Richard Lee's Letter Dated May 19, 1985

Esalen

Letter dated May 19, 1985

Walker Court
Cypress, CA.
May 19, 85

Dear Daralee--

It is lovely, cool, a Taoist morning, and I thought
I would write you a letter, thanking you for yours.
My card of a month or so ago was so hurried I was
embarrassed to send it. That moving got to me and fast.
Actually we won't be here as long as I had planned.
We are buying a house up in the high desert, in Joshua
Tree in fact, right next to the Monument property itself.
So we will be moving again, but perhaps not entirely until
Christmas time. I teach this coming fall and need a place
down here close to the university. It will be expensive
keeping two places! Wow, I feel like a millionaire.
Unfortunately, I am no millionaire.

Anyway we will, as I said, be here for a while. I will
send you the desert address once we get it.

I liked your poems. You are a poet like it or not.
Soft, quiet, gentle, a poet. And I like your keeping
to form as well. But I have always known all this.
You as student, you as ex-student! The same thing so far
as poetry is concerned.

Esalen is really the name of Indians who settled in
the Big Sur area hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
They are no longer around, but Esalen now is a human
potential or growth center right on the coast where the
most marvelous hot springs gush forth to form hot tubs
and spas all hanging precariously on a cliff from which,
as one sits soaking up the sulfur water, he can look out
on the Pacific and watch the whales migrate down the coast.
This is what I did in January and part of February this
year, also attending there a month long workshop in
Shamanism.

Do you use a computer-word-processor to write with? I have
been wondering if I should take the plunge into word pro-
cessing.... And yet here I am enjoying my Smith-Corona
manual that is noisy, slow, and keeps everyone awake for
miles around.

Oh, well. Love, Daralee. Your life sounds good.
Enjoy.

r
richard lee

[See the illustration by Richard Lee entitled "Esalen"
that accompanies his poem "Shaman Song."]