Rites of relaxation

So, in general, I take vacations that are really nothing at all like vacations. I come home after running around the country, or the globe, spent and swamped with work that I dragged around behind me, unable to entirely let it go, but unable to engage with it in any real manner.

This may be true once again, but, not only did I not finish my work before leaving, I did some of it while on vacation, and still managed to relax. Just a little. A friend of mine recently made me remember what it was like to be a kid whose one object of affection (parental unit) was too busy or distracted to actually be with them. If I have done one thing, it has been to be in the present with my kiddo, and exploring the world together, well... I have forced myself to disconnect from my other stressors (mostly) and just play with her.

Today she hiked a good 6 mile, and only slipped into the water at the end, tired from the trek. West Fork was beautiful, and replete with vegetation unimaginable just 2 miles out, in the sand-blasted red rock desert, and I smiled to myself, in secret quiet, because in part I was just doing what I was told. It is the only way for me to relax, to be ordered to do so, as I am fully incapable of doing things for myself. I. exclaimed, "this is the best day of my life!" She has said this at least on three different occasions, "This is the best day because I get to see petrographs! and ruins! Hey mommy, do you remember the ruins in México, oh look, it is Frida Kahlo..." as we walk past a store front. She tastes, and likes, buffalo jerky. She bounces across streams. I promise her that from now until the summer we will go on at least one hike a weekend. It is true. It feels great to be outside, after a few minutes of such excitement (the same stream-of-consciousness chatter follows us into the wild) I hush her, but not unkindly. "Stop. Listen." We close our eyes and map the sounds, listen for birds, and ground squirrels. We walk along and discover incipient life, budding flowers, crumbling rock.

I try to close my eyes and push everything else away. I make promises to her that I intend to keep, camping trips to Yellowstone, someday, and to the Channel Islands, mid spring (We listened to the entire audiobook of Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins to get us in the spirit of eco-tourism. And I remember the wonder, like the bears K. and I saw entering Yellowstone all those years ago. And I laugh because there are some things that I will always still do, like the "Ilana in the bathroom" shots that I only recently realized I always take, almost everywhere I go ever since we took our famous floating in the air bathroom shots (ok, not famous to anyone but us, but hey). There is always me, in mirrors or water or both. I don't know why I feel such a compulsion to record these moments, like the San Diego, leg from the toilet, or the Portuguese green light glow, or the Los Angeles series with fabric trailing behind me in the Omni, after having the most impressive panic attack of my life just the night before, and I realize too that this is part of my relaxation... Quirky and neurotic as that may be, and of course for no one's eyes but my own (more likely than not), my obsession with self-reflection (both written and photographic) is much less about narcissism (or, to quote another dear boy "hey, I wouldn't fuck myself... it would have to be someone a heck of a lot cuter than me to convince me) and more about somehow ordering my universe. And I think of Ani's lyric from Puddle Dive: "what if no one's watching, what if when we're dead we are just dead." So I go back to trying (and failing, but trying nonetheless) to live, if only for a few days, as if no one were watching but my sweet beautiful child (who has puppy lust -and incidentally, baby lust, but this is a more difficult proposition -and may just convince me to get a dog someday to go hiking with us).