Loomings of a California Spiritual Journey

Your first job before leaving on a geographical spiritual journey is to make sure you and the equipment are ready. But tonight as I prepare to leave, the car is out of gas. And I am rushing around the kitchen, making pizza. Thinking that I will eat some now and some tomorrow. And some when I get back. Clothes and equipment are spread all over my bed, with backpacks and travel cases. And I still have to go to the grocery store.

Call Me Ishmael

Spiritual journeys are often thought to be metaphysical, but I tend to make every physical journey I go on a spiritual journey. It was in Melville that I first read on this. The famous opening lines of Loomings, the first chapter of Moby Dick, are “Call me Ishmael,” but they are followed by a description of how going to sea is a way of settling Ishmael’s bad thoughts and regaining his sanity. As the book opens, Ishmael tells us “my hypos got the better of me … ” Thus he signs to sail on the doomed Pequod.

He did not, of course, realize that that was what he was doing. No one who starts a spiritual journey or any journey knows what may befall. As I met with friends in the last two days of school and declared my intention to set sail for California, land of dreams, over spring break, I was met with excitement but also the question “All by yourself? Why?”

An Idea of Home

Because my “hypos” have got the better of me? Because no one else was available? Scarlett has joined the Marines and they won’t let her off for long enough to do our usual Morro Bay trip. Or how about this: I have to solve some questions about where is home. Home has always been California, where I was born, as my father used to say, “In the shadow of Mount Diablo.” And California is where I grew up, unencumbered by a wondering about the world outside of the Golden State.

Now, in middle age, I find I cannot shake my memories of California. The land of golden light. But I am also aware that now my life is here, in Colorado. To continue to hold out connection to California, as I do, to claim it is my true spiritual home, is to weaken my ability to build here. I have come to another mountain, to the shadow of the Front Range of the Rockies.

Driving into the Sunset

And so I depart west, in the morning, on my spiritual journey. The sun sets in the west, and that is where I will drive.

I have decided to drive so I can take my bike, my guitar, my computers, backpack, books … no one is here to make the obvious comment “if you’re going away from it all, why are you taking it all with you?” But I make it for myself, and then continue packing.

Questions That Haunt Me

I might need these things on my spiritual journey. The bike could help clear my head, and I might need to play guitar, to remember the past with the songs we sang years ago. Hiking will remind me of childhood and the hikes I took with my father. And I might need books to read up on spirituality, yoga, and how to get around San Luis Obispo. During this search, using these tools, I hope to find answers for the questions that haunt me. What went wrong with my life plan? Did I make some critical error? Who am I now, and who do I want to be? And is that person that I want to be reachable?

What is the meaning of life?

As evening fell tonight I squatted in the semi darkness behind the Lexus, cinching up the bike carrier to the back deck of the car, thinking to myself that I have threaded these straps so many times, but this time I have to do it just so, because the journey is 1260 miles. To be driven over two days. My fingers are clumsy, the straps have to be tied to the trailer hitch just so or they will bounce out.

Every small task must be done with fidelity.

This is the first of the spiritual reflections of this journey. Take actions with fidelity.

I fill up the water bottles with Colorado water, the best water in the world, possibly. I won’t be drinking anything like it for a while, I know.

And more will be revealed.