My girlfriend and I were going on vacation for two weeks on Friday. We had rented a cabin for a few days, and we were arriving on Sunday. Saturday was devoted to preparations. We would throw around suggestions for things to watch while stuffing our travel bags. Season three of The Bear ! And The Veil ! And Beautiful flower ! And In Memoriam ! And the documentary about nutrition! And the one with the depressed man and the otter! (Yes, in the countryside, in the evening, we prefer to watch series than campfires. We are the same. Judge us.) We filled the remaining space in the bags with books, two horror bricks on my side, and then some of my purchases from August 12, 2021 that I have not read yet, and then an essay, and the biography of Kathleen Hanna from Bikini Kill and then… the bag would not close anymore.
We arrived at the chalet still filled with the furious energy of work, determined to “perform” our vacation. It goes by quickly, we have little time and a lot of things to do, we have to be efficient and check things off our list!
The first day, phone in hand, we did some research to try to identify the birds around us by their song, the plants — who knows if we weren’t going to discover a new kind of mushroom or a sea monster in the small lake. Still caught up in our work rhythm, we confused vacation with performance. A little more and we would have given ourselves the challenge of learning a new language before the end of the week.
Might as well spoil the story right away: we didn’t do much, in the end.
We slowly started to drop some items from the list. Hiking: no thanks. Billy the pug wouldn’t be able to keep up anyway. Cooking delicious meals made with local produce? Our willpower was slowly leaving us. And then, people drive so fast in the country, right? After nearly dying in our car during our trip to the grocery store, where we had to turn into the parking lot at 100 km/h to avoid getting hit, we agreed that this would be our first and last visit: we would make do with what we had on hand. To hell with finding a delicatessen, a country bakery, the local cheese shop and the vegetable stands. And we weren’t going to risk our lives for corn, currants and a bag of squick squick cheese, thanks. More and more lazy, less and less ambitious, we fell back on jarred tomato sauce, and not even Stefano, nor Classico, we unknowingly bought… Peter MacLeod?! Has he become a chef? Life moves fast, we missed that part.
Our pile of books to read has shrunk less than expected.
We mostly spent time on the edge of the dock, sipping coffee in the morning or drinking white wine as an aperitif. Looking at the lake, hoping to see the great blue heron we had been promised, or the loons we could hear in the distance. We mostly saw people in kayaks, passing very close to us at a fascinating slowness, while we wondered if there was a code of ethics: should we greet them? Passing a walker and greeting him, I understand, he is very quickly behind us, but greeting someone who stays in our field of vision for far too long while paddling in a zigzag pattern made me more uncomfortable than anything else.
We were fascinated by the Sea-Doos, especially by the guy who started going around the tiny lake at 10am in order to… in order to what? Wake everyone up? Mission accomplished! If we were able to avoid ruining our vacation by sleeping in, it’s largely thanks to him.
He was nicknamed the chief; he was certainly the leader of the petro-masculinists in the area. A profound reflection on our times was about to emerge in our minds as we watched him turn in circles on the lake, standing on an obvious phallic symbol. But we were starting to lose interest, so it didn’t arise.
For the rest of our vacation, back at the duplex, it was the usual three stages of new homeownership: 1. Contemplating all there is to do. 2. Telling yourself that you have to do it. 3. Not doing it.
It took us a while, but with a little help from Aperol spritzes, we finally managed to let go of this concern for performance and efficiency.
The thing is, it was already Sunday and we were starting work again the next day.
Who is Stéphane Dompierre?
- Stéphane Dompierre is a writer, editor and columnist.
- He has written more than half a dozen novels, including Novicein 2022, as well as the collections of chronicles Angry black And Stepping on a Lego.
- He is director of the La Shop collection at Québec Amérique.
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