Photography by John McCarthy
Editing by Victor Win

{faluvia peedlestein}

I awoke, cramped in the car, to the foggy blue light of morning and the smell of the Pacific. Sol was climbing back into the driver's seat after a short nap on top of all our luggage in the back seat. He made some dramatic squeals and grunts as we both tried to stretch out.

He packed the bowl full of salvia we'd bought in Missoula when we ran out of weed. I was barely awake but I took a hit. The smoke had a bitter licorice flavor, and in what must have been seconds I promptly forgot who I was. For a moment, completely present, unthinking, I reveled in the unfamiliar feeling of psychic weightlessness. As quickly as it overtook me, it began to fade. I realized my life circumstances--the road trip, the plans we'd made, the fact that we were finally in California--and I accepted it; I could do this, I was already doing this. I turned to Sol and he proceeded to look at me in awe, and said: "That stuff just made me feel like I was a Japanese man!" We laughed until it hurt.

Being on the road simplified everything for us. We had time to think, a lot of time, but really our only task was moving forward. We tried to accomplish this as adventurously as possible.

Sol was up and rummaging in the trunk, while I sat motionless in the passenger seat and stared at what we couldn't see in the dark a few hours before. The air was tinged grey with mist so thick you could caress it. Wind beaten cypress trees lined the cliffside, gnarled into disfigured shapes, leaning away from nature's violent hand. The sea beyond them made itself known in scent and sound only. I took a breath and tried to comprehend how I'd gotten here, to this moment. The parking lot was empty. It was about 6am, and after a fitful sleep and more salvia than I would ever go near again, my thoughts felt as dense and fragile as the fog floating around me. 

The sky was a blank sheet, but I thought of the deep, twinkling blanket of brilliance it had been the night before when we had stopped to check the leak in the back tire. Refilling periodically with a tiny compressor had kept us going since Seattle. When we decided to stop again, it was 3am in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to do but star-gaze while the compressor rattled and hummed in the vast black. I had tilted backwards as far as I could, mouth open, eyes wide to let the massive dome overhead capture me. I wasn't searching for it this time, but right where my eyes rested, to the left of the Big Dipper, a streak of light peeked back. I wished the best for us and hoped it would mean something. Alexandretta's psychedelic-soaked words from back in Seattle kept running through my mind, like the song of chanting monks we'd fallen asleep to in her attic room. She said, "There's a lot going on out there...in here...in there...out here..." 

And on that misty morning the Pacific crashed in front of us, and the lighthouse on the bluff beyond still spun its beacon faithfully. Sol refilled just to be safe. The tire finally reached 30 psi, and we were ready to begin again, identities relatively intact.