forest – somebody else's paradise

back in SC (light)

i enjoy the jetlag this way around. get up at 6.30, feeling fresh and eager. breakfast with leta. the chilly evening and morning air had made be believe that autumn had already installed itself, but leta tells me there’s a bit of an indian summer in the afternoons. she’s right. the light is so golden and tender.

yet autumn is in the air. the overwhelming thick and sweet smell of blooming flowers and trees that had filled the streets around our house during spring and summer is gone. the air is brisk now. (and what a pleasure to breath in fresh oxygen after more than 14 hours of flying and passing time in airports…)

and then there are the redwoods and the smell of autumn forest. i realize it’s the redwoods that impress me most here, far more than the ocean.

something monastic about coming back in this season. preparing for a period of writing in the quietness and natural beauty of this place. (meaning i’ve put up a number of walls, shutting out the parts of santa cruz i don’t like)

Big Bassin state park

the marvel of redwoods redwoods redwoods redwoods
redwoods redwoods redwoods redwoods redwoods
redwoods redwoods redwoods redwoods redwoods…
(and a tick in my belly. michael, assisted by marÃa,
gets it out. sahar googles this mysterious lyme-disease.
michael during the rest of the massage session: you
fight me. do you realize that? you’re the only one who
does this. wherever i touch your shoulders, you resist
and actually push against me.)

garden of eden – the return

giulia comes back from san francisco full of advertures and incredible stories of new age spirituality of her own, and as we are jumpy and laughing and sharing it’s clear that we should jump in the car (mihui’s) and go to the garden of eden. another circle, as we went there two days after giulia got here and now it’s two days before she leaves. for sahar and mihui it’s a first time meeting with the redwoods, and i’m all happy be the redwood story teller. doesn’t matter if they are not true, giulia laughs, they are beautiful. a moment of indignation – what do you mean, not true?!? but i guess she’s right.

our arrival coincides with that of the old train, from the good ol’ times when santa cruz was still connected to the american rail track network – imagine that pleasure. (before they dynamited the tunnels that cut through the hills separating santa cruz from the rest of the world, as a way of sabotaging potential japanese invasion in the 1940s – another story that might not be true, didier and i still have a bet for a bottle of champagne on this one…). the train is now spending its old days taking visitors from the santa cruz boardwalk all the way up to Henry Cowell state park and back.

we cross the san lorenzo river, the train tracks and find the garden of eden. it was different this time, the story of the garden of eden continues to unfold. first i must tell you, there’s nothing to do about it (i think i don’t even have a bathing suit, or at least i don’t remember last time i saw it) but i swim naked. okay, it must also be said that swimming is definately an overstatement. i step into the water till it is too cold to get in any further, and that happens quite quickly around here. and giulia also swims (yes, she really does) naked. this is not different from last time, when marÃa swimmed semi-naked as well. but no doubt last time didier’s presence, as he sat in the shade of the tree on the river banks, made a difference.

this time sahar and mihui were sitting under that very same tree, getting increasingly nervous after a little while. as it seemed that we attracked a particular kind of annoying creatures: young fraternity-style men holding on to a beer can. the first one came while we were still sun bathing, mumbled if he could join us or if we wanted to have a conversation or something along the lines. i interrupted our conversation for a very brief moment to look him in the eyes and say as firmly as i could “no, thank you, goodbye” and resumed what we were doing as if he disappeared into the air. it seemed clear enough, in her accounts of the story afterwards mihui kept on saying “how much more clear can you get.” but they kept on sticking around. i kind of like the strategy of completely ignoring in these kind of situations, like a magical drawing of an invisible but strong boundary around our company of four. emphasising the point that they simply have no access to us, no point of entry, no impact on us. admittingly, it didn’t work to get them away: they kept on coming and hanging around and paying much attention to us – no matter how little attention we paid to them. then sahar and mihui started to propose us towels to wrap around us. in such situations i can’t help refusing the cover – when i mean no impact, i try to take that as far as i can… we couldn’t stay very long this afternoon, so soon after we had become the center of attention for frat-boys in the garden of eden, we left, immersed in our conversations and company like when we came, and without granting them the acknowlegdement of a look or a changed pace. makes you wonder how many of these frat-boys pathetically roam the garden of eden looking for some entertainment which they are unable to create on their own.

garden of eden (Henry Cowell state park)

… we were even a bit late for our apointments with michael, something almost unthinkable. still with the smell and feeling of the san lorenzo river on my skin (i must admit, giulia and marÃa had to insist to get me in the cold mountain river) i ran into michael (on the street, phoning to leta, to find out what happened) and all i could say was: “we were in the garden of eden”. he smiled, “yes, i’ve spent many summer days in the garden of eden, a good place to be”. funny how there was sun and blue sky in the garden of eden, and how the fog hit us when we got back to santa cruz by the ocean…

redwoods (Henry Cowell state park)

mariposa grove

Giant sequoias sequoias sequoias… (among the largest living things on earth, more than 2000 and sometimes even 3000 years old…)

of the forest

She once said that i came from the forest.
And when she said that i knew how true it had been, all along.

“It is something like this: I, an animal of the forest, was at that time barely in the forest; I lay somewhere in a muddy hollow (muddy only as a consequence of my being there, naturally); and then I saw you out there in the open, the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen; I forgot everything; I forgot myself totally, I got up, came closer, anxious to be secure in this freedom that was new though familiar; I approached even closer, came to you, you were so good, I huddled near you, as though I had the right, I placed my face in your hand, I was so happy, so proud, so free, so powerful, so much at home – and yet, at bottom, I was only the animal, I’d always belonged to the forest alone, and if I was living here in the open it was only by your grace… It couldn’t last… I saw more and more clearly what a sordid pest, what a clumsy obstacle I was for you in every respect… I recalled who I was; in your eyes I read the end of illusion; I experienced the fright that is in dreams (acting as though one were at home in the place where one didn’t belong), I had that fright in reality itself; I had to return to the darkness, I couldn’t bear the sun any longer, I was desperate, really, like a stray animal, I began to run breathlessly; constantly the thought, “If only I could take her with me!” and the counterthought “Is it ever dark where she is?” / You ask me how I live: that is how I live.”

Franz Kafka, Briefe an Milena.
Thanks to Peter Steeves,
for his beautiful talk Monkey See

And i love all the differences she makes.

And so it happens that so soon after i turned my back to an old forest i find myself in the middle of the impressive ancient forest of the redwoods.
Not the forest was left behind, but the world became forest.
It is Maria who made me see all of this.

Will you come and visit this forest/world, sweet amoureuse?