I always become a nihlist when I'm on vacation...

Not a dedicated, Uli Kunkel, floating in a pool surrounded by Jack Daniels bottles, "I beleeve in nuh-zing!" nihlist, mind you...just a "nothing means anything" nihlist. Which, as I think about this again, may not qualify as nihlism...or any ism for that matter...it may better qualify as good ol' fashioned depression.

I had a great weekend this weekend. I drove up with Stacy to Put-In-Bay, a tiny little island on the Ohio side of Lake Erie whose homes and city streets resemble Pleasantville and whose night-times resemble Mardi Gras. It's essentially a party paradise for four months out of the year, with all varieties of wealthy white boat-owners and their college-aged offspring gathering together to drink beer, flash people for beads, and spend a lot of time saying "WOOOO!" Fifty-something men with white hair tucked under straight-billed baseball caps roam the streets by day, buying cigars and t-shirts with funny sayings on them, and young people wake up at nooon and slowly take over the town by nightfall, when all is transformed into a pulsing, sexy, simmering party for those who can afford to get themselves blurry.

In short, it's a lot of fun.

However, I don't tend to enjoy it as much as I would expect. In the middle of everything I get introspective, distant, and navel-gazing. I wish I could say it was some kind of pious soul-thing...watching that sort of gluttony and debauchery from a distance with a holy discontent for the short-lived things of this world...but I'm usually four or five beers south of that ivory tower by then. No, I think it's more the realization that several hundred miles, several hundred dollars, several dozen cigarettes, and seven days of severance from my soberest sentience later, I'm left with a feeling of..."is this all there is?"

Right now I'm sitting in a bed in the Seelbach Hotel in downtown Louisville. I'm in a very large room with very dark oak, surrounded by four posters of bed and lying on a duvet with a thread count that exceeds the average Nicaraguan's yearly salary. The lighting is perfect, the dinner was magnificent, and the Kentucky bourbon that followed deserves a post of it's very own. I was lucky to be treated to these great amenities on this particular trip, and I'm glad to consume them and to smile while doing it. Yet, for all of the soft touches and scented soaps and leather seats and tasty glasses of wine...I still feel a bit hollow, and more than a bit useless.

I think that's the problem. I work at work, and I feel useful. I work at home sometimes, and when I do, I feel useful. I occasionally get to counsel my friends, console my parents, and fix things that break around the house...and I feel useful. But when I'm on vacation...all I do is consume. I just keep taking things in. The only thing I'm doing as I move from hotel to restaurant to rental car to playhouse to hotel is contribute to the GNP and global warming. I'd like to relax, to be sure, but I feel like there has to be more than just tickling my own underbelly, and that thought keeps me discontented. That discontent, if left to simmer long enough, eventually turns into a bland form of disgust, which eventually commits itself to pseudo-nihlism. That nihlishm takes the shape of, "If I am having all of the finest things in the world and all of them offer only momentary feelings of joy or growth...than nothing can mean anything."

Seems dramatic, doesn't it? I realize. But I can't get that feeling to go away. It comes as one of the many flavors of my neurosis, I guess...one little Buttered Popcorn in the multi-colored bag of Jelly Bellys we call the human condition. (Lord, that metaphor is a stretch, isn't it?) But it is what it is, and it's my blog, so there you have it.

I sleep now, and I dream of Stacy. I love to travel, and I look forward to going home.

Peace,
Justin