Out Here Driving
Did you know that the ground shifts? I learned this the other night driving down PCH when it was recommended that I slow down because the dips can hurt your car. You nod and keep going and as the headlights show road followed by nothing but air, you get what they mean. It was frightening for like a second, but I’m also someone that almost drove off the cliff in Laguna trying to light a cigarette. PCH won’t be the road that gets me in this life.
My insomnia-induced night driving is back with a flourish, complete with passengers that also enjoy long expanses of road and music with minimal talking. One will always manage to find their tribe.
Coronado was a nice stop. It’s the first time I’d ever visited when it was arctic cold. Christmas lights, great views, and a biting cold that made me rethink not wearing my winter coat. It was the catalyst to a winter cold, but I wouldn’t change anything about that adventure. It’s normal to start out at dinner in Los Angeles and a quick drive ends up in San Diego. I’m turning SoCal into the Bay Area, and I think the city spots are closer together than they are back home. I did San Diego in 45 minutes. I don’t know if it was because it was the holidays or because I’m just that good of a driver, but one minute I was near home, then it was Dana Point, and then I was pulling into the Coronado Hotel.
Vegas will obviously be an upcoming cruise, but that’s a three-hour drive that will just be driving from one home to another. That stretch of desert road is familiar and the real adventure is if I veer off course and head towards Arizona or New Mexico instead. Highway 61 is what I really want to do. I don’t know if it’s in the cards for this year, but that drive is one that I can picture myself on. Open road that I’m unfamiliar with in cities I’d never been to - that’s where I’m headed next. There’s always the question if once there, it doesn’t just become the permanent residence.
This isn’t about future trips, this is about transit times with conversations that are happening in present time. I’ve learned to stay hydrated. Chapstick is an important tool to have at hand and it centers me when I’m at a red light or changing highways.
I wrote a poem while driving the other day. It came to me and I had the foresight to pen it down before it drifted off back into the world of ideas that never materialize. I was trying to describe the shift from cerulean to Yves Klein blue and this is what I came up with:
Winter green
Sea moss, learned
From a jar
With flecks of hazel and amber
Light strewn from a broken kaleidoscope
Fragments of conversations
Echoed in the same chamber
Clutch
A complete sentence
With color this time
Turquoise, possibly
Peacock, maybe?
A ruddy blue, imagined green.