Day 1

A young Hamlet whines of nunneries outside my 7th floor window. Elizabeth admits that this is one of her pet peeves, and when I start writing for the Publications portion of my Publications and Literary Associate gig, when these external recitations compete with my internal experiments, it will probably become one of my pet peeves as well. But for now I can only giggle. I work in an office where on any given day one might hear Juliet bitch out her nurse on the 7th floor patio.

Damn you USPS!

I built my bookcases on Monday. After days of Craigslist games -- The Waiting Game; Cat and Mouse; Bullshittm; etc. -- we caved and went back to Ikea to get some bookcases named after some guy named Billy. And they are lovely, and now all my books and comic books and encyclopedia collection (The DC Comics Encyclopedia; The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology; A Dictionary of Angels; The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft) have been freed from their boxes.

Some books were not so lucky. Of the seven boxes I sent media mail, only six arrived unmarred: the seventh sadly had broken open en route and only a third of contents made the trek: Sylvia Plath's Ariel was unsurprisingly a trooper though her friend Sappho was left behind. God smiled down upon The Five Gospels and A Dictionary of Angels, but surprisingly did not favor my collection of Horton Foote plays. I don't know all that was lost, and all you bibliophiles out there know my heart is breaking.

If anyone sees Horton Foote having a tea party with Sappho somewhere in the vicinity of the Rocky Mountains, let me know: I'll send Paula Vogel and Richard Rodriguez to come rescue them.

Pilgrimage

I'll begin in the middle of things as it seems like an epic.

Kansas is beautiful. It's supposed to be boring and monotonous, isn't it? It was last time I did this drive when I was coming back from Colorado with my family when I was, what, 16? 15? Maybe earlier. Earlier, I think, because I bought that t-shirt in Durango that I wore through high school (and college), but I was old enough to sample dad's samples at the microbrews. But maybe it was middle school because I remember being poolside at our hotel and calculating the chances that I had with random girl A. That was a middle school mindsent, and a middle school mindset cannot appreciate Kansas. Or was that Arizona? Maybe I was in high school...but still had a middle school mindset.

It is the second shift on Day 1 and I am driving Defne's 1994 Ford pickup through Kansas with the windows down and I think I understand America.

It is the third shift on Day 1 and we are driving north around Denver towards Ft. Collins where we will spend the night at a hotel that allows pets with the sun setting behind the mountain range and I think I understand much of art history.

It is the first shift on Day 1 and I am driving Rachel's 2008 Honda Fit which she bought off the lot yesterday afternoon from a charming salesman who used to be a highway patrolman and has a niece in PT school. He doesn't bullshit us about the price or the trade-in. It's a hatchback: Rach has beamed over hatchbacks since I have known her. I am driving towards Kansas City, MO without cruise control because we are supposed to let the engine relax periodically. I am hoping that this zippy car has the stamina to make the 30 hour pilgrimage. With 5 cats in the back seat yelling in my ear, I am hoping I have the stamina to make the 30 hour pilgrimage. I wonder what the ramifications would be for removing a cat's larynx.

It is Sunday and we are finally moving towards San Francisco. Last Wednesday we drove from Chicago to St. Louis to pick up Rachel's new Honda Civic, which will arrive from the manufacturer by Friday at the latest. St. Louis is not on the way from Chicago to San Francisco unless there is severe flooding in southern Iowa. I enjoy returning to St. Louis more every time I return to St. Louis. Family, yes of course; but the trees. St. Louis doesn't have a lot of height to it. Not like Chicago's apartment filled skyline. In St. Louis, the trees are often the top of the civilized world. At least in the parts of St. Louis I frequent. I am missing a staged reading of a play I wrote for a company I adore in Chicago, but I will be able to attend the opening of a site-specific piece I wrote for a young company in St. Louis.

On Thursday, we take Defne (who is our roommate in SF if I neglected to mention it) to Blueberry to visit with old friends who prove to be very much the same as when we left a year ago. Time moves slowly in that bar if it moves at all. Delightful for us now that we are on the outside, but obviously frustrating for some of our friends who are tired of the stasis. Breaking stasis is difficult, especially when it pays well and the drinks are half off.

Friday comes and still no car. The manufacturer is in Ohio. If the car were coming from overseas, then the dealer who sold Rachel the car (Randy Borth, whom we have dealt with before and who is a straightshooter and an all around great guy...there are some lovely car dealers in this world, let the record show) would have been able to track every leg of the journey. But as the car is coming from Ohio, we are at the whim of the trucking union, who is apparently is not required or expected to communicate with the car dealers. We begin to panic because we wanted to leave Friday, Saturday at the latest, Sunday as a worst case scenario. I am driving the Fit through Wyoming (first shift Day 2) when Randy calls Rachel to tell her the Civic finally arrived.

I am not sure about Utah. Utah has exits off the highway that don't seem to go anywhere. You exit, the road bends, and then the concrete ends. Other exits lead to towns which appear to be merely a short series of trailers. Utah confuses me. Wyoming is beautiful, and it is interesting to me that the state lines are not as arbitrary as I imagined. Wyoming is marketable; Wyoming is a cigarette ad. Ten minutes into Utah, and you stop imagining cowboys and start wondering where people buy milk. You drive for an hour and a half at 80 mph on the same straight highway going between one mountain range and another, congratulating yourself for filling up your gas tank at the last station, listening to the Bible Station explain Revelations and Jezebel because it is the most interesting of three stations and because it couldn't hurt to have God on your side out here seeing as the wilderness seems to be God's thing. I am driving the truck again. It is not as comfortable or as fun as it was on Day 1.

Utah shifts into Nevada without much fuss. We stay in a small city ~100 miles outside of Reno where we get a roll of nickels with our hotel (motel?) room and are encouraged to eat at one of the 7 or 8 casinos on our block. We do. I win a dollar in nickels before losing them.

We get into San Francisco at 2pm on Day 3. Our keys don't work because they apparently fixed (changed) the locks, but luckily the third floor had burst a pipe over the weekend and workmen were around the building with keys and they let us in so that we can let our cats (little troopers) out of their crates. Earlier in the day, Linus had finally had enough and succeeded in expanding a small hole in the carrier he shared with Mabel into a hole large enough for him to jam his head through and subsequently shimmy his body out of. But they survived. We survived.

Tips for moving from the Midwest to California:

1) Burger King has the best vegetarian options of the fast food chains. They also have cheesy tots.

2) Gas is cheaper in Wyoming.

3) Go through Kansas. Skip most of Utah.

4) Drive an old pickup with bunk air conditioning.

5) You could do it two days if you had to...two really long days.