Gifted a stack of reading material yesterday, I was up til midnight perusing the contents of my instantaneous reading list. My neighbor was feeling inspiration, too, twirling the dark, wee hours with the tinkle of piano keys and starlight.
My writing continues, though sometimes you’ve got to fill the well with the words of others. And sometimes you have to rest, ever-still, in the waters of your own.
Here’s to words and silence, time, space and the present.
Last month in California, my father loaned me his special desktop copy of Robinson Jeffers Selected Poems. I was on a pilgrimage to Tor House, but first, five days in my feel-good place.
Dad's book at the Jeffers' Cornerstone
Within hours of arriving at the land of my solo retreat, I was out of sorts and feeling stuck. Searching for clues, I flipped through pages of poetry and found the somber piece “To the Stone-cutters” (entire work can be read here). My journal entry begins by quoting the last line. One that seems even more relevant now as I try to glean some nectar from the words I wrote during that expansive time.
Here’s an excerpt from day one, as I began to unravel in that coastal dwelling.
“The honey of peace in old poems…” Robinson Jeffers
‘Dance Church’ is next door and the bass is pumping. I know that I love to dance but there are reasons I am here, not there: jet lag, no sleep, bloodshot eyes, bad music, closed circuits, just don’t feel like it.
I peek in the window and be the voyeur that watches but doesn’t want to take the plunge. Sixty happy people move and jump in a mass of ecstatic wildness. A man exits, sees my indecision and encourages me to go inside. I tell him that I am just too tired.
“I was too, but it woke me up…”
Eventually, I enter. Somewhere around the Van Halen song, “Jump”, (that’s right, ‘go ahead and jump!’) I’m telling myself that I just can’t dance to this. But then I try it anyway. David Lee Roth’s mantra segues into something more palatable and I’m soon a member of the congregation, dancing my own kind of freedom. My state is altered, my body enlivened and I get so into it that when Dance Church is over and it’s time for dinner, I can barely eat.
Later I’m in the hot springs on a new moon in the starlight. A bath with myself and two women – silent. After a long while one begins to gently sing: “When I am in the light of my soul I am home.”
She sings this line quietly for a short time then slowly exits the bath. More silence, warm water and calm.”
Baur and Jeffers found a home on the remote and rugged coast of Big Sur, where the landscape shaped their art.
photo by Jessica Dofflemyerphoto by Jessica Dofflemyer
Looking forward to the time in six weeks when I’ll be reunited with this magical coastline, I poked around at some of my own photos from when I was there last winter.
On an isolated stretch of beach, I meandered with my new love picking a few special stones along the way. When we ascended the bluff, we looked down and photographed our footsteps that wove apart and then together. So smitten we were with our blossoming connection, every detail had significance. Warm heart flutters and butterflies mingled with tangerines and chocolate in the salt air. My pocket full of stones eventually made it into a special box, bought at the Phoenix Shop at Nepenthe, specifically to house them.
I still have the stones. And I’ll return to Big Sur soon. But pathways have crossroads and sometimes we diverge (I now note in the photo our steps fall far apart). Waves come and sweep the sands. They shape and smooth the rocks.
With Baer and Jeffers I’m reminded that the art remains – words and photographs capture the essence of a feeling. The love of a land and the experiences lived there. These gifts are alive forever in our hearts.
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