Click on photo to enlarge
I'd like to say we came down the hill, around a corner ... and there
it was! The blue Pacific Ocean, looking much the same as when
Balboa was the first white man to
lay eyes on it. If Sunset had sidewalks all the way, that's how it
would have happened. But since we've had to skip large chunks, and
elected to skip others, and since we like to end a day's walk going
downhill ... we started at the ocean for our last day.
We met our friend Random at the intersection of Sunset and Pacific
Coast Highway, decided we were all feeling a tad hungry, so we went
to
Gladstone's to get a bite to eat. After almost half an
hour we were seated outside on the edge of the sea, and ...
OUCH! The tabletops and seats were made of concrete
that had been baking in the sun all day. After a minute I started to
feel like my ass was being poached. Lee and Random felt the same
way. I don't know how all those other people out there were handling
it. Maybe it's a Cahleefornia thing. Maybe they have better
insulation on their butts out here. I'm from Texas, Random is from
New Orleans, and Lee's from Oregon. We moved back inside and sat in
a booth in the bar.
There we feasted on crab cakes, lobster rolls, and fishin' chips. We
feasted so well that I thought of suggesting that we might now be
too heavy for the trek up the mountainside ... but I thought better
of it.
Soon I was waiting outside, and was approached by a man pushing a
grocery cart full of garbage. He had about three teeth. I expected I
was about to be hit up for some money, but no. He started discussing
Gladstone's, asked if I'd enjoyed my lunch. I said I had, though it
was a bit overpriced. He extolled the virtues of another restaurant
just up the beach in
Malibu, and said they also had a
branch in
Marina del Rey. No shit, I thought.
Soon, I'm not quite sure how, we were discussing the
Michigan State/UCLA Rose Bowl game
of January 1, 1966. I told him
UCLA won, 14 to 12. He was sure it
had been the
Spartans who prevailed. He said
Bubba Smith had been on that team,
right? And I said, yeah, I met Bubba once, briefly, at MSU, and he
had gone to high school near my home town, in
Beaumont, Texas.
It was all a little surreal. Before we got away from him he did hit
me up for some money, though, which brought it all a bit more down
to earth.
Then it was up the hill. Before long we reached our goal:
The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine
Temple. This is the jewel in the crown of the SRF, which
we had visited previously at its Hollywood Temple on Sunset. The
church was founded in 1920 by
Swami Paramahansa Yogananda in Los
Angeles. The Swami died (or whatever swamis do in place of dying) in
1952, but before that he made some extremely astute purchases in
real estate. I don't know what the church's land in Hollywood is
worth, but their acreage there in the Palisades, a stone's throw
from the beach, must be astronomical in value. And all tax free!
I'm not implying he was a scoundrel, like his Hollywood neighbor
L Ron Hubbard. In fact, from the
little I know of his philosophy, he seems okay. He wanted to combine
all the world's five major religions—probably impossible, but it's
worth a try; think of the suffering that could be avoided!
Anyway, the Lake Shrine has been there quite a while. I visited it
several times in the '60s, and back then it was full of hippies. I
don't know what Yogananda would have thought of the various
substances these folks had smoked and ingested before coming there,
but this was supposed to be a place of meditation, and there
was some meditation going on, mostly to whispers of
"Groovy!" and "Oh, wow!" and "The colors! The colors! I'm a
butterfly!"
We had thought of bringing a picnic lunch, but when we got there we
were glad we'd eaten before. Not that it wouldn't be a wonderful
spot for al fresco dining, but the signs were pretty explicit. This
was a place for silence and meditation, not really to be disturbed
by the sounds of munching.
It is one of the most incredibly beautiful places I have ever
visited, and I'm seen some doozies. You get the impression that
every blade of grass has been set out there after careful
consideration. Random pointed out that somebody had been sweeping
the dead leaves from the surface of the green lake, and it probably
wasn't the swans. There were massive koi lurking just below the
surface or resting in the shade of overhanging shrubs, and turtles,
red-eared sliders, slowly paddling around doing their turtle thing.
Flower beds burst with the radiant colors of annuals.
The whole place is arranged so that there are dozens of places for
relative privacy. You turn a corner of the path and there is a bench
slightly up the hill with someone sitting on it, doing nothing.
There is a shrine to
Gandhi, which claims to contain some of his
ashes. There are quotes from the
Bible, the
Koran, the
Bhagavad Gita.
This is my kind of church. No hard sell, just a few pamphlets
scattered around. Nobody shoving his hand into your pocket. There
are donation boxes here and there. I dropped in some change.
The temple itself is at the top of the hill, up a very long
staircase, and the gate was locked when we were there. The sign says
the public is welcome on Sunday from noon to 4. Maybe we'll amble up
there one of these days ... but the garden and lake is the main
attraction, unless you're one of the faithful.
I'm a wordsmith, but I'm not up to the Lake Shrine. Lee will do a
better job with her pictures. She took some great ones.
So back down the hill ... ... and there it was! The blue Pacific
Ocean, looking much the same as when Balboa was the first white man
to lay eyes on it. We burst into a spontaneous song—in Spanish!
Which I don't even know!—and sprinted heedlessly across eight lanes
of traffic to a chorus of blaring car horns. We vaulted over the
retaining wall, kicked off our shoes, and plunged fully-clothed into
the sparkling crystalline waters (which we had just heard on the
radio is the fourth-most-polluted beach in Cahleefornia, but never
mind that!) and cavorted like dolphins as
John Williams music
swelled in the background and the credits began to roll ...
We did none of that, of course. But it's a swell ending, don't you
think?
May 30, 2006