Eat, Pray, Love - Barbara Jordan

I don't think it was the incredible meal of spaghetti and boullanaise sauce, with freshly grated Parmesan. Or the Chianti that stuck to my tongue long after I stopped drinking it, or the thick artesian bread soaked in olive oil and topped with roma tomatoes from my garden, or the sautéed spinach with a slight hint of garlic and chili, or the amazing sex that came as desert.

I think it might have been the next day when I packed a small bag and drove the six hours to Los Angeles by myself after getting up at dawn. Like any journey, even the simplest of ones, it can play with our minds. We tend to fight the change, the slightest shift in our routine, our comfort zone. Wouldn't it be so much easier to make some coffee and crawl back into bed with a good book? To stay home and pay the bills, walk the dogs, go to a favorite yoga class and zone out during shavasana?
Or stay home and indulge in some kind of self-flagellation about how my life is not going the way I want it to? Even though I just had this amazing meal with friends and sex with… well, sex.

Instead I slogged through the morning like walking through quick sand, struggling with what to wear, what clothes to actually put in my overnight bag, arguing with myself the whole way. Honestly? I'm only going to L.A., not Timbuktu. But driving to L.A. sucks right? --Especially on the I-5. What if I fall asleep at the wheel, run out of gas, get lost, or decide to have a panic attack. What if there is traffic and I get road rage. I really shouldn't use the gas, what about the gulf oil spill?

In spite of this internal dialogue, I managed to get in the car by 9 am. --approximately three hours after the argument with myself started. The first two hours of the trip sucked. I was bored. But I found a great station on my new XM radio. I started singing along with some music and relaxing into a knowing that I was completely alone. The landscape was expansive, like I might imagine what it would be to drive on the moon. I was barreling along in a metal time capsule, and I was free. Maybe this is how a monk feels when he crawls into a cave.

No one was asking me questions, and I wasn't attempting to solve any problems. There were no demands, and there was no performance anxiety. I could space out. I could sing, or daydream without worrying about the dirty dishes in the sink, or the laundry piling up. I didn't think about work even once. When I started down the other side of the Grapevine into the city, the sun was warm on my face through the windshield and I was convinced this must be a form of prayer.