vacation

 

The first definition of vacation in Samuel Johnson’s dictionary is: Intermission of judicial proceedings. The second definition is: leisure: freedom from trouble or perplexity.

Both are capillary links to our origins in paradise, where there is neither judging nor perplexity.

Paradise closed, as we all know, a long time ago – learned bishops in the 17^th century reckoned that the event happened 6000 years ago. We, who are more scientifically minded, have put the freedom from trouble or perplexity a bit earlier than that – it occurred before occurrence could rightly occur, around 12 billion years ago. This is a different paradise than the one in Genesis. Here we must go to Calvino’s old Qfwfq, who tells the story in Cosmicomics:

“What use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines? I say “packed like sardines”, using a literary image. In reality there wasn’t even space to pack us into. Every point of each of us coincided with every point of each of the others in a single point, which was where we all were. In fact, we didn’t even bother one another, except for personality differences, for when space doesn’t exist, having somebody unpleasant like Mr. Pber^t Pber^d  underfoot all the time is the most irritating thing.”

This is a pretty exact description of the train from Montpellier to Agde that we took on Saturday.

Yes, we have moved about – probably more than old Qfwfq would countenance, himself, who just wants to shuffle around and sit for a billion lightyears in his rocking chair, musing – we have, I say, moved about this vacation considerably. America first – ah, awful phrase!- in July and the first week of August, then a little staycation in Paris, and finally here, in this little resort and port on the Meditteranean, Agde. Famed in nudist circles internationally for the Centre Naturiste of Cap D’agde, but this is a long busride away from the little villa we are stayin’ in. According to our taxi driver, we are in an “eccentric” part of the Agde region. Far hence are those civilizing thing, the Super-U grocery store and Lidel. Instead, we shop at the little pokey places in the Grau d’Agde, swim in the non-naturist, popular beach area, and endure the heat with numerous, strategically placed ventilateurs.

When our OUIGO train unstuck itself from Paris and whizzed us through the French countryside, we were visited by a pang – the Paris we were leaving had just experienced a considerable drop in temperature. As all American newspaper readers know, it is hot in Europe, with fires breaking out all over the place. The NYT had a frightening story about the Paris city climate committee, all in a sweat to prepare us for 150 degree days in a few decades. Welcome to the post-baby boomer civilization, which is kissing cousin to Hobbes’s state of nature, except we will be too beaten down by the heat to be red in tooth and claw – we will be sunburned and heatstroked.

Paradise, it turns out, was the Holocene. Remember that?

Still, I don’t want to be all down and bitter like Mr. Pber^t Pber^d   - I am, after all, unworthily vacay-ing near the Meditteranean, and I would have to be one lyrically empty point not to see the poetry in that!

Vacation is one of the great inventions of the social democratic era, and the plutocrats, at least in Europe, haven’t yet snatched it back. In the U.S., vacation used to be a great thing, something to look forward to. This was before the Credit system swallowed the culture. Now vacation is having the weekend free. Except of course for the yachting class, whch pretty much vacations 365 days round. I exaggerate! Still, I wonder if the children of the summer of 2025 will look back on it as an intermission, a freeing from perplexity and trouble, a period laced with lemonade and fireflies, which it seems to have been, astonishingly, in my boyhood. Astonishing when I think of how my parents could have afforded it.

And now we are bogdeep in August and I see, with some fright, that the end of vacation is almost upon us. How can the season have gone so quickly?