Miles to go before I sleep

I had 382 miles to make peace with LA last night.

At 5:30, I sat in Berkeley on the corner of Telegraph and Haste, watching the sky squeeze out the last of the light and the last of the rain for the day, and I had no desire to make the six-hour drive south on dark, wet roads. I had offers for two dinners, one movie, three beds to sleep in, and even the pair of guest pajamas at Phil and James' place so I wouldn't have to unpack to stay the night. And I didn't have anywhere I had to be today in Pasadena. I kept trying to talk myself into staying, but I kept pointing my car south. I even pulled over on MLK and sat with my car running for 10 more minutes, trying to will myself to turn around and stay the night. But stronger than all my reasons for staying was the inescapable urge to wake up in LA today, even if I had to drive all night to get here.

To use a totally non-dinner-table analogy, revisiting the past is a bit like poking at a wound. If you pick at it too much while it's still fresh, it takes a lot longer for new skin to grow in its place. Once you've got a scar, you can stay there longer. In a little while, further through transition, I'll be able to go back to Seattle and Berkeley and appreciate each for what it is, but this time I was spending too much energy appreciating them for what LA isn't. Four months into starting over, staying another night in fantasyland (which is what each place was, considering half the people I spent time with don't even live in those places anymore) was starting to feel masochistic. Or maybe it's less dramatic than that -- maybe revisiting the past is more like baking cookies... the oven is a necessary place to be but when the timer goes off, ding! Stay any longer and you'll burn on the bottom and get dried out and crumbly. Either way, it was time to hit the road.

I-5 ended up being closed in two places, and the drive took nine hours. I rolled in around 3am and caffeine kept me up until 5. But I woke up at lunchtime today a little more at peace with LA, having drawn up a tiny truce with everything Berkeley is/was and isn't/wasn't, and with a new appreciation for the scars that cut across the landscape of my arms, legs, and hands, reminding me not to poke too much right now.