Peter Melchior
But for me Peter’s ‘home’ was always Big Sur, no matter how many more years he domiciled in Boulder. When I first came to Big Sur in 1974, Peter was already gone, waiting in my future for our intersection in Boulder, the new home of the Rolf Institute. I was newly-Rolfed then, and an enthusiastic neophyte of the Human Potential Movement. After a day of teaching / assisting in the spiritual boot-camp of an Arica training up the road in Ventana, we would come into the famous Esalen baths after midnight. It was allowed, but it felt like sneaking in – a glimpse into the cradle of all this new work: Rolfing’s deep journeys into the body, the radical cracking open of Gestalt, the promise of peace in Alan Watts’ full-catastrophe approach to Zen meditation. It was all new and exciting.
Big Sur
One night in the old cement baths, I met John Lilly up close and personal, stoned on ketamine and soft of body, hip, hair, voice, and eyes with the female hormone he was reportedly injecting. We had a long and silent conversation. (I met him many years later in London, not long before his death, still strung out on K, but very male, very thin, crew cut white hair, like nothing so much as an old oak with a masterful voice – “You a wrestler?” he boomed, as soon as he saw me. Of course he had no memory of our previous encounter, as I did.)
Ida I had met the previous spring at the ratty conference room of the Dawn Dee Motel on Santa Monica Boulevard, where Jan Sultan ‘Rolfed’ me twice a week after her class finished. I met Peter in my fraught admissions interview at 200 Abbey Place, where he gently but firmly told me to wait – but he ended up being both my auditing and practitioning teacher. For my final phase in ’76. We were with Ida for the morning lecture and demos in her advanced class, and then with Peter for the afternoon. His childlike innocence in front of Ida, working under her watchful and abrupt tutelage (now up on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJxajGLepyQ) belied his shamanic calm in the afternoon, when he had the six of us, including the physiatrist Dr Frank Wenger, well in hand – a steel hand in a velvet glove.
I was square in the middle of the hippie era, but I had done my homework on the beats, reading Dharma Bums and Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me. Richard Farina held a special place in Peter’s musician rebel heart, as did Joan Baez. For some reason, I guess ‘cause I played music, he told me many stories of the early days in Big Sur – like folkie ‘Joanie’ Baez rockin’ out with ‘Dancin’ in the Streets’ up in Monterey.
Peter was one of the few living members of the ‘West on One’ Club. Highway 1 swoops around the ridges and into the canyons from Carmel to Morro Bay with a cliff on its western edge for most of the way, so the driver losing attention through fatigue or intoxication generally got into the West on One Club only by way of being a posthumous member. Peter fell asleep at the wheel one night, and went over the edge toward the sea, but luckily hit a tree and lived to climb back up, have 5 children, and a long and influential career.
When I got back to Esalen in the 90’s to teach a workshop, a landslide had taken the famous old baths down the hillside to the sea, and the new ones were much ‘nicer’, higher on the hill with new plumbing and a bigger view, but it was a disappointment to me, because of the treasury of memories the old tubs had. The workshops too, at that time, seemed prosaic, the consciousness deflated, the energy moribund. It seemed an era had disappeared.
Now I am back, with the ‘uh-ohs’ decade over and the twenteens begun. The baths have been restored in their old spot over the ocean. The update still leaves the feel and sense of the original baths that Michael Murphy parlayed from a family inheritance to a world-affecting center, and son Mac shows every sign of continuing.
Peter – I want to tell my old friend – they’ve done a good job. The crazies and iconoclasts are still here trying to awaken the world, as well as the smelly and beautiful youths with outlandish hair, startling body art, and charming accents, whose world is just unrolling before them. Some are hangers-on, some are cleaning up the kitchen, some are working the expanded gardens, a few still tending to the Gazebo School. Yes, they all have iPads, and the jargon has changed, but I see my ’74 self very clearly reflected in their starry eyes. Even though the Hollywood types in their shiny cars abound and there are a few new galleries for questionable art along Route 1, the Big Sur Inn is still here, and Nepenthe. Like Bali or Greece, it is still easy to shed the tourists by going just a bit off the beaten track.
Esalen itself has a bit of a new feel – that’s the nature of a change agency – but the essence of exploration and opening up is back, while the names – Rolf, Maslow, Porter’s Yurt, Gazebo school – echo back from your time here. The fog has lifted for today, and I am looking out among the sparkles for a spout or the tell-tale back of a gray whale. But my mind’s eye is looking back on your silent wisdom, when you were leviathan in my life, where the things you didn’t say had more influence on me than even the minimal maxims you did utter with that little laugh to (and at) yourself. Such a force for good, in my life and so many others, your inner silence has been my ‘Umbrella for a Hard Rain’.
That was his book of poems, the one Allen Ginsburg threw over his shoulder – Peter reported, with his same little laugh – with the brief critical review: ‘Archaic drivel!’ – but I liked them. He gave me a copy, lost in my many moves since, sad to say. Poet, raconteur, teacher, friend – Peter, you embodied the Esalen spirit. Even though you have left that body behind, the spirit endures.
Tags: Big Sur, Esalen Institute, Ida Rolf, Peter Melchior