Lush Life

The other night (more accurately, morning) a strange addiction took hold of me, something called reading, but not just any ol' bedstand reading, because the cliche "a real page-turner" took hold of me, became incarnate, as I kept helplessly fighting the common-sense and body-demanding notion of cease and desist, turn off the light and sink deeper into the pillow, into the wee hours, sometime around 5 a.m., the birds not yet on speaking terms, and me afraid to know how bright it might really be on the other side of the bedroom shades, even figuring that I'm going to feel dreadfully bad if I go to sleep now and wake up at 6:20 when my daughter jauntily answers her alarm (I didn't; felt okay but jet-lagged).

What book would keep you riveted like that, you ask?

Lush Life by Richard Price (a requested birthday or Christmas book I am just getting round to; each book in its rightful time).

Yes, a real tribute to an author, that he or she could have such sway and magnetic force.

Either that or the coffee I drank before the Vestry meeting had mega-doses of Caffeine Plus.

Or just something weird going on in me and my brain (I love reading the latest stuff on neurology, realizing we are pretty darn hard-wired in compelling but just-beginning-to-understand ways).

Tip of my San Francisco Giants' baseball cap to Richard Price and Lush Life anyway.

My Summer Vacation

My summer vacation was short because I had taken a winter vacation and a spring vacation. My summer vacation consisted of parts of four days amidst pine needles, by a lake, in a cottage, called a "camp" in these parts. The morning alarum was the whimpering of Maggie, a yellow labrador-German shepherd puppy asking to be let out. At 6:40 a.m., or later on two mornings, a walk along Long Point of Brantingham Lake, foggy mist curling up off the lake, the sun trying to burn through. Chickadees. Lots of blue jays. Then back down the opposite end of Long Point, up and down macadamed inclines. One day her gnawed-at leash broke. She stayed close, unlike the late but beloved Rosie, who would've been gone, chasing the wind. All this in my pajama bottoms, sandals, t-shirt, baseball cap. No bears. Return to the cabin: toast and tea. A nap. Still in pajamas. (Have I already told you the ol' Groucho Marx line? "I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How it got there, I'll never know.") Play Yahtzee. Trade obscenities. Young'uns howl. Eat. Sleep. Play Scrabble. "Assise." "Cruster." Walk. Eat. Sleep. Dangle feet in lake. Sleep. Finish Samaritan by Richard Price. No cellphone coverage. Buy fly paper ribbon strips; mostly feckless. Nap. Read. Return home. Two messages from work on cellphone when in range. Dread. Horrid dread. Work Wednesday. Somehow get through it all. Back up to camp Friday for a cameo return.

The aim of leisure is not to make us better drones.