Summer Vacation
When the school bell rang on the last of the last hours of the last of the last days, it reverberated, “Freedom!” at last. The hours and the days welled up before me and dammed, for childhood’s time is slow; the hours and the days were waded through, pleasurably, and I never got wet.
Freedom! to read any book, to run barefoot through fields, to play Super Mario Brothers, to play with friends, to eat at any hour and to eat anything. “Yes,” I thought childishly to myself, “this is what being an adult must be all about. Freedom! in choices of thoughts and action.” School was something one made it to the end of and then after that of course, freedom! of choice and action. Too bad the populace dictates; too bad they had to go and take it all away.
Summer vacation only lasted for so long, as did the summer vacation of childhood’s nubile emotions. Then entered the march of consciousness, then stuttered in the morose world of adults. No more bells, easy starts, easy ends; no more summer vacations.
Summer vacations, I just had one, though the question must linger: how much is mine deserved? Well and good, I say, like an eraser for obstinate questioning which has risen like a fork jammed into my work. Why not? I say, though writing is a work I loathe to be parted from. Everyone should have a vacation.
What kind of summer vacation would you demand?
I think it is cruelty of totalitarian standards, this obscene treatment of adults in the grand ole’ USA. You see, Italians and Europeans in general are well-versed in vacation time. You wouldn’t be a true Italian if you didn’t take a vacation in August to go swimming and beach-bumming. The restaurants close, the clothes shops, sometimes even the grocery stores. This wouldn’t be Europe if they weren’t allowed to enjoy themselves, receiving three-times more vacation time than their American counterparts. Instead you sit before a glowing screen, bored out of your minds.
An anecdote: From the last two jobs, one long standing, my mother was fired on the account of taking too much time off, too many vacations. “Margaret,” I imagine them saying, “you shouldn’t be enjoying yourself. You should stay stuck here, as if with a hole drilled into your head, like the rest of us.”
Rise up Americans! en masse! Flood the chambers of the “higher-ups.” Reach into their lower desk drawers and ring the bells that they have been hiding. Brrring! Brrrrrring! Can’t you feel your heart jump? Can’t you feel your life-waters rising?
Note: While on summer vacation I received this comment on an oldie but goodie: Henry Miller and the Life Abundant. Thanks! and Thanks always to the Cosmodemonic Blog — devoted to that immortal god of challenging literature, Henry Miller — for the continuous link!
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·