in-residence somewhere, ideally coinciding with a trip to see loved ones. Time off has always turned into time for writing and reading.
When the pandemic began, we asked during icebreakers what we wanted to do when this was over, I regularly conjured driving to the Midwest; specifically, to Iowa City, where I was supposed to teach again the first summer. I wanted to drive by the salt flats. To sit with friends and fireflies on porches. To visit my favorite thrift store and load up on odd ceramics. To drive north and see chosen family in Minneapolis.
As I shared this vision with a friend—lamenting my lack of adventure—he reflected that I tend to explore differently from most people, and often by going nowhere geographically, but someplace new in conversation.
He noted that a person who jumps out of planes (no thanks) may not want to lead or participate in the kinds of conversations I seek—which can be as challenging, intense, and exhilarating as physical adventures. I felt surprised by, and then grateful for, the precision with which he understood me.
Waking up today in my neighbor’s bedroom, psychically very far from my apartment (despite the fact that my own Wi-Fi can be accessed from here) I was struck by what little I need to feel away.
The change in scenery, however familiar, creates “a form” for how I’ll spend this string of days, with the piles of writing I brought with me to lay out on tables bigger than any I can fit in my apartment. Last night I watched the Olympics on a real television. Today I’ll go on the same walks I take every day in the neighborhood; next Wednesday I’ll pick up my CSA across the street. I intend to read more books and close browser tabs that have been open for months. I’m going to lounge on a couch and call a friend, confident that no one in my building can hear me. I’m not going to feel like I have to be anywhere in particular at any given moment.
If I’m honest, my best vacations rhyme with the imagination, especially now, after spending the last 17 months in a 400 square foot apartment. All of which makes me wonder: what does vacation mean to you, in the old days, and now, and in the future?