PHOTOBOMB: Vacation’s All I Ever Wanted

“And the follow-up question: Vacation, how did you get away?”

Looking up the song, I don’t think that those are the actual lyrics, but it’s what I’ve always heard in the song, so it’s close enough. Anyway, I’m currently on vacation, or what approximates vacation in this kind of whirlwind part of my life right now, and things have gotten complicated for a number of reasons. Some are expected, and some are very much not expected. The unexpected ones are, well, I can’t really say the full details because it isn’t my place.

But I do not want to make light of it, nor do I want to leave it out, because friends of mine have lost someone very close to them recently. It is someone that I did, indeed, know, someone I even lived with for a time, and though I did not stay in touch with them nor felt particularly close to them while I had our time together (not for a lack of a desire to feel close to them or because I did not like them; it was, by all accounts, a strange time in my life back then, too, and my emotional bandwidth was limited), things have been weird regardless. They were a person that, despite the distance of time and acquaintanceship, I still remember quite fondly as someone who was able to make the whole room laugh without even seeming to try, who had a whip-crack of a personality and an illuminating lens of a mind. These last few days have been trying in more ways than one. It is a strange time right now. I am feeling quite strange. Many people are feeling quite strange, though I do not presume to speak for any of them.

I don’t plan to memorialize the departed on this blog beyond these words here, because I do not feel I knew them well enough to do so, but I knew them enough to know that their passing is a tremendous loss. They were a bright bundle of sardonic humor and unexpected joy for many people that knew them, myself included, and something of a gentle, guiding figure to a few, despite being relatively young themselves. I wish I knew what more to say. What is the shape of loss? So it seems to me, they were as a comet shining into the darkness. They have left behind a shimmering trail full of as many questions as answers, as many moments of quiet fortitude as moments of raucous jollity, but their light yet remains in the hearts of those that knew them. The world is worse off without them, and they will be deeply missed. Farewell, and may they allow banana shirts in the great beyond.

And while I have, for better or for worse, scraped by just outside the primary depth of the emotional turmoil and grief that has followed in the wake of this tragedy, there has been much else going on in the rest of my life, from a trip to the east coast spanning four modes of transportation to spending time with my bed-ridden grandmother facing down her own dancing mental demons to prepping for not just a job interview but also, more importantly, a wedding. So, please, take this collection of photos and odd comments off my recent trip not as something of a grand gesture, but as an incomplete stopgap measure meant to satisfy my own illness-afflicted, compulsion-addled, self-imposed need to produce all-important content. And besides, I write this now at one in the morning running off of a Portillo’s large vanilla malt and uploading from my ancient chromebook, which itself has the combined technical horsepower of a lemon battery science fair project.

As the saying goes, you’ve met me at a very strange time in my life.

To make a long story very short, Cheyenne and I went to New York city for a few days this last week so we could take in some of the sights before traveling to Cape May, New Jersey for her brother’s graduation from the United States Coast Guard boot camp. And, subsequently, before he leaves for California. For those of you only half-familiar with Cheyenne and her family, I am referring to her older brother, not the nine-year-old. Thankfully, her Fortnite-playing younger brother has yet to take up arms against the ocean.

We wandered the city and did all the touristy things that people typically do in New York. We went shopping, we saw Times Square, went up the Rockefeller building, got caught in the rain in Central Park, ate deli sandwiches, got assaulted by pigeons and subway rats carrying knives made out of old breadsticks, took a tour to get a better view of the Statue of Liberty, and of course, ate at the famous Joe’s Pizza. The pizza of which Spider-Man once stole from that guy.

After New York, we traveled to Philadelphia for all of ten minutes before traveling to the coast to celebrate her brother’s graduation and successfully making it through something that is designed to be as physically and emotionally grueling as possible. I would have flunked out and or removed myself the moment they told me to stare at a wall for thirty minutes and scream. But then again I do that of my own volition from time to time, so what kind of judge am I?

But traveling to the coast afforded us some fun time with Cheyenne’s family, and I got to see dolphins, sea birds, and a used plunger. Which also, coincidentally, sums up how I feel about Atlantic City. No offense to Cheyenne’s dad, who genuinely wanted to go there for reasons that were unclear to me/all of us, and all offense to me, who also genuinely wanted to go there for reasons that were unclear to me/all of us, but Atlantic City is perhaps the worst city in America. It’s a shittier, dirtier, wetter version of Las Vegas. I got exactly what I wanted out of it, which was to see a) some Monopoly stops, b) a casino that ate my money, and c) everything Bruce Springsteen was born to run from, and I still wouldn’t classify my time there as “fulfilling” or “enjoyable” or “worth returning to.” Atlantic City is a blight. I am glad that it is as far east of me as is physically possible.

(Just kidding; this is a bit of comedic exaggeration. In truth, Cheyenne’s dad was there to gamble, and, like the rest of the entire trip, I did enjoy my time in Atlantic City, as much as it pains me to admit it because the city already has such a bloated ego. Though the enjoyment was had because of the people I was with, not the city. And while I did go to the city to spend more time with Cheyenne’s dad, it is still unclear why the city still draws me so)

And that’s kind of been my trip so far. If you’ve made it this far into the post, I’m sorry, and I thank you. I’ve spent time with friends, too, who are also, incidentally, going through their own, separate rollercoaster motions in their lives right now, which kind of makes you think, huh, isn’t it crazy that everyone around me has a life that is just as structurally complex and emotionally variable as my own? It seems like one of those obvious things, but I have to sit my ass down and remind myself once in a while that it’s easy to get caught up in writing these blogs and all but there’s way more shit going on out there than I can ever dream to conceive of. It makes me wonder, what is this? Is it right for me to be traveling at a time like this? Or at the very least writing about it? Why am I pinballing between ideas like a slapshot hockey duo bouncing a puck back and forth? Why can’t I slow down, but what the hell gives me the right? Why do I feel like I’m coming apart at the seams when, at the exact same time, things on my plate aren’t really that much? What the hell am I doing here, and what do I do next? And the answer seems, every time, to just be silence.

I don’t really know what or who this post is for, or even if it is appropriate at a time like this. A blog is, by nature, self-centered, as much as I try to avoid making things about me, but I don’t even know what emotions I’m feeling except for some kind of guilt and grief and a weird need to keep pushing forward at any costs. But I would not call the text here an exercise in expressing grief, but there are many things to grieve at this time, both myself personally and many, many others. It is an exercise in expressing something, either way. All things are.

But I hope you have gotten something out of it nonetheless, whoever you are and however it is you managed to reach this particular sliver of the world. These strangers we meet, spinning together on this odd rock. Is it not weird how chance encounters, or slightly different decisions, can radically alter outcomes for years down the line? Just a few words here or there may have completely changed my life. And categorizing that? Understanding that? Appreciating or regretting that? Predicting what may or may not have happened? What do we make of it all, when we attempt something like that? It’s impossible to say, except that we are where we are now, in exactly this moment, and caught up in those decisions and chance meetings marching inexorably onward into an unknown, far-sighted future.

This is it. This is where we are now. Can you feel how far we’ve come, and how far there is still to go? But try as we might, we cannot see it all. I just wish there were more of us here to see it.