I know I risk receiving a gag order on this one…but being an outlaw at heart, I’ll take my chances. When Margot came to visit over Memorial Day weekend, our drive back from Pismo Beach and a few wrong turns led us to signs for the tiny town of Halcyon. As Wikipedia so nicely puts it, “[Halcyon] was founded in 1903 as a Theosophist intentional community and is the home and headquarters of a religious organization, The Temple of the People (not to be confused with Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple).” As we used to say in Los Alamos, I’d link you to it, but I’d have to kill you…
I had driven by this rather eye-catching temple once before, and being a big fan of oddball, turn-of-the-century transcendentalist communities, utopian experiments, and other quaint notions that gave birth to such phenomena as Craftsman furniture, Shaker tables and polygamous compounds, I felt compelled to turn off. Especially knowing I had my big strong German bodyguard with me.
As we wended our way in, it felt like we’d landed in some kind of Amish/hippie compound, with colorful murals, hedgerows, topiaries, and perhaps some wee faery folk on toadstools doling out magic mushrooms. Margot immediately cited the Alice and Wonderland metaphor as we shot down the rabbit hole…and I parked the car.
Now, it looked like a harmless enough water tower. Don’t know about you, but I generally think of water towers as rather neutral, innocuous entities, much like manhole covers or porch railings or even fenceposts. They just don’t overwhelm me with import. However, when I parked in front of THIS water tower, it was clear that I had crossed very Big, Bad Line #1. We jumped out of the car with our cameras, of course, and stumbled down the road, Margot thinking she’d hit the stock-photography jackpot and me thinking I hadn’t seen anyplace this whacked since Cerrillos, NM, with its Dylan-used-to-live-here acid murals on crumbling adobe walls.
I’d hardly got off one decent shot when a man with a grandbaby pulled up beside me and took a long gander. I’m sure I was probably wearing my usual summer uniform: Hawaiian shirt, particolored shorts, and New Balances—clearly a menace to society. He rolled down his window and inquired if that was my Toyota parked in front of his water tower. Yes, I admitted, the vagrant Celica was mine. He stared at me again, soberly, humorlessly, and asked what we were doing. I told him we were just walking around being Margot and Heidi, which sometimes involves gaping at weird shit and taking lots of photos. This took a few moments to compute, and once again I got the up and down. Finally, his eyes narrowed and he gave me that look that Maurice Minnifield used to give Joel Fleischman on Northern Exposure. “Well, you see, you have to be careful of your water towers these days because you never know with all the terrorists. It’s generally their first target.”
I gazed back at him long and hard, probably with that “what do you want from me, I’m just an overeducated NYer” squint that Joel tended to give Maurice. “Do I really look like a terrorist?”
“Well, you just can’t be too careful,” he said as he drove away. The baby smiled at me in a way that reassured me that SHE knew I wasn’t a terrorist. I prayed that she would learn to discern paranoia in her elders from a young age and make a graceful exit from Halcyon, perhaps buying real estate in Harmony or Happiness or Hesperia.
Meanwhile, Margot had been shooting liberally, radiating cherubic innocence in that way of hers. (I can’t help but note that strawberry blondes seem to get away with so much more.) I figured I’d best get down to business, and grabbed a few shots. Just as I was sizing up a particularly scenic entryway to what really did look like Alice’s Magical Kingdom, footsteps came pounding toward me with the thunder of Billy Jack’s horse. I sense that I’d just crossed Big, Bad Line #2, though I had barely crossed the street. As I turned to survey, there before my eyes was Alice herself, looking a mashup of Little Miss Muffett and Bjork, with two knobs of hair on her head in much the style of 1920s Navajo women. “I’ve got you now,” she cried out. “I’ve got you on film!” Cradled in her hand was her high-tech surveillance device, an opened cell phone with me in its sights. I knew that I was no longer dealing with a man and a baby, but was now rested squarely in the hands of Lady Justice. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Margot taking 10 steps back. It would be me and me alone in this tete a tete. Good thing I’d seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Good thing I graduated first in my Scorpio class, and know well the fine art of telling all and revealing nothing. You’ve met your match, o knob-headed woman. My keen verbal skills and sharp wit will soon reduce you to soot and ash…
“Pretty groovy place you’ve got here,” I said.
She glowered at me as only someone living in Eden can.
“We’ve come in peace…,” I tried.
Her glower continued glowering. My usual charm and finesse in these matters seemed utterly ineffective in the face of her surety that I was a trespassing, water tower-poisoning terrorist documenting the Halcyon way of life for my sources in Washington. “I’ve gotten five phone calls since you’ve set foot on our land,” she said. “Everyone wants to know what you’re doing here.”
“Oh, we just stumbled onto it, and it’s so beautiful…”
Her knobs seemed to vibrate and I wondered if they might sprout antennae. I feared she was going to try and confiscate my camera, at which moment I would refer her to the girl holding the $5,000 Leica who’d actually taken all the photos…Meanwhile, Margot had inched about a half-mile away from the proceedings.
“Is this some kind of spiritual community?”
Clearly the question ALL the terrorists ask.
“You may not take photos here. Not of us, not of our houses, not of where we live,” she stated.
Oh, man, what a time to be out lost in my Hawaiian shirt. Perhaps I could just go find her the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the North and we could call it a day?
Finally, I summoned my strength, martialed all my jing, looked her squarely in the eye, and announced my intention to end the conversation, grossly entertaining as it was. Just as she began to snap that I was no mere paper tiger, between us walked a woman who looked like she’d escaped from shock treatments. She scrutinized the ground acknowledging no one.
“A lot of us have psychic powers here,” the Knobbed One said. “She and I are best friends. We talk all the time. She knew you were here.”
I began to hope that if I were led to a basement for further edification that Margot might follow, at least with my water bottle.
But at long last, a ray of sunshine appeared on the horizon, and suddenly the Knob Lady’s glower seemed to soften into a steady glare. I believe she began to truly grok that I was less an Uzi-packing terrorist and more a lost heathen with a hulking camera that tops out at 2.1 megapixels on a good day with a stiff breeze. She left me with a final caution against doing photographic harm and bid us farewell.
The Halcyon temple conducts healing services every day at noon for 15 minutes. I guess that’s all it takes to cast out the demons and send you running for your Celica.
And now it can be revealed...Halcyon, as few have ever glimpsed her:
The mysteries laid bare before your eyes:
Shocking footage not even the paparazzi could score....
Not since the days of the WPA has documentary photography brought you this up-close and personal with places you've never seen before:
