Cross-Country Cooking

Dar Williams wrote a song called Iowa that starts out I've never had a
way with women but the hills of iowa make of wish that I could. now,
from my car, watching iowa undulate all around me, i can see where She's
coming from. one has to wonder though if the hypnotic rolling
landscape, the intoxicating scents of fertil land and seasonal surplus, the way
the brisk morning air embraces you like your most familiar lover, if
all this is just the magic of travel. a small illusion of speed and
distance, the drunken love at first sight that seems like such a good idea
at the time. here's to iowa, i certainly hope she looks as good when
her spell's worn off.

sorry, wrote this on my cell phone, maybe I'll fix it up a little later.

This morning
The clouds were a wool blanket,
Rough and too close to breathe.
This afternoon,
Gentle snowcapped peaks fading into wispy swirls.
Then,
Mere hints of a november morning til,
Finally,
West-bound enough,
Bright blue spilled like water,
Drowning this burnt-autumn landscape and I,
Drenched in sunlight,
Turned my face up
To laugh.

So, I guess it's begun. I find myself sitting at a rest stop in Ohio, just a few miles west of Toledo. Why Toledo, you ask? Well, my favorite Aunt always used to say "Holy Toledo", at least around my sister and I, so I figured, why not? Yeah, so maybe the full exclamation wasn't exactly "Holy Toledo... Ohio!" but you can't always have it all now can you.

I've been driving all day so I just might be a little loopy at this point but I've reached a state of road exhaustion that could only be described as ANYTHING BUT ZEN!!! (See my earlier post if that seems unnecessarily capitalized.) I've taken a whole lot of pictures on a camera that probably doesn't work and Wayne looks a whole lot worse for the wear, as a matter of fact, I think he's dying. Wayne is my cactus, by the by, I don't know if it was yesterday's cold, Thursday's heat or Wednesday's glue. Poor Wayne, too bad for him I'm just not cut out for commitment.

The Poconos were right pretty, I must say, all foliage-y and all. Then the color sort of dropped off, in favor of local color, I guess, as I got into Ohio. Home of... nothing apparently. Pretty unremarkable so far. Got through Cleveland sans disaster though so, rock on, as far as I'm concerned. May fortune smile upon me in the future as it has today. I do hope one day to add a side note: BAD THINGS HAPPEN IN CLEVELAND. It just seems too close for comfort now though, I mean <stage whisper> it's right behind me! Now comes the fun task of finding where to sleep. This well lit parking lot seems nice enough, that and it's about my only option because, and this one deserves it's own paragraph:

I know how I am going to die. Narcolepsy. That's it. You know, I'll just be driving along, do do-do and all of a sudden, a dream sequence will break in and they'll find me all mangled on the side of the road somewhere, head resting serenely atop my gently folded hands, silvery filament of drool snaking down my chin.... yeah. That or A.D.D.. You know it's bad when you're looking out the window and enjoying the beautiful scenery, trying to identify the road kill and then you realize you're driving. In fact, you're the only one in the car so there's no way you couldn't be driving, you've been driving for the past 500 miles and you just kind of FORGOT because there was something shiny on the side of the road. Who the hell let me do this?!? This was not a good idea! I shouldn't even have my license. I don't remember getting my license. Oh my god, I'm that guy from Memento, why didn't anyone tell me? Wait, maybe you did tell me. Maybe you told me and I didn't believe you because I couldn't remember who you were. Who are you? And why are you reading this?!? Oh, oh, no, for the love of God, leave me alone!!!

Or maybe I'll die of natural causes, like getting brained by a rock thrown from a riding lawn mower. And if that's what going to happen, my money says it happens in Cleveland.

When I finally went outside today, the sky was grey and low, like it was going to snow. I'd been sitting inside all day feeling sorry for myself so I was cold and a bit on the achy side. There I was, outside, on this cold, grey, achy day when I saw this black-eyed susan and I thought how everything about her is beauty and light and here I am, somewhere dismal and bleak without her. And the tears started to catch in my throat. I got halfway to my car with my jaw clenched tight and my eyes narrowed against the perpetual flood of grief, when I realized: I could see the sky. And I looked around and I saw the clouds, low and grey, sloping down to hills with houses carved into them and roads crisscrossing the thick green flesh as far as my weepy little eyes could see and I thought: This is only New Jersey!

You have my heart.

So, as I was saying, this undertaking has been labeled "zen" by some and that couldn't be farther from the truth. The fact is, this is the stupidest, most frenetic, out of control thing I've ever done. SO not zen! People think I'm abandoning all my belongings. In reality, I've packed everything I own into a chevy. People think, I don't know, I'll be medititating the whole time or something, like I'll just throw my car on cruise control, sit all full-lotus on my zabuton (which is totally in the back seat, thank you very much) and just go out there chanting "OM" the whole damn way. Yeah, not so much.
Okay, so, I'll admit, a good part of this endeavor is an attempt to crush this insane drive to succeed. That's right, my goal is failure or, okay, no it's not. Really, though, my goal is to not have a goal and I guess, after all, that is a little bit zen. And impossible. Didja catch that? My goal is to not have a goal. No wonder I'm having such a hard time. I'm working on not getting so wrapped up in where I'm going that I sabotage where I am. There have been a number of occasions as of late where I've gotten so worked up that I was experiencing something for the last time that I've actually ruined the experience. No one wants your coffee when you're crying.
So what's a late twenty-something chick to do with herself when she's realized she's spent several years on an accidental career only to find herself adrift in seemingly endless possibility, none of which are remotely appealing? Well, simple: try as hard as she can to eradicate the desire and competitiveness that drove her to that accidental career in the first place. I mean, really, what is this need for success than an attempt to fill some deep chasm within ourselves? Some self-aggrandizing pile construction so that one can climb all the way up to the tipity top and shout to everyone around, "look how good I did."? I mean, I don't want to feel like a failure, in and of myself or in front of other people either but I'm begining to think that maybe it's not my job (or current lack thereof) that determines whether or not people see me as such. I mean, what if I'm more than my job, more than who I'm sleeping with, more than my apartment (hope so, I don't have one) or my car? Then I suppose that means I'll have to work on myself, you know, wear more makeup or something. That and start taking life one day at a time. Or, maybe, a bit more to the point, one mile at a time. I'm off tomorrow morning, wish me luck, or unending prosperity.

If I may, for a moment, adopt this idea of bipolarity (one, I must say, which has seemed most fitting as of late) I must then extend it to it's logical conclusion, as one is wont to do, and report that my life is nothing more than a pendulous riccochet between two opposing (but equally compelling) ends of some ginourmous, all encompassing spectrum. Take, for instance, my undertaking. Could there be a better example of dichotomy? Having narrowly escaped the domestic riggeurs, the daily drudgery, the 9-5 world of suits, surreptitious subservience and such strenuously sought after (albeit pitifully modest) success, I experienced what you might call a yang hangover, leading, presumably, to a yin rebound. Right. Thus I was left, quite naturally, with a yen for the road. Having had, always, a tendency to la vie hobo, I feel I must go where no sane cooker of things has gone since the day of the chuck wagon. And even then, that was a damned wagon, I mean really, who ever heard of a chuck chevy?!? The real problem here, though is not one of logistics. I mean, really, when has a logistical problem ever felled a truly great idea? The problem at hand currently is how best to act on an idea so obviously conceived in a time of complete and utter mania when one is knee deep in the self doubt and groundless amotivation that accompanies such a radical swing of emotions. When crossing the street engenders a feeling of dread, how is one supposed to go cross country?
She just does. That's all. She just effin does.

Sometimes it's necessary to do the craziest thing you can think to do, if only to keep yourself sane.