Unprocessed Everything

The roads to Ojai are raw on the senses.
We are now far removed from heavy levels of processed everything.
Soft fields stretch out as disregardant as our neighbor's grandest sunbathing window cat -- vast and motionless. My pupils, accustomed to being in an incessant state of strained dilation, are now a mad workaholic forced into sudden rest: struggling in absence. They frantically scan passing scenery, craving for something stimulating to land on. But with only plain skies, roads, and fields forever, they are at long last forced to surrender into a foreign state of boredom. Undistracted boredom has become sacred. And in acknowledgement, I pay respects to this sacred moment by turning off the music. A meditative lull of two, three hours roll by. I am now my five-year-old self, rolling around on the carpet floor, lacking all obligations. Dust particles in an afternoon trance shimmer quietly, revealed by the rays of light from the west-facing window -- the same kind of sacred moment that can only be perceived by children who lack obligations. All is calm. And from within confinement and deprivation comes slow freedom. The sun is warm against my skin -- I feel it just a little more than usual. My sleeping lover breathes heavy beside me as we drive through some unknown coastal town swallowed up in fog. We pop out the other end, back into the gold of the sun, the passenger still asleep. All the while a constant rhythmic hum of the engine and nothing else. Unprocessed everything. I smile like the foolish romantic that I am. I haven't arrived yet, but my body has already begun the process of feeling again.