It ain't Italy...

but I think these are olive trees.

I do enjoy the meditative state that a roadtrip can put me in. But I always think it will open my mind to new places (creative states as well as the changing landscape). This time, I even kept my notebook on my lap. But while we traveled down I-5, my thoughts frittered around mundane daydreams. I even tried nudging myself in a direction I thought might be more productive. No luck.

How do you nudge a meditative state (or something like a meditative state)? How do you get the most creative exploration in your traveling time?

Traveling light

I have one small rolling suitcase, and it's pretty full, plus one gym bag, which is fuller than I planned, and my usual dowdy purse and a fleece jacket and a Panama hat in a hat box.

I have one notebook for free writes and another notebook for revisions (as though I might work), but I have only one chapbook of poems and one (short, kid-lit, halfway finished already) novel to read.

What was I thinking?