I heard: “Big Sur is calling to me” and here’s what happened to me.

I immediately felt the grey, El Nino winter that that I spent in California, in 1999.

I was working in a restaurant in Kansas City at the time a place that was renovating. All the staff was given 6 weeks vacation, unpaid.

So I planned for it, saved up money the way that single people can do– just enough– and bought a one-way Amtrak ticket to San Francisco. I had a cousin to stay with. And a college friend. And my first-ever laptop.

In the weeks, I hung out in Berkeley, writing things that got saved in the hard drive of a laptop I don’t own anymore. Also on floppy disk. Once I  printed onto dot matrix at some point too. My feet froze in the Starbucks as I wrote.

It was a psychological break from work for me that I hadn’t ever taken before. I was free to wander around… in my writing and in the day.

Unfortunately, most days were drenching cold rain.

On the weekends, I found my way to be with my friends Mallie and Adrian. We drove north and stayed in cheap hotels. Walked barren beaches and watched dogs chase men in wetsuits into the surf. We argued and ate. She dropped me back in Berkeley again for the weekdays, to come and find me again on the weekend.

More writing at the library table, and wandering around San Francisco alone. Then the weekend again and roadtrip.

We meandered south, where we found the sun. We stopped in Santa Cruz and walked along a funny boardwalk and up onto the cliffs, watching the wild surfers below us.  We went on for miles on two-lane roads through old Western towns that are hidden like real fossils. Stopping at bar that was rough hewn and soaked in beer and pops up in my memory like a movie scene.

We kept going, by the artists’ caves packed into the trees along Highway 1, and the little surprise restaurants in the middle of nowhere, overflowing with people and paperbacks and coffee stains.

We found our way to Hearst Castle Road, and timed it so we could take the tour. Stared at the abandoned and gleaming bowling alleys like they they were diamond rings sitting on a can of tuna in the supermarket. The castle on top of the hill that people wanted to be haunted with fame and glory was just draped in fog and stony silence.

We wound our way back up the first highway. Stopped in Carmel for lunch and felt cheated by the  diamond choker vibe. A strangeness of glamour tarred the wildnerness.

Another weekend we went north again. Into the redwoods, walking without anyone else. Only the rain and dead leaf carpets. Trying to adjust our sense of proportion. And our sense of alone.

In between the weekends, to solidify the strangeness, my cousin introduced me to a red-headed boy. And the boy took me on a date. To dinner in North Beach, San Francisco. And then to that wonderful, narrow bookstore where the Beats lived.

The boy took me out again, and then surprised me by finding me beautiful.

In weak moments, the sun winced its way out from the clouds.

Otherwise, the rain poured down. We had to kiss in a doorway to stay dry.

After another week, I stared at Bridal Veil Falls at Yosemite, my nose frozen, but far enough from the coast to be in the sun. Wishing to be back in Berkeley, the way girls in love do.

Then the train and the goodbyes and the wishes to stay and promises to come. And photographs — traded — all before the cell phone era. And I don’t remember the train home, even though I took it there.

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1. A Long Way from Home
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I need a vacation.
Let’s all insert here for a minute the list of blessings I have.

• Nice house
• Good family
• Everything I need and want (food, clothing, shelter)
• Friends
• Education
• Human Rights
• Time to meditate and do yoga
• Lots of good books, and a library card too.
• Many more

OK, even in the face of all these blessings, I know there comes a time when the mind and body need to get away.

Out of the normal, out of the routine, outside of life-par-normale. For longer than a couple of hours or a day.

For a VACATION.

Colin and I love to travel. We both agree we are most happy with he in the driver’s seat, me in the passenger’s seat, the iPod filled with music lists and podcasts, the van filled to the brim with chattering — or snoozy — ones, and the destination programed in the GPS. It’s the kind of time that lets us simulatneously switch off and tune in.

I can feel the physical changes in my body and my mind when we set off for “vacation.” Even if there’s traffic, arguments, or bad diners, the entire experience feels different.

I mean, not to sound idiotically obvious, but it feels, well, separate. Switched off, and tuned in.

But, we can’t take vacations right now.

Airfares disagree with our budget and our schedules seem to continually argue with any meaningful drive time.

So how do we teleport ourselves to Vacationland — to that place where we can all just chill for awhile — without leaving home? It seems to be a mystery I cannot solve.

I’m open to suggestions.

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Glassy days–
Across the fields
Crows can’t be bothered.
Hot summer car rides
Roads lounging into
Forever.
Windscreen winks at
Passing clouds.

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I-74
Across the Mississippi–
That Familiar vein through
My life I
Cross this morning east.
Your still flatness hides
Lonely strong
Currents
Pulling me back.

Day 9, A River of Stones

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We are passing through some flyover states today… Glad that we are not flying over but taking that slower time to look at the scenery, at what the shape of other places looks like.

We came around a bend near Lake Erie and all at once the land flattened out into farms… The horizon was visible again and people shook off their mantle of reserve.

It’s good to see the sky again and lonely barns and miles of soy and corn.

I remember empty time and wide open space.

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Maine waters, very good for meditation

This picture reminded me instantly of our summer vacation in Maine and of floating on my back, gazing at the blue sky and hearing only the sound of my own breath.

But then, it also reminded me of this new feeling I own… a tight grip on my heart that comes from the constant stress of responsibility.

After those few moments of perfect me time on the cool lake, I came back to reality, and regained my senses.

After all, there is no real “me” time anymore. Even if I steal away while Colin is with the kids, they are always leaning against my heart, poking me, asking me questions, asking more of me than I’m at first willing to offer– more than I believe I am capable of offering.

And this, I am happy to say, is a mutual feeling.

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1. A Long Way from Home

Writer Jill Murphy is crisscrossing the country to have coffee in person with all of her Facebook friends (there are 379).

She interviews as research for a book she is working on a book about Facebook’s impact on relationships.

Here is Part One of My Interview with “My Close Strangers” writer Jill Murphy

JM: The idea was instigated, in part, by a four-hour cup of coffee with an old high school friend.

When we connected on Facebook, she asked me if I wanted to meet for coffee, it’s what she does whenever she gets a new friend. A few months later, on my next trip to New York, we met in the city. It was a special afternoon. We’d both just walked away from successful yet unfulfilling careers.

We were both sorting out what to do next. It was serendipitous to connect with someone else having a mid life crisis in her mid 30′s. The fact that we’d already shared a significant phase of life added unexpected richness to the new relationship forged that day.

Meeting her made me curious about the others in my life whom I knew but didn’t really know. There were real stories behind the little pictures, I wanted to hear them.

E-mail is great (I couldn’t live without it), but it isn’t a replacement for sitting with someone, for hearing the way they laugh or seeing how they play with the coffee stirrer or if they look at attractive women when they walk by a table.

I don’t have an agenda or thesis to test; I just want to see what happens when I sit down with people and talk about what it means to be connected in this new way. And, one of the many beauties of this project, sometimes it is beer!

ME: In your recent post “Brassy tack,” you talk about our cultural disdain for free time, which manifests in that FRIEND who seems to have all the time in the world to comment on your vaca pics, no matter how good of a friend those friends really are.

JM: The Brassy Tack post was hard to write. It was personal but it wasn’t just about me. It was about the broader way we think about friendliness on Facebook and in life. I wanted to reframe how we engage intentions.

I’ve been a little surprised by the cynicism some people have about the way others interact online. We could all do with a little less judgement, we tend to be such harsh critics of each other without any sense of context about people or their lives. We make assumptions and read things into everything. This leads to Facebook creating a lot of surreptitious relational chaos. After sitting with over 40 people, I realize how tough we all are on ourselves: we’d all be so much better off if we simply eased up.

I do want to be clear about one thing. I differentiate between what one person called the “all the time talkers” and those who comment and engage on other’s people’s stuff. No one likes the people who post about themselves non-stop, especially the “Debbie Downers” and the braggarts.

On the flip side, everyone likes to have their posts and pictures commented on yet many are suspicious of the time investment or motives of the people who do that. It’s just one of the interesting paradoxes emerging from this process.

ME: Many of us have found old high school or college friends on Facebook. What do you see is the impact on our psyches when we reconnect — possibly in some intimate way — with people we had already said good-bye to?

JM: How people deal with the ghosts of high school past very much depends on the person. Many have talked about how being connected to high school friends churns their old insecurities and inhibits their Facebook interaction. For others, it’s almost redemptive to be able to reengage with that time and those people as an adult. One person said seeing everyone on Facebook made him happy he didn’t waste the time or the money on going to a reunion.

I’ve had moments of terrible insecurity that I didn’t expect. For me, the sharpest came in the experience of friending a particular person who in 7th grade passed a note telling her friend how she had to sit next to “Jill Murphy (yuck!)”

Because 7th grade is a particularly mean age for most, one of the boys showed me – and everyone else – the note. I still remember what the letters looked like on the page and how publicly embarrassed I was.

The girl and I ran in different social circles so we got through the rest school without much interaction. More than 20 years later, we’re both on Facebook. We’re friends with scads of the same people but not with each other. After a few months, it’s clear we have similar interests and we had some interesting interactions on other people’s pages. Yet, every time I saw her name, I thought “Jill Murphy (yuck!)” and I didn’t friend her for fear she still didn’t like me. It’s embarassing to admit. I’m not sure if I held a grudge so much as I held the hurt.

One day, I just decided it was well past the time to be over it. I needed to extend the request and if she wasn’t interested, so be it. She instantly accepted. We ended up in the same city and we’ve become quite close friends. The relationship is very important to me and it wouldn’t have happened without Facebook.

It also stands as a reminder that we all have to take responsibility for getting over things and for being true to who we are as formed adults, not reverting to the patterns and pathologies of our youth.

Facebook can be salt in old wounds or a second chance to appreciate someone with whom you share an important generational connection. The bigger question that looms is what does it mean for kids who never leave their high school friends behind? For my generation, we had that coming of age experience of going off to college. We transitioned out of high school relationships and in the process created space to define or redefine ourselves.

(The current) generation of kids is the first to be eternally connected online. I’m deeply curious what the perpetual connection is going to do to them. I’m glad I didn’t have to contend with carrying my old self and my old relationships with me through the whole of my life. I needed the 20-year break!

I’ll continue this interview with Jill Murphy tomorrow! She’ll discuss Facebook addiction, unfriending, and more!

Jill blogs her experience at www.myclosestrangers.com

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I’m on the train on the way to meet two old friends in New York. A part of me is terrified to put my foot on the platform at Grand Central.

I am a traveller. I don’t stay put. I go places.

Yet in the last 8 years I’ve mostly been with my travel companion, who has excellent sense of direction. He never once panics when he pops up out of the Tube in London, wondering which way to turn my face.

So I know I am not afraid of the city or getting lost.

I am suddenly aware that I love my husband a whole lot and depend on him. Even if I know I can get by for a day without him.

It’s a beautiful sunny day for meeting friends in the city…

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Day 3, #Reverb10

Prompt: Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). (by Ali Edwards.)

View from the Passenger Seat

Once I sink against the leather–
GPS Daniel having accepted
Our destination–
Once we have buckled
With coffee stowed…

I become feather light with
The air of tire noise
Moving us away.
Daniel drones on in his
Automated accent,
But I hardly hear.

In our climate-controlled
Shuttle to Vacationland,
Rolling along the WPA
Dream road, I sketch myself
Into the landscape–
Just another happy
Bluebird, nesting in favored
Hiding place.

From here, from here
I can see forever:
Windturbines realized.
Acid-washed barns
Reaching into gravitational
Certainty.

Wedged into the seat
By ignored activity bags
Too busy doing nothing,
For once,
Occupied, well-enough:
Trading Oujia board imaginations
With my driver,
And snapping up the
Flashing poetry
Of sky and field.

This post is part of a daily writing project called #reverb10. Find out more & join in this creative exercise here.

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…And Other  Existential Observations on Home

My colleague (we both teach at university) said, quite innocently:

“I guess I don’t think of Wisconsin as the Midwest.”

This while I was rapping a heavy mix of Madison virtues and Midwest easiness.

“Oh,” she said when I called up the map. “I guess I thought it was over by Ohio and Pennsylvania.”

She said she wasn’t that great with “geography.”

Living on the East Coast is like being trapped in an episode of the Gilmore Girls.

Insanely intelligent-sounding people are constantly rattling in run-on sentences, fueled by tidal marshes of Dunkin Donuts coffee. They’ve got so much to say about staycations, community gardens, the humane treatment of turtles, and “red states,” they quite often ramble themselves into thoughtless places of emotionally conjugated human illogic.

Whenever I watch “The Gilmore Girls,” though, I can’t help but remember that Lorelei has never left Connecticut. She’s an expert on the trivia of pop culture, and can perfectly analyze a muffin without opening the bag. But could SHE find Wisconsin on an unlabeled map?

What I Mean To Say…

This is usually where people expect me to say that the Midwest is BETTER than everywhere else. I don’t mean that.

I will say that it surprises me that no matter where I go, people seem to be really glad to tell me how much better “HERE” is than someplace else. And usually that is followed by their complete lack of knowledge of that someplace else.

Personally, I love other places. I suppose my failing is not being able to love HERE enough, while I am living it.

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