I had spent the day in Notting
Hill. It was my last day in London, in England, after four months of living
abroad. I left my hotel, a narrow Victorian conversion near Paddington station,
and wandering to Portobello Road. It was not a market day, however, so I came
away with only a few errant scarves, some Mediterranean food, and a homeless
stalker. Having evaded him, and eaten the food, I determined it was time to
visit Harrod’s.
My best friend back home had this
tin of Earl Grey tea that he swore by. He’d purchased it in London, at Harrod’s
(that was the brand), a few years previously and despite attempts at rationing,
was nearly done with it. You could order it online, but the price was
exorbitant. So I’d promised I’d see what I could do in the way of picking up a
tin or two while I was in the country. It was Christmas time, after all.
Knightsbridge was the area I
needed, and coming from Notting Hill the best way (by foot, I was at this point
too poor, and desperate for all the scenery I could still get, for the tube)
was by foot, across Hyde Park. So off I went. The late afternoon sun shone down
with the filtered timidity and peace that comes at that hour, especially in
Northern Latitudes. Everything was golden, crisp in the winter air, and for once,
not raining.
Hyde Park was beautiful and full of
people enjoying the holidays and the sun, two things I doubt often coincide in
London. Every moment was more precious than the last, or any before, because I
knew that in a matter of hours my adventures would be at an end and I would be
back home, no longer able to jump to Norway on a whim or get lost on an
ancient, winding cobblestone street somewhere between the Louvre and the Quick
Burger where I’d had dinner once. I already felt the pang of nostalgia, though
I was still there. The accents of small children crying out in mirth as they
ran in circles around each other, their diction belying their social class,
their neighborhood, but all pure and happy. People walked with dogs, with
children, with lovers, or in groups I could not label. I walked alone. I liked
it that way, and still do. You see much more when there’s nothing else to look
at.
The park is a big one, and it’s
previous status as a hunting ground for kings seemed plausible (it’s a fact,
actually). I would miss the history, too. But I knew there were things to look
forward to, a reason I would not refuse to get on the plane at the last moment
and forsake all I had ever known to exist in a world I loved in so many more
ways. I had left Paris, hadn’t I? And that had been the hardest.
In California, in the United
States, there were things for me to do. Things I had to do. Things I needed to
accomplish before I could get back here where my heart so desperately wanted to
cling, like a barnacle that finds the post it likes best. There are other piers
in the sea, however, and unfortunately I had to go home to find and conquer
them. Plus, there were adventures to be had on the other side of the world I
hadn’t gotten to yet. I had been thinking of one adventure in particular for
years, but strangely more so inthe months I was in Europe. Odd, with my drive
to see these other countries so removed from tiny Tehachapi, but I kept being
drawn back to thoughts of Big Sur. Having grown up loving the rolling hills to
the south of the Sur, I was always intrigued by the rugged Northern stretch of
the Central Coast. My father loved it, I knew. My mother said she would not
take me, it was too dangerous. This combination naturally meant that I had to
go the second I could, but the opportunity had not yet arisen. I knew little
about it, only rumors. I had, for some reason, not even googled it, and so
therefore the mystery was far more vague than it should have been. With nary an
image to put to the name, I knew only that it was a place I had to, without
compromise, find.
These thoughts, balancing where I
was and what little good I foresee in where I was to go (I really didn’t want
to leave, if you can’t tell) filled my sun-dappled brain as I made my way
across Hyde Park that afternoon, bundled in my beloved fur coat. A group of
people, one of many, approached me. Two men and a woman, all perhaps around
thirty. The moment I spoke, I knew they were American.
As they neared I heard them
discussing friends of theirs they might meet up with somewhere. And then, in
that flash where passing strangers may alight into one another’s conversations
for moment decried by a collision of physics and acoustics, I heard: “I really
just need to get up to Big Sur.”
They said more about why and what
and who, but it was so fast, and then they were gone. In that moment, on the
other side of the planet, in a country where people knew “Los Angeles” and “San
Francisco” perhaps and no other city near my home, in a public park, in the
most incidental and mundane of passings, that is what I heard.
I have a lot of suspicions about
fate and coincidence, and refuse to define, defy, or deny either, but I cannot
deny that of all the things that could have been said to me in that moment,
that was perhaps the best. I had to see the Sur. Stronger than had to, even, if
there is a word for that. I suspected I was in love with the place, despite
having never been there.
So as soon as I could, I went.
Such an enigma. Right there in the
center of the most prominent coastline of the most prominent state of what is
likely the planet’s most prominent country, there is a rugged abyss, equal
parts bucolic and otherworldly. It’s a curious thing, especially when one
considers the beaches of L.A. and San Francisco that bookend the central coast,
which is generally more rural and sparse—but Big Sur is more than that. So few
people have been here, and while to me it feels, like Yosemite, a necessary
awareness for anyone who can find a way, any way, there is something essential
to its isolation. I feel every human soul would benefit from knowing its crags
and lichen, but part of its allure, its magic, is the secret of it. An open
secret, but it seems only some, deemed worthy by whatever thought pattern,
coincidence, or mishap led them here, are thereby blessed with its knowledge.
Surely, there are those immune to nature (a tragedy upon their souls—and for
those whose circumstances prevent them I offer no judgment but count only my
own blessings), those who would not see the hand of God if it slapped their
face, or the essence of peace and happiness unless its wicked, false,
doppelganger jumped out of a Louis Vuitton handbag. There are those, though,
who do find this place. I tell my friends and acquaintances to come with utmost
passion and eagerness, for I know my urgings will not lead to a spoiling influx
of people—most will still not come, and those that do I will know have passed
the bar.
My heart leaps with delight when I
find the names and stories of those who have known this place before me. My
father, first and foremost, whose occasional mentions of his beloved “Big Sur”
(in connection with my mother’s cryptic “I’ll not take you, the road is a death
trap”) gave me hope of a magical Eden hidden in the midst of one of the Western
World’s epicenters. My hopes were high and the reality, the soaring eyries of
stone plummeting straight into the roiling blue, the brush and red woods
clinging to the crevices and crowning the skyline, the homes of wood, and rock,
and water speaking of cultured elegance with the language of rustic truth, the
reality surpassed what I might have hoped for.
The names of others I recognize
who’ve been here, loved here, include many I look to in other realms, and to
find them here mentioned in local annals of history and legend merely indicates
that whatever my taste and aspirations are, they are consistent and not alone.
Robert Redford, Jimi Hendrix, Henry Miller (perhaps the most famous local inhabitant),
Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth (once owners of the point on which my most beloved
restaurant Nepenthe now sits), Janis Joplin, members of Crosby, Stills, Nash,
and Young, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, (Hitchcock heroine), William
Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, Jaime de Angulo, Robert Louis Stevenson,
Tiburcio Vasquez, these are merely a few.
My heart aches, as it does for
Paris, but Big Sur is near and attainable.
Los Angeles is a place where souls
go to die. Big Sur is where they may go to breathe.
My favorite places are Big Sur and
Paris. Others are wonderful too (Yosemite, Zion, the Rockies, Norway, and Taos
spring first to mind), but for me, Big Sur and Paris emanate a quintessential
essence of what it is to die with no regrets, never wishing for more, for different,
for better. There is no better. They are perfection, and a reminder of the
personal perfection in each of us, a kind both inherent and discoverable. Call
that God, if you like, I don’t know what it is, but its some of that highest
form of good that flits through our world, and us, from time to time, like a
good glass of wine or a child’s smile, helping another in need or breathing air
fresh from the salty face of the spraying sea, the truth in a lover’s eyes or
the smell of the first rain on dry ground.
