Vacation

A woman rolls her suitcase over the poorly paved sidewalk. The caverns and cracks in the sloping cement truly make one wonder what urban monstrosity is trying to burst through and surface. I like to think the tree roots are plotting their revenge on Los Angelenos. They’re the ones we should be sending our rent checks to.

The woman wears flip flops, so maybe she’s headed somewhere tropical. She packs light, so maybe it will be a quick trip. She’s getting into an Uber, so she obviously isn’t that paranoid of catching the virus. Her suitcase wheel gets stuck, launching her cell phone that was pinched between her cheek and collarbone. The phone skids across the sidewalk. The woman mumbles an impressively long string of curse words that even her face mask can’t muffle. 

She gets in and the Prius takes her away. 

Can you, dear reader, imagine a vacation? Will I ever travel again? And if I do, will it ever be for the sheer purpose of relaxing? 

I presume she is on her way to Tahiti or something to enjoy an all inclusive resort. 

For me, alcohol was always the perfect catalyst for resort oblivion, or any oblivion. As long as it’s cold and has a squeeze of lime in it, I’d drink it. It made time go dizzily slow until I’d wake up from my high and return to my unquiet mind.

It’s curious…Like a vacation, the pandemic has forced us all to gain a different perspective. We’ve lost our sense of time and meaning. We’ve been apart from our families and friends. It has been a time of stillness and reflection. We weren’t pondering life from a palapa on the beach at sunset. It may have just been from our couch. It may have been from a 6’x3’ balcony, or it may have been from a hospital bed.

Vacations are to escape, the pandemic is to be captured. 

A woman pushes an old fashioned stroller on my street. She walks aimlessly, her baby cooing in its covered seat. She breathlessly hums like there isn’t much left, an over-inflated balloon. I imagine she’s too fatigued from pushing the stroller in the heat. Or maybe she’s tired because she’s a mother, and being a mother is taking away pieces of her.