It's All In A Word

Drove from the Valley to Venice Beach yesterday morning and avoided using a single freeway. I am what you might call, surface road girl! I don't mind the freeways, honestly. I mean, yeah, they're super congested and it's a total drag sometimes, but I've found that I'm pretty comfortable on them after all. Confusing numbers, breakneck speeds, winding roadways, and all. I just like the surface roads. I feel more connected to the city or something. LA is s...p...r...a...w...l...i...n...g, so knowing which neighborhood is where and how to navigate through them to get to wherever you need to be is, well, kind of essential.

Yesterday's drive was particularly nice though. Most of my time was spent on the really beautiful section of Topanga Canyon Boulevard that winds, and I mean winds, through that gorgeous canyon and bottoms out right smack dab into the Pacific Ocean. Honestly, you exit the canyon and the ocean, in all its glory, is quite suddenly twenty feet in front of you. It's a stunningly abrupt and stunningly gorgeous moment. Hang a right, and you're headed for Malibu and all points north. I was headed south through Pacific Palisades, home to what has to be the most expensive trailer park known to man-kind, then Santa Monica, and finally into Venice. Had coffee with a new friend and lunch with an old one, and then drove back exactly the way I had gotten there just so I could enjoy that canyon one more time and take some photos.

I was so taken with the Topanga landscape that I decided a hike there was exactly what I needed today. Fresh air, long walk, clear my head. Or more precisely, get out of my head. This year, I've had a sort of 'meditation word' I guess is the best phrase for it, "unfolding". Simply a word I've been repeating to myself to keep all the madness and changes in perspective. Helps me to remember all things are fluid and evolving, nothing is certain. This past week and a half though, my meditation word had morphed, much to my dismay, into something much less affirmative, "unraveling". I had seemingly lost my badass mojo. There were a couple of events that started the spool spinning of course, but really it's been mostly just me, spending too much time in my head. And not writing about it! I've felt a sort of responsibility to keep, what I had come to be afraid was an illusion, going. Not to admit in writing that I was feeling anxious and unsettled and frankly, sad. It's amazing what a little fresh air, a long walk, and a chat with a friend can do. "Think" with your heart, my friends. It's a much more accurate tool than the computer in your skull.*


*With thanks to my always insightful and almost always calm friend.