Pilgrimage

Once a week I make the trek from city to country, returning home after a week of work and karate. Every Thursday or Friday night, Larry and I sit in the traffic that inevitably awaits us on the East River Drive up through the Bronx and the Major Deegan.



In The Art of Pilgrimage Phil Cousineau writes about the sacredness of all travel, even our daily commutes. And while I've taken this book to be a personal bible in many ways, it's still difficult to enjoy our exodus until we hit the tree-lined Taconic State Parkway where my whole body feels like it opens up.
Every day is filled with mini departures and arrivals. Last week I took my niece to the airport for her flight home to Isreal after a two week visit. I'd taken my nephew's friend to Newark for her flight home just a few weeks before.
Going back and forth through the Holland Tunnel always reminds me of being a kid and trying to hold my breath as if I were actually underwater. I remember exploring silently in my head the mystery of exactly how the water stayed out of the tunnel, never fully understanding it. Tunnels still hold a kind of deep dark mystery and excitement. It's similar to archetypal woods and caves. There's a sense of trepidation upon entering, an emerging sense of relief. The highways themselves can feel like pathways to unknown places despite the specificity of our destinations.
I wonder how to embrace the inherent excitement of travel without the all too frequent fear and nervousness that were instilled in me as a child. I breathe and chant, talk to myself about how little it really matters if flights are missed, delayed or cancelled. How stalled traffic is an opportunity to sit still and be.
I feel as though I am constantly changing lanes: from work to art, city to country, solitude to society.
In a workshop I once took at Mirabai in Woodstock, an author whose name I can't remember here, talked about his philosophy of autopsychology. Basically, you take what's going on with your car as a metaphor for what's going on in your life.
Mine has over 150,000 miles; it starts, sometimes stalls, sputters and bucks. But once on the road it's smooth driving. There's a rolled up sleeping bag, two stuffed animals I put in the car to donate to a thrift store but can't quite manage to part with yet, and momentos of hikes that never quite make it into the house: bits of rabbit fur, sticks and bones. Kwan Yin sways from the rear view mirror.
Not too long ago I proposed an installation for an art exhibition entitled Traffic in which I would turn my car into a sacred art mobile. I imagined upholstering the insides with fabrics reminscent of nomadic tribes and covering the outside with religious icons and magnets of all types. The proposal wasn't accepted but I haven't abandoned the idea completely. In its own funky way my car is already my magic carpet. As my physical body is in life.
Today as I sit in front of the computer working on a freelance web content assignment, my adventures will be more synaptic than physical. An inner pilgrimage, another sort of creative holy grail. One day closer to the weekly road that takes me home.