vacation – The inner voice where gaps of expression are liberated.

[contact-form subject='[SMILEY%26#039;S DICE’][contact-field label="Name" type="name" required="1"/][contact-field label="Email" type="email" required="1"/][contact-field label="Website" type="url"/][contact-field label="Comment" type="textarea" required="1"/][/contact-form] I’m a creative nonfiction short story writer, and a columnist on arts and lifestyle. I have never said one word about politics; I am not a debater, academic, or political science major.

As a writer I read the newspapers; Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Santa Fe New Mexico papers, where I live. I watch all the news stations. I quit MSNBC, cause Chris Mathews made me hyperventilate. I think Charles Krauthammer is the most knowledgeable and sustainable journalist of our time.

Do to an act of nature, lightening, I lost Cable for a month. This was when Syria broke. No one talked about it here, and I felt the communities disillusionment. When my service was repaired, I turned on the news. I felt more insulted than the time a young boy told me my legs were hairy. Who did you think you are kidding? You want us to watch both sides fisting each other like a street gang! Please someone tell them, the Press, chill out a bit and stop turning the news into a talk show. You talk to us as we were mutes. The Government has evolved as false as who we see in the mirror. If you are plain you see beautiful, if you are beautiful you see plain. I see you government, and I am ashamed.

I haven’t read the papers since June. This Thursday I went to the bank to make a deposit to cover my negative, and I looked at the newspapers on the customer coffee table., My eyes shut after two headlines. How much more can we take? I really have lost track of priorities.

Should I get a job because my writing remains unrecognized. I need a retirement guidance counselor. I don’t like the title of financial advisor; they sound too rigid. Should I respond to the dreadful vacillation of American Policy. How much more debating can they do? It’s like when I worked in corporate real estate. The meetings I attended and had to present were progress reports on whether I was an effective employee. I don’t know how I lasted as long as I did; my act was good, and I impressed some of the boys, but communication was too formal to bring out honesty. Maybe that’s what has evaporated in our

government, or am I seeing it differently because I’ve aged into it slowly. I think it started when the cool shit act came about. Some artists have it, Musicians, yea they got it, gangsta’s got it, but they always had it. Those of us who feigned cool acts, became feigned. Rambling now. Got to sweep fall leaves and

start editing 350 columns.

I’m listing to Nessun Dorma, and oil treating my hair. I was thinking how much I detest all this multitasking. I can now handle five projects at once; write, sweep mop the floor, water plants, contemplate resolutions to my finances, all the while feeling my nerves tighten, and even though I stretch four times a day; this crushing operatic play in life is overstrung. I watch those Sandals vacation commercials and practically cry because how many of us haven’t had a vacation in years, or a chance to

play a round or golf or read More Magazine all the way through?

JEWISHCUBA.ORG

I’ve been staying in a hotel during a short interim while my house is rented. It is not the most profitable venture, but it does bring some extra cash into my pocket.

{Photo credit http://www.JewishCuba.org}

While I am in the hotel observing guests; their mannerism, conversations, and facial expressions, I have come to the conclusion we are not only on a fiscal cliff we are on a sinking shore of wet sand. I do not see these guests who’ve come for Spring break and skiing, lapping up the Southwest serenity. I see glum faces and sluggish bodies weighted down by heavy tote bags, and they seem to shuffle like the very old or weak, from the pathway to the lobby. I am not excluded; by the time I checked into the hotel, my body was withered from house work and preparation. All I wanted to do was sink into a bed and hang the Do Not Disturb notice on the door. Why has our vitality sunk into the sand? Are we suffering from too much information, too many alerts, too many scandals, too much uncertainty that the adventure in livingness has turned into misadventures.

In reading the WordPress posts, I’ve discovered the Travel blogs are the ones that revive my interest in the world I haven’t seen. These are the ones I read because they strike my flame for travel instead of of comfort and complacency. Cuba has been stirring in my imagination ever since I discovered Cuban Salsa, about twenty-five years ago! Thanks to you travel bloggers, I made the decision. This is the year for CUBA. Now that it’s written, I must follow my word.