Well, here we are in 2026. I find myself gathering my feelings and making them thoughts as the big change I’ve set myself up for for this first quarter of the year starts to unfold. These words and photos bridge the weirdness of my own way of how I look at the turn of solstice as the new year. This is me landing as the days start to grow longer towards spring renewal with a complete disregard for the Gregorian Calendar.
Before I put myself in the car and got on the road, I had some semblance of the typical winter “bug” that goes around every year. I caught a more severe one from some kid in the Phoenix airport on the way back from Baltimore last year. This year, I had spent one of my few non-hibernation nights out with co-workers post the office Christmas Party. It wasn’t COVID, nor whatever multiple varieties of Flu or RSV that are going around. It lingered for days as a sore throat, escalating into a bit of malaise of congestion. Since the theme of this time of the year is rest and release for me anyways, I just sat to see what energy preservation, tea, lots of tea, airborne, eucalyptus baths and the sort would do for healing.
One byproduct of sitting still, especially post at least one for sure COVID infection, is anything viral always risks me having such immune dysregulation that my Gout will flare up as my body tries to ward off viruses and bacteria. The more I rested, and the viral symptoms waned as solstice approached, the more joint paint radiated first from my ankles, to the random joints in my feet, threatening to take over my hands. Counter to my seasonal and typical logic, I told myself keep moving. I knew to a degree the dysregulation was also a consequence of my emotional state as well.
If you know me personally, you’ll know that I was actually hoping to be in Philadelphia already by Christmas Day 2025. Pragmatically and esoterically (hey, you can’t know I used to edit Chani Nicholas’s work and think I’m not gonna look up astrological transits to make a decision) it wasn’t time yet. My foolish vision board for the move was Car (I wanted another Corvair, we’ve got that handled) Job (still currently in my Bay Area based one. I’m submitting and interviewing for work that’ll be possible from Philadelphia) House (some in my budget are bookmarked) then (snicker if you want) boyfriend to husband. That’s the most hilarious of them all, yet I’m inspired again by my yearly re-watch of Bell, Book and Candle on Christmas Eve.
As I sat and the cold or whatever it was started to fade, and my energy returned, there was an element I was feeling to push through the pain. Like most Non Profit zombies in the collapse of American Empire, I have the two weeks around Christmas and New Years off. I had intended, at bare minimum, to gas up Gracie with the premium she craved and at least do a day trip somewhere during that time off. As I pay a see-ya-later-maybe-never to California, I had plotted my top 5 favorite places in the state. When I first got Gracie, I went to one (the Sacramento River Delta) and two posts back, I wrote about the tail end of that deeply emotional trek to San Luis Obispo County.
During that trip, Gracie started developing an exhaust leak that hit full bore by early December. Some had told me ride it out until the muffler fell off. Given that non gasoline heater Corvair heaters rely on engine heat exchange that pulls from the engine compartment, Gracie being my only car right now, and having to drive her on some chilly winter days, I couldn’t go out in the most glamorous asphyxiation situation possible for me. Each time I take the dear ride into a non-Corvair specialist so far, I’m surprised at how much people love stepping up to a challenge on working on something non-typical. So $500 later, I had a burbling exhaust note that Ty said purred. Purr indeed.
All of my other favored top 5 locales in California are all points north: Bodega Bay, Point Arena to Fort Bragg. Ukiah, Willits, and my childhood Catskills for Colored folks of California: Clear Lake. Initially on Christmas Eve I just booked a few nights in Fort Bragg, knowing I could roll back to the bay thru Point Arena and Bodega Bay and save some money. I had mistakenly overpaid my credit card bill, and in full irony had a back credit on my credit card statement. Like in November, at the last minute, the forecast changed to pure clear skies for most of the time I was going to be away. The rain was gonna start trailing off on the 26th. I ran some errands for prescriptions post Christmas and said fuck it.
I booked a Days Inn in Ukiah, knowing that my body was also calling out for spa time. Vichy Springs offers day rates far cheaper than anything in Napa or Calistoga. The mineral baths description explicitly says that they can assist with gout flares. I threw some clothes in the suitcase, grabbed my meds and my edibles, my sunglasses and hit the road. Movement is healing, waters are too. Also it would be nice to eat something that wasn’t bland soup that I had been feasting on for recovery.
I was right.
I’ve been told very recently to trust intuition, especially about myself (and more often than not about that I’m picking up off of others). My right foot started to relieve some tension and swelling as I feathered the pedal as I hit steady rain in Novato. Skies started to break in the most delightful darkened to near sunset blues north of Santa Rosa. Gracie relished the challenges of climbing the grade north of Cloverdale, keeping pace with a brand new Volkswagen ID Buzz retro-minivan. We coasted into Ukiah right at 4:20pm. Light up that blunt. But don’t because no hotel these days allows you to smoke a damn thing in them.
It was different than Morro Bay in a way. Again, I did feel the loneliness of the trek being solo. I also felt more defiant, felt more like making an example of myself. I hadn’t realized until deeper in the trip as I saw it grace more menus that Cod Piccata is sort of a fine dining staple in upstate California. I tried it. I like it more than the Veal variety. It’s already been added to my recipe repertoire.
I actually hadn’t packed a swimsuit or sandals or a robe or a towel for Vichy Springs the next morning. I also got a nagging feeling that after Fort Bragg, I didn’t want to go home and be around for the fireworks hellnoise that is Deep East Oakland on either 4th of July or New Years Eve. There was a cheap timeshare unit available at the north side of Clearlake in the hamlet of Nice. In the spirit of treat yourself, 2025, to make life more abundant than it’s been, I said fuck it.
I had the option to blow a full 8 hour day at Vichy Springs, but I was relaxed plenty by doing the first bath that was a little cooler, but has more of a bias towards circulation and muscle relaxation. The next one, a little warmer, is beneficial for hair and skin, so I soaked in each for an hour on a beautiful, none too chilly late December Morning under crystal clear after-the-rain skies. I relaxed, I floated. I didn’t know that the healing powers of water would dominate the rest of the trip at this point.
As I returned my towel and robe to the front desk, I noticed that syrupy tone of my voice when I know my body is in full relaxation stage after pure pleasure. I ambled back to Gracie wondering how, in this cruel world, will I be able to prompt this beautiful state I was feeling more often as a need and not a sequestered treat tucked away in corners of my life. I looked in the rearview mirror as I rolled down the window and fired Gracie up to head up through Willits out Highway 20 towards the coast. I appreciated as I looked at myself, now halfway thru my 43rd round around the sun, how I thought I looked beautiful. My hair was indeed softer from the second bath. My skin had a faint sheen to glow in the mid morning sun. I saw what Ty had mentioned back in September. I started to wonder, and a smirk a little at what I had forgotten about myself. I’m glad that it had been mentioned to me so it wasn’t something I completely lost.
Whenever I do end up in Fort Bragg, I always take California 1, and the original scope of this trip was supposed to be framed in me recreating my favorite car commercial that had long sold me on having a Corvair in the first place. Perhaps the gayest thing about me is realizing I feel like a sexually liberated white woman with fabulous hair in this car when I hit the open road. The commercial is filmed on a stretch long familiar to my hands between Fort Ross and Point Arena. The more logical routes of Highway 116 or 128 out to the coast were 40 to 70 miles to my south, so it didn’t make sense to waste the gasoline to recreate that mid century reality.
I took to the zeal of rolling up the coastal ranges among the redwoods instead, delighting again that for 110 gross horsepower, Gracie has gumption that is timeless, ageless and frankly exhilarating to the cusp of arousal. Granted there’s the smooth slight vibration of the Turbo-Air Flat Six thrusting your giddly along. There is something magical about this movement, about this going. The thrill of the activity is just as great as the eventual pay off. This analog device is so much better a technological replacement for companionship than any AI generated boyfriend being sold to me on Instagram.
I feel that I’m paving some sort of runway for a soon to be take off. I have to go as far west as I love to go as far east as I love. I have to hug the trees I’ve known for so long before I make love to and below a new set. I had to see old sands and old places I love so dearly, committing to the firmer memory of film photography so they aren’t ephemeral.
I also have to let go of any fantasy of isolating myself in Mendocino County. Each time I sat down for a take out meal in Ukiah or Fort Bragg, I was the only Black person, and often the most conspicuously queer too. There were white folks more or less looking like the future blobs of folks in Wall-E sitting high on seafood if not hogs always being served by Latine servers. As when I made the trek in June to the same region in the rented Chrysler, I did encounter a bit of grounding queerness. I ended up spending more than I expected in Pippi’s Longstockings in downtown Fort Bragg before I proved to myself what I knew was true: You only need a 2 speed Automatic for such coastal driving shenanigans.
To make it more epic on Monday, I went north thru the notorious twisties as CA-1 eventually merges again with U.S. 101, giving up any attempt to hug the coastline to Shelter Cove. I didn’t go to that beautiful place because I don’t trust any drum brakes to do the descent out of Garberville over those steep mountains into the Lost Coast. I succumbed to being a tourist at the crass drive-thru tree at Leggett, not posing with Gracie but allowing other tourists to pose with clearly the coolest car that would drive through the tree on December 29, 2025.
I turned back south and remembered deeply how the intimacy of this car makes up for the lack of intimacy I feel elsewhere in my life as we both hunkered down for the joy of the long sweepers on the mountainous sections of 101 between Leggett and Willits before you turn on 20 to slowly lift yourself in Lake County.
I stopped in Lakeport and came to my own conclusions about my childhood, and what meth had done to one of my childhood stomping grounds. Others had long questioned my quest to reclaim this particular part of my childhood, but I relegated such concerns to pure snobbery.
Clear Lake, Mt. Konockti and the general lay of that land is still entrancing, especially on a crystal clear day. Sure, it’s land that has been passed by in the conformist culture of consumption based luxury relaxation. It still felt like home to me. It still made me smile. I still go hit on by an older white dude at the time share registration desk.
I sincerely thought about inviting him to give myself a little respite from the gnawing undertow that crept, altho not as strong as it did in November when I had fewer reminders of my desirability, that I was going to enter this year alone. But a surprising round of conversations in the pool, in the hot tub, at the dock on the lake made me realize it’s worth holding out for more of the world I’m building for myself.
For all of the chaos that is going on, for all of the destruction that is happening in front of all of our eyes, somehow the world still heals itself. When I tune in, it heals me too. All I can hope is that people that I truly love can start working on that for themselves, so we can do more of this healing together.
PS: There’s an unreleased until about 20 years ago track that Martha Reeves recorded, sans Vandellas, with The Andantes, that was recorded in early 1966. It’s wild to think that’s 60 years ago now, that Martha Reeves is soon to be 85, and a form of the Vandellas compromised of her sisters just performed on New Years in Tampa. Slowly but surely that unreleased song burbled up as I reviewed these photos as they came in. The sentiment carries so strongly as I start this year, hence the title and the wish of the last photo included. Indeed, “You’ve Been On My Mind.”
