Big Sur and the Phantom Hands

The Big Sur Coast has always been a source of strength and wisdom for me. I gather it from the elements around me : the ocean and the trees. Its a place I go to get grounded, to center myself. Like magic, I always run into dear old friends, and always make new ones, (usually at Fernwood Bar believe it or not, but I have yet to make friends with the old guy that sleeps in the corner of the bar....hhmmm, next trip.) Additionally, Big Sur is excellent territory for dreams and nightmares....




My shoddy, little cabin welcomed me with open, decrepit doors which hung on rusty hinges. Pasha immediately jumped on the ancient quilt, and began his hilarious ritual of rubbing his face, hence distributing his scent everywhere, snorting and snuffing and basically messing up the bed. He looked up at me with his coal brown eyes, and disheveled hair. We were home.

After a relaxing day sitting in my obligatory plastic lawn chair, feet in the river, cowboy hat on, beer in one hand, Stephen King's book Desperation in the other ("Desperation , Nevada, a horrible place to live, a worse place to die") I was ready to get under that musty quilt and have some truly peculiar, phenomenal, and hopefully spooky dreams. I never disappoint myself:

Toss, Turn, Toss again, get Pasha's tongue out of my ear, roll over, untangle, untangle Pash. Soon I found myself leisurely floating down the Big Sur River in a taped up, maybe soon to be deflating innertube. Fog lifted off the water and the near distance shore filled with campers from Bakersfield. Beer bellies teasing out of much too low jeans, mouths agape like hungry little fish. I waved, feeling like the queen in my own white trash parade. They waved furiously, I rotated left palm side-to-side, pageant style. As I came to a dark, murky pool, I realized that the campers were yelling and frantically jumping up and down, white bellies bouncing and exposed. Before I knew it, hands pulled my waist down and I found myself embarrassingly stuck in the innertube, hands at ankles, booty, belly and thighs underneath the now black water. Worse yet, at the mercy of the phantom hands. (Note I once got stuck like this in the toilet and my Dad had to save me. It's been a fear of mine ever since. Note to self: avoid innertubes.) The dark, underwater phantom hands grabbed again and I woke, taking sweaty, plentiful gulps of air.

This ironically is not the first "phantom hand" dream I've had in Big Sur. I'll share the other at a later time. The first picture is of me and Pasha at Pfeirffer's Beach. Note the rocks, precariously balanced on top of each other making fragile sculptures. Tons of them. Someone went to a lot of work. In the honor of my Californian heritage I say the following: "Dude, that's like way Blair Witch"