Submitted by Anonymous on
This fall-ish weather has been great – is Columbus like this all the time?! It’s also somewhat of a reminder that summer is vanishing and the school year is pretty near. Many of you have had the chance to take vacations out of town, are currently on vacation, or are planning one soon. Wendell Berry is a favorite writer of mine (as you’ll be reminded on many occasions, I’m sure) and I came across this poem this week. Vacation well, and may your pictures take you deeper into the experience rather than distance you from it.
The Vacation
By Wendell Berry
Once there was a man who filmed his vacation.
He went flying down the river in his boat
with his video camera to his eye, making
a moving picture of the moving river
upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly
toward the end of his vacation. He showed
his vacation to his camera, which pictured it,
preserving it forever: the river, the trees,
the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat
behind which he stood with his camera
preserving his vacation even as he was having it
so that after he had had it he would still
have it. It would be there. With a flick
of a switch, there it would be. But he
would not be in it. He would never be in it.
(from New Collected Poems, 2012)
