Packed.

Hollywood is not a kind and gentle place, but it's where my work takes me. On the first day of a recent meeting, we worked fourteen hours, a reminder that the place doesn't necessarily dollar up on the side of frivolity. This schedule continued for several days, until 1 felt like one of the well-known, three peeled throats of Cerberus, exhausted, fluttery, my imagination a mud puddle rather than a mighty river. To put it simply, I wasn't getting enough to eat. My partners (Harrison Ford and Douglas Wick) own the sharpish features of the underfed, features that any phrenologist will tell you reflect an interest in money and power rather than in the fruits of the imagination.

Anyway, in the middle of a serious point, I slipped into an out-of-body experience and was swept away to New York City, tracking myself as I left the therapist's office where I am treated for the usual obsessive-compulsive disorders. My first stop was the Ideal Lunch & Bar on Eighty-sixth Street, for a quick boiled pig hock, then on to the Papaya King hotdog stand on the corner of Eighty-sixth and Third for a quick frank with sauerkraut and mustard, down Third to Ray's for a slice of pizza with eggplant, then over to JG Melon for a simple rare burger and a double V.O. When I came to, I discovered that I had been talking with incisive brilliance and the meeting was over, which proves that even ghost food is better than none. Unfortunately, I don't have any of the notes.

The point is that there's no snack food in L.A. on the order of New York's. I ate very good dinners at Dan Tana's and at Osteria Orsini, where my table was presided over by the best waiter on the West Coast, the fabled Igor. The last night I agreed hesitantly to Chaya's, doubtful that a restaurant that “hot” could also be good. The meal was splendid, again highlighting the fact that I have never had an accurate intuition (raw-tuna salad, a pasta with peerless squid and slivered jalapeños, a small grilled chicken with a side of garlic the equal of any I've ever had, pommes frites, and a whole bottle of Château Montelena just for me).

Despite this grand send-off, I arrived home in a palsied state—tremors of exhaustion, near tears, that sort of thing. My wife noted a burnt-rubber scent coming out of my ears, firm evidence of my brain's drag racing with itself in film country. To set the brakes 1 wandered for hours in the woods, looking for morels, but it had been a dry, bitterly cold spring, and the mushrooms were scarce. At one point I walked three hours to find four morels. I did, however, gather enough to cook our annual spring rite, a simple sauté of the mushrooms, wild leeks, and sweetbreads. Regardless of this tonic for the body, I fired off inconsolably angry letters to no one in particular and lightly spanked the bird dogs for minor infractions, until I gave up on domestic life and packed north to the cabin, with three cartons of books on Native Americans and John Thorne's Simple Cooking. Native Americans are an obsession of mine, totally unshared by New York and Los Angeles for the average reason of moral vacuum. Native Americans are like good poetry, and it is particularly banal that we are dying from the lack of what both tell us.

Jim Harrison, from "Consciousness Dining"