A Brief Vacation

Posted on February 5, 2007 in Travels - So Cal

My ideal of a vacation features a storm and an ocean. The rain pits the ruffled surface until it resembles slaty sandstone. In such hours, I stand out in the squall, growing wet to the skin. Oh, how great a warm shower feels when I go back inside.

These were the kinds of trips I took when younger, when I could follow the fronts up and down the Pacific Coast. Mad trips, I suppose, that I relied upon to wash the dust from my car and windshield. I could set up a tent and sleep on the ground.

Vacations such as these I no longer take. I’ve become fond of thick and wide hotel beds. This past weekend, we went down to the Lawrence Welk Resort on part of a timeshare that my mother owns. Leah joined us. There was no rain and no ocean, just sun and hills that looked like they were accursed with the pox. I went everywhere with Lynn and Leah: those days when I took off into the woods on my own, strolled beneath dripping redwoods, had ended. I had given up the manic impulses of youth. For what? An equally manic drive for safety?

I did not count the usual rituals of my disease. Some had counted me in “severe episode” lately, an opinion which was not shared by anyone else.* I just felt like I had to go along with visiting the same places that I always visited every winter. That was a habit, not a symptom.

At the San Diego Wild Animal Park, I did all the same things: took the tram, watched the Bird Show, and descended into the Heart of Africa sector. Going back up those hills, I realized that I knew every way, every short cut even as construction commanded a redrawing of the map.

I brought no camera and no notebook to record the sights. I did not float in a reverie spawned by the landscape: my feet remained dully on the ground. I need new sights.

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*Which could indicate that the person attacking me is projecting their own inner antagonisms on me.