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ON A RECENT AUGUST FRIDAY, I was the recipient of a gift. My wife, Amy, told me to pack clothes, art supplies, journals, books, and a laptop so I'd be ready for a surprise trip. She was sending me out of town for the weekend — she had been secretly preparing a personal retreat for me and had already taken care of all the details. I was handed an itinerary, driving directions, and a sealed envelope that I was to "hand over to the person behind the counter" once I arrived at my destination, but that's all I knew when I pulled out of my driveway in San Antonio. After a tedious summer of work and family obligations, I was curious, excited and energized. I started my journey at 1:30 PM. The local NPR jockey noted the temperature at 109º. Luckily my itinerant air conditioning kicked in and worked the whole weekend. I motored north on IH-35 and an hour and a half later ended up in Austin's eclectic SOCO district — named for South Congress Avenue — which boasts an blend of art galleries, colorful antique dealers, hip restaurants and live music venues like the fabled Continental Club. I took a left into the parking lot at Jo's coffee shop and found myself outside a restyled vintage motor court.
The rooms have a minimalist aesthetic that proved the perfect place to create my own temporary getaway. Strong lines and Zen-like simplicity define the surroundings. A few years ago, proprietor Liz Lambert hired Lake|Flato, the San Antonio-based architects that popularized Texas Vernacular style to help her transform the "motor-west" era 1930s bungalows into a calm-yet-funky hospitality destination. (Hank Williams III once described Hotel San José style as "Mexico meets Japan"). Floorplans were reimagined, and a new, two-story complex was introduced to the existing space, echoing the forms found in the existing Spanish Colonial bungalows. Inside, the walls, towels, shelves, shower curtains and bathroom tile are articulated in crisp gallery white; focal splashes of color in my room included an Eames chair and a 1976 concert poster for Austin's Armadillo World Headquarters. A bowl of fresh fruit and chocolate was positioned on a simple desk, and an industrial sliding door partitioned the sleeping space into my own postmodern dojo. The Third Coast urban chic-ness of the hotel environs extends past the architecture to the well-designed paper system and collateral and on to the amenities including an on-site art gallery featuring the work of rotating artists-in-residence, and a gratis CD lending library. I set down my satchel and travel bags, and stood there, reveling in the quiet and freedom of the moment. Then I panicked. What hit me was the weight of properly dividing my time between relaxation, meditation, artistic pursuits, reading, eating and sightseeing. I intended to be thoughtful about my use of time. I wanted to engineer an artistic/spiritual retreat for myself. Other "retreats" I had been on in the past were corporate, not individual. And they were directed — there was always a speaker or program or at minimum some expectation, often replete with bible studies, suggested readings or scripture to memorize. What surprised me was how overwhelming liberty can be to a thirtysomething husband and father. I'm sure other people don't have this problem.... I put off my choices for the moment and decided to take in the sights on Congress Ave. I poked around at some great antique stores and ate an early dinner at Guero's. I can recommend the enchiladas verdes, but one should back away from their gringo rendition of my comfort food staple, the venerable potato, egg and cheese breakfast taco (aside: one day I fully intend to create a website devoted to the potato, egg and cheese taco, having now tasted many dozens of them. The best in the world, I believe, still reside in San Antonio). Inspiration hadn't hit, so I thought I'd doodle, sketch and maybe chart out a mind-map on paper. I went back to my car and drove off to Book People, an Austin treasure, a great place to browse for books, and the closest place to buy a Moleskine blank book for journaling. Which I did. I also spent about an hour there reading some great thoughts on design. On my way out of the bookstore, I noticed dark rain clouds had swiftly moved in, cooling off the evening, but looking ominous nonetheless. I quickly crossed Sixth Street and walked to a mega-chain office supplies store where I grabbed some tape, pens and a kid's watercolor set. I was set to journal.
Then my thoughts turned to my question from earlier in the day: "What to do with the weekend?" I wrote the question on the page and stared at it for a few minutes in silence. Sitting there I remembered a sermon from the previous week. My friend and pastor Cliff Knighten remarked that being always precedes doing. I had packed that thought away in my mind, but there in the coffee shop with the rain pouring down, it took on a new, profound weight. Being always precedes doing. I wrote, "The question of what I should do with this free time shouldn't maybe be answered until I have 'been' for a while." The being and doing dialectic continued in my head through the weekend. I enjoyed simply resting instead of producing. I journaled only when I had something to commit to paper, and not out of obligation. I meditated on the scripture in Romans that teach us to not be conformed to the world, but rather to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. If I was hoping to emerge with some clearer direction about my particular role in the will of God, I would need to go through change. I remembered that back in San Antonio on Friday morning over breakfast, my mentor had pointed out the same principle to me. It had been arranged that on Saturday morning I would be able to take an excursion 20-minutes south to Buda, Texas to meet up with a group from my church who were gathering for a half-day worship conference at a retreat center. A retreat within my retreat. It was a poignant break in the weekend, where visual, taste and olfactory aesthetics were traded for auditory aesthetics: the group broke into beautiful harmonies, singing "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs." It was a different kind of meditation, yet still focused on the development of arts inthe church.
I showered and went to Magnolia Cafe — also on South Congress — and ordered a buttermilk pancake (seriously, one is enough for a light meal) and started writing this article on a laptop borrowed from work. Later I went back to the room and drifted off to sleep within a half hour. On Sunday, I had an excellent room service breakfast (I recommend the granola and milk) delivered in a unique compartmentalized natural wood box. It had rained overnight. I spent several hours walking around the grounds, taking photgraphs and sitting among the peaceful surroundings, and then back in my room I spent upwards of an hour in prayer and reflection — an exercise in concentration for someone as impatient as I am. The simplicity of the weekend had, in the end, been a friend to me. I didn't paint after all, and the only drawings I completed were the doodles in the journal. I freed myself of feeling like I had to emerge from my impromptu artistic/spiritual retreat with artifacts — completed poetry, finished canvases and the like — and instead found a framework from which I could simply be. If you're planning your own urban spiritual getaway and Austin is within reach, consider Hotel San José. Hotel San José -prs |
©2003 Communiqué: An Online Literary & Arts Journal. All Rights Reserved.
"Welcome
- Hotel - San José", the entryway steps announced as I walked
into the lobby and approached a polite, young guy behind the counter.
He and several members of the hotel's young, capable staff had been assisting
my wife with arrangements and knew I'd be due in about 3:00 PM. He shot
me a knowing smile as I handed him the envelope, and told me that they
"had taken care of everything." He slid me a real key —
no plastic swipe cards here — and pointed the way to my room. Heading
into the courtyards I stopped noticing the record-breaking heat, and instead
was greeted by lush sights and smells. Overhead, ruddy tile shed roofs
meet arbors draped in shady green vines. The expert landscaping was designed
and installed by Austin's Big Red Sun (landscaper/owner Selena Souders
is a New York Botanical Gardens veteran). Underfoot, the crunch of decomposed
granite gravel-and-silt walkways provided contrapuntal texture to the
smooth, concrete floors I found as I entered Room 26.
Raindrops
had started falling outside, so I ducked into the Starbucks next door,
grabbed a for-here-grande-white-mocha and waited out the rain with my
blank book. I ended up staying there for more than three hours, doodling.
That's when everything hit me. That's when the "retreat"
started. Amidst the ecru pages of the journal, once ink hit paper, that's
when I experienced a kenotic relinquishment of agenda, if not entirely
of self. I wrote "A FREE WEEKEND" on the center of the page,
and embellished the rest of the page with notes and scribbles about the
day. It led me to thoughts about space and environment; of culture and
counterculture; of work and family; of the arts and my purpose in life
as an artist and specifically as one who feels called to champion the
development of arts in and around the Christian church.
Back
in Austin I spent the rest of the day relaxing, even arranging a massage
therapist to work out some of the stress-induced tightness in my shoulders
and lower back. Later I lounged beside the hotel's classic pool and read
half of Stanley Grenz's Primer on Postmodernism and tried to set aside
"doing" in favor of "being". Shadows grew across the
pool and I closed my eyes and rested in the white, canvas-backed chair.
The wind pushed through bamboo stalks and leaves. The calm did wonders
for my outlook. As the evening crowd of young, hip Austinites began to
file into the courtyard they quietly smoked and sat and laughed and self-consciously
drank their longneck Coronas. I got up and ordered a tray of bread, fruit,
olives and cheese and a glass of merlot. I was able to have a modified
eucharist and discovered that I liked black olives, as long as they aren't
too briny. The sun set and the colors in the courtyard grayed.