“I can always hear a freight train, baby, if I listen real hard.”

I need to travel, need to spread my wings and fly.  Or my tires.  I have been without a car for… ever, now?(1)  It’s been a while regardless and I grow so stir-crazy.  The few times that I do borrow Meredith‘s car to drive to work and back remind me how much I enjoy driving.  I love to turn the music up and find a nice stretch of pavement and just go.  I want to go.

I’ve lived in San Diego, CA for almost eight years now, and I haven’t seen as much of picturesque California as I’d like.  I’ve been to LA maybe five or six times, I’ve been to Anza-Borrego State Park once, I’ve been to Temecula twice, and I’ve been to Sacramento once.  That’s it.  Oh, and Tijuana a handful of times and Rosarito once.  I need to get out more.

San Francisco seems alluring, with its historic structures, characteristic Summer fog, and literary significance.  I want to stand outside the City Lights Bookstore in Kerouac Alley and feel the energy of the street beneath my feet, pushing me, inspiring me.  I want to look across the bay and see the gateway to the Pacific Theatre that our young men saw in the throes of WWII, hearts filled with apprehension and wonder at the spectacle and terror of it all.  I want to watch the birds circle on Telegraph Hill and think of my own wings spreading out around me.

I want to go.

I want to go back to LA on my own terms, see things at my own clip, and soak up all the glory and grit of the City of Angels on fire.  (A few months ago I landed in LA on a commuter flight on a late February night and the lights playing on the smog made the city look like the Entrance to Hell, which I’ve heard that the opinion of many is that it isn’t far from the truth.)  I want to eat street tacos and look at clothes that I can’t afford, read names on the pavement of people I don’t know, and smile in the faces of strangers who don’t care.

I want to go back to New York City.  I want to be its guest.  I want to do something of purpose, be a person of interest, find myself the guest of honor.  I want to go to Napa Valley, I want to see the Joshua Tree, I want to eat a fistful of snow from the top of Bear Mountain.

Honestly, I’d be content just to drive around Coronado Island for a few hours, looking for something to catch my eye.  I’d like to have a bean burrito for lunch in Mission Beach by Belmont Park, looking serenely out at the Pacific Ocean. 

I need to do something of substance.  I need to be more than I am.  I need to deserve the life that I desire.  And with that, I leave you now to troll the Internet for opportunities.(2)

(Oh, and I plan on getting a car within the next few weeks or month, so there will be a happy ending to this story.  Hopefully.)

(1) – My most recent car had a multitude of shortcomings: the speedometer didn’t work, the gas guage didn’t work, the windshield wipers didn’t work, the engine idled erratically, the windows wouldn’t roll down, the tape deck was stolen, the passenger door wouldn’t lock, the tires were bald, and the electrical system had a short in it somewhere so that I would have to disconnect the battery any time I parked the car for more than a few minutes lest it ground out and drain all the charge.  So even when I did have a car I didn’t get out much.

(2) – I just sent one of my one-act plays, “Going Through the Motions”, to a contest based out of New Orleans in honor of Tennessee Williams that responds in March, so cross your fingers for me.