Leaving, part 2: Los Angeles

I walked into Lorrie’s suburban Pasadena house to find Lorrie and her partner and their two year old twin daughters in the kitchen. Lorrie had marinated a pile of chicken for dinner and was now rubbing several racks of pork ribs to sit overnight, grilling up a storm in my honor. I was flattered, exhausted, crampy and a little overwhelmed, but excitement at meeting her partner of like eight years and their two kids won out at least for a while. After hanging out for a while, I loaded my bags into the guest room, put my little decorations and toiletries on top of a dresser, and laid down for a while.

Lorrie and I had caught up on the phone a few weeks before, when I was in Vermont, so I already knew what was going on her life. She had put her art on hold and gotten an office job and was a super attentive and fun daddy/mom. It was so weird to see her like that. I don’t know why I sometimes think I’m the only one of all of us who grew up and got married and had a nice house and two cars and stuff, like she would forever stay frozen in time in our early twenties, dropping ecstasy and swinging on the swings in Dolores Park and laughing our asses off at 2am until the cops asked us to leave. Her personality was wholly the same, though, and she shared that so beautifully with her kids. It was fun to watch.

I could tell she felt overwhelmed by parenthood at times, as any parent does, but loved her family and was comfortable with her choices. Here she was, living this beautiful life, a family she loved, two beautiful homes, nice cars, and no personal time whatsoever. I think I’m just too selfish to have kids. When my mom used to ask when Tracy and I would have kids, I’d always say we’d looked into fostering for awhile and got a dog instead.

My mom would say that parenthood is the greatest love there is, and that part of the beauty of it is that is makes you (ideally) put someone before yourself. It makes you stop obsessing about yourself so much. That is the only aspect of parenthood that has ever sounded appealing to me. Really. Only when I fell in love with my last girlfriend did I understand what it must feel like to want to make a new person with someone else. I’d never felt that before, and it was profound, and it passed within a few weeks. I just like my time and quiet and money and cleanliness too much. Maybe in the next life.

We ate dinner and hung out a bit, I helped clean up and then went to lay down. The guest bed was so comfortable, and in this sweet little corner room of the house that felt like a cozy cubby hole, overlooking the beautifully landscaped back yard. I did more than lay down this night though. I slept. I slept a lot. I slept straight through the night with no wake ups and probably got at least eight hours of sleep. This trend has continued the entire time I’ve been in California, with the exception of the last two nights. Last month, PMS was like nothing, no crying, no sleep issues. This month, it’s back to normal. There is a direct connection between my anxiety levels and the amount of time I spend crying and the amount of sleep I get. When I sleep, I don’t feel as anxious or cry nearly as often.

Lorrie and I talked about old times. I remembered this stuffed animal I had as a kid, a Curious George I took with me everywhere, until I was twenty. I mean, I still slept with him, I didn’t take him to work or anything (honest!). When Lorrie and I had been dating for about five months, I had to leave and go back to school, finish my senior year of college. She told me I should leave George with her, and I said no way, and I regret that, because I went to Europe and totally lost George. I forgot him in a hotel room in Krakow. I can still see myself on the phone from London with the hotel, trying to ask them in German (the hotel staff spoke more German than English and I spoke no Polish) if they had found ein affen in any of the rooms. They had no idea what I was talking about. I was crushed and honestly I still miss him.

Lorrie said, ‘well, you shouldn’t have left me then. I had been such a jerk to you and I was finally opening up and you left.’ I had forgotten all about that. She had been a jerk, and I’d loved her anyway, and then she started feeling like she could open up, she softened and things were getting really good, and then I left.

‘Yeah I know, and I didn’t want to leave, but I’d already taken a semester off to stay longer in SF and I had to graduate. But, we saw each other in Europe, and then slept together as friends when I came back to California after graduating. Besides, you fell a lot harder for the girls that came after me anyway,’ I said. ‘I was just your first out girlfriend.’ I started thinking about leaving again though. Is this how she saw me?

‘You shouldn’t have left me,’ she said again, teasing.

Lorrie took such good care of me while I was there, I had forgotten how well we knew each other. I mean, we had been close friends for years after we dated, we just hadn’t stayed in touch the last ten years or so, but when we see each other, our friendship feels the same as it ever did. I like friendships like that. I’d arrived on Friday afternoon and on Saturday, Lorrie took me on a driving tour of LA for the afternoon. We stopped and had amazing tacos at Guisados.

Sunday, I met up for brunch and ended up spending the entire day with one of my best friends from high school. The first girl I was ever in love with. I always remember Aimee, the woman I dated after/at the same time as Lorrie to be my first big love, but was reminded on this visit that when I don’t block out high school, RF was really the first and it was a tortured high school ‘I’m to scared to be out’ kind of thing for both of us. It was mutual for sure, and we were clear about that, and we had an emotional and sometimes kiss at parties when we’re drunk relationship for my sophomore year of high school. And then, as RF reminded me, I left.

I moved to Santa Rosa and then back to the east coast and we didn’t see each other again until my early twenties when we awkwardly bumped into each other at a party on South Van Ness. We saw each other around the city, had dated some of the same people (at different times), but didn’t really bond one-on-one again until this sunny day in Los Angeles. After brunch we drove around, and I got another tour of parts of LA. I got to see RF’s childhood house, and where she took art classes as a child.

We went to a Made in LA exhibit at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. This was one of my favorite pieces-sections of carpet from various Las Vegas casinos sewn together.

We snuck in on a tour of the Hollyhock House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

We drove up to the Griffith Observatory and looked at the city.

We drove around some more and RF treated me to delicious tacos. I don’t recall a lull in our conversation at any time that day. Hanging out with her felt so familiar and fun, so easy. I was immediately reminded of all the things I loved so much about her when I was younger. Maybe some of those feelings were still there, buried deep in a high school trauma grave and forgotten. Huh. When she drove me back to Lorrie’s house that evening, we sat talking in her car for about an hour. She invited me to go to the movies, but I thought it was best to spend some more time with Lorrie, as I was leaving for Sonoma County the next morning. RF said she might come up for SF Pride the following week, and that she’d get in touch if she did.

During my three day stay in LA, the east coast had really disappeared from my mind. It was such a familiar feeling, the leaving, putting the wall up, placing one foot in front of the other and moving on. I started to realize that I had really moved around all the time until I was twenty-five. From foster home to foster home to adoptive home, or from this mother to that one, east coast to west coast and back with dips into the midwest and Colorado. The unusual thing for me to have done was to stay in the same place for eleven years. Maybe that’s part of why it never felt quite right, why I wanted to leave for so much of the time I lived there. Maybe that was why traveling, leaving for a new place every day or every week, although tiring, felt completely natural and still does.

I rejoined Lorrie and her family for the evening, eating leftover ribs and watching teevee. Lorrie had to leave for work at 3:30am the next morning, so at around 10:30pm, we hugged goodnight and goodbye and went to bed. The next morning, I packed up my car, picked up Kirsten at a Metro stop, and went to Whole Foods so we could stock the cooler for the hot ride through the Central Valley.

Semi-truck scripture.

On the drive, we listened to the Pixies and other bands we’d both loved in high school, finishing the trip with a dance mix I made a few years back. We got excited as we started to approach the Bay Area.

Two of my favoritest things!

We bypassed the city and headed north to Napa, where I dropped Kirsten off at her mother’s house. From there, I drove at sunset on back roads from Napa to my mom, Barbara’s house in Sebastopol, happy to have had the company and also relieved to be alone in my car again. If you ever have the chance to drive those back roads through wine country at sunset, I highly recommend it. The golden hills and the shadows of the sun setting were so stunning, I cried a little.

I pulled into Barbara’s estate (I really don’t know what else to call it) at about 9:30pm, passing under a tunnel of Eucalyptus trees.

New Mexico 3

WARNING: This one is pretty long.

There’s a reason the southwest is the environment most associated with vision quests. The sun is so hot, and the sky is so big, and the ground is so desolate, you can’t help but feel exposed. I felt like the sun was beaming through a magnifying glass, directly at my heart. On retreat land where there are few distractions, this feeling was magnified even more. It did not feel good.

I hadn’t come to the ranch for a vision quest or for retreat. I wanted to work and to see if I still felt as strong of a connection to the land and the Lama as I’d felt when I first visited earlier this year. I wanted to see if this was a place I’d want to spend a few months living and working this coming winter. I wanted to see if I still felt like Lama S was a teacher I could work with in developing more discipline in Buddhist practice, admittedly still contemplating if I even really want to develop more discipline.

I spent much of my time on the ranch feeling restless and uncomfortable, feeling like I wanted to leave and run for the cover of Redwood trees, shun the sun, but I didn’t. I would hope that the fact that there is no geographical cure for ME is something I can just know at this point in my life and not have to re-learn it over and over. Bailing might have given me more distraction, but it wouldn’t make the feelings go away, and I said I was doing this, so I stayed.

I settled into a routine of laying awake most of the night, often crying a lot and/or having psychotic thoughts. I had one of the worst bouts with PMS I’ve ever had, and would have to get up to pee three or four times in the night, despite not consuming any liquid for hours before I went to bed.

Every time I fell asleep, I’d be wakened within an hour with nightmares. The same nightmare, over and over again. The same nightmare I’ve had since April 9th. I saw something that day that made the nightmares start, and they haven’t stopped since, although sometimes there’s a few weeks break between occurrences. On the ranch though, the only time I didn’t have nightmares, was when I was awake.

The first morning there, I got up, went to the kitchen building, made some coffee and started slicing peppers. I listened to ‘Drift’ by Rachel Maddow and sliced peppers for the better part of a day and a half.

Everyone communicates by walkie-talkie on the ranch, and sometime mid-day, Lama walkied down that she wanted to meet with me, so after cry o’ clock in my casita, I put on my sunblock, sun hat, sunglasses, and long-sleeved, collared white shirt for the walk up the hill. I would put these on every time I left any building, even just to go to the composting toilet. It was over 100 degrees in the shade every day.

It was great to see her and catch up. She was feeling low energy, suffering from extreme adrenal fatigue, so she had been taking it easy, not traveling as much, and spending time going through her files from two decades of working in the domestic violence movement before becoming a Lama, deciding what to donate to the archives at Smith College and what to toss. She asked if I would work with her while I was there, a few hours a day, re-organizing and indexing her files, retreat notebooks and prayer books so that she could find things easily, as there were several piles on her desk and other things out of place. Her house had AC and I have a degree in organizing information, so I said I’d love to.

So I’d get out of bed around 4:30am and head over to the kitchen building, feeling like a shell of a zombie with DTs. I’d make coffee and eat a little yogurt, take my vitamins and then M, another woman visiting the ranch, would meet me and we’d walk over to headquarters. The ranch folks are slowly building an addition on the HQ building, and we were going to grout the space between these large iron beams and the concrete/styrofoam blocks each morning until the sun got too hot to work outside, between 8-9am.

We mixed grout, troubleshooting until we found the right water-to-powder ratio for a still wet, but putty-like consistency. We wore gloves at all times and masks when we were mixing, since the grout would burn your skin or lungs upon contact or inhale. The mixture would dry up and harden within about twenty minutes, so we’d make sure our ladders were positioned in the right section of beam before mixing it and then carefully ascend the ladders. With trowels and fingers, we’d each push grout under our side of the beam until what we’d pushed in was solidly meeting in the middle.

We talked about Buddhism and the ranch and relationships. M had lived on the ranch for several years a few years back, and had a couple of relationships in that context. Her two ex-girlfriends from the ranch were actually dating each other now, which she seemed fine with. Relieved, even. She was pointing out date spots to me from our vantage point on top of the unfinished building. It hadn’t occurred to me that the ranch could be such a romantic place. I don’t know why, I just didn’t think about it that way. I liked hearing her perspective on it.

Puffy eyes for dayz.

We talked about Chogyam Trungpa, attachment, Minneapolis (where M is from), music and trans-politics. Once the sun got too hot, we would use up whatever grout was in our buckets and then rinse everything off with a hose. We’d head back to the kitchen and make breakfast, sometimes making our own thing and sometimes making something to share. Then M would head up to the shrine building where she was working with Sam, another ranch resident. They were drawing up designs for finishing the ceiling of the shrine building with panels painted gold.

Ranch butterfly.

I would walkie up to Lama and see when was a good time to come up, then go to my casita and lay down and/or cry for a few minutes. Then I’d pull it together, put on all my sun armor and head for the shower building, brush my teeth and wash my face and continue on up the hill to Lama’s house. As I walked, I kept my eyes on the ground not only to prevent tripping on the uneven terrain, but also to see the beautiful geodes and quartz crystals littering the ground everywhere I walked.

I would put my hands on the ground, trying to feel whatever energy was in there, but I was unable to feel any the whole time I was on the ranch. My heart ached for the soft, Spring reborn green trees and moss of New England. Without any sleep, I felt needy for energy and I wasn’t finding any in that dry dirt, but I’d collect crystals and put them on a flat rock in front of my casita anyway, knowing there was energy in them, but I was just too unfamiliar or too tired and hormonally/emotionally jacked-up to feel it.

Visitors are asked not to take any of the crystals from the ranch, as they believe it weakens the earth spirits of the land. When the spirits are depleted, they don’t bring the rains. I didn’t know this when I’d visited in January, so I’d taken a few crystals home to Rhode Island and put them on my nightstand. Luckily, upon learning this, I remembered that I’d brought all my little nightstand stones and trinkets on this trip, along with a few other decorations. I went back to my casita, found the crystals and returned them to the land. I did find a rusty horseshoe that I kept, however.

I’d arrive at Lama’s house sweaty and short of breath, my lungs still adjusting to the altitude. I think it’s something like 3000 feet. Maybe higher. I’d knock on the door and step into her cool, quiet house. I’d take off all my sun armor, shoes and socks and we’d sit in her living room, talking politics. Everyone on the ranch is pretty unplugged from the outside world, so she liked that I was up to date with political banter. She’d asked if I had any spiritual questions my first day visiting her, and I said I’d think about it and if I came up with any, ask her tomorrow.

I asked her about attachment and letting go, but mainly we talked about my journey and navigating the uncertainty of it. I expressed my mixed feelings of interest and ambivalence at getting more deeply involved in Buddhism, cultivating a disciplined practice, joining a sangha. I love the basic concepts of Buddhism and have been reading about them, contemplating them and integrating them into my life for about fifteen years, but ‘I’m just not much of a joiner,’ I said, ‘I am wary of organized anything.’

I can get down with mindfulness and equanimity and tonglen prayer and all that, but when it starts to get into karma and dedicating virtue and the four winds of this and the eight mountains of that, it starts to feel more complicated and abstract than the spirituality I feel in my heart. I get skeptical and defensive. As someone raised in western culture, even raised atheist/Buddhist, I don’t know if I can genuinely not feel like a douche using Tibetan terms and chants. It feels culty to me the same way AA mantras feel culty. While many of the mantras of AA and Buddhism ring true to me, I am still leery of chanting them in a group of people. I’m guessing this would have to be a ‘fake it til’ you make it’ situation for me if I was to dedicate energy to developing discipline.

Lama said, ‘well, there are thousands of ways you can walk the path of Buddhism, if you feel it’s for you. First, though, you have to decide what the purpose of your life is. If you feel the purpose of your life is working to reduce the suffering of all beings and attain enlightenment, then you decide how fast you want to reach that goal. You can sit for few minutes every day in your nine-to-five life, that requires the least amount of compromise, or you can go live on a Buddhist retreat and practice twenty-four hours a day. If you practice with pure motivation, you may reach your goal a lot faster this way, but you’ll likely endure more concentrated discomfort and compromise. Of course there is the whole range of paths in between those extremes as well.’

Well that’s not heavy or anything. I mean, of course I want all beings to be happy and free of suffering, but do I want to form discipline around it? Doesn’t it make more sense to volunteer at a soup kitchen or animal rescue than to sit on a cushion dedicating the virtue you’ve gained from sitting there out into space? (I know many people do both). The spirituality I’ve felt in my heart since I was a child is very simple. There is energy that runs through the Universe and everything and everyone in it and we are all connected by it. If I hurt you, I hurt myself and so on. Buddhism speaks to this and then it gets complicated. I don’t want to prostrate and pray in a foreign language, it feels contrived to me. Lama reminded me that the Buddha laid out something like 39,000 paths to enlightenment and that one can only walk the Buddhist path in their own way. I hear that.

Honestly, I’m not sure if I want to attain enlightenment or even try. How many westerners actually pull it off? I figure that unless I die at an unexpectedly young age, I’m already 30-50% of my way through this life, and I’m doing alright. Do I want to put the energy into forming discipline? How much good can we really do others with prayer and dedication of virtue and merit when peak oil, global warming, pollution, political and economic corruption, and water scarcity are real? I mean, aren’t we pretty much going down anyway? Isn’t it human nature to kill and destroy as well as to love unconditionally? Even if we could somehow tip the balance of what’s affecting the world more to the love side, haven’t we already done enough irreversible damage to the Earth’s ability to sustain life? Am I just lazy and selfish and looking for a pass? Am I just over-thinking this as I do everything? Probably.

You know what helps with over-thinking? Meditation. Goddamn me.

After we had our talk, we were indexing her retreat notebooks together when this fell out of one of them.

Lama laughed and remarked on the auspiciousness of this falling out of a notebook she’d not touched in years, right after she told me I need to decide what the purpose of my life is. She gave it to me and reiterated that this journey I’ve chosen is perfect for contemplating this question if I choose to do so.

After working with Lama each day, I’d go back to the kitchen building for lunch, which ranch residents were taking turns cooking each day since the kitchen manager was away. I cooked lunch for everyone one day. I stepped in for the kitchen manager somewhat and did a lot of the kitchen cleaning each day. That felt good.

Then I’d head back to my casita and lay down. The work day is pretty much done by 2pm when you start at 5am and didn’t sleep. I’d lay there sweating, watching episodes of the Sarah Silverman Program that I’d downloaded years ago until my computer battery was low. I didn’t feel capable of reading or writing or sleeping or practicing or doing anything otherwise productive. I’d head back to the kitchen around dinnertime and eat something.

Each evening after the sun started to go down, JT and I would take a walk down to this well half way down the ranch’s mile long driveway. Near the well, there was a big tub the cows that roamed around the ranch (owned by a neighbor) would drink out of, and when they keep the tub full, the cows and other animals tend to stay down there instead of coming up, so we’d walk down there and fill the tub each evening, freeing any mice that had been captured in the store-room, sitting on an old rusty cart, checking cel phones and shooting the shit while the water pumped through the hose into the tub. It took about twenty minutes to fill.

Instagrammed well cows.

M joined us one evening and on the walk back, JT and M started talking about spiders in their beds and Black Widows in their casitas. I hadn’t seen any Black Widows yet, or had any spiders in my bed, and I jokingly told them that after this conversation, I bet I’d see them everywhere. I was right. I went to take a shower when we got back and there was a huge Black Widow in the middle of its web, partially strung to the pump gallons of shampoo and conditioner we all used. I didn’t use them that day and took my future showers during the day when the Black Widows stay hidden. I went to the sinks outside the shower building after my shower to discover Black Widows chilling under each sink.

I headed back to my casita and as I was reaching to slide open the screen door, felt spider web stick to my face. I looked up. Two Black Widows, directly above the only entrance to my casita. Every night. Waking from nightmares to pee at least three times every night, I’d lay there, stuck in the nightmare and anxious about walking under the spiders, but I’d get up and do it eventually, squatting under the bright moon.

Once I entered my casita, I saw a brown spider on my bed. I kept trying to capture it, but it was too fast, so I just wrapped up the whole blanket, walked it outside under the Black Widows, and shook it out. If anyone could have seen this panicked scene and decision-making process, I imagine I would have looked like someone who has to pee really badly and is slightly bent over, knees together, shuffling from foot to foot. I decided that I’d have to try to make peace with my fear of spiders for the remainder of my time there. I’d have to pretend I was still blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was surrounded by Black Widows and other spiders. Also scorpions, wolves, and rattlesnakes. I didn’t see any of these other creatures on this visit, which was fine with me.

A few days before I left, K the kitchen manager returned and asked me at dinner that night if she could ride to Northern California with me. I said sure, but I am stopping in LA for a few days and she said that worked for her. She’d go to San Diego and spend Father’s Day with her dad. Great! As much as I love driving alone, the company and help driving was a welcome change at that point. With two of us, we’d be able to cross Arizona at night, which would be safer and more comfortable than trying to do it during the day with no AC.

People spend a lot of time in silence on the ranch. Residents who leave the ranch spend the entire day after they return in silence. Sometimes they wear little signs around their necks that say ‘please respect my silence’ and sometimes they just write on the dry erase board in the kitchen that they are in silence. Some people do functional silence, which means you can talk to them about work, but nothing else. JT was in functional silence every day until noon. The first day I didn’t notice the sign on her neck and said good morning or hi and when she didn’t respond, I remembered about the silence. I must have tried to talk to K at least three times when she was in silence because I kept forgetting. Doh! I felt like a jackass, but everyone was nice about it. ‘You just got here,’ they said.

Lama and I were able to organize everything she’d wanted to by my last day there, which felt great. I was so happy to have been able to help with a project that seemed so daunting to her and so simple to me. I’d gotten to spend a lot more time with her than most people get to, and she is very wise, indeed, but also fun and funny. I showed her how to use Google maps and she helped me map out my route across Arizona and convinced me to do it at night. She gave me her numbers and asked me to call and let her know when we’d made it safely to Los Angeles. I walked back down the hill to the kitchen and saw JT. I told her I’d be leaving later that day and she said ‘well we gotta hang out then.’

We hadn’t gotten to hang much during the time I was there with us both working a lot and neither of us sleeping much. She was suffering severe adrenal fatigue like Lama was, had been for several months, and was pretty clearly running on fumes. I’d had adrenal fatigue for a while last Fall and completely understood. I took expensive supplements for it and it cleared up, but JT doesn’t have any money for supplements, so she avoids foods that make it worse and tries to get as much rest as she can, but the adrenal fatigue makes it hard to sleep. You just lay there wanting to. I can relate to that too. We went and sat in front of the fan in her casita and bonded for a couple of hours before K and I got a ride to my car in Duncan.

We talked about the ranch, our childhoods, relationships, Buddhism, ranch lesbians, filthy queers, Michfest and San Francisco, where we’ve both lived in the past. Although we’ve been acquaintances for a couple of years, I really only started being friends with JT a year ago, and although we get along pretty well, I don’t actually know much about her, so it was nice to learn more, clarify and deepen the friendship.

Seeing Lama and JT run down from working so hard at the ranch plus having such a hard time emotionally while I was there had me thinking I probably didn’t want to come back in the winter. By the day I left though, the same day I got my period, I realized I’d unintentionally felt the emotional discomfort people often feel when they are intentionally on retreat, intensified by hormone fluctuation and still feeling heartbroken.

I decided I’d have good boundaries around work if I decided to come back for a few weeks or months later, no one else on the ranch had adrenal fatigue, and some of them had lived there for years. They just don’t work as hard as these two women and I wouldn’t either. I’d figured out that while I want to maintain a relationship with the ranch, I still don’t really want to delve more deeply into Buddhism as a practice, even though I’ve found a teacher with whom there are mutual feelings of connection. I said goodbye for now to the ranch and C, the office/administrative person on the ranch, gave K and I a ride into town.

Super sweet ranch dogs, Sonam and Samo.

Midwest

I left Syracuse in the late afternoon and headed on towards Chicago. It’s an 11 hour trip if there’s no traffic and you don’t stop at all, so this means it’s a two dayer for me. I set out across northern New York state and into Ohio. I thought about stopping at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo for buffalo wings, as I have done every other time I’ve passed through Buffalo. I think Tracy and I even stopped there with our moving truck on the way to Rhode Island 11 years ago. But this time, I decided to skip it and keep it cheap with the healthier fare in my cooler, get more miles behind me before finding a Red Roof Inn for the night.

I didn’t sleep well, so I took my time getting going in the morning. I walked over to the McDonald’s next door and took them up on the free breakfast voucher the hotel had given me. I futzed around the hotel room. I talked to a friend in Brooklyn for a while. I loaded out my duffel bags and cooler and got back on the road.

I saw the landscape start to flatten out, water towers pop up, fields of corn. I continued to marvel at how variant and stunningly this country visually unfolds as you traverse it and I felt that sweet, Saturday Evening Post cover type feeling I always feel when driving through the Midwest. I stopped and had pork chops at a Perkins in Ohio.

I called my health insurance company from the Perkins to see if I still had prescription coverage, as melted ice water had seeped into the bottle containing a year’s worth of the Zoloft that I take two weeks per month for my often psycho PMS. Maybe it’s PMDD, who knows. Its sucks, and sometimes the Zoloft helps temper the cray-cray a bit, but not always and certainly not when I forgot to seal it in a Ziploc bag before tossing it in the cooler the day before and I discover the entire year of pills looks like this. I’d put it and all my vitamins in the cooler so they wouldn’t melt or start to break down in the hot car with no air conditioning. Whoops.

Bummer, dude. But I still had prescription coverage somehow, so I called the next closest Walgreen’s on my route, in Toledo, and was able to get three months worth for $7, instead of the $100.49 I was told it would cost without insurance. It didn’t really help at all this last month anyway, so I doubt I’ll continue to take it once it starts costing more than $7.

As I got further from the east coast, I felt my heart break in happy ways as well as sad. I felt a not entirely identifiable, but distinct and taught strand of emotion snap inside me. An unexpected and small, but welcome release. I felt completely free aside from being confined to my un-airconditioned-in-the-summer mode of transportation. I felt moments of total elation, moments that started to arise out of the blue when I was in Vermont, and it still happens almost every day, sometimes several times a day.

Once I get out into the middle where things start to open up and horizons last forever, I start to think things like, maybe I want to find a way to give up the gold star on this journey, or, maybe I want to start drinking again. I start to question my conventional knowledge, curious to see if a change of life or scenery shifts those things I don’t question. So far, those things haven’t changed, but it’s good to check in with them, especially the drinking thing, in every environment I enter.

I arrived at my friend Frankie’s house just north of Chicago around dinner time. She had super delicious take out BBQ ribs and mac n’ cheese waiting for me and I felt spoiled. Another theme on this trip. The free food (especially ribs) didn’t stop after I left Rhode Island. Pretty much everyone I’ve visited tells me to put my wallet away, it’s on me, you’re traveling. THANK YOU.

We caught up a bit as I inhaled the food, and went for a drive to bring Frankie’s roommate/ex/co-parent/BF her BBQ at work. Once M had her food, we decided to take a walk in this park near her house, but by the time we got there, it was getting pretty dark, so instead we drove slowly through the park, watching the wildlife that comes out when the sun starts to go down. We must have seen about thirty raccoons and about five deer.

They were all really cute.

After Skokie’s Wild Kingdom, we went over to the Whole Foods near her house to get some snacks and stuff to refill my cooler for the next few days of driving. I was so tired from not sleeping much the night before and driving all day, I forgot the bag containing most of my groceries right there on the bagging shelf at the end of the register counter. We didn’t notice until we got back to her house, so we drove back. I ran in just as they were closing and the nice hippy gay dude at the customer service desk said he’d just put it in one of the walk in fridges in case I came back. THANK YOU.

I cannot even begin to list the many things I have forgotten or lost since I stopped sleeping well four years ago, especially in grocery stores. The mixed feelings of anxiety and acceptance of my mental limitations as I back track to find what I lost or forgot. I mean, I pretty much have to laugh about it most of the time, except for the two times I forgot my wallet with all my rent money in cash in shopping carts at Stop & Shop. I did this TWICE, a year apart. Those times there was only full on, heart racing, sweat dripping anxiety. But both times, whoever had collected the carts had brought my wallet to the customer service desk, untouched.

It gives me faith in humanity. I mean, honestly, I bring other people’s wallets and stuff like that I’ve found to customer service too, but once when I was a teenager, a friend and I decided to keep a purse we’d seen a woman leave in a bagel shop. We bought a case of beer and carton of cigarettes with the cash and threw the rest in a dumpster. We didn’t know how to scam credit cards then. Lucky her.

But seriously, if I was a Stop & Shop bagger in this economy, I might think about it for a minute. Six or seven hundred dollars probably takes at least two weeks to earn in that position. When I’d just started working at the Women’s Center at Brown, I found $500 in cash in a folder at the bottom of a dusty box, buried in a closet that no one ever went into. I certainly thought about it. I was broke from being unemployed. The job was only supposed to last three months. I was completely alone in the building that week. Brown has plenty of money, I thought, no one will know. Except me. I filled out a deposit slip and took it to the University cashier’s window because that was the right thing to do. That ended up being the best job I ever had.

Frankie, M, and I hung out in the hammock in their back yard and talked some more.

Blessed are we with many chins.

I met their teenage son. Evening teevee time in the living room. Then it was time for bed. Everyone had work and school early the next morning. Frankie set me up on their surprisingly comfy fold out couch and I fell asleep at least for a little while. I was debating staying another day, but since I barely slept and was completely overtaken by sadness when I woke up, I figured it was better to have a day like that in my car alone. So I left around 10am when the morning traffic had cleared up.

I headed south and west through Illinois. I ended up on this one toll road where I had to stop and pay like seventy-five cents every few miles. It was really annoying. I talked to each booth out loud as I approached it, ‘can’t I just have a card and pay once later?’ The annoyance distracted me from my tears, however, and by the time I crossed the border into Iowa, I was back to appreciating all the different shades of green in the fields and trees, the smell of cow manure, watching tractors and watering systems do their thing in the fields, broken down trailers, rusty stuff, signs for church dinners, farmer’s markets, wooden crosses peeking out from the side of the road, religious billboards, signs for Kum n’ Go gas stations. Heh heh, Kum n’ Go. Do they really not know? The founder of the company’s last name must be Kumber or Kumborn or Kumstein or something like that. Heh heh, Kumstein.

I stopped in a small town in southern Illinois for off-brand gas, stretched my legs and saw this stuff.

I drove about three-quarters of the way through Iowa before I had to stop for the night. I usually don’t stop until after it’s dark, so this was my reward as seen from the Motel 6 parking lot.

Craving junk food, I ordered a cheeseburger and chicken tenders from some local place that delivered. I was not getting back in that hot hot car. I was starving, shaky, underslept and overcried. When I drive all day, after I stop for the night, my whole body continues to vibrate as if my foot is still on the gas pedal, for hours after I stop. It’s unsettling and makes me feel wired. Tired wired. I wanted to eat it down. I took a cold shower, put on Rachel Maddow and ate junk food and salad greens until my stomach felt sufficiently distended. I watched Game of Thrones and went to sleep.

I slept a little better that night so the next day I polished off the rest of Iowa, all of Nebraska, and half of Colorado. Oh Nebraska. The only thing I can say about you is that every time I drive through you, it feels like the longest day of my life. Once you get into Nebraska, the Midwestern charm has grown stale, but the landscape hasn’t started to get westerny yet. It’s flat and endless and there is road work for the entire state, which makes a really long, boring place feel even longer and more boring. On top of that, it’s so windy that you have to wrestle with the steering wheel the whole time to keep the car from blowing off the road. You can’t just cruise along with one hand gently steadying the wheel, enjoying your WTF with Marc Maron podcasts. You have to ten and two it, and hard, causing shoulder tension followed by a tension headache.

But somehow I survived.

You have to get up and live this day.

I didn’t sleep much last night, so I have the usual upset stomach, shaky hands, slow memory, dark eyelids, heavy heart. I think about how much time the negative health effects of insomnia are possibly shaving off my life. And no, the time I spend awake in the middle of the night does not make up for it. Many a red-eyed morning these last four years I lay in bed, giving myself The Talk.

‘Be gentle with yourself today. Drive carefully. Be quiet if the events of your day allow for it. Cry if you need to. Do your best and don’t worry that it’s not as good as your best when you’ve slept. This will probably not be the worst day of your life. You will start to feel better in the late afternoon. Maybe you will sleep well tonight, but have to get up NOW, and live this day. You have to get up and live this day. You have to get up and live this day.’

Uplifting, I know. But it works, especially the repetition at the end. Many days, I just skip straight to that.

I did manage to organize some stuff and do laundry and futz around online a lot. I’ve been exploring a lot of new blogs now that I’ve started blogging, and my favorite thing I read yesterday was Marianne Williamson’s blog entry, The Romantic Mysteries.

This perspective on romantic love (or any unconditional love, really) resonates with how I’ve always felt about it, but flips it into a much more positive light than the usual ‘honeymoon’s over’ downer perspective. I adopted this perspective immediately after reading this for the first time, and I’ve read it a few more times since. Love it.

I didn’t really feel human until late afternoon, which is normal. I took a walk with my mom, Linda and her dog, Biscuit down the dirt road she lives on. Biscuit is like some otherworldly embodiment of pure Universe love, in dog form. Spending any amount of time with her automatically makes anyone feel lighter. I like to sing to her. My sister’s boyfriend once said, ‘she’s like a stuffed animal that loves you back.’

She makes he and I feel completely giddy when we’re with her.

This is Biscuit laying on me a few Thanksgivings ago.

It’s like she’s looking right at your heart, like I do.

Seriously.

Our walking and talking energized me, and also, I found this gem free right on the side of the road! I always think it’s funny when people put stuff out on the street or the road with a sign that reads, ‘free.’ Um, obvs!

This will be a nice addition to whatever home I set up next, wherever and whenever that happens. Maybe on top of a mantle, or hung on a living room or mud room wall. I suppose now is not the time to start mentally decorating a home the does not exist, but I’m inherently nesty and I can’t help myself.

Speaking of having no home and organizing stuff for indefinite drifting, this is what my key chain looks like now.

No house. No job. No supermarket discount or gym id tags. Just the car and The Club for parking in cities. Here, we just leave our keys in the car with the doors unlocked cuz it’s the boonies.

Anyway, I returned to my mom, Beth’s house (where I’m staying) and jumped into action, cooking a fried chicken dinner for five. I tried a ‘quick and dirty’ method, as opposed to my usual fried chicken recipe, which requires 24-48 hours of preparation. This time, I just dipped the chicken in egg yolk, dredged each piece in a flour and spice mixture similar to my usual one, but eyeballed instead of measured the amounts, and fried it in grocery store brand vegetable oil, instead of the usual Earth Balance vegan shortening. I always fry until each side is golden brown, then finish it in the oven, so I did that this time too.

Except for burning some of the pieces on the outside a bit due to my inexperience with egg yolks and electric stove burners, the chicken came out almost as moist and delicious as my usual, much more time and effort intensive recipe. Good to know! I did of course pack my faded and food stained recipe for the road, as I fully intend to make fried chicken for my friends in CA. I’ve spent years perfecting that recipe, and I can truly say I’ve never eaten fried chicken that is better than mine. Not to brag.

I ate a lot and fell asleep on the couch, listening to the after dinner tea conversations of my Cronies. This is what I’m now calling my moms and their friends that helped raise me. Well into their sixties and seventies now, they are all wise, powerful crones in their own ways, and I look up them immensely.

That was yesterday.

Today I awoke well rested and feeling about a hundred times more motivated, cheery, and capable. Sleep is awesome. No need for The Talk. There is so much going on inside me right now and today I actually have the energy to handle it. I’m going to go take a walk in the woods, or as I learned in my online puttering yesterday, do some ‘forest bathing.‘