Leaving Los Angeles

From Salt Lake City
Yes, I have much to write retroactively on Morocco. And yes, much has to happen to get from Tangier to Salt Lake City. I'm going to jump forward a bit, then back in later posts.
I left Los Angeles quietly. No nostalgia, no fanfare, no turmoil, no second thoughts, no difficulties short of needing to return the cable box to Time Warner. There was a moment when I was sitting in my empty living room, save for a few more items I needed to pack in the car, eating a salad leftover from dinner the night before, staring at what seemed to be a huge empty space, that I realized what I was doing: changing jobs and moving 3000 miles to another life. It was actually happening. And it better be happening considering three moving men had just finished loading my "stuff" onto a very large truck. When I shut my door to apartment 33 for the last time, George and Gracie in their carriers at last, I felt done.
At noon on Monday August 11, I filled my tank (at $4.29/gal) at a Chevron in Hollywood and slid onto the 101, headed for the 405 interchange. As I merged onto the 5 on the other side of the San Fernando Valley, I didn't look back. Last week friends did grace me with farewell/good luck dinners and with these small gatherings, I felt quite comfortable saying goodbye, but with a definite eagerness to anticipate what's to come. So far I don't feel stressed with the move or the long drive as much just needing to perform some tasks. Now that I'm on the road, it's a matter of the next gas station, the next hotel, shushing the meowing cats so I can get some sleep, etc.
For the record, while it may not make mileage sense to head north on the 5 to pick up the I-80 near Sacramento, yesterday's drive into Truckee--where I spent the night--and today's drive to Salt Lake City made it worth it. I did do the 15 through Utah and the 40 across the southwest last summer. What I haven't done as an adult is drive the I-80 between Tahoe and Salt Lake City. I think leaving California via the Sierras was a nice way to do it. Then there was the snowy white salt flats stretching far and wide, simmering under a hazy sky, just over the border of Nevada into Utah.
To continue a habit from last summer, I spotted some funny signage today:
1. "Fog may be icy" -- this on a diamond yellow sign of course. A weather phenomenon I apparently have not encountered since I don't know what this means!

2. An advertising "poem" for the highway. Small so easy to miss. Each line is on its own rectangular sign and the signs are placed about 25 yards apart:
A good shot of tequila
Cold beer on tap
We got some pretty 'wimmins'
To sit on your lap
Wild Horse Saloon
Exit 28

Cheapest gas thus far: $4.02. I saw $3.53, but foolishly I waited because at the time I had half a tank. Tomorrow, my goal is Cheyenne. All this when two weeks ago I attended an elegant, traditional engagement party in Rabat.
more to come...

Cookies & Darija

Finally some time at a siber. After a 28 hour delay at JFK, our intrepid, good natured group took off for Casablanca where we landed the next day at noon. A full day later than was arranged. My week (yes I am with 14 other Fulbrighters, but for this blog, I'll speak for myself) in Rabat was a headspinning introduction to l'Maghreb with 4 hour language classes (Darija Arabic, but it certainly helped I had had beginning Standard Arabic prior to this trip) in the morning followed by a hearty lunch at the school; then we were whisked away to the Fulbright Commission for 2 lectures followed by my discovery of the century: cookies. Not your ordinary cookies mind you, but I dare anyone to find cookies of various kinds that are better than these. Traditional Moroccan varieties (gazelle horns are among my favorite) and French versions of other Maghrebi pastries. Darija with Hassan (a more than capable teacher with the patience of a saint), lectures on 20th century political history, Moroccan francophone literature, women's rights, women and Islam, the 2004 Moudawana, and a reading by Leila Abouzeid--this was the week. I have managed to read two books and have started my third. I really should blame my lack of sleep on my reading.
On Saturday morning, we left the cookies and our darija classes behind and departed for Tetouan and then Tangier. In its medina, we had a lecture on the social and cultural history of Tetouan through the study of its architecture and urban planning. An exhausting walking tour, but one of the best learning experiences I've ever had. Tangier is far larger than I expected and while it does not come close to Cairo in scale and population, the throngs of people and honking horns do remind me of Cairo. Of course, the Mediterranean ensures a comfortable 85. In the future, I will try to avoid the boring travelogue. The next siber opportunity--who knows.
bsmallah.
lcr

On the Road to Morocco

Well,not a road exactly. A flight path. If we could get on a plane, that is. Stuck at Ramada JFK is far from ideal. Hoping to arrive in Morocco tomorrow sometime this week! More later. Time's up.

Travel Seasons

"On the road" becomes a rather absurd metaphor when one is in New York City in the middle of November. Gone are my summer days of rural expanse, prairie vistas, wide open spaces that remind you how to breathe. I've gone from horizontal to vertical and I'm convinced there's a psychological shift in perspective that goes with that. Also gone, for the time being anyway, are any romantic, nostalgic memories of autumn in the northeast.
However, I feel compelled to include this business jaunt and make it a part of my Penelope Road travels because, despite the rain, wind, awful hotel, runny scrambled eggs, and heavy laptop, my first 12 hours here remind me that I have something to learn about kinks, snafus, and New Yorkers who think they're funny (but they're not--at least not at midnight after I've been on a plane all day).
So it's not a road I'm on, but a street, an avenue, a hotel lobby, a chilly marble convention center bench. Vision is limited here, especially when the weather demands I stay hidden under an umbrella. Furthermore, I need to dodge in and out of herds of hurried people scuttling here and there (if you think herds don't scuttle you haven't seen a crowd emerge from a NYC subway at 7:30 in the morning). This doesn't leave me much of an opportunity to stop (if I do, I shall surely be run over by boot or wheel) and look, gaze (stare) and people watch. Forget walking to meditate or ponder or relax. If I don't have a purpose, a concrete (ha) destination to which I speed walk without making eye contact with anyone, I shall surely be run over by high-heeled shoe or wheel.
It really doesn't help that in the only chunk of free time I have while I am in this city, it is raining. Hard. And it's windy. And I am really cursing myself for bringing a heavy laptop.
So a few questions:

• Why is it that I can get a hair dryer and in-room coffee in a no name motel in Gallup New Mexico ($59 per night) and not have the same small conveniences in a major hotel in midtown Manhattan ($229 per night)?
• What major hotel DOESN'T have in-room wifi? The one I'm paying handsomely for in midtown Manhattan.
• Why does it really take soooo long for luggage to make it from the airplane to the carousel? It's not as if the baggage handlers are bringing them one by one, on foot. I also want to know why "they" sound the red light alert and start the carousel running and bags don't appear for another 20 minutes? I'm really not in the mood to be teased like that after a 6 hour flight.
• Why do I always forget that many, many people smoke? It always takes leaving California for me to be reminded of this fact. I forget I am in a city that believes a non-smoking hotel room (for $229 per night) is smoke free while next door to people who seem to be chain smoking all night long. Give me a hair dryer, in-room coffee and something to get the smell of stale cigarette smell out of my clothes.

Travel this fall has been fraught with grim reminders that all is not bouncing yellow daisies on the prairie. I'd like to know what the equivalent is here in New York City though. I'm sure there is something I can stop and look at--just need to walk around a little more to find it.
I did find an excellent cup of coffee, however, at a no-name walk-in joint.
Onward...

An Irish Blessing, 1933-2007

It is appropriate that I take this space to say a few words in memory of my mother. She is, afterall, the inspiration for Penelope Road. A woman's journey that wasn't so much about looking for her Odysseus, but about finding her way back home, back to a place of origin. Her peripatetic life, the journeys she embarked upon, the obstacles she encountered, the temptations she faced, the distance she traveled all fly in the face of convention. She did what Penelope could not do. In her journey, as one would expect, she lost, too, as well as gained. She suffered and she celebrated. She sacrificed, she compromised--and not always with desired results. She raged against what life threw at her and she silently, passively accepted when the rage came back an empty echo. And until the very end, she raged against the dying of the light. She did so with a bellowing voice until she figured out how to get off the ride that was tiring her so much.
(MPB, high school senior picture, 1951)

It is not her death, however, I wish to remember here. It is her journey--as much as I know of it, anyway. Her life spanned a good amount of geography: Nebraska, Northern California, Alabama, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, back to Northern California, back to Massachusetts, Southern California, Northern California, Southern California, Arizona, Southern California, and, finally, back to Massachusetts. Other than a couple of wild weekends in Tijuana in her early 20s, she never left the country. Her reasons for moving from place to place may not have been always dignified or rational or right. In her flaws, she was, as we all are, a complex person, leaving her life without a real opportunity to resolve or connect or forgive or be forgiven. The walls she constructed around parts of herself will always remain large and impermeable to me. In her brightest qualities, she has left behind a legacy of voice, unconventional choices, self-assertion, independence, rebelliousness, and the firm belief that the world was hers to live in as she chose. This was her estate. This is my inheritance:

She taught me that Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Puccini, Mozart, and Cole Porter were musical geniuses. She taught me "if you don't ask, you don't get." She taught me I could do anything I wanted, but I should never underestimate the power of work and effort. She taught me that I, and only I, am in control of my life--I determine what happens. And I am responsible for the outcomes, no matter what they should be. She taught me that books matter. That music matters. That art matters. That knowledge matters. That caring matters. That citizenship matters. That the open road is the best gift you can give yourself. She taught me to be fearless when I am afraid, to be undaunted when I am daunted. She taught me what it means to journey. She taught me how to go, how to expand.

She never did find her way home. But this spring, I'll take her there and with a shot of Irish whiskey, I'll make her a part of Nebraska once again and return to the earth what it once gave up, and toast:
May the road rise above you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
May the rain fall softly upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.

Rest,
In Peace,
At last.

Distance traveled: untold, immeasureable miles.
Time: 74 years, 2 weeks, 3 days.

While Listening to Coltrane

"Though I play at the edges of knowing,/truly I know/our part is not knowing,/but looking, and touching, and loving,/which is the way I walked on,/softly,/through the pale-pink morning light." --Mary Oliver, "Bone" from Why I Wake Early

"So Penelope took the hand of Odysseus,/not to hold him back but to impress/this peace on his memory:/from this point on, the silence through which you move/is my voice pursuing you." --Louise Gluck, "Quiet Evening" from Meadowlands

It's not so much about being Penelope's daughter, but recognizing that I am Penelope, Odysseus, and Athena rolled into one; I embody all three at once. A trinity in and of itself. Home, Quest, and the twin engines of action: Desire and Intuition. The trinity balances, keeps the earth spinning, keeps the world moving forward, keeps me on the road, path, trail, interstate, always with some sense of direction, and, if I know anything, always knowing change is constant.

As much as Alexandra remains at home in O Pioneers! certain her purpose is to shape the land, give all of herself to it, knowing the cost, Willa Cather traveled, as if her constant movement would propel everything else forward along with her. The price is the same for both: the ever-present need for reconciliation, order, meaning, constant creation.

So what is this need for space? Or silence? Or place between/within the conversation between the piano and the sax? Maybe it's about the persistent possibility of catching a glimpse, of seeing the very thing that would settle the moment.


Photos (from top to bottom): Scipio, Utah; outside Beatrice, Nebraska; north of Lebanon, Kansas; outside Beatrice, Nebraska.

Oasis North of Barstow

Total mileage for the entire trip: 6,115 miles. Time for an oil change and a car wash.

The final leg home, from St. George Utah to Los Angeles, took me a little by surprise and simply points to my ignorance of geography in this region. The drive through the Virgin River Gorge is one of the more dramatic I've taken and while I am still not terribly moved by the browns, beiges, tans, and ecrus that make up this Arizona-California desert, its remoteness struck me as otherworldly. I was pining for a little of the remoteness I experienced traveling through Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and Wyoming when I unwillingly became part of a speeding caravan of cars headed toward LA--sort of like being absorbed into the bunny hop even when you don't want to dance. You really have no choice but to keep a constant eye out for the weavers and the right-passers. After an hour of driving in California, I did indeed conclude California has the worst drivers. Driving on various interstates this summer, I've come to appreciate the language and rules of two-lane driving. The basics are easy: left lane is for passing, right lane is for traveling. And you signal when you change lanes. Californians, I think, take pride in being able to shun, defy, loop around these basic courtesies. Needless to say, I found the traffic and the weaving all a little irritating and disheartening. I was charmed, however, by a billboard I spotted about an hour north of Barstow. Now, mind you, I don't recall EVER getting off the highway solely because of a billboard and this one was not particularly funny or cute or clever. It simply stated "Peggy Sue's 50's Diner." This appeared three times, the last one promising it was just 5 minutes ahead. I-15, Ghost Town Road exit. There it is, a twilight zone kinda place complete with diner food (decent hamburgers), a pizza parlor, a soda fountain (great shakes), and the mother of all kitschy memorabilia shops--all somehow 50s related. Sitting at the counter waiting patiently for my burger and slaw, I started taking note of the signs on the walls: "if you're mean, irritable, or just plain grouchy, a $10 charge will be added to your check." And one of my favorites: "All children unattended and running around loose will be picked up and stowed at owner's expense." This place certainly isn't Ole's, but it is a welcome bit of amusement in the heat of the Calfornia desert. Enjoying my coffee ice cream shake as I headed toward Victorville, Apple Valley and the junction for the 210 made it a little easier to accept that space, sky, grass, trees, and summer rain were all behind me. Five weeks of maps, signs, gas prices, mileage counts, museums, new cities, jazz, scrabble, books, mountains, prairies, and interesting folks were done. And three miles before my exit off the 101? A traffic jam, naturally, throwing me into second gear and beginning to erase the memory of 85 mph on the interstate.