Dead pigs, Julia Morgan, and what would Paracelus say?

I should mention that I had called ahead to Esalen, hot baths in Big Sur dug into cliffs overlooking the Pacific, supposedly a spa for well-being. The baths are open from 1-3 in the morning to the public. A woman picked up, said they were all reserved, and hung up on me.

So, if anyone is interested in going to Esalen to relax, or meet nice people, I would advise you to stay far away from that $&%^ place. Lost a customer for life right there, I don’t care how nice your baths are.

There’s that abrasiveness again. But I really didn’t instigate it….

So north we went, beneath a sun alternately filtered by high-flying clouds and fog. Compromising between the 1 and 5 with the 101. Friends had recommended the Hearst castle, and I was curious to witness some of the green cutting-edge systems the architect and engineer Julia Morgan employed.

The first female graduate of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts – after twice being rejected for enrollment – she was a true badass of her time. She also surgery to repair an ear go bad, and her face was distorted, and she had trouble with balance.

From a young age I’ve been fascinated with how people’s physical condition triangulates with their inner self and resultant creations. Meaning art I guess. Lucy Greely’s Autobiography of a Face is hypnotic. Rilke and his deep sickness as a child. How something such as a distorted facade touches consciousness, and what is created as a result.

In any case, I didn’t know it at the time, but such was Morgan’s condition, and I would have enjoyed thinking back on how it affected her designs. How could it have not ?

I’ve been reading about the sixteenth-century German humanist Paracelsus. He came up with the idea of Simpling – the search for outwardly manifested signs giving clues to what goes on inside a person. Teju Cole, for all his mopiness, makes connections one cannot overlook. He writes:

For Paracelsus, the light of nature functioned intuitively, but it was also sharpened by experience. Properly read, it informed us what the inner reality of a thing was by means of its form, so that the appearance of a man gave some valid reflection of the person he really was. The inner reality is, indeed, so pround that, for Paracelsus, it cannot help but be expressed in the external form. On the other hand, as in the case of artists, unless the work of art addressed the question of an inner life, its external Signs would be empty. And so, Paracelsus developed a fourfold theory around how the light of nature is manifest in individual men : through the limbs, through the head and face, through the form of the body as a whole, and through bearing, or the way a man carries himself.

Although, as Cole goes on to point out, it’s not a far jump to the black bile of eugenics, and indeed racism ; it’s also not a far jump to the mind-body-spirit continuum, phenomenology, and the idea that nothing exists except what is perceived by consciousness.

Narcissist that I am, I’m sure the conversation has some deep relevance for me, although I sometimes think it will be my life’s work to figure out exactly what that conversation might be.

I should have guessed – it being Saturday, the Morgan’s masterpiece the Hearst Castle, and the rest of Big Sur for that matter – was just inundated. People responding to the physical need for sunlight and fresh air and thus their consciousness says let’s get the hell out of Dodge. Even parking at the Henry James library was full – I mean, you know it’s gotta be crowded if….

I also did my damndest to try and get a tour at my man Robinson Jeffers Tor house – self-built, rock by rock, at the hands of a poet after my own heart. But no one picked up the line there in Monterey, despite the website saying that tours were available only on Friday and Saturday.

Dog hadn’t walked at all so we did stop at sweet Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, in hopes of seeing the Falls, but there were so many people, and clear signs that no dogs were allowed, so we took a shorter walk.

Hearing rumors issuing from my friend Jen, who I met at a writing residency at Ragdale, in Chicago, that a dead pig was waiting to be et in San Francisco, freshly turned on a spit, I made the decision to just ball it north – forget precious spiritual Big Sur with its crowds eager for enlightenment lite.

So ball it north we did, passing Castro Valley at the rosy fingertips of fog so wonderful I had to stop and watch it roll over the hillside, and get caught in the valley, like a tsunami of vapor slamming against a wall, and folding back on itself. I took a video of it moving in, some overwhelming creature, but alas I cannot load it on to the blog. As a living creature it moved, roiling, folding in on itself, jamming its leading edge into the valley – the light changing from grey to blue and back again in the space of seconds.

Dog could really give two shits. Excuse the profanity but I want to express how much he was ready to not be in that truck anymore. I was not far behind him, I gotta say, though I will always have time in my schedule to park and watch fog.

We cruised into town, Mathilda not thrilled about the hills, but content to be at the end of the day’s trip. She just wanted her oats and to be watered and left alone.

My grandfather hailed from San Francisco, his family originally making its way down from Salem Oregon. Apparently one of our relatives – who participated in the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898 – went by the name of Snoot and refused to evacuate his house during the great fire of 1906. The police tried to force him out, on pain of being shot.

« Shoot and be damned, » he supposedly responded.

So we parked at about a 12-pitch if that road had been a roof, Dog having to stay in the truck, doing his best to find purchase on the inclined seat. I arrived at the barbecue where, indeed a Japanese knife beveled at 17 degrees, an assortment of Mason jarred pickled peppers, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, with a delicate vinegar sauce – and one big dead pig sat waiting. I tell you, that shoulder meat of that suckling pig made the ride worth it. Not really. But it was good. I wish I could have seen dog have a go at the carcass.

Jen was housesitting in Mill Valley, so Cal and I followed her over the Golden Gate Bridge into a sunset that I swear God must have dialed up for the occasion. What enchanted land. Crossing the bridge I recalled Cal on the Brooklyn Bridge, his trip through Chinatown. Part of me thinks he enjoys these roadtrips, the sights. Part of me thinks I’m just projecting, anthropomorphizing, whatever.

The following day we took a hike in Tennessee Valley, Jen Nick and I. Jen, true wildlife guide, pointed out rattlesnake grass and turkey vultures, as Dog, desperate for a swim, played crocodile in the mud.

We got back, and Jen made a fine breakfast frittata with avocado, peppers, and spinach that balanced the dead pig and pickled radishes like the perfect see-saw partner.