I haven’t had a ‘vacation’ or respite from work of more than three consecutive days in the last 11 years.  And I haven’t had a single day off, it would appear, since mid-summer.   Yet today brings newness as I actually slept-in to the unimaginable hour of 10:30 AM, dreaming of girls arrayed in lusciously revealing positions and  dream-envisioning myself, at times an adjunct professor, a student again and cheating on a test (which I never did—ever during my actual tenure as a student for so many, too many years). 

And now for the next 10 days, starting tomorrow, I’ll be away from home, and possibly Xanga, too (wait...isn’t that redundant?!)  as I loll and cavort and run like a banshee in the land of my rebirth: 9 degree north latitude, Panama.

Oh, I won’t be staying in a hotel.  There won’t be air conditioning, probably not even hot water.  There certainly will be little privacy and my valuables won’t be truly secure so I’ll have to hold onto them wherever I go.  But I will be amidst the common people in the interior countryside, a guest, and there will be many parties flowing from ever open doors into the streets, moments of all-night street dancing, and the opportunity to socialize in breeze-cooled straw hut cantinas during the mid-day heat.   I will seek out a visit to a certain pristine Pacific beach where you feel you own it-and-eternity for being the sole proprietor making footprints in the sand.  And I will run unimproved jeep trails (actually more like donkey trails) for good distances out into a plush places of forgetfulness—and back, if I don’t forget!

And I will write on my laptop.  And I will have my digital camera with me to seize the sites.  But I may not post until I return, unless I run into a generous soul down there who’s joined the cyber age and is willing to provide me with his/her access to that nation’s fledgling internet backbone.  Oh, the dread of that.  But, ah, the sweet, unencumbered, undriven ‘workless’ release otherwise!

Happy holidays and Merry Christmas all!  And either pray or don’t pray that I find a way to bum off a coved beach nine degrees north of the equator for the rest of my life.