But much of our trip was not play. We were working, and had business and family to attend to there in the land of eternal sunshine. Every day I walked three or four miles starting in Cardiff, surf and surfers on the left, all the way to Encinitas, north up to Swami's. Swami's is the affectionate name given to the Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda who lived on the bluff and by his own labor created the exquisite gardens there on the temple grounds. Established in 1937 in Encinitas, and carried on by followers today who exercise careful stewardship of the land on which the retreat center stands, and also of the lands around the community which they care for and make available for public benefit. I am not a follower, but I admire the organization greatly. Yogananda Paramahansa's book, Autobiography of a Yogi is a classic.
I always make my pilgramage to the gardens, which are open to the public, and always speak in soft whispers and gentle splashes every day to visitors who each interpret this stunning legacy according to individual needs.
California is a strange place. Sunshine does not always seem to bring out the best in people for some reason. I spend some time at an outdoor plaza where people get their Starbucks coffee and hang out in the mornings. I hear people talking. People talk about their feelings, a lot. Stick thin, overly tanned, panic showing in eyes that cannot express through the botox. Desperate. I always want to say, "do you see there are orange trees here, there are pots of exotic flowers? We are sitting under frikkin' palm trees and we can see and hear the ocean across the street! Hello! There is a hummingbird landing on your head!" But no one would hear me, or see me, because I am over thirty and not wearing this year's hip gym clothes.
I heard one muscle man guy say to a weeping woman, "nothing can make you feel bad unless you allow it."
A typical sort of California sentiment.
A couple of years ago I sat on a bench in the Swami's garden on the bluff over the sparkling Pacific. My father had called me a week or so prior to this, to say, almost apologetically, that his long, grueling and inspirational marathon run with cancer was about to end. Forever. I sat up there and felt it like a black fog and it went right through me, while my middle daughter sat calm, quiet, slipping her arm around me to take some of the impact.
This trip I sat there again, alone. The bad (?) sad feeling was still there, but different now that my father's transition is complete, that he is past all that business of the dying body. But the feeling is all there, bringing me along on my own journey.
The way I absorb that garden, and what I learn from it, is to hear a message from beyond the Swami's life on earth. Make a garden, make life beautiful, feel all of it.
