The Rural Retreat

So much optimism goes into preparing for the rural retreat. You pack old issues of the New Yorker -- you will finally read that Nicholas Lemann article on Afghanistan! You take writing materials because surely in all that quiet and natural beauty, you'll be super-creative. Of course you take the book you're currently reading, and you also take another paperback you've been meaning to read because you'll probably finish your current book, lying peacefully in your pastoral-retreat motel room.

But naturally, even rural motel rooms are equipped now with cable TV and so you never open a book or magazine -- and as for getting into the disciplined mindset needed to write, forget it! Who needs discipline? You're on vacation!

Me and my companion were able to see the Colbert Report for the first time! That excitement can't be matched. Not by any mountain view or waterfall. Stephen Colbert/rural splendor: you choose. I bet you'd choose as we did. (We don't have cable in the city, lest we sound like insensitive, nature-immune boobs.)

We also had perfect wireless reception so we took turns at the computer, compulsively checking our email and surfing the web the same way we do all day at work. This was weird but constant. There was scarcely a moment that one of us wasn't at the computer.

Oh, I don't mean that's all we did. We did partake of rural splendor and we did relax in happy comfort in our snappy little "contemporary lodging" motel room. But we didn't pick up our books till we got back to New York. I guess a bare-bones, tight-budget existence in NYC is in some ways more peaceful than a full-amenities motel room in a mountain idyll.