I know I’m forgetting something. The stove on. My entire bag of undies. A small blonde-haired kid in the attic. (RIP Catherine O’Hara). I’m not a forgetful person, but road trips don’t force the same kind of economy as air travel when it comes to packing, so I’ve been slacking, chucking random things into my suitcase in between popping cookies into my mouth, checking stupid work emails, and overwatering my houseplants (and sniffing my potatoes!) because it’s going to climb into the 80s next week. IYKYK. 

We luxuriate in our cars, us Californians, overconfident that a Costco will just appear on the horizon even if we take the Mojave route. I got the oil changed in the Subaru this morning, and while Brody at Valvoline was topping off my fluids I gripped the wheel and thought about how I’ve always wanted to start a high speed chase. I feel safe, righteous, and in control when I’m driving, even with a filthy cabin air filter. And I need that feeling right now because I have no idea where I’m going or what to expect. I need to know that I can toss a bunch of papers in the air, hop back in, and leave.

The thing with this trip is that I can’t be too economical. My final destination isn’t a hotel with fresh towels available at the push of a button, or even a suburb teeming with Walgreenses where I can load up on maxi pads and Corn Nuts in a pinch. I’m headed to a rental property called Pirate’s Alley in Niland, California. AKA Buttcrack Middleahnowhere about 20 minutes away from Bombay Beach, a place mostly known for its swinging resort town past and perhaps soon for its post-apocalyptic future as ground zero of the lithium boom. I’m hesitant to describe a place I’ve never been to so I’ve relied on the accounts of others.

A town on the edge of a toxic lake might seem a strange place to look for the future. Over a hundred miles southeast of Los Angeles, alongside the Salton Sea, Bombay Beach is a stretch of mud and sand wracked by hazardous dust storms, trash-filled lots and the smell of fetid algae. Its shores are also home to a burgeoning, surrealist art hub. Walk the town’s cracked streets and you’ll see aluminum-covered planes emerging nose-first from the ground, metal cubes that glow in the night and monopoly boards stretching 50 feet wide.

— NOÉMA - Futures From Ruins by Johanna Hoffman

Mmkay.

I’ve read a lot of stuff like this over the past few days and I’m intimidated because I don’t consider myself an artistic person at all. I live in a cul-de-sac. Sure, I enjoy reading, watching movies, and going to the occasional show. But I’m a practical cook who’s never drizzled anything on anything, and I couldn’t throw a pot on a wheel if my life depended on it. There are no milk glass chopsticks in my hair or dangly earrings on my lobes. So this whole surreal art scene with its effervescing toxic plumes…I hope the profundity of it all is not lost on me. I hope it presses some flowers into my soul.

I started reading up on Bombay Beach after I was accepted to the Transom Audio Storytelling Workshop. I’d be lying if I said my curiosity about the place compelled me to apply. The only time I heard about the Salton Sea growing up was when local meteorologists forecasted its sulfuric stench wafting westward. In my head it was a boiling lake full of bobbing dead fish heads. But I applied anyway because it was the closest workshop to me and I’ve felt the pull of the desert for months. Driving to the Salton Sea would plop me right in the middle of the Sonoran. It happens during prolonged periods of stress, this yearning for the wilds. I’ve needed to take to the road and stretch out on a flat red rock.

When I told my mom about the workshop she reminded me that Huell Howser, one of my childhood TV idols, visited there. So I went back and watched this episode of California’s Gold where Huell is as fascinated with Bombay Beach as the guy who cracked open King Tut’s tomb. It grounded me because Huell never treated a place like an abstract idea or museum. People and their sense of place were at the center of his storytelling. He’d follow them just about anywhere they wanted to go with his big fuzzy mic, put his arm around them and let them ramble on and on about catching a 20 lb corvina right over there and how fish dying and turning to shells like this over here is actually gorgeous and there’s a burial ground up over there where we take people’s ashes when they kick the bucket and this right here is no different than the ocean and yeah, we go swimming in it and I’m still alive. We take care of each other, we protect each other, and it’s just beautiful.

What is art, anyway? Is it people and stories? Because I can do people and stories.

I’ve always loved public radio and have wanted to learn how to tell stories in sound. I enjoy the intimacy of it all. A good audio story is like good pillow talk, a bespoke tale told in whispers that creates space in a person's heart. It could be about petrified dinosaur poop and it would still titillate me. I want to learn how to tell a story like that. There will be times when I’m talking to someone in real life (as opposed to in my head) and I’ll think, “Damn, I wish I had recorded that.” This especially happens when I’m talking to kids. Their ideas and speech are like the sea when it was crystalline. And I have been recording with them more and more.

Right before Thanksgiving I interviewed two girls at lunch at the small continuation school I work at. Our topic: America. It was embarrassingly unplanned and informal. They were munching on chicken sandwiches while people walked in and out of my office and my walkie was going off, so I had no intention of using that tape. I’m just in the habit now of hitting record because I run a qualitative data-gathering project on student experience and you never know what might be useful. I played it back one night though and was so moved by what the girls shared, their voices so fresh and honest, the ambient sounds folding in rich texture, that I voiced some context and crafted it into a sample for Transom because I knew I had to get better at this. You can listen to it here and tell me by the end of the workshop if I indeed have gotten any better based on my final story, which is hopefully more organic.

And so here we are. I’m holding all of this and more in my head. I’m worn to a frazzle because I haven’t slept well for days. I keep waking up at two in the morning thinking about things I need to pack and wondering if I’ll see Greg Bovino’s ICE motorcade on the 111. My little body has been so stressed about the micro and macro that it precipitated my period four days early, which never happens. But it was good because that broke the dam. I just laughed, recognized her as God in drag, a familiar friend along for the ride, and threw more junk in my bags. 

It’ll take me just under three hours to get to Niland tomorrow. I’ll probably stop in Palm Springs or La Quinta to pee and grab some lunch. I have a feeling most of my anxiety will evaporate once I arrive at my destination, meet my people, and get situated in my little corner where I can jam my stick back in the mud for a while. Once all the hellos die down, my plan is to return here, perhaps from my twin bunk in a shared room (!!!), or from a folding chair under the stars, to type some (fewer!) words and then stop — to listen to the still voices of the desert telling me where I am and what I need to hear.