This is Big Sur, California Big Sur - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It's one of my favorite places on earth. You can see why. I spent a good deal of time here, camping and having fun back in the early 70s.
This is Richard Brautigan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia who happened to be my favorite author at the time I was playing in Big Sur. Richard was well known then as a "Beat" type poet and an author of novels. A Confederate General From Big Sur (1964, ISBN 0-224-61923-3) was my favorite of his books. Here you can find a list of his novels Richard Brautigan: Novels—Introduction and a blip about their content. Here you can find his poetry Poet: Richard Brautigan - All poems of Richard Brautigan
Today I have to go to the town to the left and do my Monday meeting thing again. But my head will be in Big Sur. It's featured in The Smithsonian Magazine this month, if you read it. The article talks about my Big Sur and it's unique ambience and the people, famous and not who are connected with it. A good read.
Here are a couple of Brautigan poems. I once laid on the very edge of one of those cliffs up there in the top photograph, drinking Strawberry Hill wine, as my friend and I dangeled our idiot's legs off the end of the cliff and took turns reading Brautigan's poems. There was a good deal of laughing involved too. :-) He was an interesting fellow, our Richard. Parody, satire, black humor and Zen.
As it turns out, Richard had a long battle with mental illness and took his own life the
age of 49 back in 1984. I think it was a tragic loss. Here, where this tiny lettering and heart are... is a poem that I find particularly relavant to my life currently. I should have known that Richard Brautigan would have had the right words. As it turns out, you can't enlarge it so here it is:
Love Poem
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone.
and not to have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
anymore.
Hope your evening has something warm and sentimental.
