UNPLUGGED AND CONNECTED
May 31 2012
I did have to use the calendar just now…not to fill in an empty square but to find out the date. That’s sweet. I barely know what day it is never mind the date. We’re finally on vacation.
Vacation. That’s an interesting word, isn’t it? We have vacated the space, both physically and emotionally, that we had inhabited these last few months. And I must say we are greatly abetted in this regard due to the lack of Internet access. What at first seemed like a malevolent inconvenience is, we now realize, true liberation.
I should make the disclaimer that we are able to access the Internet via our smartphones but are not prepared to pay AT&T its outrageous roaming charges and so, except for a quick once-a-day check-in, we are nicely untethered from the faux reality that for the most part, most of us, have come to believe is impossible to live without.
The constant sucking at the teat of cyberspace is ludicrous. How many times do we now text a person whom we have arranged to meet? You know how it goes:
‘just leaving,’ ‘entering the subway,’ ‘3 blocks away,’ ‘nearly there,’ ‘I’m here.’ Jesus. Come on, be honest, which of you has not yet experienced phoning someone to ask them where they are only to look up and see them 10 yards away…telling you…by phone!
So, yes we were pissed when the Internet went out a day after arriving here. Joel, who is one of the calmest people on the planet, spent hours doing his version of a rat on cocaine withdrawal: shut down the computers, restart them; move them here, there, lean out the window with them; flip off all the Airport switches, flip them back on; take the airport out of the socket, put it back in; sit for a while, then start the whole process all over again.
Funny thing though, 4 days have passed and the world hasn’t ended. Not only has it not ended, it’s larger, emptier, more peaceful. We move from surface to surface; bed to breakfast table to armchair to a bench at the top of the village where we gaze out to the valley and the Luberon Crest, while savoring a ficelle stuffed with prosciutto and Brebis cheese, sliced tomatoes, butter and mustard. The breeze at our backs whooshes through the cedar trees. Birds, whose variety I do not know, sing happy songs. And then it’s time for a little nap by the open window, the white muslin curtain catching the afternoon breeze like a sail.
Now we are lying by the pool down at Les Trois Source, our minds open to the blue, vast sky, smudged here and there with white cloud. I think of summer holidays from childhood, my father and brother on the motorcycle, mother and I in the sidecar; four people together yet separate, traveling silently through the landscapes of Devon or Cornwall or Somerset, the coming to rest in villages or seaside coves. The uncluttered, uncomplicated time to just be; no cell phone, no iPad, no computer. Just time adrift from the must do’s, should do’s, better do’s…or else…or else what?
The sun is beginning its descent toward evening. Soon we’ll mosey home, warm up last night’s saffron fish and vegetable soup and bring it back here to Les Trois Source to dine outside with Paul and Caro, to share some stories in English and French until, full of this day, we will surrender to the night.