Surf's Up

11.24.06

I awake to gray light, overcast skies and walk down to the ocean past the shuttered restaurant, bar and home of the owners, Mona & Leo. The waves crash into the rocks protecting the shore front and I seek out a beach area to the left. An inlet provides a nice sandy area and in day’s light I see the ramshackled buildings surrounding the playa. It feels homey and comfortable, so unlike the garish Palm Springs resort we stayed in this time last year. No phone, TV or internet access here but the kids immediately pull out Battleship and play on their beds as we finish our coffee and a variety of lower sugar pastels, pan dulces and donuts. The sun wants to come out, and it’s sweatshirt temperature so far, but just being removed from home’s distractions is calming and I’m looking forward to finishing John Updike’s latest, The Terrorist.

I take a look at the “playground” which down here is Spanish for “lawsuit in the making”, much like similar structures we found in New Zealand and the Czech Republic, featuring broken swings, rusty slides with loose panels and missing ladder rungs. When I think of the $50,000 structure that was put up at the kids’s school in LA, I wonder who really has more fun? Updike has a wonderful passage bemoaning our technological age and how kids are so much more plugged in than 50 years ago and less guided by human interactions. I fear they are not the only age group so disconnected.

Someone knocks at our front door selling tamales, which she reassures me without my even asking, are made with aceite de vegetal y no manteca. Seems everyone knows the horrors of trans-fats these days. I buy two and we enjoy them with breakfast. We then venture down to the beach where Noah and I catch a few waves on our boogie boards and then Hanah and I, Beach Adventure Girls, explore the limited sandy expanse and come upon a “fossil” which she tests and verifies as of the genus “archiosis.” It’s a gorgeous day, the sun appeared on schedule at noon and the water was warm enough for those of us in wet suits to stay in a while. The look on Noah’s face as we raced over the water together towards the shore was priceless.

A drive down the coast past a farming valley that now exports baby vegetables, took us to La Bufadora. (A dietician friend told me that one of MX’s problem with growing obesity is that they are now sending so much of their fresh produce out of the country, they have less available for their own consumption. That coupled with all the junk food you can now find everywhere explains a lot of wide waists.) The coast line is stunning in places and exactly like Palos Verdes, the Pacific Palisades, any number of CA seaside towns, except for the money. Modest homes, and oddly sprouting hotels in the middle of nowhere, dot the hill sides and your typical ticky-tack souvenir stands hack familiar goods in both languages. We watch the famous blow-hole spray water from a crotch in the inlet and then turn back to our place for a nap, jumping rope for me and the Simpsons on DVD for the kids. Next stop, lobster for dinner in the city.

On the Art of Listening

In her book, The Zen of Listening, Rebecca Shaffir cites a passage by Richard Ben Cramer from his work, What it Takes. He describes Senator Richard Gehphardt’s ability to listen: “When Gephardt started to listen, his whole person went into receive mode. He locked his sky-blue eyes on your face, and they didn’t wiggle around between your eyes and your mouth and the guy who walked in the door behind you, they were just on you, still and absorptive, like a couple of small blotters… If it was just you and your problems, he’d stay on receive until you were weak from being listened to.”

On reading this my knees buckled, even though I was sitting down. I can’t think of a more provocative, romantic imagery of connecting one person to another. This description felt quasi-erotic, as if Gephardt (and I think Bill Clinton had this gift as well) made love to the person he was attending to in the moment. And truly, what greater display of love can there be than being truly present with, listening to another and their inner truths? Making love in a sexual sense asks this of partners as well, that they both be awake and aware of the other person’s needs, wants, fears and joys. Receiving and returning those attentions and acknowledgements is perhaps the closest two human beings can get.

When we listen with our hearts, our minds, our souls and our senses we have truly made love in this world, whether with our eyes and our ears or the rest of our bodies. What a joy to have those all in a partnership, whether as lover, friend or kin.