Esalen

October 26, 2013

The drive from San Francisco was long, but most of it through the most wonderful scenery I’ve seen that was not in Ireland. At a certain point the extended suburbs transformed into rolling brown hills, the landscape of a cowboy movie, dramatic and, to me, exotic. Then, almost as abruptly, mountain to one side and the sea to the other. The war between ocean and continent left vast and scattered ruins, great cliffs and pinnacles in the midst of the torn sea. I pulled over several times to explore. One time, at Carmel River, there were seals barking far out in the surf. Made an extended stop at Point Lobo, clambering among the stones, taking dramatic shots with my camera, which died in the midst of it. The light was veiled and misty, but brilliant enough to show all things as though minted the moment before. I remembered the joy of the rocky shore, which I have not known for an extended time since I moved from New Hampshire. I stood in the cutting light with the pelicans beating over and the strange flowers of the salt cliffs blooming around. I was exultant. Arrived at Esalen late in the afternoon. Esalen is Rivendell with an ocean. People talk about how magical it is, and that makes one doubtful before one has ever seen, but magical it is. Everything tilts down toward the sea, and the air flutters with monarchs. You think they are falling leaves, but they are living butterflies. I’m already on hugging terms with a lad named Jake, who is from North Carolina. He saw me watching a Stellar’s jay flash his sapphire into the tilted woods, and conversation started from there. They gave me the Cypress Studio, overhung with, yes, cypresses, with the sounding Pacific outside the window. I have to walk through the sensational main garden, all thick vegetables and gold and orange flowers, to get anywhere. It is the best room in the world. The only rivals are the one I had in the B&B that overlooked the Liffey, and the one Nick and I had opening on Dingle Bay. The sea sounds like liquid, and then it sounds like wind, and then it sounds like a kind of music when it withdraws, rattling stone upon stone within itself.

Woke in the dark and crept out on my deck overlooking the sea. The little moon rides very high, just before zenith, I think, but is sufficient to light everything one needs to see: the moon side of the cypresses, the rocks, even the contours of individual waves marching in, at what seems to me wondrous slowness. The ravine beside my cabin is a well of moonlight, in which something is screaming a small but piercing scream. I don’t know the fauna here well enough even to give a guess. The stars are a bright myriad, sealed off near the horizon by what I assume is fog. Astronomy was not an option most of the places I have lived. It would be here.  I honored all by masturbating from my deck as close to the sea as I could get. It was– and as time goes by this becomes less and less frequent– a unique experience. I quizzed myself on the color I was seeing over the sea, and though habit suggested blue, I realized it was not blue at all but the apotheosis of black, deeper here and paler there, ending the continuum at the cold white of the moon, which holds to black by being its opposite. Now as I write in the yellow light of my room, the sky seems deep blue indeed, but perhaps that is the sun coming. It seems to take its time in the west, to come late and hurry along, compensation in the middle by wince-inducing brilliance.

At opening session, Angela had everyone–a hundred people or so– read their short bios. It was one of those moments where you think “Oh, God, no,” but it was eventually over and one did get a better sense of one’s colleagues. We presenters read, announcements were made, and everyone filed out into the night. I read “The Friend beside the Pool” to God knows what reception. The fear that no one will show up for one’s sessions. . . .The female propensity to stop and fuss in doorways even if a hundred people are behind them trying to get out never ceases to amaze.  This goes for one-person-at-a-time bridges as well. I wonder what I do that drives everyone mad. If told, I would try to stop. I really would.

Sea at my left ear, the wondrous dark.