Sand City: West End Celebration — August 24, 25, 26

Sand City's "West End Celebration" is always a lively way to explore one of the most interesting pockets of the peninsula. Click here (or on the image above) to go to the "West End Celebration's" website for details of the weekend's schedule of music, artists, and venues.

And click here (or on the map above) to retrieve a PDF file that will enable you to scroll in more detail on the map of the weekend.

"Nosy Neighbor."One of the many artists at the "West End Celebration" will be our good friend Murphy Adams. You might recognize any number of your friends in her paintings.

"I Like Bad Boys."Or if you're not careful, you might even recognize yourself.

Ikkyu: "Nature's Way"

Ikkyu gazes at the mountains. From "Ikkyu Shokoku Monogatari Zue."

The wise heathens have no knowledge;

They just keep their mind continually set on the Way.

There are no big-shot Buddhas in nature,

And ten thousand sutras are distilled in a single song.

                                          ---------------------

Ikkyu, "Nature's Way," in Wild Ways: Zen Poems of Ikkyu, trans. by John Stevens. Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press, 2003.

White Pine Press founder and publisher Dennis Maloney and his wife Elaine are canyon residents who divide their time between Big Sur and New York. Whenever I pick up one of their "Companions for the Journey Series" titles from my bookshelf, the poems I find seem meant to be read right where I'm standing.

"Koyaanisqatsi" at the Henry Miller Library on August 31

Don't know whether you've seen and heard Koyaanisqatsi before. But whether or not you have, I can't think of a better place to see and hear it (a first or third time) than within the amphitheatre of redwoods at the Henry Miller Memorial Library.

The HMML is already a noted film venue through the year-after-year success of its Big Sur International Short Film Series. But for experiencing a film like Koyaanisqatsi, whose very nature is a meditation upon the mythic upheavals in our relationship to wilderness and technology, the HMML is an even more poignantly fitting venue than usual.

Joanna Newsom, Tim Fain, and Philip Glass performing at this June's benefit for the HMML at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco.For Koyaanisqatsi the HMML will have a new state-of-the-art sound system in place to join its state-of-the-art projection system — the better to take in both the poetic visual imagery of the film and Philip Glass' musical score.

Speaking of which, here's a very important element of the evening: director Godfrey Reggio and composer Philip Glass will both be in attendance, and they'll host a question-and-answer period with the audience prior to the screening.

You can get your tickets here. Get them quickly, though. As I type this, a month before the event, half the available tickets already have been sold.

Image from "Koyaanisqatsi."Often we wax nostalgic over bygone cultural highpoints that we may or may not have been able to participate in ourselves. Say, the Big Sur Folk Festival in 1969, to take one event in particular, or, on the other hand, the "bohemian" reputation of the coast in the 30's and 40's.

But such cultural highpoints are still happening. And it's still largely up to us how much we choose to live within them.

Into the Mystic

I grew up as a valley kid — at the foot of the Sierra. But that didn't mean that the distant murmur of the sea didn't also call me.

The mountains or the sea?

Coming home to the Sur means that you don't have to choose. And maybe that's why many of us have landed here.

From Olmsted Point.Even so, not even the Sur has this clean a sweep of glaciated stone.

Tuolumne MeadowsWhen I was 18 in the valley, the rest of the valley was 18, too. Cutoffs, t-shirt, and Chuck Taylors were the uniform. (And even a couple of those were optional.)

Late one summer night, at one of those valley parties by the river that consisted of beer, the uniform (worn or not), water-immersions, and maybe triple-digit temperatures even at midnight, someone had the big idea that a handful of us should head to Yosemite.

Which meant wide-awake, non-stop conversation and Van Morrison all the way.

When the sun came up that morning, I found myself at the foot of Yosemite Falls.

Half Dome.How many moments does it really take to form whom you will turn out to be?

Ventana Wilderness Alliance president Tom Hopkins.They say that you can't go home again.

But is that really true? Aren't we always going home? And don't we always know just where that home might really be?

Anasazi

White House, Canyon de ChellyWhen traveling away from the Big Sur coast, we often post in our Red Egg journal. For instance, read/see more about the Anasazi here.