Book Review
Snippets from the book.
Walking to Molera Beach at Cooper Point was like walking it
when the state first bought the land and had yet to make a park of it. Hiking
the trail through a towering, verdant canyon erased a quarter century of human
tramping and plodding. This wasn’t a park for people, but a dance parlor for
bumblebee and lupine, an aerodrome for songbirds, a tanning booth for lizards,
a conspiracy of unsavory thistle. Gaining the headland involved bushwhacking
the trail, a trail that had been devoured by the greedy appetite of nature. The
first violet iris on the trail arose like a gun sight against a Big Sur of
dreams, a Big Sur quiet, thick, verdant, contemplative and still. The Big Sur
River, alive with glowing emeralds, flowed full and proud toward the cove,
blue-calmed despite the raging wind that pushed white caps from behind the
point rock to the horizon. The rock was a packed rookery, the pocket beach
below the headlands was awash with musical pebbles in the rising tide. The main
beach was filled with driftwood from slivers to huge trunks. Near the river, at
the edge of the driftwood, someone had made a driftwood tent, a place to lie,
perchance to sleep and dream while gazing at the little waves lapping the
shore. Biking Highway One from Molera south to Fullers was the rare opportunity
to really see the rich tapestry of Big Sur. Without traffic, one can ride down
the middle of the road, swerving from side to side to take in every nuance of
scenery. In a car there are stretches of meadow, thickets of brush, and clumps
of forest. From a traffic-free bike, there was magic at every curve. Each tiny
creek had grown waterfalls. The river was so cleansed that the bottom gravel
rattled, as the mountains sweated their excess water. Each little meadow was a
labyrinthine mystery, a winding road to wonderland. Every mature redwood had a
hollowed out place in its base that had that lived-in look of a small,
comfortable den. Locals were standing in the parking lots of closed or partly
opened businesses, stretching arms to the sky, celebrating the place as it was
the day they arrived. No one was in a hurry, everyone was taking the time to
smile and greet, conversations happened any place two people met, even in the
middle of the highway. While waiting for a section of road to open, I was lying
naked in the tall, sweet grass between the road and the cliff, watching
hummingbirds dart against the backdrop of spreading oak branches, alone for
miles, alone for hours. In a flash I’m there again, painting a picture on the
porch of the Phoenix Shop at Nepenthe. The view is making me delusional and
slightly manic, and one of the people in the shop is an artist and is
discussing the view and the care of good brushes. Some sort of weird rapture is
setting in. I’m assured that I’m OK, that humanity has the ability to rise up
and perfect itself, that the world is both an aesthetic and pragmatic work of
art, and that joy and wonder will endure.
Almost without taking a breath or blinking, I’m in the car
again, my eyes tracing the full, rich, sensuous curves of this fecund coast. I
remind myself that it isn’t the spring of ‘98, but the spring of ‘99. The road
is long since repaired, and the rains have been gentler. The season of renewal
still wraps me in its arms and sings me to flights of ecstasy. I’m working my
way slowly through the erogenous zones of this wild and free land. My watch is
left behind somewhere, and the petty stresses and obligations of mundane living
are caught in a tree somewhere near Point Lobos. Looking around, I see that
nothing is exactly as it was thirteen months ago, but then, nothing will ever
be like it is this moment. I know this coast like the topography of my mind,
but still I see myriad things I’ve never seen before. As always, I consider
myself the model of self-restraint when I can drive this road without pulling
over, stripping naked and running—gibberishly screaming —into the brush.
I remember someone saying, “I have my faith to see me
through.” If “faith” is an absolute conviction without benefit of direct
experience, how much greater is the experience of this moment than all the
prayers of mankind.
#2
Moments had become years, had dissolved toward oblivion.
My one success in those years was getting through college:
no grants, no loans, no savings. Living by my wits, working when absolutely
necessary, doing without a car, sometimes without shelter, I graduated.
Foolishly, I thought the diploma would free me from my habit
of sabotaging my life. I planned on finding some work that acknowledged my
education, education, skills, and talents, and allowed me some self-respect.
When I ended up at the same kind of clerical job I’d had four years before,
with less money in the bargain, my bile rose like the tide.
Then, like the desperate are wont to do, I looked outside
myself for something to cling to, an anchor for my castaway life, an artificial
center for my universe. For some it might have been God or golf or some other
hobby; for me it was a woman. She was my salvation, my goddess, my excuse for
being, and when she walked out on me, I crumbled like a gingerbread man in the
rain.
Alcohol and drugs are not problems per se. Individuals have
problems, probably from living in a dysfunctional society. Drugs and alcohol
are merely symptoms of their inability to deal with it all.
The human mind seems to recoil when attempting to look over
the whole of anything and to see it as unbroken continuity. To be human is to
see some patterns in life, some divisions. We are born tailors, landscapers,
fabricators. We fabricate everything in our lives: our tools, our surroundings,
our identities. Everywhere we look, we see the dotted lines, labeled, “cut
here.” The retailer sees the seasonal patterns of sales, while the new mother
sees the patterns of child changing and feeding. The architect is surrounded by
structural patterns, and the microbiologist, molecular patterns. The artist
sees color and form patterns, while the TV viewer sees the patterns of prime
time and late night viewing. We all live in and are constantly thinking in
patterns, but we rarely stop to consider that, like templates, these patterns
overlay every aspect of our lives. We also seldom realize that all of these
patterns are fundamentally related.
The movement of living things, such as the
leaves of trees on a windy day or the intricate dance of a flock of birds,
crack open, ever so slightly, the door between the world of the physical face
of God and the world of forces that bind it together in a vibrating becoming.
"Although I don’t understand musical theory, I know there are patterns of life there also. Some music can heal illness, something traditional healers have known for centuries. Other music, we all know, can instill romance, and other music can irritate you to the point of punching someone out. Then there is the ambient noise of the city and the home, the music of the damned. It just leaves you disconnected, out of sorts, and out of phase. I know there is music in a creek flowing over a rocky bed, for I have sat and listened to its song. And there is music in the wind through the trees, and music in the ocean waves assaulting the shore. My nerves are like tuning forks, and each music touches a sympathetic vibration within, creating little variations in my dance of life."
