The Sylvia Beach Hotel Weekend

NOTE: what follows is in essence a diary – perhaps one that is far too personal for such a public space, yet here it is. Each entry was written in its present moment while emotions were high and memories strong. It is too long by far and I make no apologies for that. Each is also presented as-written in that moment. To go back and edit after the fact would be dishonest. Please – enjoy.

Friday March 13. Sylvia Beach Hotel, Newport, Oregon. This place is featured in the book “1000 Places to see Before You Die”. Mark it off my list. It’s 5:15 and I’m sitting in the 3^rd Floor reading room in an ancient, patina-rich leather club chair, my feet on a matching ottoman and just inches beyond, a window overlooking the full richness of the Pacific Ocean surf rolling gently in – actually I think it’s out – while the sun begins to set off in the distance. This is one of my ideas of heaven. I’ve been in Newport for an hour.

Today was a gorgeous, sunny day on the coast and that beauty welcomed and enveloped as I drove north through what is, in my opinion, the most beautiful section of the Oregon coast. The last time I drove that stretch had to be 1999, so I am well overdue. The clouds are beginning to roll in now, the weekend should be a bit stormy but that’s ok. I had time for a short walk on the beach in the sunshine, and I am truly grateful for that.

That walk, short though it was, brought every simmering emotion from just below the surface where they’ve been hovering for weeks now and placed them front and center, demanding attention. I was overwhelmed, brought to tears as I walked in the soft breeze at water’s edge, frighteningly aware of how fragile I am right now, how near the breaking point. I need this place this weekend. I need the healing, the time to think as well as read.

There is so much love in my heart here in Oregon. Love for this coast. Love for a few people – a very few people. Driving the coast today I wondered how I can possibly leave. How can I go 3000 miles from here and never see this again? And yet – I can’t afford to live over here. My best friends in Albany, dear friends of 13 years, have disowned me over political differences. I can’t imagine losing friends over politics, but as he said in an email, “it’s a character flaw and it’s mine”. No apologies, but I’m no longer welcome in a home that used to call me family. It hurts. One other dear friend – so much love between us, yet so many fears that keep us apart. The Buddhist in me says stay, learn from this. The human in me says go, it hurts too much to continue this learning experience.

So yes, Oregon offers so much and yet with all the love in my heart that rests here, I know that there is also much that awaits in Georgia. Not the same, most certainly, but also much that I love, such as the Appalachian Trail and the Nantahala National Forest in North Carolina. Even a few friends/relatives who are waiting to welcome me back into that warm southern sunshine and warm southern way of life. And right now, it’s people I want, more than place. I’m tired of being alone. I need people and friends and companionship. I have no people in Oregon.

So you see, I really do need this place this weekend, and I need it badly. I can feel the healing already. Dinner is served family-style in the ocean-front dining room at 7pm. I think it’s 8 courses. I chose some kind of prawns and scallops for my entree and I know it will be delicious. I’d planned to visit the Rogue Brewery Pub tonight for some fish and chips, but I’ve slept so little the past few nights, with so many emotions draining my energy, that I opted to reverse things and stay here tonight. Somehow, driving those few blocks seems beyond me and this place is superb. There is a group of ladies about my age from Portland sharing this room with me. Many bottles of wine, having a great time, apologetic for their noise that I try to convince them I am enjoying immensely. I spend so much time alone that their cheery, happy, laughing voices are a joy. If I were trying to read I might find it annoying, but since I’m only writing mindless drivel, it’s fun.

Saturday, March 14. 4:35pm. Settled once more in the reading room with a glass of wine, shoeless feet resting upon cushy ottoman, the ocean moving ceaselessly, beautifully, out the window to my right. I have, with the exception of the last hour and a half and breakfast, spent the entire day in this room, much of it in this chair. From 6am until 3pm – I’ll let you figure out the math on how many hours that was – I sat here and lived within Jack Kornfield’s new and wonderful book on Buddhist philosophy. And in the process I unwound, let go of so much that needed letting go.

With all that reading, I’ve only covered maybe 75 pages, which is a tiny fraction of the book. It is not a book to be read through quickly – although I suppose one could do that. For me, it is a book to be absorbed. He is a master teacher and, while I did get a glimpse of him during my time at Spirit Rock, this is no doubt as close as I will ever be to his teachings in any personal sense. He’s written other books and I’ve read them, but this one is something of a culmination of his years as a Buddhist monk and his years as a practicing psychologist in California and something I am totally ready and eager to learn. So I devoured and savored, read and re-read, contemplated and meditated and in the process, found pure consciousness and peace. A state I believe he said was the heart of the matter, what it is all about.

Ephemeral, yes – I suffer no illusions that this state will remain once I return to the realities of life in Eugene, but I have learned the process and know so much more and have much to build upon. He offered an exercise, which I followed: Full awareness of all sounds (and there were plenty – the wind buffeting the old building making it squeak and rattle, the surf rolling in, myriad soft sounds of human occupation), allowing my consciousness to move beyond my mind and expand into the fullness of the sky, watching thoughts arise and dissipate in the same way of the sounds, feeling the varying sensations of my body. All at the same time, all in perfect concert. Resting in consciousness. Indescribably peaceful and beautiful. And when I’d absorbed all I could for one day, I retired to my room and sat in peaceful, private meditation and did it all over again.

The storm – and it was a small one, as these things go – seems to be easing. I had another brief and bracing walk on the beach this morning before breakfast, but the wind was strong and cold and quickly drove old softie here back inside the warmth.

This place is indeed magical. On their webpage they say something to the effect that it’s not for everyone – it will either welcome you in, or spit you out. I feel welcomed. I’d love to come here again and again, but I’m grateful to have experienced it once.

Dinner was superb last night – some kind of pureed soup, carrot? then a Caesar salad, both served with baskets of incredible, freshly baked home-made bread. Fat asparagus with garlic and red peppers, steaming bowls of fragrant rice, and a perfectly cooked concoction of huge prawns and scallops in a rich cream sauce. I could barely contemplate dessert, yet couldn’t resist a few tastes. A luscious white cake drizzled heavily with melted dark chocolate and sliced almonds. Afterwards – it was 9pm by now, a two-hour dinner – I rolled myself up two flights of stairs and into the welcoming, high bed and slept for 8 solid hours. Some of that can be credited to Xanax, but mostly I think fatigue, an easing mind and a full belly might have had the same effect without the pharmaceutical industry.

Breakfast was mostly carbs but very wonderful – a wide variety of baked goodies, and pumpkin pancakes with a pecan butter and sausages. I’m so comfortable here, so lazy and peaceful, that I have no desire to get into the car and go anywhere. The desk clerk sent me to the Sandbar, a block away with a lovely ocean view and super fish and chips. I can get a brew pub in Eugene – no need to drive to the one here.

Again, so many emotions roiling through my head today as I studied the book. I made a couple of notes and one seed that was apparently planted a few weeks ago began to germinate and grow. I don’t know where it will lead, but I like the sounds of it and wanted to run to the computer and start searching the internet, but had to practice patience, as that can’t happen until I return home tomorrow. No wireless card in this computer and frankly, I am thoroughly enjoying the absence of such things as the internet, the TV and radio. I digress.

My original intent was to have my furniture picked up and then drive straight to Georgia diagonally across country so I could get there before the stuff does. In recent weeks, I’ve found myself wanting to make a few stops along the way – such as visit my friends in Napa (or Phoenix, depending upon where they are at the time). Once I let go of the idea of a forced march to Georgia, I began to think how lovely it would be to drive down the Oregon and California coasts, see the redwoods once more, en route to Napa. Yosemite pulls me, yet I wouldn’t have time for that.

Another thing I’ve been deeply drawn to do for a couple of years now is spend long weeks in meditation at some Buddhist center. There is one in West Virginia that I would have flown back to last summer, then I realized that the course I’d chosen overlapped the Track and Field Olympic Trials in Eugene, where I’d committed to volunteer. Spirit Rock has always pulled me back and yet, where is the time for all these things?

And then, there is a certain desire to look around the southeast – most particularly the low country of South Carolina around Beaufort – as an alternative to Cedartown. But how to do all that with furniture that needs a home and needs it fast? The answer really wasn’t all that difficult, once my mind opened. I will look into having the moving company hold my things in storage in Eugene until I give them a time and place to ship. I’ve done this in the past, more than once, and the price is generally fairly reasonable. A phone call puts it all into action.

So, if that works, I’m essentially free. I will look for a long retreat at Spirit Rock and time my departure from Eugene around that. From there – Napa, no doubt, and from there, wherever the spirit moves me at the time but essentially southeast. I will also look at the schedule for the place in West Virginia and see if the timing is right for me to go there as well. And somewhere along the way, I’ll stop in Beaufort and bask in the reflected glory of my writing idol, Pat Conroy, who has made that small town so famous in his writings and who lives there yet today. Between him and my other writing idol, Anne Rivers Siddons, I have a no-doubt totally idealized sense of life in the plough mud and marshes and reeds and islands that generate so much magic for the two of them. I may not like it, and I may not be able to afford it, but I want the opportunity to find out before I settle anywhere.

In essence, I’m doing the same thing I did 13 years ago only in reverse, and when I put it that way, it seems insane. Driving in search of a home, but this time combining it with a search for greater Buddhist teachings and philosophies and – I can’t say searching for myself because in Buddhism, there is no ‘self’ – but searching for the ultimate answers, perhaps.

And who knows – I may find that home really is in Oregon, perhaps really in Eugene or perhaps here in Newport, as the fates allow.

Sunday, March 15, 7:30 am. The storm is raging again, buffeting the building and making it shudder and shake and rattle and squeak. I sit in my favorite leather chair watching as night turns to day – albeit a very gray, monotone day filled with some of nature’s harsher elements. Beautiful, nonetheless. The surf is constant and this morning plenty of it is white. Exquisite.

It’s a pensive morning – I feel so lost in thought, unsure of my future, unsettled in so much, and yet, fully secure in the things that perhaps matter most. I have no idea where the thoughts and ideas posited during this weekend will take me, but then, I’m not sure it really matters. All I need is inside me. If I’ve learned anything through all my travels and roaming, it is that I cannot escape inner turmoils by moving to a new place. Conversely, the beauty of this is that I have very few inner turmoils left and those that remain will travel with me, as will my knowledge that the only way to expunge them is from within, rather than from without. I take them gladly, secure in the knowing that I am not yet fully free in the Buddhist sense but that the ability to achieve freedom will be with me wherever I am. Whether it’s Eugene, or the Sylvia Beach Hotel, or a monastery deep in the West Virginia hills, everything I need I carry within, totally transportable, totally powerful, totally beautiful. Place does not matter. I have no people – at least, none who either want or need me in their lives to any large degree. No responsibilities.

All I need to do is toss a wireless card into this laptop, hop into my car, and follow where the road of life takes me whether it’s 10 miles or 3000 miles, and in the process remember to open my heart and mind, let go of the outcome, listen to intuition and insights, and rest in consciousness and awareness.

I’m torn with emotions about leaving this place today. It could be home for life, very easily, although that, of course, is not possible. It’s been an extraordinary interlude, worth every penny, fully the indulgent treat I intended it to be, and more. And yet, Eugene calls because it’s inevitable that I return to that reality. I’m almost ready to leave – but I will have breakfast first!

The view from my chair in the reading room. Not so hard to take!