Countryside and Caffiene.

Warning: This entry is not meant to be entertaining or original. If you want to hear your typical cross-country roadtrip life-is-completely-changing story, then bother reading it. But that's exactly all this is.

I tried to update this from the road but there was so much going on that it was hard to even answer text messages. Driving is a really exhausting enterprise, especially when it's across the country in two different directions and when you realize how much you are both leaving behind and heading toward. It's important to stay in the moment but when you think about it the past and future are really happening right now too... and I think it's okay to freak out a little when you are considering all of these things. I thought about all my friends while I drove across the various states... thought about all the things I needed to leave behind, all the negative things I was holding onto, all the security and beliefs that don't mean anything really... all the things I had leftover to say to people. I kind of left without trying too hard to say bye to a lot of people because it didn't seem to make sense somehow. I needed to leave at peace with the things I did and did not do, knowing that there is no pair of sentences that can make me feel completely great about my entire life... I just needed to go, with the way things are, with the way they were meant to be. Being here now, I feel like I did the right thing, like there's no way I could have done things any differently really. I am so thankful to have been blessed with so many wonderful chances, and with those different kind of eyes, the ones that can recognize the heavens opening in all skies and the opportunity in each inch. Anyway, onward.

Bryan Wilson Bramlett and I began our trek around 8:30am on a Wednesday, December 29 and headed North. In no rush, we got to Richmond, VA around 7pm and, after hearing the weather in New England was pretty awful still, piles of dirty snow and such, we stopped at a Knight's Inn for the night. It was a cool spot and we had an awesome grocery store dinner... watched the movie Chuck and Larry and just enjoyed the ridiculousness that is our time together. Giggle fits ensued. The next day we made it to New York City and stayed with Bryan's friend (he's known her since Kindergarten!), the lovely Katherine Aul. Again, blessed with delicious and nutritious food, our NYC adventure was off to a solid start. Katherine took us on a mini-tour of her chunk of the city, showed us around Central Park, provided good conversation and a contagiously pleasant attitude the next day. Bryan and I wandered for a short while off by ourselves and then later went to a party with Katherine and her "wife" (like mine!) named Teets. Bryan and I spent a lot of the party together, and a lot of the party with Miss Teets, enjoying the company of the crowd and crunkosity of the three-layer apartment. 2011 was brought in with a series of kisses and a lot of happy noises, good people, and a really beautiful feeling of vibrancy, aliveness, aloudness. Saturday, Bram and I wandered, completely nervously, around Times Square, just soaking in the sheer whelm of it all. Not my fave experience ever but I think it was good to see the city at that kind of time... sometimes things are best to see this way. Either way, it was an overall cool experience and Katherine's hostessing was good enough to create a Yelp! page for. I would totally love her on Yelp! Also, there were cats.

On January 2, Bryan and I started crossing the country in the other direction: westward. During our 4 day journey, we saw highways and roadkill, snow and stars, indians and sunsets. We saw everything. It was amazing, most of all, to see how each state differs from the last, how the sunset across the entire sky of Ohio transformed into the misery that is driving across Indiana. We flowed into Illinois where there were so many good vibes and soft lights, cities perfectly distanced from the highways, buildings built in accordance with God's permission, like they were laid out like constellations on the ground almost. We stayed the night in a $35 (after-tax) room in Morris, Illinois (ha!). It was basically a riot of which deserves more than a sentence, but perhaps a tale for another day. Then was the rest of Illinois, BEAUTIFUL IOWA!!!, Nebraska, and a bit of Wyoming. I drove through Iowa on my own, through the whole state, Bryan asleep by my side most of the way. There was so much peace in those rolling hills, sweeping flatlands, all of it. It was just the most comforting and spiritual drive of my life. I just felt like prayers and promise were keeping me at peace behind that wheel, going 80mph and feeling like everything was in perfect order. Nebraska was aiight, beautiful stars! Wyoming, by night, was all about minimal humanity, all about the natural land, and NATIVES! By day, it was snowing, winding roads. Bryan took the wheel that entire day... way too nerve-racking for a Granny-driver such as myself. Point is, we rolled through Utah and Nevada, stopping in a sketch convenience store, Knight's Inn, Casino & Diner combo truck-stop. Nothing to write home about. Fu' Realz. The next day we just rolled through California's windy mountains into the Bay Area. So much green everywhere you looked... just grassy hills. It really amazed us how the geography of the states fits where they separate... was that on purpose? I guess it doesn't really matter. Getting to El Cerrito was exciting... it felt good to be back in a familiar place, knowing the car (newly named Cleopatra) had made it, and so had we.

Since we got back on Wednesday, I've been handing out resumes and looking daily for somewhere to live... to start my own independent adventure. It's been really frustrating and difficult and I've cried a ton in the last few days, just emptying myself of weird emotional build-up and necessary anxieties, but I know it's all so good and that I'm right where I need to be, doing the best I possibly can. I am so lucky to have Bryan here to tell me I'm pretty when I feel miserable, to hold my hand when I feel so scared, and to remind me constantly how lucky I am just by being present with me, and understanding of my struggle. I am so grateful for this challenge, so grateful for all the encouragement from those I know, for my own motivation to do things on my own, for being young and healthy and ready to do everything. I just hope it works out, too. I just hope I have somewhere of my own to live, a job to go to. I know that this was long-winded, but such is life. And, oh, it is so very good.

Meow, from the Left Coast.
<3