Blahg #:1 29 April 2008

7:21 am PDT

Trying not to wake Mike, I get up and do a little yoga in our hotel room. I guess I'm trying to preserve what I can of my old, ersatz routine. The one part I thought I’d not miss : rising at 6:15 every Tuesday and Thursday for morning yoga. But the last couple of days have been so frantic that I do miss it.

I leave today at 10:30 am on a 2,200 mile road trip to Nashville, my new home. My friend Margaret is riding with me and I must say that I was excited about the move until now. Now it is sinking in, now that all the goodbyes are said and the boxes have been closed and shipped. Now I wake with gulping thoughts like: I should have packed my little book light or did I remember to pack extra razors? And they feel like semaphores for other, more fundamental concerns.

I’ve been a coastal person most of my life: New Jersey, Maryland, California with a ten year hiatus in-between in the inter-mountain west. But it was this most recent spell in California – land of my husband and perfect contradictions and a pervasive sense of “whatever, man” that I feel like I’ve hit my stride. I never thought I’d ever live in the Central Time Zone. I don’t have that kind of equilibrium. I like boundaries, markers. The edges of things – they seem important, where one can witness great changes and upheavals. The great plains seem well plaintive, sighing and moaning, unchanging and boundless. I hate constant wind. And even though Nashville is in what might be described as piedmont; rolls of earth undulating away from the Appalachians, how the hell will I ever know where I am without an ocean or a mountain to point me?

Maybe I'll learn to use a compass...

Note: the photo collage above is actually the cover of a wonderful travel journal that fellow poet Kathy O'Brien gave me at the last meeting of the GOMT Poetry Collective (dinner at Cha - Ya). I love it because it captures much of the American Road experience in general and for me specifically since we went south on I-5 and took 40 East for almost 2,000 miles. Kathy - thanks a jillion for this little gem. Posts from my scribblings held within it are forthcoming.

I love you and miss you all.
Val