After chewing slowly my last bit of palak paneer and nan, sipped every drop of the Pineapple, ginger, mint juice, shared hugs and kisses with many good friends, I headed off to return my 100cc black and orange Honda. I rented it for $2.5 a day including insurance. A taxi driver and a small car awaited me to take me to the airport.
Mysore, Bangalore, Bombay, Frankfurt and directly heading north towards the pole to SF. Passing Iceland to the left, the water appears like a desert, cracks and formation of something that later reviled itself as ice. As we head north, the cracks seem to connect creating and ice layer, till reaching over northern Canada where dunes of snow flowed for endless miles, where not even a white bear, or a crazy explorer wearing a red suit, appeared.
My journey home (where is home?) would last close to 40 hours, where at the SF airport I would meet my brother Gil and a sunny sky. “The rains have just stopped”, he told me in Hebrew, and I smiled, realizing I missed winter all together this year.
Clean wide roads, SUV’s and convertibles, big homes and a crazy huge motorcycle (mine) were slight different scenery. People however, are still people. Stripping off the façade, the masks, the make up, all that remains is the same thing.
The trees and the grass don’t seem to mind if the land is called India or California. The birds sing indifferently, palm trees rise up and the waves of the ocean always seem to head towards shore.
Two nights at Debbie and Gils house, playing with the always happy Maya, I find myself packing again, this time my motorcycle, getting ready for my trip down the coast, Past Big Sur to Esalen (http://www.esalen.org/)
I have 5 weeks here as a works scholar, Participating in the Biodanza program and working in the kitchen.
Typing on my laptop on the large deck outside the dining room, the sound of birds singing tingle the ocean down below. Esalen is in Big Sur, a cliffy area where green hills roll down to rocky beaches.
In a moment I will head down to the natural hot springs that flow into beautifully designed baths hanging over the crashing waves.
A river flows down through its land passing by the meditation hut, uniting with the ocean where dolphins and whales come to visit, organic gardens surrounded with flowers, butterflies and the community. Esalen brings to its land of Native Indians people from all over the world, of all ages, to come and live beautiful moments, to explore their potential as humans, to study and have fun. It’s a community that consists of many that are here for a weekly program, some come to study for a month (like myself), of course a core group that lives here, and many short term workshop visitors.
Esalen is known for so many things, that I just want to send you to their website to read more…think of Abraham Maslow developing his theories here, of Joseph Campbell, Ida Rolf, the gestalt therapist Fritz Perlsand and many more…
Visitors included the Beatles, Moby, Gurbachev…and now me.
Off for a soak as the sun is playing hide and seek with some clouds, and a special Indian feast will be served soon…
