Back to school

I've been a taciturn blogger this Fall, but I have an excuse: I'm studying, studying, studying, getting my mid-life brain into shape. My flabby neurons are huffing and puffing, jumping over synaptic paths long faded from disuse. I'm memorizing business practices, concepts and laws and re-acquainting myself with the horrors of formulas and charts. It's shocking to face the enormous mental challenge of actually remembering stuff after decades of living in the attention-span eroding school of hard knocks.

The subject: Human Resources Management. The setting: Brandman University in Monterey. The goal: Initials after my name! PHR. Professional in Human Resources. (I know there's some humor to be mined in that acronym.) The 4 hour, 225 multiple choice test is now just two months away. When stacked up in a neat (and terrifying) pile, the course materials measure 6 inches deep. I've befriended the campus coffee shop queen, Yvonne, at Cafe 316. I'm a regular, and she makes a killer double latté, with whipped cream of course.

I take comfort from what a fellow mature student shared with me after a mildly disastrous test, "Well, at least I'm learning!" There is the desire, as a colleague of mine has said, to simply "do it all with my heart" v. painstakingly reading and re-reading, creating flashcards, taking tests. Oh yeah, and did I mention, reading glasses? Let's not and say we did, please.

This morning we rang long-silent bells at Deetjen's Inn, where I'm known affectionately as "Ms. HR." ("Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings" says Zuzu in that masterpiece of Capra-corn, "It's a Wonderful Life.") We made a crown from the beautifully shaped vine cut out of the center of one of the bells, the beginning of a Halloween costume. The people at Deetjen's move my heart, every day. Yes, this is my chosen professional path, and I want to understand it completely, bringing all my wisdom to bear to make the experience of work (that four letter word) as fun, empowering and rewarding as possible.

As you might imagine, there's inertia lurking in the Big Sur landscape, as well as the powerful tranquility we wax poetic over. I remember a visitor who contributed nothing to the party, except his transfixed pose, seated on the grass, watching the ocean, all day long, all weekend. The bugaboo of procrastination stalks me every day now, as I try to move beyond the flight path of the normal working adult, and re-grow study habits.

My kitchen is cleaner, my closets more organized, fresh linens and clean laundry suddenly have a higher priority. I'm drawn away from my desk (which faces a wall) quite often by the compelling quality of light in the afternoon, the need to take a cat-nap, or make a snack. Yes, I'll take butter on that English muffin, then the peanut butter, please. Watching my kitten and our neighbor's chihuahua chase each other on the lawn is a passion.

But by far the best procrastination-excuse of all is blogging about studying v. actually hitting the books! "The way to start work is to start work," says James Tyrone Sr. in Eugene O'Neill's play, Long Day's Journey into Night. And so off I go.


Room photo courtesy of Deetjen's Inn
"The Chase" by Linda Sonrisa

Painting the Fire

There’s a reason why, “At the top of the world” is also an expression referring to one’s state of mind. On the way to Branham Rendlen’s home last weekend, I remembered this. I felt clearer up there, happier. The healing power of the earth is more palpable when you experience her grander vistas, the ones that give you immense perspective.

This past year as we have healed from the Basin Complex Fire has been all about perspective. From shock and destruction has come new growth and beauty. We learn to believe, again, that happy endings are possible. "The fire," Branham says, "has become a story of watching destruction create healing, both in the land and in our community.

Painter Branham Rendlen lives at the tippy top of Castro Canyon, on the Old Coast Road, with a view of the Santa Lucia mountains that is out of this world. Last summer, her home was in the war zone longer and more perilously than most. During our visit she points out to me a small singed oak tree, about twenty feet from her front door. Without her husband on hand to put that fire out, all would have been lost.

It took her months to venture back outside to paint the post-fire lunar landscape as it began to come back, and you can see some of those results at her online gallery, as well as at the Del Campo Gallery here in town. This is the third time she's felt fire so close: there was the '96 fire and the '99 fire as well. During the '99 fire she actually painted it plein aire style, setting up her easel on the road above her house, looking southwest into the back country.

She also contributed to "Recovered and Renewed — A Year Later” (which can now be viewed online) a unique show presented by the Big Sur Health Center and the Ventana Inn and Spa, showcasing the work of thirty Big Sur Artists, each having created a piece that reflects the surge of fire-inspired creativity. A founder of Monterey Bay Plein Aire Painter's Association (MBPAPA) she reminds me that they currently have a show at the Pacific Grove Art Center.

Branham has been drawing and painting her whole life, beginning by taking art classes with her mother at age 6. She has a Masters degree in printmaking from the University of Kansas, and received support for her creative development all along. She works now primarily in oil. She paints landscapes, and imaginative works like her Condor and Hummingbirds series, going where the artistic flow leads her.

A soft-spoken shaman, her message is simple and hugely powerful: Art heals. It heals individuals, and in doing so, heals us all. The brain-wave state of the creative mind opens the psyche. Using music or meditation to get to this place can help. She shows me Dr. Michael Samuels' book Creative Healing, which features her artwork.

"For some reason, making things heals people," she says, "Writing, music, painting, cooking, whatever, we can use that energy inside us to be either destructive or constructive, depending on how we choose to be with our feelings. Art can also raise consciousness individually and collectively, by bringing people joy and peace." To quote Dr. Samuels, "The moment you see your spirit is the moment your heart opens. When you glimpse your spirit you gasp and cry, you feel emotion, you know who you are. That is the moment you begin to heal."

Branham came to Big Sur in 1986 with a few dear girlfriends, and began to make her life here. It's one of those Big Sur stories where she was handed a job and place to live, boom. The doors opened and she couldn't say no, letting go of her vision of herself as an art school professor. We laugh at the notion that, as she predicted, she met a guy, fell in love and stayed. "It was the land that grabbed me," she said. "I'd lived in rural Kansas and grew up in rural Missouri, so I knew country. But this was something new, something deeper, for me."

As we conclude our coffee, cookies and conversation, we talk a little bit more about art and healing. “Through the artwork, I have come to understand myself as a part of this energy that heals, that is creativity and love (which I hope doesn't sound pompous)" she adds with a quiet laugh. "Basically, people are hungry for soul," she says, and Big Sur is the essence of soul in the land."

Paintings by Branham Rendlen:
Self-portrait
Condors Configuration with Fire, 36" X 34"
Photos by Linda Sonrisa

Reading poetry on Mother Nature's lap

There's something about living here: waking up on a Sunday morning and rolling out of bed, standing in the wet grass, peering through binoculars at hundreds of dolphins in the ocean below us. Yes! As they swirl around, feeding, perhaps dancing, one or two jump above the waves, way up high, their silver bellies sparkling in the morning light. Worth the price of admission, as they say.

Big Sur is the stuff of raw poetry. These Indian Summer nights, crickets, and star-light on the sea, simply fill my soul. A friend from New Jersey once told me, complete with his salt-of-the-earth regional accent, "Here, God is knocking at your door, saying Hello." (Emphasis on the first syllable.) The Divine is with always with us, every time we stop, look around, and let it all sink in.

As my friend viticulturist Lane Tanner says, Big Sur is a huge negative ion bath, which is why, if we let ourselves be, we're just naturally more happy here. A few deep breaths of good clean air, and presence comes flowing in. Yesterday I took one of these baths, watching little birds taking turns at my bird-feeder. One of them lands in the elm tree overhead, and as I watch it fluff its tiny feathers, getting a firmer grip on the branch, I remember seeing a mighty hawk balancing on a power line. This elegant creature transformed for a moment into an old man in his bathrobe, hunched forward, talons splayed out like skinny legs. Nature can be comical, too.

Years ago, I bought a copy of the Tao te Ching. A pretty book for my shelf, intriguing, and unintelligible. Then, my house burned down in the Oakland Hills Fire of 1991. The first book I replaced was this one, from a spiritual bookseller on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley. I was open, empty, in shock, and suddenly, all those words from Lao Tzu made perfect sense. Less really is more, and more is less. I got it. Free from desire, understanding is possible.

Since I am blessed with friends who read, write and share poetry, I’ve been testing my theory about a wild landscape (filled with negative ions) inspiring greater openness to the art of words. Can Nature, and Poetry, consumed together, lead to a nurturing stillness, a fuller presence in our beings? As Lao Tzu says, "The Tao is the Great Mother: Empty yet inexhaustible, she gives birth to infinite worlds."

For this Sunday morning, here are a few snippets of poetry that currently fill my belly with a comforting warmth:

From the ineffable Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz:

Hands and lips of wind
heart of water
eucalyptus
campground of the clouds
the life that is born every day
the death that is born every life—
I rub my eyes: the sky walks the land.

Your hair lost in the forest,
your feet touching mine.
Asleep you are bigger than the night,
but your dream fits within this room.

Dear Dorothy Parker! Hardly upbeat, but wise:

The stars are soft as flowers, and as near;
The hills are webs of shadow, slowly spun;
No separate leaf or single blade is here—
All blend to one.
No moonbeam cuts the air; a sapphire light
Rolls lazily, and slips again to rest.
there is no edgéd thing in all this night,
Save in my breast.

And from 13th century Turkey, the much beloved Jelaluddin Rumi:

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for!

Show me the way to the Ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.

All this fantasy
and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night out of the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.


Photo by Linda Sonrisa

What we practice

is what we have. Or, the devil is in the details. Who would have thought that spending a weekend sitting under the Big Top with 70 people (yes, the Esalen yurt felt like a circus tent) breathing, and then reflecting on this process, would be so difficult?

At times, it was excruciating. I kept wanting to fall asleep, my busy life (and the late summer heat) catching up with me. The sound of the surf below us blending with Zen teacher, speaker and writer Cheri Huber's soothing voice...everyone quiet, pondering their "practice" — the ways we keep ourselves from being present with Life. (My specialty is the perpetual re-write, as I edit all out my regrets, large and small.) Then there are obsessive "mantras" — endless loops of distraction and self-criticism. Add to this mix residual emotions from the past, and worry about the unknowable future, and spontaneous joy withers.

Cheri, like so many of the enlightened ones, has a quick wit, and (dare I say it?) a wicked sense of humor. She's not invested in evangelizing Buddhism, "it's hard enough for those of you who are powerfully motivated," she says. Yet her organization, Living Compassion, works to make a difference in the world, most notably in Zambia, with her Vulnerable Children Project.

The big "A-Ha" for me was that I finally grasped the concept of the Ego. That creature that keeps us separate from life, stuck in our own movies, unable to fully feel and enjoy the world as it unfolds around us, moment by moment. The ego-centric conditioned mind that makes us suffer can be interrupted through awareness practice: understanding and compassion felt in the body through healing breath. This is freedom. This is where creativity lives, where wonder lives, and I want it!

So, are we now all ready to meditate 10 minutes a day? Try by just enjoying a few breaths, relaxing all your exhausted grey matter as you exhale. (Terrifying, isn't it?) Or, as Eckhart Tolle says, we can consciously ask ourselves, what will I think of next? Then watch that thought appear like a tiny mouse emerging from her cartoon doorway. Because a significant part my brain is actually an archive of black and white films, I think of Deborah Kerr, in Night of the Iguana, chasing away her "blue devils" with deep, restorative breaths.

Let's heal the world, starting with ourselves. Be in the moment. It's a good trick and the only game in town. We can begin to climb this mountain, right now. Ready, set, go!

We are shaped by our thoughts. We become what we think. -Buddha

Photos by Linda Sonrisa

Rise up Singing

Last night, a year after I began to find my singing voice, I stepped up to the microphone and sang a tiny solo at the Henry Miller Library's "open mike." I am so very grateful to the angelic teacher I found right here in Big Sur: Lisa Goettel, of The Bird Sings.

Lisa's dream is to travel the world teaching people to sing, in the way of the Sufi poet Rumi, who says:
"I want to sing like birds sing. Not worrying about who hears or what they think."

Confident and charming, Lisa teaches at Esalen and at the Spirit Garden, and can travel to your town to guide you and your friends in song. A coltish beauty, she leads students in vocal exercises that expand breath, the key to vocal power. She encourages us to make funny sounds, and instructs us in the fine art of harmonizing. Her repertoire is vast, having sung before she could speak (Mom was an opera diva).

With all the chaos and distraction of life, it helps to sing. To hear and feel your sound resonating in your own body is a fundamental tonic. In addition to diluting the self-consciousness so many of us experience being fully ourselves in front of others, it simply feels good.

If, as another teacher has told me, your body is your designated toy, then the voice is the part that takes play to the next level. Everyone's voice is exquisitely their own, the primary expression of soul. More than just listening to music, making music with our voices can generate and release emotion, cleanse us and set us free.

Singing fills me with love, and the possibilities in song are endless. As long as we breathe, we can sing out who we are to the world. So, dear readers: here's a bit of music that comes to mind just now. I hope it will make you smile!

Photo of Lisa at Easter celebration by Linda Sonrisa

A prom queen's (not!) rite of passage

Oh yeah, I'm never, ever, going to my high school reunion! I mean, why? I don't get it. What is this absurd American ritual, anyway? Eeeeeewwwwww.

I said this for years, without really exploring why I felt so strongly about it. I tossed the invites, never sent my forwarding address, even changed my maiden name (for other reasons, another story).

This summer, my mother sent me the fateful letter, and this time the number of years between then and now got to me. I started talking to people about reunions, heard their stories, their enthusiasm. Like Grace, who just had to go back and see what happened to the friends that helped her dig her retainer out of the cafeteria trash bins. Or Jay, who was in email contact with former classmates and contemplating going to his 40th reunion on the other side of the country.

Not letting myself think about it much, I sent off the check two weeks beforehand. Then, the day of, this strange thing happened. I began to understand why I'd been feeling so awkward, grumpy and over-sexed for the past week or so. This constellation of emotions reminded me of how I felt...in high school! Funniest of all was the sign-up form: in a space of about an inch we were asked to say what we'd been doing since graduation. Oh dear, where to begin?

Packing my bag, I struggled over that eternal question: what to wear? Then I realized that if I wore something that I felt made me feel unattractive, that would be the perfect reminder of my adolescent angst as well. (Yes, I know, it's pathetic, the grief of a mildly neurotic American teenager, 70's style.)

But we work with what we have, and this is what I got: Midwest to California diaspora of job-seeking soon to be divorce-seeking disaffected adults, tidy tract home, public schools, the suburbs, the malls, the funny hair and ridiculous clothes of the time. Aside from books, a few good teachers, and drinking ice tea with my Mom (sitting on the kitchen counter, dispensing advice at the tender age of 13) it, basically, sucked.

So, I didn't want to go back. But something magical happened when I did: it wasn't so bad. Ah, I thought afterwards, this must be the rite of passage part. I connected with a few people, some I remembered from before, some only when I saw them, wearing their name-tag pictures from years ago. We laughed, about who we'd been then, and who we are now. Add to this hugs, dry humor and storytelling and you get a night out that is refreshingly real.

Since I was a hold out, people thought I'd been traipsing about remote corners of the globe for decades, making films. "Didn't you do something with drama?" someone asked and I replied "well, I've certainly done drama in my life..." And again that familiar laughter. "Oh, I remember you, you were one of the super-smart kids," I said to a man who I recalled was also horribly awkward in those years, "Yeah, I think I peaked in 9th grade," he replied as we both sipped our drinks.

That part was fun, too. Hey, we can all drink like fishes together now, legally! The class photo was a bit eerie: all these same spirits together again, on a different planet now, in terms of life experience. Sad faces, thoughtful faces, glowing faces. There was that familiarity, that ever-so-faint whisper of who we were then.

Happy to have my husband with me, we began the evening on the edge of the crowd, looking in (another echo of the past), cracking jokes. In addition to an award for greatest number of children, we decided there should be one for, say, greatest number of sexual partners! Or extra-marital affairs, with bonus points for children out-of-wedlock!

And at the end of the night: pay dirt. A woman emerges from the crowd, and I recognize her first. I grin and watch her face change as she looks at me. "Oh, you brat!" she exclaims, "we were so close!" and we embrace. Her face is the same, her body, larger and softer. My husband sparkles at her, and I see a sudden kinship (she's Welsh, like him).

This is Julie, the pretty young woman I fell in love with when we were both about 9 years old. We were in Camp Fire Girls together, we had sleepovers, we went to Pt. Lobos with her parents, and tidepooling with them one Saturday morning stayed in my consciousness for decades.

We head to the bar together, order drinks, but don't get our talk in because one of those guys, the kind who ignored us when we teenagers but who can't get enough of us now, chats us up. You know the type: married but friendly and quite possibly available for the night. His senior photo on his name-tag literally sends me into a time spiral (or maybe it's the Tequila).

So now, Julie and I are friends again. She has a 19 year old son, an ex-husband, and is about to go to Lake Tahoe on vacation. I have a husband, a great dog, and a wild life in Big Sur. Life, as they say, is strange, wonderfully so. Or, (and you've probably heard this before) as one of my classmates (who no-showed to the reunion) said beneath his photo in the senior yearbook: "What a long, strange trip it's been."

And a photo of me, on the edge of the crowd, (picture #2) big smile on my face (just like in 1979.)

A public service message

Last Tuesday, the Man and I had a little chat. Since there's no cell phone reception on top of the mountain, I make and receive a pathetic number of calls on my sexy red phone, and so I get very, very excited whenever it rings. Like Pavlov's dog, I always pick up the phone. Which is what I did, as I was waiting in the left turn lane, driving from Rio Road onto Highway One.

Whoops! Yes, that squad car is for me, I think, as I pull onto the side of the road near the picturesque fields stretching up and down the corridor of the Carmel Valley meadow. "So," he says, (blond, attired in regulation khaki, holding his clipboard, his shadow falling across me) "Can you tell me why I stopped you?" This is good, I think, as the wheels in my brain start turning, gauging the potential value of clever banter with a man in uniform.

"Um, my car is really dirty?" I ask meekly, glancing at the heavy layer of road dust on my wagon's rear window, the distinctive fan of clear glass shaped by my back wiper blade. Someone has drawn a peace sign in the upper left hand corner. "Nope," he says, "Try again." "Uh, I didn't use my turn signal?" I look up at him and squeak this out.

"No," he says once more. "You were talking on your cell phone." "I bought one of those expensive ear-thingies," I reply, "but I lost it..." "So, why don't you use your speaker phone?" Now it's his turn to sound a bit pleading. I grimace. "I can't figure out where the button is." He sighs. "License and registration, please." Dang. Then, I dive into the well of my passenger seat, digging about for my booklet with registration papers, etc. As I do this I realize my backside is up in the air, giving the cop a good view. This seems to have no effect, either. Oh well.

"Why don't you have your registration in your glove box?" (Like you're supposed to, he adds silently.) "Because I've got too much other stuff in there." Now I'm in the back seat, still looking. I show him a Dinosaur excavation kit I'd just purchased for a friend's 5th birthday. This gets a smile from him. "My life is chaos!" I confess, my car at times doubling as my suitcase, camping kit and mobile office.

As he writes me up, outside, beside his car, I wonder how many locals are observing my mis-adventure. In fact, since this corner of Highway One is the beginning of the main artery all of us use to travel down the coast, my story could make it back to Big Sur before I do. Or at least a version of it. (Yes, the following afternoon a colleague asks me, "Hey, what was up with you and the Sheriff?")

My day had been full of puddles of love. I had lovely exchanges with all the people I met as I took care of a variety of endless items on my many to-do lists. The lady I bought coffee from in the café taught me how to say good morning in Turkish, the sad-faced grocery store clerk and I chuckled over the horrors of holiday Musak, the man at the toy store told me he felt like Tom Hanks in "Big" and so on. Perhaps, in my golden, happy-for-no-reason day, I was due for a friendly interaction with the Law.

So, yes, it's very dangerous to talk (or heaven forbid, text!) while driving. Accidents can and do happen as a result, and often. Officer Dainty (I swear that's what his name looks like on my ticket) shows me where the speaker button is on his cell phone. As I sheepishly return to my dirty blue Subaru, parked beside the highway, broadcasting my rule-breaking to my neighbors, he calls out to me, "And hey, clean your car!"