Reflections on vacation

As I write this, it's October. But back in July -- when I have dated the post -- I sent the following letter to Marie as a follow-up to our vacation in New Zealand. I think it speaks for itself.
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Hey sweetness!

 

I didn’t know where this was going to go at first, but it ended up being a restatement of the idea I proposed last week that part of why we go on vacation is actually for the sheer trouble and inconvenience of it all. (And anyone who has ever been camping will have numerous examples to hand! Yet people still go camping ….)

 

It’s not great – in some [many!] ways I think it may be too precious by half – and I welcome suggestions for improvement. All I can say in its defense is that – dear heavens, but it seems like our conversation has gone on for too long a stretch without any poetry! Maybe I’m just failing to pay attention or maybe I’m counting wrong, but it felt high time to do something about it.

 

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There’s rhythm in the hum of day-to-day,

Of coffee, emails, work to do and done –

A kind of verse, a poem in its way,

That sings us on our road from sun to sun.

 

So breakfast rhymes with breakfast, task with task,

We go to work each day just like before.

The tune so charms us that we never ask

If out beyond this round hides something more.

 

There’s comfort in this song of somnolence.

To break it off is pain and irritation.

Disrupting habits leaves us fraught and tense.

And trouble is the hallmark of vacation.

 

But now and then this inconvenience

Is just the balm, the medicine we need,

When by good fortune it can jar us loose

To break the crust of our too-daily selves.

 

Put down the phone.

Wade through water, not through words.

 

Go feel the breeze.

And listen to the birds.