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As I drove over the roads that led me to the workshop the next day, my tires were hugging the curve of the road underneath an openness of sea, sky, and landscape that was a broken-open somewhere between the beautifully poignant that fills us up, and the achingly small that leaves us feeling like we are entirely only this very moment.

My body became the landscape, tires and torso hugging the road. Pawing our way through. Spreading, sprawling, breathing. And it was as if I wanted to wrap my arms around the earth, an embrace that would reach from east coast to west. Holding everyone I missed and all those I knew and longed for, in one easy enrapture.

I think I had taken Boston with me. The rush, the race, the questioning my place while my body fatigued and Spirit begged for me to slow down the pace. How my plans and arrangements had spilled late into the evening before, before my day of departure. Trying to find a place to stay, a location to land. While the images of cabins and cliffs, beach and open air played out in my mind.

The duality between the imaged and the now winding curving roads and tall redwood trees offering up enough space for the desire of the cool air to draw forth from me the dormant pieces of womanhood standing tall, proud, independent. Sturdy and strong, while still subtle and sensual. The parts of the pull inside, the wild and contoured in a dance, longing to still know themselves in both the savage spaces and the more civilized. Driving on roads with a vista of mountains, valley and open air, in a responsible rented Subaru at 11:15 am with a glowing red check engine light still lit up on the dashboard. The one that had delayed my departure by an hour. Still holding on.

How it morphed into a borrowed black Mercedes convertible on the open road of Highway 1 at 8:28pm with solitude my companion instead of loneliness, alongside a wanting to not be worried what this kind of car meant about me. And still loneliness wasn’t pushed aside, but held next to me in the passenger seat, in a way that recognized the longing for my partner, the parts of him I knew would explore this way too. Between worlds. And not be afraid of what it would mean.

That way our womanhood is enough in that spacious and relieved reassurance with which one moves through the world when you know you are each others without force, effort, or holding.

My bones were saying Carmel, as if I had something of myself to retrieve from here. Something for Her to teach me. The way her fog rests low and soft in the morning, retreating and parting way for the strength of midday sun. Before the ocean blows the fog back in around dusk, with generous hands and gentle lips.

And I don’t know but maybe it isn’t that we only get one shot in life, but opportunities to explore and get to know ourselves over and over and over again.