Routine started to disintegrate at dawn today with more phone calls from the UK — a small family crisis for Ewan. We did manage to paint a mandala each, although (like breakfast) this was about two hours later than planned. Finally left the house noon-ish and headed north to Marin county, turning left at the Arco petrol station where the worst of California (urban wasteland) abruptly transforms itself into the best (fragrant hills hovering dreamily between earth and sea).
W e disembarked at Green Gulch Farm, a Zen Buddhist center where we naturally fell quiet as we waited for the office to open. What did we want to know? We were not sure; we’d missed the most recent tea gathering (chado) and are still too steeped in family life to volunteer. We browsed the bookshop instead (actually somewhat tortuous since I have pledged not to buy anything I cannot leave behind) and strolled around under the peace of tall trees. We did not even see the inside the meditation hall (it felt wrong to view it in a touristy way) but left feeling somehow more serene.
High windy Highway 1 — with ‘rough road’ warnings — took us to Stinson Beach, where we had a very late lunch in an all-American place that looked so gloomy and greasy it made us a bit hysterical; and then we did do the tourist thing: Ewan slept on the beach, I walked along the ocean edge, and Maaike read (Gossip Girl, more American fare). And we didn’t even get stuck in the traffic on the way back.
So not a bad day, particularly given that Gov Schwarzenegger and the Democrats have cut a historic deal on greenhouse gas emissions.