Bill Powell Is Alive
{ Man Found Alive With Two Legs }

A personal blog about Linux and literature, distributism and Catholicism, adventures in permaculture, and being alive.

For the Love of Siesta

by Bill Powell | updated: 2004 Jun 08 Tue | published: 2004 Jun 08, 00:00 Tue
tags: quest

I should be working right now.

It’s 4:30 pm. The hottest part of the day is past. We all ought to be working. But we’re getting a drink, relaxing in the shade, or, at the nadir of idleness, writing blogs. We deserve this rest. We just worked hard for hours. Now we’re beat.

Er, I’m beat. The others show every sign of hurling their sun-soaked selves back into the fields with renewed vigor (if no blog). My re-entry will be more of a gentle toss.

If I had only observed a venerable European tradition, I would not be beat. This blog would already be written. I would be well-napped. I would at this moment be dancing across the fields in my bare feet, without a thought for the pebble/burning coal tendencies of the dry dirt.

Siesta. What a wonderful word.

We had our reasons for pushing it. It rained all last week, thus these plants are a bit late, thus we would kick ourselves all the harder were we to squander this opportunity and then, at five, watch rain slop the ground into mud. I didn’t know this before I came, but you can’t do much to your crops when it’s muddy. Around here, Rain is the great Call To A Break…or to Cut Seed Potatoes.

Anyhow, we beat the potential rain. Now we have a nice, full row of plants, and a collective headache.

So I see the sense of siesta. Once you scamper outside our little air-conditioned buildings, Real Weather supports the old ways. I can beg off work some steamy summer afternoon, while my former colleagues in graphic design can only grit their teeth in their arctic offices and put on extra sweaters.

But maybe your boss would be up for the midday nap. Curious? Bring a cot to the cubicle. See what happens. Who needs health insurance, retirement plans, or corporate gym membership discounts? The Restypoo Revolution begins now.


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