Hey there!
Here is a table of contents of sorts:
Intro/Mini Essay: Small Adventures, Big Feelings
Photo Essay
10 Things to Fill You Up
Playlist: Big Sublime
Small Adventures, Big Feelings
There is much that makes Big Sur feel mystical: rich literary history; turquoise shores; staggering, heavenly views. It all makes you feel small in the best way and engenders big feelings: the kind of sublime that raptures your spirit and restores your soul, if only for mere earthly moments.
I’d been before. Some places, though they remain mostly unchanged, feel richer over a lifetime with each experiential layer you bring. Big Sur is that kind of place.
Prior to this trip, I’d gone a few years ago post-heartbreak. I met some LA friends at a campsite there, a halfway point of healing. Three out of five of us were raw from breakups, so naturally we spent some time sitting around the campfire reviewing the records of our relationships’ dissolution. As the weekend went on, these stories became touchstones from which to move onto other subjects; we pitched running jokes and moved our bodies through new spaces, atomizing and recalibrating against the many microclimates. I remember, on the last day, taking a phone call from my ex from a field. It was unsatisfying. I hung up, cried and rejoined the group. It’s possible that after packing everything up from the site as the weekend came to a close, each of us left some amount suffering to be vaporized into the coastal mist.
This time I planned the trip for Andrew and me, your standard romantic getaway albeit during a very atypical time. I was more intentional this time, in pursuit of the pure, natural sublime in the most Wordsworthian sense. I felt a fervor for a rustic escape that was, in essence, primal and romantic, but truthfully its inception was digitally-fueled, dangled before me through the prism of Instagram. That’s where I discovered the charming, historic inn known as Deetjen’s.
After a hectic Friday of packing, loading our cameras with film, procuring fancy beach snacks, and waiting an hour for our road pizza, we finally left town after sundown. It was the kind of drive that somehow unearthed new things to talk about, including some thoughtful, post-podcast debriefs. (Why, for example, is culture suddenly so nostalgic for the blog era of the early aughts? Perhaps a topic for another newsletter.)
We arrived at Deetjen’s after 9pm, retrieving the grounds directory that was left for us on the office door. The illustrated map, annotated with a penciled-in arrow leading from the office to our room, left us flummoxed for fifteen moonlit minutes. It curiously circled around the office, but was also somehow above it? After climbing a dark set of stone stairs, which dead-ended to a gate that read, “private,” and repeatedly retracing the arrow to a place with no door to be found, we just started trying stuff.
We boldly walked up a set of stairs sans signage, and stumbled onto a network of rooms that were mostly vacant, cozily lit, and labeled in white, cottage-style font. There it was, “The Little Room” (the only affordable room), waiting for us tidily with its double bed and worn-in Persian rug. We popped our bottle of wine, munched cold pizza, and read over the welcome packet, which, to our chagrin, emphasized the thin walls. “Your neighbors can almost hear you breathe,” it read. We unpacked in slow-motion.
We joked over the next three days that Deetjen’s is really just a glorified hostel (our room shared a bathroom with our neighbors), but it’s also charming as hell, and just the experience we wanted. One night while eating our takeout on the property’s patio, we had the pleasure of overhearing another guest strumming a guitar and serenading his lover (and by extension, us) from their balcony. Since the late 1930s, Deetjen’s has attracted artists, writers, all kinds of Bohemians, and we loved feeling like that cultural history extended right up to this very moment. Some tech bros and yuppies stood out anachronistically and almost burst the provincial bubble, but mostly it had a charming beatnik vibe.
The rest of our trip is best represented through the photos we took. We visited the iconic McWay Falls and must-see Henry Miller Library, roasted in the unseasonably warm sun at Pfeiffer Beach, and ate canned dolmas in front of sunsets. We had an expectedly good time. The only thing not aligning was the objectively bad restaurant food (at least from the pandemic-era options available to us), which was mediocre in a Disneyland sort of way — we tourists faced with limited fare of $25 hamburgers that turned out to be Fyre Fest-level sandwiches on limp, sliced white bread, albeit facing some of the most breathtaking view of our lives. But even that provided much amusement throughout the trip as we created a ranking system for each meal.
The first set of photos are taken on my DSLR, followed by my film, then Andrew’s black-and-white film. Quotes throughout are from Henry Miller’s Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. 🌊🌊🌊
“If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” -Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
“To prove that he is ‘as good as the next man’ means little or nothing to one who is an artist. It was his ‘otherness’ which made him an artist and, given the chance, he will make his fellow-man other too… Unlike the ordinary fellow, he will throw everything to the winds when the urge seizes him. Moreover, if he is and artist, he will be compelled to make sacrifices which worldly people find absurd and unnecessary.”
“If I did not succeed in finding the ‘peace and solitude’ I had hoped to find, I most certainly found other things which have more than compensated for my disappointment. Once again, I might say that I found what I needed to find, experienced what I needed to experience.”
“Of all the many fruitful experiences which I fell heir to since anchoring in Big Sur, the discovery of certain books holds as much, possibly more, importance, I find in retrospect, as the ‘coindidences,’ recontres hasardeux and other ‘unpredictables.’”
“. . . They had skies of pure azure and walls of fog moving in and out of the canyons with invisible feet, hills in winter of emerald green and in summer mountain upon mountain of pure gold. They had even more, for there was ever the unfathomable silence of the forest, the blazing immensity of the Pacific, days drenched with sun and nights spangled with stars. . .”
On Film
10 Things to Fill You Up
Tim Urban’s TED Talk on procrastination, which made me feel seen as I am still not done with the “isolation” piece! The talk is funny in a don’t-we-humans-do-the-darndest-things kind of way, but also surprisingly heavy and profound toward the end.
This hat by Museum of Peace and Quiet, which sadly sold out immediately after it dropped.
On a related note — “Impulse Buy,” Jonah Weiner’s essay for SSENCE on the artificial pressure created by such clothing drops. His account of the pursuit of a $900 jacket made of persimmon-dyed Yak wool is absurd and delightful.
Pretend It’s a City, the new Netflix docuseries about Fran Lebowitz, who imparts her grumpy wisdom about New York, culture, and life. I was enchanted.
The new film, Promising Young Woman, floored me. Carmen Maria Machado’s New Yorker review, “How Promising Young Woman Refigures the Rape-Revenge Movie,” is my favorite piece about the film so far.
Ryan Heffington’s IGTV dance tutorials, which brought me back to life after falling victim to winter’s cozy-to-sedentary slippery slope.
The Beaming Design Instagram page, which juxtaposes inspiring messages and graphic design that looks like it was plucked from a vintage metaphysical textbook.
Puddle Pieces — playful, squiggly mirrors that add just the right amount of zaniness to a space. Funhouse chic!
SZA’s “Good Days,” which I’ve been listening to on repeat.
This Bullseye with Jesse Thorn podcast episode with John Wilson, whose HBO show, How To With John Wilson, captivated me last year (listed on a previous 10 Things). If you watched the offbeat series, this podcast contains some fun how-it’s-made secrets.
Playlist: Big Sublime
Play on your next trip to Big Sur (ha, seems very specific) or, more likely, just play it now and be transported by the earthy vibes. I fused folksy, nature-inspired, meditative, and ultimately groovy melodies for some sweet, soulful restoration. Enjoy!
Thanks so much for reading,
Vanessa
Love the playlist. Listening now
It seems everything's in life is a "glorified hostel." It's all in the packaging.