Sweet Home Big Sur

Sweet Home Big Sur

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Arriving in Big Sur

I’m home again. It never fails. The stillness and quiet of this place presses against the cyclone of my skull until the rock of stillness grinds the centrifuge to a stop. And then I emerge from my earthsuit and join my molecular limbs with those of my brethren redwoods, wild turkeys, mountains and stars. I can feel the silence and quiet like a soothing unguent. The muscles of my earthsuit are loosening moment by moment – stretching into the promise of this weekend.

Big Sur Sleep

I awoke this morning from a sleep so deep it felt as though my body had been emptied of all care, and had become clay. My limbs and back had curled into a rigour-like foetal position. It felt so womb-like, so warm and beautiful …. And the rain fell outside like a cleansing symphony … rain drops falling on roof tiles, pooling and spilling down tree limbs and window panes… with fog dancing in sinews in the redwood crowned hills outside my window.

Morning Thoughts

The Detective and Mrs. Hutchinson and my old friend Dickie are still roaming the pastures of dreams while I clear away the scrim of my own dream pageant and make my way, with hot coffee in hand, to my promontory at Ventana to stretch out on the redwood-planked day bed that the management has provided for people such as myself to settle into – to commune with the silent glimmering ocean below and the birds – the blue birds, the finches, the crows and the woodpeckers . The morning stillness carries their caws and chirrups and cuckoos over this vast panorama as though they were assembled for a garden party.

I close my eyes to shut out the dazzling glow of dawn light on Spring leaves and blossoms… the panel of new grass like a velvet blanket draping over the hill… to listen to the bird song symphony.

This Big Sur has an uncanny ability to unlock the vaults of memory. Maybe it’s because I give myself to the process of contemplation here in a way that I don’t at home in Elay. My knot of memories feels like a golf ball come unbound – with a messy snap and an unfurling – a burst of connections revealed – a chaotic unwinding of images which when peeled away, reveal their otherwise unremembered chronology… leaving me here on this redwood-planked day bed – with a steady caravan of pickup trucks and golf carts trundling past me up the hill to Ventana, and an empty paper cup with frigid droplets of milky coffee clinging to its bottom.

A Benediction

I was scooped from the purple sand of Big Sur to dance with the mountains, the sky and the sea, while the sun and the moon accompanied on high, until my flesh evaporated, and I stretched my yearning molecular limbs into the sky and returned to the sand.

The Big Sur River

When I give myself to curiosity, Big Sur responds by revealing its secrets, such as this access point to the Big Sur River. It’s a perfect river moment. A clear sheet of water runs over smooth stones, past redwood roots and birch trees, under blue skies, with morning sunlight dancing in microscopic ripples in the water, until the passage narrows and the water collides in violent white explosions with the stones and sticks that block its path.

I realize here that I am a friend to all things – kin of all things. I asked myself today if I had created a great rationalization for not being in an intimate relationship by embracing a deliberately transcendental distance from all things emotionally complicated. I laughed as I wrote this because I felt the censorious and sanctimonious claws of the popular culture creeping into my reasoning … fear-based-reasoning, earthsuit-based-reasoning, audience-based-reasoning. I laughed because I have a community of friends conjoined at the spirit to explore this life.

So, the question is, if we are scooped from the purple sand to exist but for a limited number of dawns and dusks, what is the right way to conduct this life? In a way, the earthsuit is a vehicle that is prone to madness, sadness, loneliness, anxiety and suffering. It’s inherent in its design [:)]. But, at the same time, the earthsuit is also capable of feeling great love, quiet peace, soaring contentment, revelation, bodily pleasures, and giddy, silly, human happiness. All of these things are possible all of the time while the soul resides in this vessel. So, what do we do? We explore the infinite permutations of feeling and meaning that confront us day to day with a perspective that allows us to see that the transitory, the fleeting sensations, whether dark or bright, are just that – microscopic moments in the river of moments that runs from the birth canal, in sunlight dappled cascades, over smooth stones, past violent, chaotic narrows, where sticks and rocks collide with our bones, until our spirit is released into the clear, placid eternal.

posted by Jed Proske at 8:52 PM 1 comments