Holiday Shrubbery

I follow Toby up the path on the side of the hill, turning to look at the panoramic view below and beyond to the gray, winter-day ocean. “Did you know this path used to be the Old Partington Road?” he reminds me. “Yep,” I reply automatically, as I watch our scruffy black and white dog, the neighbor’s chihuaha, and our orange kitten scamper up the hill beside us. The kitten is really scampering, hopping ahead, his fluffy tail waving proudly behind him.

Forgoing the $50 tree from the lot in town this holiday, we’re doing what we’ve said we’ll do for years: chain-sawing a non-native pine tree (well, bush, really) and taking it back down the hill to our living room. Christmas really begins with decorating the tree. Breaking into the box of last year’s goodies stored on a shelf, unwinding the strings of lights, seeing which of the ornaments have broken, or are just too terribly corny to use again.

The beautiful ones emerge to our delight from tissue and we remember, Oh yes, this is the tiny crystal globe that Margaret painted, with our dogs Kip and Mina looking at the Big Sur stars. Oh, here’s the blown glass Amanita mushroom! And the vermeil oak leaf from our trip to Yosemite a decade ago.

It’s our wild kitten Cricket's first Christmas, so the crinkly paper and shiny, sparkly, dangly things emerging from the holiday box are pounced on and purred over. The leaves are falling outside like snowflakes, and suddenly I see in my mind’s eye a 12 point buck walk past my bedroom window, but no, that was a winter day in the Oakland hills, almost 20 years ago.

The tide of the end of the year (and this time, of the first decade of our 21st century) draws us to contemplation, and a bittersweet sense of Time. The current we want to flow with, not getting stuck (for too long!) in the swirling eddies of life.

This morning I wrapped stocking gifts while listening to bluesy Christmas songs. Funny how so many of them are about Santa bringing “my baby” down the chimney, of rewarding good girls, of all I want is L-O-V-E for the holidays. As Ray Charles sings Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer I wonder, where did that red nose come from, again?

Since our home is more Pagan than Christian, we celebrate the ending of the year with deep breaths, kindness, winter naps, and the baking of many mincemeat pies. Then, a theme party with friends on the 25th—Champagne at sunset, good food, warm fires, dancing and laughter.

One year we wore 70’s outfits and danced to disco music late into the night, hanging mirrored balls on the tree. Another season was Spanish Christmas, with shawls, mantillas and our neighbor Jay in his running of the bulls costume from Pamplona. There was the Mad Hatter party, when we wore silly hats, drank lots of tea from mis-matched cups and changed places around the table during our feast. This time, it’s YO HO HO, a Pirate Christmas, with buckets of flaming rum punch…

After this year, and the end of a somewhat disastrous decade for the world, we all deserve a little Joy. While we’re at it, let’s hope and work for Peace on Earth—which, as Santa will tell you, begins at home, in our hearts.
Photos from Rowland-Jones' family archive

Hibernating with Rumi

I always know when I'm about to get sick: I start envisioning a nap (a long winter's nap, as the famous holiday poem goes.) This time it came on like a wave: chills, aches and tummy unease, dizziness and exhaustion. Boom! Instant winter cold.

Because we go inward at this time of year (conserving our energy to survive the elements, to renew our strength for the year to come) questions of contentment and belonging surface. Where are we happiest? Who makes up our community? (Even Mary and Joseph were looking for that as they traveled to their home town for the census. Remember they were told there was no room at the inn, perhaps the first documented case of holiday angst.)

Early Winter is a time when we should be hibernating, but instead we find ourselves going into a kind of surreal hyper-drive with the demands of the season. We cope with the stress of family expectations and excessive socializing by over-indulging ourselves, to top it off with dancing on tables at the office Christmas party. Oh, right, we should save that for New Year's Eve. The whole thing, while certainly enjoyable, strikes me as a massive, culture-wide anniversary reaction: each year is a touchstone, recalling all the holiday seasons of the past.

A day at home, sick with a tummy bug, gives me me the unexpected peace of slowing down, of stopping. Surrendering to the land beneath the covers, slipping into the quiet depths of the sheets, finally stilling my busy mind as I try to give comfort to my body. Sipping peppermint tea with a mindfulness I rarely experience when I'm in full swing, reading until I surrender to the aches and slumber deeply, all day and into the night. Guilt-free enjoyment of total sloth.

Other things comfort me in these times too: my cat sprawled at the end of the bed, absorbing the heat from the wood-burning stove nearby, the neighbor's little dog looking up at me demurely from the sheepskin near the altar, my dog running up to the bedroom door, ears flapping and tail spinning, happy to come inside for a bit of bacon. Practicing the simplest of domestic arts: tending the home fires with the wood dutifully chopped (and hauled, and split, and stacked) by my husband.

After hours of delicious hibernation, medicated with pain pills and drinking lots of water, I emerge to another level of consciousness, which in my case, is always aided by a dose of Rumi's poetry. Something about being slightly broken lends itself to letting his words flow into my soul with a new, fuller understanding—

There's a path from me to you
I'm constantly looking for,
so I try to keep clear and still
as water does with the moon.

Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is: Suffer the pain.

Each moment you call me to you
and ask how I am, even though you know.
The love I answer you with
stirs like wind through cypress.

Your presence is a river
that refreshes everyone,
a rose-garden fragrance.

Don't worry about making doorways
between individual lovers when
this flow is so all around.

Some souls flow like clear water.
They pour into our veins and feel like wine.
I give in to that. I fall flat.
We can sail this boat lying down!

Humble living does not diminish. It fills.
Going back to a simple self gives wisdom.
When a man makes up a story for his child,
he becomes a father and a child
together, listening.

You don't win here with loud publicity.
Union comes of not being.
These birds do not learn to fly,
until they lose all their feathers.


--
Rumi's words are from Say I Am You, the John Moyne, Coleman Barks translation.
Photos by Linda Sonrisa

Ratatouille on the Roof

My eyes opened wide when I looked out the office window that morning: 48' of billboard plastic spread across the front lawn. Going outside, I see three cartoon characters bigger than myself in action, the skyline of Paris behind them. One, a mouse, well, OK, an enormous RAT, wields a huge soup spoon, while the other two, a boy and a girl in chef's uniforms, gaze at each other with goofy smiles.

Whoa, this is going on our roof? Can we put it face up so the low-flying planes and helicopters looking for ganja plantations can spot a bit of Hollywood á la Pixar razzle-dazzle here on top of the mountain? Sadly, the top secret agreement via our friend and the billboard supplier, is no, all that happy color must go face down, onto the shingles, no longer serving as advertising, but keeping us from using our pots and pans to gather rain-water indoors during the Big Sur winter.

Over coffee, we discuss the placement of the three heavy duty billboard tarps, which should last us 3-5 years, so our roof-tarping work parties will no longer be an annual event. Pity. The plan is to divide the roof in thirds, draping each sheet over the tippy top of the roof, like strips of wide pasta over and down, tucking them up under the eaves. Voilá, a leak-proof home! Now we sleep under the roofs of Paris, which will doubtless inspire our dinner parties and our dreams.

So far so good with our new roof, with tempest winds last night rattling the redwood strips (that help hold the tarps in place) just a little. Since I have a touch of vertigo, I was exempt from the actual labor (thanks to neighbors Aengus, Bill and John on that one) but did manage to climb the ladder this morning (had only a minor fainting spell afterwards) to take this snap of our neatly finished "Ratatouille Roof."
And here's the best part: we saved the billboard section featuring rat and spoon for use as a water slide at our next Easter Party...

A dream fulfilled

Last weekend marked the launch of the Big Sur Food and Wine Festival, brainchild of Toby Rowland-Jones, led to exquisite fulfillment by a local team of gifted and passionate food and wine professionals.

That's Rosalia Byrne, Matt Peterson, Toby, Aengus Wagner, Alicia Hahn and Adam Olthof, all happy as clams after their amazingly successful event. The weekend popped with sheer joy: Big Sur wore her warm, sparkling fall light, splashed across the mountains and ocean. Everyone present glowed with the pleasure that comes from good food, wine and communion with friends in a beautiful place.

Crafted as a fund-raiser for the Big Sur community last January, when we all wondered if a) the road would hold during winter storms and b) the economy would keep folks properly employed, the BSFWF brought together Central Coast winemakers, their many fans, generous business sponsors and a crew of indomitable volunteers.

Over the past year, I've discreetly observed these volunteers grow into themselves in new ways. Their strategic planning and communication skills soared, plus they managed to drink excellent wine at all their meetings, definitely an organizational plus. After the Saturday night auction at Ventana Inn, Rosalia and Alicia treated the crowd to a fire dance, Big Sur style.

While stress levels reached the stratosphere in the weeks right before the festival, in the end, everything worked beautifully: people dined in a variety of locales, experiencing the culinary richness and romance found here.

Under the 501c3 umbrella of the Big Sur Arts Initiative, funds were raised for community non-profits such as the Volunteer Fire Brigade and the Health Center, as well as for a culinary institute scholarship for local youth.

Last Sunday afternoon amid laughter and some tears, several of the planning committee members met beneath the small oak tree on the point that we call the "wedding tree". Here they re-affirmed their commitment to giving to their community in the way they know best: loving people by leading them in feasts and celebrations of the grape.

The Algerian singer Idir, from the Berber tradition of Kabylia, says this in his lyrics, "Sing, dance and make merry. This is the only time when God joins us here on earth. Offer up a plate of couscous, and put aside your problems. On with the music!" Please plan to join us at next year's Big Sur Food and Wine Festival, when we’ll call down the gods to play with us again on November 5, 6, and 7, 2010.


Group photo by Linda Sonrisa
Sunset group photo "Victory" by Rosie Kenworthy

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