"You suddenly realize what a tremendous opportunity it is just to be alive. The potential."

And then—bam!—we lived in New York. And it only took me 40 years to get here.

I keep waiting for the giant wallop of realization, the smack on the rear end as the door to California hits me on my way out. But it's not like that. I've discovered that instead it's an incremental dawning, a gradual accumulation of signs and moments.

I got my New York driver's license, surrendering my California license in the process. I have no car, but I have a driver's license, on which I've given my permission to donate my organs and tissue and eyeballs in the event of my untimely death. (Realizing that my eyeballs would likely go to a New Yorker, the better to see the Empire State Building, was one tiny wallop of realization.)

I got my first piece of direct mail containing return-address labels in my name paired with my New York address—and considered donating money to the cause just because they were the first. Yes, I'm that kind of idiot.

I give directions to inquiring strangers on a regular basis, and have only once sent someone 90 degrees in the wrong direction.

I launch into conversation with total strangers, as I did today on the subway when I found a car full of people dressed in plastic bags. It was the day of the New York City Half-Marathon, explained the woman on my right, who was proud to have completed it in under 10 minutes per mile.

I group my errands not by which side of the street the stores are on or by how many left turns I can avoid, but by the walking route I'll take to get to them. The other day I had a nice straight-line trajectory from the neighborhood office store to the FedEx office to the Jefferson Market library, back to Three Lives bookstore and home. It was a sunny day and I smiled the whole way.

I'm convinced I love snow and slush as much as sun and blue skies. I do not make myself popular when I express this opinion—admittedly formed after only half a winter on the east coast. But where else can you enjoy scenes like this:

















And pat yourself on the back for having survived this:






















And then you see things like this in a sidewalk planter, which give you a whole new appreciation for spring and new life and starting afresh and hope and change and you feel like the first person who's ever witnessed the birth of a season:






















This morning The Child, home on spring break, said in the midst of a lovely 56-degree day, "I wish I could transport my L.A. friends here and say, 'So, what do you think of the weather?' And when they say, 'Brr, it's cold,' I can say, 'Yeah, no, not really.' "

I promise I'll never become a smug East Coaster who glows with moral superiority because her winters are tougher. I'll probably never call myself a New Yorker, because I haven't earned the title. I'm still an L.A. girl at heart—one who goes to the water for relief and renewal, and who feels calmed by the sun setting over the place where a body of water meets the land, whether it's over the Pacific Ocean...

















...or over the Hudson River.

















But I'm mighty happy to be here.

* Title courtesy Katharine Hepburn, speaking of her film The Corn Is Green, in her autobiography, Me.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

"Orphaned again!" my dad cried, as My Beloved and I prepared to leave my parents' home for our flight back to New York. My parents have watched a lot of kids (6) and grandkids (13) and great-grandkids (5) come and go from this house, while they stand on the front porch and wave goodbye. They prefer the hellos to the goodbyes.

We'd been staying with my parents for nearly two weeks, ever since escrow closed on my L.A. condo and we'd moved out—watching the moving truck drive away...






















...and vacuuming and scrubbing the now-empty space.

















I leaned on the third-floor railing and cried for a minute. Stan patted my back. Then we laid out our keys on the kitchen counter, gathered our backpacks and our bottles of 409 and Windex, and closed the door behind us. Goodbye, house.

The two weeks at my parents' house were a gift. Yes, it was a little weird staying in the bedroom I'd grown up in, surrounded by too many pictures of myself in my hideous adolescent state. But the come-full-circle effect was soothing in a way I hadn't expected. I started my L.A. life in this house, and I left my L.A. life in this house. In fact, I literally left my L.A. life in this house, since my mom encouraged us to fill up a drawer with our socks and t-shirts so we'd have them there for our next visit which would be VERY SOON, she suggested.

Stan and I got up early each day and sat in the backyard reading the paper, while the cat put on his Fearless Hunter costume and stalked grasshoppers.






















I had the chance to appreciate the stillness and the rustle of leaves and the changing light.

















We drove around town in the car we'd sold to my niece and borrowed back from her, now with her bright-yellow graduation tassel swinging from the rear-view mirror. I jammed my camera phone with an L.A. mosaic—from the ridiculous...






















...to the sublime.

















We scheduled as many goodbye lunches and dinners with friends and family as we could, and I always said the same thing: "We'll be back often. We'll just be traveling from east to west to east, instead of from west to east to west." But I discovered we couldn't stop people from treating this like a mournful farewell.

Between outings, we spent mornings at the breakfast table and evenings at the dinner table with my mom and dad, tucking ourselves in among the routines they've formed over 61 and a half years of marriage. I appreciated all over again my mom's unassuming strength, my dad's quick wit, the old Bob and Ray jokes retold with fresh appreciation, the Sinatra CDs playing in the background, the comfortable potato face of Jim Lehrer each night on the big TV, the sound of my mom's voice reading crossword puzzle clues to my dad, now legally blind with macular degeneration. Like a Waltons family of four, we'd bid each other good night and take up our stations in bedrooms down the creaky hallway.

And then, last Monday morning, it was time to go—time to gather our bags and the giant sheep-cat, and head east toward home.

(To be continued...)

"Has your mind taken hold again, dear Professor?"

I hope you'll excuse my long absence. I've been having a Jason Bourne moment.

For those of you who haven't enjoyed multiple viewings of The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum like The Child and I have: At the beginning of The Bourne Identity, Matt Damon is found floating in the ocean with gunshots in his back; he has no idea who he is or how he got there, or why people seem to be coming after him with nefarious intent. Turns out he's a highly trained CIA assassin, but he doesn't know that. He just knows that no matter what country he's in or what life-threatening situation presents itself, he can miraculously speak the language and instinctively break a guy's neck in less time than it takes to say, "Who am I? Where am I?"

My Bourne Identity Crisis is less deadly, more domestic. Still, a little unsettling.

I'm back in Los Angeles again, this time to close escrow on my condo, sell everything I own (except my baking dishes and my books; too many books), pack everything in boxes and finish—really, I mean it this time—the move to New York.

At least, my body's back in L.A.; my mind is apparently flying in on the redeye. I get in the car and my body knows how and where to drive, but my brain is going, "Wait, what?"

We arrived at LAX on a weekday morning, and took the #6 Culver City bus up Sepulveda toward home. I watched the city go by out the window. The Citibank (Didn't that used to be called something else? What the heck was it?), the Trader Joe's, Dinah's Family Restaurant. It all felt familiar—my body knew enough to relax, sensing we'd be on this bus for a while—and it was completely strange, too. (The strangeness amplified when the bus stopped outside a mental clinic and a woman about my age got on, her hand clamped over her own mouth. She sat in the front of the bus and rocked a little, emitting stifled screams from behind her hand.)

We walked in to an oddly familiar foreign apartment, everything in a realtor-approved state of fake perfection. What is this place, and why do I know where they keep the extra rolls of toilet paper?

Since then, we've been going through the appropriate motions: selling, packing, boxing. A lone desk chair bobs sadly on an ocean of blank carpet. The desk is gone, though; carted off by another in a new series of Craigslisters. The sound of screeching packing tape travels around the apartment—now it's coming from the walk-in closet! now from the kitchen! A molehill of taped, labeled cardboard boxes grows into a mountain in The Child's former bedroom.

It's weird. What can I say? Qu'est-ce que je peux dire? Wait, what?

And it's exciting, too, of course. I'm developing a new identity. Someone who can fly in from New York, be dropped down in the middle of Los Angeles and instinctively find her way around. And, of course, miraculously speak the language. Sorry I'm late, I was trying to avoid the 405, so I took the 134 to the 101 and got off at Coldwater and came over the canyon, which was fine till I got to Santa Monica, so I thought Olympic would be better, but...

Try that, Jason.

* * * * *

Title courtesy Tracy Lord (Katharine Hepburn, of course) in The Philadelphia Story, screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart, based on the play by Philip Barry.

Olly, Olly Oxen Free

One of the great surprises of starting this blog was discovering the world of support and fellowship that existed "out there"—though fellowship is an unfortunate word, since my blog world is primarily populated by women. Articulate, funny, self-deprecating, generous, open-hearted women. From the charming and poetic Miss Whistle, who inspired me to start this blog, to the witty and fashion-savvy (not fashion-slavish) That's Not My Age, whose acquaintance I made just yesterday, these women have included me in a community that expands infinitely outward yet remains as warm as a campfire circle. (I'd also like to thank my muse, Katharine Hepburn, whose name always manages to catch people's eye.)

Yesterday, the Finnish goddess Helena Halme, who tells the romantic story of how she came to marry her Englishman and live in that country for now more than 20 years, "tagged" me in a sort of blog round-robin. When tagged, you're supposed to reveal 10 things about yourself then pass the baton to seven others whose blogs you admire. As Helena suggests, this is a good news/bad news thing: an honor to be listed, a challenge to reveal. Then I decided this blog is nothing if not a great wallowing in self-revelation, so what the hell? Fortunately, Helena and others before her have already played fast and loose with the "10" part of the deal, so I won't be struck dead if I come up short. Here goes.

1. My original life's dream was to be an actress. It was a high school dream, I admit, but passionate and real—until my un-Hepburn insecurities took over and I switched to my default setting: a college English major and a career spent behind a typewriter and a computer screen. Not that there's anything wrong with that! Unless you're doing it out of fear and retreat, rather than by choice. So my midlife efforts at Hepburnization are, in part, an attempt to reconnect with the teenager who never felt happier or bolder than when on stage playing Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker or Hermia in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Adriana in A Comedy of Errors.

2. I'm only now beginning to overcome Imposter Syndrome when walking the streets of New York. For the first nine years I visited New York, I was convinced that every person I passed on the sidewalk was looking at me and saying, "She's obviously not from here." Or worse: "She's obviously from California." I dodged and wove in the face of crowds. I was way too polite. I gave everyone else the right of way. And my clothes! Every season there seemed to be some mutually agreed-upon uniform—ballet flats or tight jeans tucked into boots or mini skirts with black tights—and I was never wearing it. Now for the first time I've either gotten with the program (thank you, Michele Hush, for the advice on buying a down coat), or I've decided I don't give a flying...whatever. Which would make me a true New Yorker.

3. I love water towers on the tops of buildings, trash cans on every corner, and ancient diners with $1 cups of coffee. I must look like a lunatic these days, because I'm smiling all the time as I tread the dirty, dog-poop-smeared, ice-encrusted streets of this city. I'm in my honeymoon phase, where I love everything about it. Subfreezing temperatures? Invigorating! Taxis honking? Musical! That razor-sharp wind off the Hudson? Um, that sucks.

4. I can be a spoiled princess baby. After I made my 47th elevator trip from the sixth floor to the basement while trying to do two loads of laundry with competition from five floors' worth of dirty underwear and dryers that left everything delightfully moist after an hour's worth of creaking and tumbling, I sniped to Stan, "We really have to install a washer-dryer in this apartment." He blinked at me. "I've never had a problem with it," he said. Then he added the magic words, "So I'll do all the laundry."

5. I'm more attached to my car than I admit out loud. My car's name is Dusty. For obvious reasons. She's a blue, only slighted dented 1999 Honda Civic. I resented her just the tiniest bit when I got her, because she has an automatic transmission and I really prefer a stick. But she carried us across the entire country without incident, then took me and The Child safely through a winter weather advisory, including icy interstates and swirling snow flurries, as I drove The Child to her New England college last weekend.

















I'm selling my trusty steed on Saturday. And while I'll be happy to be liberated from insurance payments and gas expenses and repair costs, I'll be a little sad, too. Goodbye, Dusty.

















6. I get testy with New Yorkers who engage in clichés about Los Angeles. We once had dinner with good friends of my Beloved, on whom I was really hoping to make a good first impression. The wife was chic and elegant. "Do you like living in Los Angeles?" she asked with velvety incredulity. I nearly bit my tongue off. "It's my home," I ended up saying. Lame. Say what you will about L.A.—traffic yes; plastic surgery, yes; sprawl, yes; 'Have a good one,' yes; the weather, yes—it's as rich and astonishing, as spectacular and as vile as anywhere on earth. I like that about a city.

7. I'm still making it up as I go along. Whether it's parenting or relationships or my so-called career, I basically have no idea what the heck I'm doing. I'm hoping that good intentions and sincerity make up the difference.

Okay, kids, that's all I got. At least there's a certain symmetry: 7 revelations, 7 blog recommendations. (Limiting the following list to 7 is much harder than coming up with 7 revelations; I've included blogs that I believe have not already been tagged elsewhere.) And I'd like to state for the record that, according to my made-up rules of the game, you 7 have no obligation whatsoever to play along. I just love what you're doing and wanted to say so in public. Herewith, in alphabetical order:

A Bag of Chips: Yes, she's my niece and no, I don't consider that cheating. She's creative, thoughtful and funny as hell. She's a photographer, scrapbooker, baker, and mom to three gorgeous live-wire children. And she made me a spectacular quilt for Christmas (thank you, Tina!), which you can see when you check out her blog. I especially recommend "Tina and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day."

Divinipotent Daily: So smart. So well-spoken. So literate. Every post broadens my intellectual horizons—in a readable, down-to-earth way. Side benefits: good quotes you've never heard before and great poetry. I especially recommend "Goodbye and Good Riddance, 2009."

Miss Whistle: She radiates positive energy, writes with heart and brains, and may be the most naturally generous person I've ever met. She recently lost her beloved father-in-law, and wrote exquisite pieces throughout the experience that conveyed simultaneously the incomparable loss and the enormous pleasure of his well-lived life. I especially recommend "Epiphany."

My Red Boa: I hope that I won't mortify my dear friend Marsha by mentioning her blog, which features beautifully rendered pieces about her childhood and young adulthood—nostalgic with a sly wit. I hope that she has recovered enough from her recent spill to think about sharing more of her stories. I especially recommend "Esmeralda and Me and the DMV."

Simmer Till Done: Luscious food, lustworthy photography, and best of all, writing that combines phenomenal intelligence with sharply honed humor—I ask you: What's not to love? Every post makes me want to cook, and as Jack Nicholson said in As Good As It Gets, "to be a better [hu]man." I especially recommend "You Scrape the Bowl Like a Housewife."

So Lovely: Heartfelt, unpretentious, and truly democratic in her interests, the pseudonymous Charlie Circus offers a cornucopia of topics and musings on her eclectic blog. She gave me a post's worth of Stuff to Think About in the piece I especially recommend, "A Longish One But Bear With Me..."

I Must See the Dhobey: Here's a blogger who almost certainly will not participate in this little tagging game: She's busy blogging from Burma in 1907. In fact, the fascinating posts are actually excerpts from letters written by the blogger's grandmother, whose surgeon husband was superintendent of the jail in Rangoon, Burma.

Laura Lansing Sleeps Here: End of the Road Trip

We're here. Safe in the New York loft looking at the view through the window while the New Year's Day Twilight Zone marathon plays on TV. All of the boxes and backpacks and bags of snacks have been unloaded from the car, which is parked two blocks away (a Manhattan success story).

We keep saying, "We're home!" and "We're back!" and "We did it!" and "My back hurts!" Yet it's strange, too, to realize that we're finished traveling.

We went from west to east in 7 days, and I feel like I gathered up the entire countryside as we went along and brought it with me, like rolling up a ball of yarn. I have this silent slideshow playing in my head all the time: red New Mexico plateaus, rolling Texas plains, bare-branched Tennessee woods, split-rail fences undulating over snowy Virginia pastures. We may be in the middle of New York now, but I'm still seeing Arkansas farmland and some jet-black grazing cows out of the corner of my eye.

We left Knoxville, Tennessee yesterday morning in a foggy rain—amazingly, the first "weather" we had to deal with on the entire trip.






















Somehow, even though we were making this trip in the middle of winter, and despite Midwest and East Coast blizzards in the days before we left Los Angeles (which caused no small amount of fretting on my mother's part), we managed to stay ahead of or behind the snow all the way across the country. Each day as we left our motel, I'd check the weather app on my iPhone, and see that the city we were leaving was due for snow...tomorrow. And we'd scoot out of town in the sunshine.

It rained all the way up and out of Tennessee and into Virginia, which still wore the hand-me-downs of the giant snowstorm that hit just before Christmas.

















Yet the highway was perfectly clear.

We drove all day and, as we did every day of the trip, arrived at our destination after dark. Before we left L.A., I'd had idealistic visions of hitting the road every day by 8 a.m., getting in our 7 hours of driving and arriving by mid-afternoon with plenty of daylight left. Ixnay on all counts.

We routinely drove out of the motel parking lot between 9 and 10 in the morning. Those 7 hours of driving turned into 9 when you included stops for gas and food and bathroom breaks and just plain sanity. And we never landed anywhere with even a sliver of sunshine remaining. Fortunately, we had the sense to always book a hotel room the night before, so we were never stumbling around looking for lodgings in the dark (a potential divorce issue even when you're not married).

But yesterday was even better, since we were staying with my cousin and her family in Springfield, Virginia, and we arrived to a warmly lighted house and a kitchen filled with the aromas of my cousin's scallop bisque, fresh bread and coffee cake that had just come out of the oven. I announced that we were moving in permanently. She took it well.

New Year's Eve notwithstanding, we were asleep by 11 p.m.—with a brief wake-up call at midnight when the neighbors set off fireworks.

And at 1:00 this afternoon we were back in the car for the last leg of the journey, carrying fresh supplies: half a homemade vegetable lasagna, peppermint brownies (with two layers of frosting) and chocolate-oatmeal-peanut butter cookies. No, she's MY cousin, and you can't have her.

On this day, finally, we knew we were in the east. For one thing, after six days of spending eight hours driving across a single state, today we were in five states in four hours: Virginia-Maryland-Delaware-New Jersey-New York. For another, after six days of driving for free across more than 2,000 miles, today we got gouged by tolls every 27 minutes. $2, $5, $4, $5, $8.70 and $8. Extortion! Graft! Waste, fraud and abuse! Welcome to New Jersey!


















But then the magic happened. We went to light speed as we entered the Holland Tunnel...






















...and when we came out the other side, I was reliving the moment nine years ago when I first popped out of that tunnel, riding in the back seat of a taxi after a red-eye flight from L.A. to visit my new beau, who met me in the lobby of his Greenwich Village apartment building looking sleepy and rumpled.

Now here we were, my beau and I, in my little car with California license plates, making our way up that same Hudson Street to that same former factory building in Greenwich Village we'll call home together.

We made it.

* * *

A playlist postscript:

For some reason, I had a hard time thinking of songs about Knoxville, Bristol, Staunton, Front Royal, Silver Spring, Wilmington, Trenton or Metuchen, but my favorite New York bard, Paul Simon, wrote the song that brought us home today:

America (Simon and Garfunkel)
"Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike/They've all come to look for America."

Laura Lansing Slept Around: Road Trip, Days 4 and 5

We woke up this morning in Memphis, had lunch in Nashville, and tonight are sleeping in Knoxville. I love saying that.

I've never been to the south before, so there was a little thrill in crossing the state line from Oklahoma into Arkansas yesterday—even if we drove straight across with almost no stops and without even taking a picture.

My I-love-the-world glow faded some in the cold icy light of an Oklahoma City morning, as we slid out of the motel parking lot after not enough sleep and a heater that noisily pumped hot air into the room all night long. Yesterday's travel became a Point A to Point B mission—Oklahoma City to Memphis—and we accomplished it without a lot of touristic fanfare.

But our spirits lifted as we crossed the Mississippi River toward the lights of Memphis. I'd booked us into a Holiday Inn smack downtown, two blocks from Beale Street, and even though we were too tired and it was too cold to do much adventuring, we were both happy to be there. And when we walked out the front door and I saw this...

...I couldn't help myself. I squealed.

"Ducks!"

"What ducks?" asked Stan.

"Isn't this the place with the ducks?"

"What are you talking about?"

I started to doubt myself. And then I saw the bronze duck webprints in the sidewalk outside the Peabody hotel.

Indeed, it was the home of the famous Peabody ducks, which have swum in the hotel fountain since the 1930s (not the same ducks), and which are marched with red-carpet formality and John Philip Sousa accompaniment from their rooftop home into the elevator and down to the lobby fountain at 11 each morning. At 5 each evening, the ritual repeats in reverse. We'd missed the march, but paid a visit to them on the roof.

















Afterwards we walked down to Beale Street, and were sad to discover that the birthplace of the blues is now a Disneyfied theme park—a deserted one in the dead of winter. Horse-drawn Cinderella-style carriages decorated with Christmas lights trolled the streets offering rides. Barkers tried to lure the few shivering tourists into their clubs and restaurants, where bad blues covers blared through the windows. We passed.

Today we drove from western Tennessee to eastern Tennessee, with a midmorning stop at Loretta Lynn's Kitchen in Hurricane Mills. I bought Loretta's blackberry preserves, strawberry jam and moonshine jelly, and trotted out for Stan my favorite Loretta Lynn Fun Fact: She became a grandmother at the age of 29.

At lunchtime, we made our way through downtown Nashville to Hog Heaven, a barbecue place we'd read about in the tour book, which turned out to be a tiny shack with one outdoor counter and no indoor seating. Undeterred, we bought our food (pulled pork for me, with turnip greens and blackeyed peas; greens, peas and barbecued beans for my Beloved) and sat in the car next to a McDonald's to eat it. Will the glamour never end?

"California!" said Drew, the young musician working the counter at Hog Heaven. "What the hey-hey are you doing all the way down here?"

It's a question we've heard in various forms along the way, and I get a charge out of saying, "We're moving from L.A. to New York," which always gets a cluck of admiration.

Of course there are downsides to traveling cross-country on a deadline, and today demonstrated the great big one: We saw nothing of Nashville, one of the great American cities. Not that I regret for a minute doing this drive rather than taking yet another plane trip, but it becomes obvious that this is a note-taking trip, not a sight-seeing one. And that we have to return.

That's okay with me.

* * *

Before I was so rudely interrupted by a non-working Internet connection at the Holiday Inn in Memphis (otherwise a great old hotel—and an excellent mattress), I put together a playlist of songs to commemorate our trip through Day 4, which ended in downtown Memphis.

Starting out
On the Road Again (Willie Nelson)
Every time we take a driving trip we sing this as soon as we get on the highway. This usually consists of: "On the road again, da da da da da da da da da..something something something...and I can't wait to get on the road again." Unfortunately, most of the versions I can find on the internet are of live performances with dubious Willie quality, so I haven't provided a link to the song.

Los Angeles, I'm Yours (The Decemberists)

Route 66 (Bobby Troup)
For obvious reasons. I adored the Depeche Mode version in the 1980s, but it's been replaced by a pesky remix with a too-insistent guitar line, so I'm also providing a link to the Rolling Stones version of the 1960s. And may I just add a personal tribute to Bobby Troup, whom I, as a kid, knew only from the 1970s TV show "Emergency!", in which he starred as an ER doctor and his wife Julie London co-starred as a nurse. And Randolph Mantooth starred as a paramedic. Why do I remember this?

Winslow, Arizona
Take It Easy (The Eagles)
POSTSCRIPT: After all these years, I just learned from my friend Carolyn that Take It Easy was co-written by Jackson Browne, and I would herewith like to give him the appropriate credit. (And credit to Carolyn, as well.) Thank you both!

Albuquerque, New Mexico
Point Me in the Direction of Albuquerque (The Partridge Family)
Hey, I didn't say I was creating a list of brilliant music by genius songwriters. I watched "The Partridge Family" faithfully when I was between the ages of 9 and 14, so this is like a free-association exercise for me. You say "Albuquerque," I say, "Point me in the direction of."

Tucumcari, New Mexico
Willin' (Little Feat, as covered by Linda Ronstadt)

Santa Rosa, New Mexico
Santa Rosa (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band)
A little gift to and from My Beloved, who often drew his comic strip on deadline while listening to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

Amarillo, Texas
Cadillac Ranch (Bruce Springsteen)

Okemah, Oklahoma—home of Woody Guthrie
Oklahoma Hills (Woody Guthrie)
As sung by Johnny Cash and Flip Wilson!

Muskogee, Oklahoma
Okie from Muskogee (Merle Haggard)
As sung by Haggard and Willie Nelson. I have to admit I didn't know anything about this time-warp song except the title, and was kind of dazzled to watch an old 1968 video of Haggard singing "We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee/We don't take our trips on LSD/We don't burn our draft cards down on Main Street...". Wow. But I did enjoy the irony of watching Willie Nelson join Haggard for a duet on this ode to all-American purity. Note that Nelson joins in after the marijuana line...

Clarksville, Arkansas
Last Train to Clarksville (The Monkees)
Okay, I have no idea if this is the Clarksville mentioned in the song. I have no idea if the completely fake Monkees thought of any real-world Clarksville at all. In fact, Clarksville, Arkansas probably doesn't even have trains. But you say "Clarksville," I say...etcetera.

Memphis, Tennessee
I've Been to Memphis (Lyle Lovett)
I love Lyle.

And She Slept Here, Too: Road Trip, Day 3

The last time we drove across the continent, from east to west in the summer of 2002, I ended up with ooey-gooey feelings of love for the whole country. Maybe all those peanut butter sandwiches on Wonder bread gummed up my brain, but I swear I loved every mile of highway as we threaded our way from New York through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois... Even the places routinely deemed boring by East and West coasters—Iowa, say, or Nebraska; "So flat!" "Nothing but cornfields!"—struck me as exquisite in their own right.

And damn if I didn't find myself falling right back in love again today as we drove through Texas and Oklahoma. And I defy you to round up 10 people who will extol the beauty of the Texas panhandle.

There's just something about how the landscape of one state eases into the topography of the next—the red plateaus of New Mexico flattening into harshly beautiful Texan ranchland—that makes me happy, giving me a touchy-feely sense of the interconnectedness of everything, while appreciating each state's distinct sense of place.

Very distinct.

Where else but Texas, for instance, would a quirky millionaire decide to plant 10 Cadillacs nose-down in the middle of a field just west of Amarillo? Or to let them become a community art project, so that the spray-painted Cadillacs change color and design hourly?























The Cadillac Ranch we went looking for (in fact, we missed it on our first pass and had to double-back from Amarillo to find it). But its little buddy, the 5-car VW ranch down the road in Conway was one we happened on by accident while looking for a restroom.

















Maybe it's because the land is so flat there in the panhandle, but the folks in Texas just can't help sticking things in the ground that stand up tall for all to see. Like the "Biggest Cross in the Western Hemisphere," in the town of Groom.






















But as we crossed into Oklahoma, I had the sense of the sky coming down to meet the earth. It was a great big swoopy sky, and the cars on the highway with their headlights illuminated looked like tiny shooting stars streaking through the Oklahoma galaxy.






[photo by my Beloved]






Over dinner at the historic Cattlemen's Cafe in Oklahoma City's Stockyard City district (where I had a tiny twinge of guilt over tucking into one of the cousins of the fuzzy-faced moo-cows we'd driven past all afternoon), we talked to our young waiter about life in and out of Oklahoma. He's a native, but has lived in Los Angeles twice and hopes to get back there again "so I can play golf all day." He's also been to New York, and loved it. He'd happily go back there, too.

"We're here in Oklahoma," he said. "You want to go one place or the other."

As I looked at him, I thought of friends in L.A. and New York who would have swiftly agreed with him. But I found myself wanting to raise a little defense for his home state. And I thought, how odd is that?

My Beloved says of driving across the country, "You can drive east, into the country's past, or you can drive west, into the country's future."

To me, it's all a present.