Suzaji’s Blog

Today I head out at dawn, buoyed by a stronger-than-usual cup of Altura coffee. Honey is so delirious with pent-up energy from missing a walk last night that at first I can’t stop to write.

I love that I can step out into nature unkempt, unbathed, wearing the same old soft clothes that I slept in, old beach thongs on my feet, wrapped in a wool cape that I bought at Kindred Spirit many moons ago. It’s just starting to get light out, the air is refreshingly cold, a light breeze flows from the direction of Matilija Canyon, and all is quiet . . . no forceful winds like the storm I walked into the other night.

I’m so aware of the wonderful freedom I have at this time of my life. Sometimes I flash on all the years I lingered in bed with a man . . . but now daybreak is the time for heading out the door. My mind flits in all directions. My two black dogs run way ahead—the other morning Nubio chased a coyote off the property that was probably eying one of the cats. Poor Chico; I dare not unleash him. Each time I stop to write he has to wait . . .

Last night I had dinner with two of my lifelong women friends. It took us three months to find a date when we could all get together. I’ve known them since the seventies, from way back in the hippie-married-child-raising-homeschooling-organic-gardening-commune days. It seems both strange and normal that we are now in our sixties. We are like those women in Fried Green Tomatoes who tell each other everything; I was laughing my head off before I even walked in the door.

We weren’t that hungry yet, so the early Thanksgiving nut loaf, mashed potatoes with gravy, and arugula salad sat waiting in the kitchen while we sat around and sipped champagne that turned pink when we dropped in frozen organic raspberries.

At some point in the conversation I heard myself say, “I would not trade this stage of life,” or maybe I said “this present state of mind,” “for all the youth in the world.” And then I launched into the romantic escapades of some of the midlife and younger women in my life—women that I run into who’ve read my dating memoir and consequently feel free to tell me just about anything. I told the story of one woman who flew to Texas to meet up with a man she had been friends with for many years. This woman had confided to me that after he picked her up at the airport, on the way to his home, he stopped to buy a brand-new bed! She described how they stopped at another store and together picked out beautiful new sheets, pillows, and covers, because, as he told her, he wanted her to sleep in a bed that no other woman had ever slept in before.

When I told my two friends this story last night, I knew they would laugh along with me when I commented, “Where did I go wrong? Back in my youth the men I met lived in cob houses and we slept on the floor . . .”

All this and more I write in my journal this morning, while Chico pulls on the leash and Honey and Nubio run back and forth on the dirt path, until finally Honey collapses exhausted at my feet.

As I write, the landscape grows brighter, the sky grows ever more illuminated. The air is still crisp; the sun has not yet risen, but already her powerful rays are bathing the mountains behind me in light. I walk and wait . . . it’s been too many days since I’ve been out here before sunrise. Soon the sky above the mountains is dazzingly bright, and now the majestic fiery ball of the sun rises above the mountains in all her full glory. The light is blinding. The landscape is all lit up—every blade, every leaf, shimmers and sparkles brand-new.

It feels safe now to unleash Chico, and we all run home. Time to do our dharma.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.
~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I’ll be reading some short passages from Krishnamurti’s journals (as well as my own) at my Journal Writing for Self-Awareness workshop this Saturday morning, May 11, from 10:30 till 12:15. This is a free event, part of the May Gathering at the Krishnamurti Pepper Tree Retreat, on McAndrew Road in Ojai.

I attended Krishnamurti’s talks at the Oak Grove, and also heard him in Saanen, Switzerland, one summer. Over the years I became friends with many of the people who came to Ojai to hear Krishnamurti, including Beatrice Wood, Alan and Helen Hooker of Ranch House fame, and Frank and Bennie Noyes, who started Live Oak School on Orange Road. There, while living in a tiny trailer on the edge of an orange orchard, I tutored, cleaned, cooked, and cared for my toddler son. Back then I had endless energy, and almost everything was great fun.

Alan Hooker used to walk into the kitchen, roll up his sleeves, and make multiple loaves of oat and prune bread. He would also show us hippie chicks how to grind and chop nuts, celery, carrots, onions, and mushrooms for nut burgers or nut loaf.

While I’ve been journaling for more than 40 years (50 if you count my high school and Haight-Ashbury diaries), I’m new at teaching journal writing to people who might feel inhibited when faced with a blank page. I’ll see if I can nudge them into putting their innermost random thoughts and observations on paper. I’m filled with a kind of joyful trepidation, along with curiosity about who will show up.

The nature descriptions in Krishnamurti’s journal, below, are so simple, timeless, and moving. The book consists of observations made between February 25, 1983, and March 30, 1984, toward the end of his life. We here in Ojai can walk the “little village” as well as the East End, Horn Canyon, and all the trails he took high up in the mountains, and see all the places that he described with such depth and sensitivity.

I remember now how many early evenings I would be in my garden on Thacher Road, picking zucchini squash or digging trenches for chicken wire in an endless battle to keep gophers at bay. Krishnamurti would walk by, and the neighbor’s little dog would come running out onto the street, yapping at his heels and threatening his companions. The dog would often follow them a little way down Thacher, and Krishnamurti would turn around, bend over, and, arms waving toward our driveway, tell the little nuisance dog, “Shoo . . . shoo . . . shoo. . .”

This gave me a bit more time to observe Krishnamurti, and sometimes I’d have to run to the street and scoop the dog up. Back then, at age twenty, I was still painfully shy, and never took the opportunity to say a friendly hello.

Today, Krishnamurti’s journals serve to remind me how journal writing not only makes us ever more aware of our automatic thought processes and responses, but strengthens our powers of observation and awareness of ourselves, other people, nature, and all the rest of life:

As you climbed, leaving the little village paths down below, the noise of the earth, the crickets, the quails, and other birds began their morning song, their chant, their rich worship, of the day. And as the sun rose you were part of that light and had left behind everything that thought had put together. You completely forgot yourself. The psyche was empty of its struggles and its pains. And as you walked, climbed, there was no sense of separateness, no sense of being even a human being . . .

From Krishnamurti to Himself: His Last Journal

Krishnamurti’s last journal, spoken into a tape recorder at his home, Pine Cottage, in the Ojai Valley, brings the reader close to this renowned spiritual teacher. Dictated in the mornings, from his bed, undisturbed, Krishnamurti’s observations are captured here in all their immediacy and candor,…