I once again did not have a summer vacation but I had a summer vacation.
most evenings at this beach, at this one spot, swimming and reading.
sometimes with friends or on dates, but often alone on my way home from work,
doing a detour down north west marine even though my legs and back felt tired
knowing I would have to cycle back up
(although google says it’s only 100m of elevation).
my legs and back tired from cycling and working,
tired from sitting at a desk, and lifting too-heavy e bikes and
not asking for help because I think I can and I know I can
(but also I can’t).
taking any vacation?
I understand and have been told that vacations are for extravagant plans and plane rides.
but I think vacations are mostly for buying extra plants, being driven to the garden center by my neighbor,
the windows rolled down, picking up 95 cent ferns and pansies that have been left to dry out
(no one left to buy them, everyone is on vacation).
travelling anywhere?
yes, I travel constantly across this city, taking different routes each day,
getting lost on those rare still-unpaved back-lanes.
last week I travelled across the street to borrow a sewing machine,
sewing cloth plant holders for the garden on my porch,
a porch I travel to daily, where I read in the morning before work and read again late into the evening
after traveling home from the beach,
mosquito bites collecting on my eyebrows
as I travel in the worlds of other peoples’ words.
I could travel far,
I could explore new places,
but I live in a beautiful place
and we can go to this beach for free
(or not really for free, but for the cost of a beer from a six pack to replenish our sweat, beers that someone gave me for fixing their bike, bartering coming back in fashion as we arrive, clumsily, into late capitalism where nothing has meaning and everything has consequences).
any summer plans?
no, not really, because I don’t know yet how to explain what I
–and they’ve already started talking about all the countries they’ve attended to,
the ones they’re earmarking for next summer, next time, and in my mind I travel with them,
listening to their stories with my feet buried in the sand
and I remember that I might like to go, one day,
to Georgia (the country) and Indonesia with my new friends.
You are looking for someone to travel with you and explore the world,
yet I want to explore the emotions attached to the salty smell of the sea
mixed with the soft plumes of someone else’s weed,
but when I offer that up you look confused:
emotions don’t make a summer vacation.
and yet here I am breathing in this sweet salty smoke.
where do I go if I lift up the lid of that memory and peer into it?
I remember sticky fingers from chocolate malts and putting on swimsuits still wet from the day before. I remember my mom’s smile as she comes out of the cold water and my sister holding the towel so I can change beneath it, a little impromptu tent made in one part out of imbued love and another part out of imposed shame.
Oh, I have those things though, summer plans, Long Weekend Plans, vacation plans.
they are understanding how best to wrap myself up in the discomforts of the lotteries of life
(even if I can’t explain what I really mean by it)
while sitting on a beach watching the sun set behind the mountains.
this is the everyday summer vacation.
it is cultivated slowly,
an accumulation of soft hours.
like the gathering of sand slipping off my feet each evening,
sand collecting in the folds of the blankets that live on the porch,
sand that somehow travels to the bathroom,
rinses it’s face and finds its resting place
at the foot of the bed.
July 2022 / ZOZOSK
ZOZOSK 