Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread... Day 19

Thanksgiving down. In the next forty days: Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year, a blitzkrieg of temptation, consumption and debt. I'm reading Walden by Henry David Thoreau, a strangely appropriate read if you're living alone on a mountaintop. I'd love to hear Thoreau sound off on the commercialization of Christmas. Returning to Big Sur from Los Angeles this weekend, I found it astonishing how many vacant lots had suddenly sprouted Xmas trees, inflated Santas and Frosty snowmen. Some of the lots still had pumpkins in them.

Today is Sunday, and the beginning of the last half of the Big Sur artist residency. I reacquainted myself with the studio, trying to remember where I put everything earlier this week. Then I swept the slate floors, made some coffee, and decided to take advantage of the currently dry weather and drive down to an Arts and Crafts Fair at a place called Grange Hall in Big Sur. Rain was forecast for tonight, but started shortly after I got to the fair.

(Uh oh. Tell me that's not thunder I'm hearing. It's raining hard right now. The horses are in the stable tonight and one of them doesn't like it. Keeps whinnying, loudly. I'm going to have to walk back to the guest house in the rain. I was feeling quite brave when I walked up here earler. But throw thunder into the equation...I don't like thunder. What would Thoreau do? (haven't read what he thinks of Nature yet...he's still bragging about having built his entire house by hand for $28.50. I'll skip ahead.....any experience with thunder?)

Back to the Fair, total flashback to the Sixties. In a clearing in the woods down by the river: beads and wooden bowls, hand blown glass, knit caps and velvet shirts, incense, little towhead children wearing tie-dye, dancing, hickory wood rocking chairs. A part of this fair supports a local school. Two young girls from the school played violin for something billed as a "cakewalk." They needed ten people for this "cakewalk" and I paid $5.00 to participate. Essentially we walked in a circle on fabricated stones that read: courage, happiness, kindness, love...you get the drift. When the music stopped a child reached in a basket, read the word "courage" and the lady on the stone next to me walked away with a carrot cake. (I was standing on the stone that said "sucker!! just kidding) Afterward I went to the world renowned Big Sur Bakery, bought a fresh baked loaf of Asiago (cheese) bread and explored the "Spirit Garden" behind the bakery. Maybe next Sunday I'll attend a drum circle there. One last stop at the Phoenix gallery and bookstore, where I got a map for future outings and heard about something "locals" do. If you call ahead to Esalen, the famous clothing-optional Institute, after 1:00 a.m. it's a custom to go soak in their hot baths along the cliff, under the stars. Apparently, I was told, it's especially cool to do it on rainy nights. I stopped in at Tom and Erin's, leaving too soon to wend my way back up the coast wet and dark. Tonight it's warm in the studio, I'm painting and writing and listening to rain (no thunder.) Life is good. Very good.

p.s. I ate half a loaf of the most delicious bread tonight and don't regret it. However, you will not see this gut at a hot tub any time soon.