Empty, Not Void
Ramblings from a vacationing frame of mind
I’m interested in the word “vacation,” the way it spins out from a related word with the same root, but very different connotations:
Vacate (v.): "to make void, to annul," from Latin vacare "be empty, be void," from *wak- "to leave, abandon, give out." Meaning "to leave, give up, quit" (a place).
I’m in Vermont at the home where my husband grew up, and though I’ve vacated my Virginia home, I am anything but vacant. I’m deep in this moment that is verdant with New England spring flowers and fearless birds at back deck feeders and a forest full of their song. Down the slope, a running river rushes over miniature falls. I spend the morning on the porch. I wake up.
Vacation (n.): "freedom from obligations, leisure, release" (from some activity or occupation), from Latin vacationem "leisure, freedom, exemption, a being free from duty," from vacare "be empty, free, or at leisure”1
My mind free, I read books, my thoughts unfurling in the way only allowed for by long stretches of unmapped time. I finish the enormous book I began five weeks ago, at the start of a poetry workshop. I read the last page thirty minutes before the final workshop, which I attend online from the guest bedroom I long to sleep in all the nights of the year when I’m back home and present to mundane daily tasks, vacant from this slow, rich pace and place.
I catch up on Substack posts. So many. All the writers putting good true bold tender surprising thoughts out there. In here, in my task-vacant, location-present mind, I hold gratitude. I read a poem a day, and each one sings as deeply and differently as the one before. In Gifts from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh says it takes a full week away for the mind to recalibrate, to be ready to think deeply, to see connections, to write.
After five days, meanings unfurl. The poems intersect, serendipitously, with the Substack readings. With the fairy tale book I’m gobbling down before bedtime. With the shows I intermittently watch. I can’t get over the way this happens. Plot and subtext, lyric and line, fact and fiction. Image and image and image again. It happens, of course, all the time, all the days of all the world’s life, but I mostly don’t see it when I’m not vacating, when I am home and busy and vacant to the burgeoning world.
I want to stay, to stay, to stay. But the river runs. The week moves toward its close. Birds sing in the trees. Books back home wait to be read between the laundry and the dishes. Music insists on listening at any time. The meanings are there, too, and will continue to be. I needn’t be afraid of going home.
The Books This Week:
Square Haunting: Five Lives in London Between the Wars by Francesca Wade
The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill
The Daily Poems:
You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, edited by Ada Limon
The Shows:
The Music on Repeat:
All the Indigo Girls albums on my iPhone, but let me point you to this song so we can be theme-y:
The Substack Posts That Have Captured Me This Week:
76 drafts - The Thread with
'Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself...'4 -
I don’t know why vacare carries a different nuance under “vacate” versus “vacation,”—sloppy web writing?—but the second sense is what I’m talking about.
Virginia Woolf is a theme this week/month.
The Indigo Girls are a theme this week/month/life.
Themey-theme theme
You describe the activity of a mind at rest so very well, Rebecca.
This is a gorgeous, restful essay to read. And I am so honored to be mentioned as one of the poets who has been part of your reflections.