Taking an Esalen break

I'll be taking a few days' break from here while I attend my yearly poetry workshop at Esalen Institute in Big Sur California. I leave for the six-hour drive from our home in southern California to go to central California in about one hour.

I love this workshop. It's a time for reflection, relaxation and some heavy-duty poetry writing. We have a craft talk every morning and then go off to write until we get together again to share our work mid afternoons. I'll take good notes on the craft talks and share them with you when I get back.

In the meantime, here are a couple of my favorite photos from the Esalen grounds. And reflections from one of my favorite times at Esalen when my husband and I went there to celebrate my sixtieth birthday.

Turning 60

As 60th birthdays go it wasn't too bad. But how would I know any difference? This was the first and last time I'll ever turn 60. Bob kept toasting me with a "here's to another 60 years." Ha! Now, that's a laugh. I know I feel pretty good, but another 60 is stretching it a bit, don't you think?

I decided to spend my birthday at the place I love the most - Esalen Institute on the Big Sur coast. I turned down a party. I just couldn't get behind the idea of a celebration this year. My sister insisted, Bob insisted, Sherry insisted, Carole insisted, but I resisted and prevailed. No way. I didn't want any part of it. A 60th birthday may be a time to celebrate, but with my son, Paul, dead less than a year, I just couldn't do it. Believe me, Paul wouldn't have cared, but, I did. I just didn’t feel right having a party this year. Anyway, why should I worry about what they all wanted. I’m the one who turned 60. 

I knew I made the right decision as we drove North on Friday. As soon as we got past Santa Barbara I started to relax, sink deep into my seat, take some long deep breaths and watch the beauty of the world go by. The verdant hills looked like they had been painted with sweeping brush strokes of mustard yellow, the rows of newly planted grape vines stood tall and proud as little toy soldiers, and the clear sky except for a few Georgia O'Keefe clouds beckoned us up the Coast. It looked like just plain heaven to me. And I figured that if it were this good on the road, what would come next would be even better.

It wasn't easy getting Bob to agree to go. Esalen, created in the 1960s where people gather to expand their minds, relax their souls and work on their bodies; eat fresh, healthy food, and soak in the hot springs baths while watching the waves of the Pacific, is my place. I've gone there many times without him, and he is very happy to have it that way. But, this time he really had no choice. Of course, I offered bribes. He got to choose the workshop, he got to ogle all the naked women in the hot baths and he got to spend as much time with marvelous me as he wanted all weekend long. There would be no interruptions - no telephone, no email, no exercise classes, no work. What the hey? He took the bribes, and in his inimitable way, he came along and participated fully and willingly. 

Out of the four workshops offered this particular weekend, we decided to take the massage intensive. What a concept! We signed up to spend about nine hours taking turns rubbing each other’s bodies. How bad could that be? At one point I was laying on the table that stood right in front of a huge dome-shaped picture window, the sun was streaming in, a cool breeze was washing over me, the ocean was roaring below, and I was being massaged by not one man, but two. The instructor had decided to come by and give Bob a lesson in using a slow hand and an easy touch. Oh, and don’t get any ideas. They each were doing a leg. Even so, if I could have my way, that moment would still be going on. 

The truth is, there’s not a lot at Esalen to complain about. Sure, the digs are a little primitive, sure, there is no room service, sure, all calls have to be made on a pay phone, sure, meals are served buffet style and before shoving our dirty dishes into the kitchen area we have to scrape any leftovers into the compost pot. That’s about it. There is so much more to like. The breathing sounds of the ocean as it laps against the rocks below are hypnotic, the pungent smells of fresh herbs and pine tickle the senses, the fertile ground that produces grapefruit size roses along side rows of emerald green vegetables boggles the mind, and, the hot baths soothe not only the body, they heal the soul. It’s like no where else I’ve ever been. It’s where I can go to be completely relaxed and at peace. I made the perfect decision. I wouldn’t have wanted to turn 60 any place else.

A rant about junk food

I was definitely heartened to read this story today. It is a great positive step to curbing the childhood obesity epidemic.

CHICAGO (AP) — Laws strictly curbing school sales of junk food and sweetened drinks may play a role in slowing childhood obesity, according to a study that seems to offer the first evidence such efforts could pay off.

Please click the link to read the whole story.

http://news.yahoo.com/study-junk-food-laws-may-help-curb-kids-041613114.html

In fact while I was at my poetry workshop at Esalen in Big Sur, CA last month I wrote a rant about junk food – triggered by the word junk, one of a list of ten given in a daily prompt.  (See the Scary Seven at the bottom of this post, courtesy of Naturally Savvy.)

A picture prettier than the rant 

(the Big Sur coast)

Here’s the rant:

Junk food is a business.

Junk food is an addiction

Eating junk food is an epidemic

Can you imagine that recent studies

show that obesity in children

is not related to their

consumption of junk food

in the schools?

Can you imagine

they say children form

their eating habits at home,

so why worry about limiting

their junk food consumption

outside the home?

Can you imagine why?

Of course, you guessed it.

The schools get a profit –

probably a huge profit

from those ubiquitous vending machines

that spit forth,

with the drop of a few coins,

a constant supply of

high-sugar soft drinks, chocolate bars,  

chocolate chip cookies, and chips.

You name it, if it’s junk, it’s there.

The food hustlers entice school management

to allow them to put the machines on their sites

in exchange for bonuses.

The food hustlers are only

about selling and money.

The food hustlers could care less

about healthy children.

And then on top of all that

these poor children eat

burgers dripping with cheese

or pizza practically every night

for dinner at home.

So the problem is not only in the schools.

Their mothers are too busy

or too uninformed

to make them a proper meal.

Just go to any school at noon

and see those little chubby guys

stuffing their faces

instead of moving their butts

out in the playground.

How astonishing that parents and teachers

allow this behavior.

The children eat and binge

binge and eat.

until they become

a generation that will not survive

long enough to become viable adults.

They will be too sick with heart problems

and diabetes to work and have a family,

We need to act.

We need to take the plunge

and get that junk stuff out of the school

and off our pantry shelves

Neither our families nor our nation

can afford to do anything less.

A new poem from Esalen

 Looking down from the road

I spent five days last week writing poems at Esalen, a beautiful site high on a cliff in Big Sur CA.

I go to this particular workshop almost every summer. Led by poets Ellen Bass, Dorianne Laux, and Joseph Millar, I always learn some lessons about writing poems, I hear excellent poems read by my fellow poets taking the workshop with me, and I never lack for something to write my poems about.

This year I wrote six poems using prompts given at the end of each day’s craft talks on: 1) a coming into consciousness poem, 2) a poem with sentiment and no sentimentality, and 3) a poem using various line break and syntax techniques. We also beg our leaders to give us a list of ten words and an assigned phrase with which to create a poem. Once in a while we’re asked to include our pick of a body part, season of the year, or time of day.

Writing to a list of words is like solving a puzzle. But sometimes the poems turn out just plain silly. This year I wrote a couple of silly poems and a diatribe focusing on the word “junk.” I couldn’t resist writing a rant about how junk food connects to our current childhood obesity epidemic.

Here’s one without any of that silliness. The assigned words were: effluent, cauterize, jowls, flange, egg, phobic, chew, skunk, floor, gels

And the phrase was: “What falls away”

(By the way, it’s always okay to use any form of the given words.)

                                         The bathhouse built into the cliff

Now for the poem:

Progression

I have my mother’s jowls.

Deep furrows from

my lips to the sides of my chin

create flanged sacks

wanting to reach

toward the floor.

I also have her deep lines

just above my eyebrows.

Every time I look up,

she haunts me

years after her death,

leaving me phobic

that the ravage

to my once egg-smooth visage

will go on.

Your face has character

they chide.

But I know it as the first signs

of what falls away,

of what becomes skunk-like effluent.

There is no way

to cauterize the progression.

Only what’s left is

to chew and swallow it down,

to gel with it and accept

what’s yet to come.

Esalen Big Sur CA photos

Esalen is one of my favorite places. Its beauty,  serenity, and healing powers cannot be surpassed. 

Here's a few shots from my cell phone camera.

 My favorite view from the hot sulfur baths

 The rocks below

 The back garden

 Resident blue jays

Last look