Advertisement
Published: October 29th 2013
Edit Blog Post
The Big Sur coast
As seen from Esalen looking south After being turned back at the gates of fabled Esalen Institute on several occasions—apparently it's not okay to just "come in and check it out"—this weekend I was at last welcomed. All it took was a check for $800. Debra and I were attending a series of writer's workshops put on by an obscure literary magazine called The Sun. Neither of us had Hemingway aspirations. Our ambitions didn't extend much beyond the Esalen bath house.
At the gate we were handed a map of the grounds. The names of the buildings on the map told the history of the place. We would be staying in the Murphy House, which is next to Price House. Michael Murphy and his fellow Stanford alum, Dick Price, founded Esalen in the early 1960s. During orientation we were told a dozen times that the two were fed up with being told "this is the way you do things because this is the way they've always been done". The phrase was repeated so many times that I began to wonder if it had been the Stanford motto. So they talked Grandma Murphy into letting them set up their own East-meets-West institute on a patch
Famous writers
Debra and me celebrating the end of the workshop. of family-owned land on the Big Sur coast where a natural hot spring bubbled into pools overlooking the ocean; a place just down the road from Henry Miller's home; a place where the scenery is so gorgeous that it borders on the erotic.
The names of the other buildings on the map looked like the reading list for a Transpersonal Psychology class I took in college: Fritz, Rolf, Huxley, Watts, Maslow. Esalen was the birth place of the human potential movement of the 60s, or as graffiti on the sign at the entrance recently read: "Jive shit for rich white folk"
Debra became grouchy when she saw the tiny room we paid $1600 to share. A double shot of whiskey, which I always carry in case of such emergencies, helped turn her petulance into bitter but entertaining sarcasm, just in time for dinner.
At 6:15 everyone lined up for dinner in the lodge. Our fellow workshoppers—
contributors, we were called—were hairy and fleece-clad. Mostly my age, they looked like characters in a
New Yorker cartoon. They struck me as clever, hyper-sensitive, perhaps working through some psychological traumas by writing. They all dreamed of being published in
The Sun,
Esalen gardens
They grow their own food. a magazine I would have to spend the next few days pretending that I read.
As I neared the front of the line I heard the server being pelted with questions about the philosophical pedigree of the soup he was ladling. Is it organic? Is it vegan? Is it lactose free? Is it gluten free? Was the quinoa shade grown? Was the chef exploited in any way? I was impressed with the server's patience answering these questions. I supposed this was a form of blowback from a movement Esalen helped start.
Throughout the weekend I tried to faithfully re-create the Esalen experience, the Bob-Carol-Ted-and-Alice experience. I was in the right place, attending cool workshops, sitting in the baths with bare breasted women. So what's missing, I asked myself. And then it occurred to me. What was missing was the life-changing epiphany, the feeling that suddenly the world got much bigger, and that I urgently needed to quit my job and go inventory the new additions to my universe. What was missing was that worm-has-turned feeling I used to get every two weeks when I was young, naive, and probably high. Am I too old, I wondered? Too jaded?
The Esalen Lodge
This is where meals are served three times per day. It's open all night and has a bar! Too closed? Or perhaps just too damned critical?
The culminating experience of the weekend happened Sunday afternoon. All 150 or so contributors gather in a giant tent-like structure for one last meeting. We heard a panel discussion of the workshop leaders followed by some readings by Sy Safransky, the much revered publisher of The Sun. Then we were given one last assignment: take seven minutes to write a story that begins "What happened was...". I applied the techniques learned in my workshops. Let the symbols that appear before my empty mind tell me what to write, author David Brendan Hopes advised. The universe wants to tell me a story, he promised. I closed my eyes and cleared my mind. A hand appeared before me and I began to write. I had no idea how the story would develop or end. At times I had no idea what the next sentence would be, but the words flowed out of my pen and then seven minutes were up.
Volunteers were asked to read their stories. One person after another stood up and read variations of the same sappy (but in many cases beautifully written) story: "What happened was
that I attended a writer's workshop at Esalen where I learned many things, attended workshops led by wonderful writers, came to terms with some deep dark stuff about myself, etc." The organizers on stage sagged visibly with each reading. Why were these people so anxious to read their work, Debra and I wondered. Near the end of the session the woman sitting next to me (not Debra) volunteered to read her story. When she finished I grabbed the microphone from her and stood up.
"What happened next," I read, "was that I found a severed hand on the trail leading into the forest." The fragile audience members gasped. I could hear Debra choking back her astonishment. The workshop leader tried to calm the audience by waving her hands as if trying to flag down a runaway train. My story ended at the present meeting with an audience member sheepishly reclaiming his hand from an impatient and unsympathetic workshop leader. My story gave no explanation as to how the contributor and his hand managed to get separated. The audience erupted into howls of laughter and applause. Several people came up to me after the session to congratulate me. "That was
The Art Barn
Something for everyone at Esalen. a great story," they would say patting me on the back, "very refreshing," and then in a whisper, "it wasn't really true, was it?"
P.S. Here's a link to the story. It's only a few paragraphs long:
What Happened Next ...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.097s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 16; qc: 34; dbt: 0.0414s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Lisa
non-member comment
Awesome!
Jon, Looks like a fantastic workshop and in such an inspiring and gorgeous location! Thanks for sharing! Lisa