Desert Dreaming

Behold, The Integreton. 

Five-hundred and nine miles from San Francisco you can enjoy a sonic healing session, i.e. a sound bath, in the high desert adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park. What is a sound bath, you might ask? According to the website, "It's kindergarten nap time of the Third Kind. This is an unforgettable sound healing experience for those who seek deep relaxation, deep meditation and rejuvenation."    

Let's stop by Disneyland, Clifton's Cafeteria, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology along the way, k?

Thank you Lauren Sorensen for the heads up about this magical magnetic vortex.

To Do

Buy these Alex and Lee necklaces (A&L themselves shown above adorned in pelts) and find a shirt/nudist colony appropriate to go with them.

Scavenger Aesthetic

From New York Magazine:

Anthony Malat Jamie Isaia rent a 700-square-foot one-bedroom in Williamsburg. The creative couple — he's a fashion designer and she's a photographer — embraced the scavenger aesthetic and reworked their space with street finds and hand-me-downs to create an eclectic, curated home.

Thank you NYMag, I have new language to describe my home furnishings (i.e. "scavenger aesthetic").

Urban Oasis

Inspired by my 1972 copy of The Art of Sensual Massage and the above images, I'm cultivating an extended family of spider plants, creeping charlies, philodendron, ferns, and various succulents. They certainly seem to make my butter-colored living quarters feel more like home, i.e. our vast open obscene mother nature. House plants are sexy.

The Obscenity of the Jungle

“Taking a close look at what’s around us, there is some sort of a harmony. It is the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder. And we in comparison to the articulate vileness and baseness and obscenity of all this jungle, we in comparison to that enormous articulation, we only sound and look like badly pronounced and half-finished sentences out of a stupid suburban novel, a cheap novel. And we have to become humble in front of this overwhelming misery and overwhelming fornication, overwhelming growth, and overwhelming lack of order. Even the stars up here in the sky look like a mess. There is no harmony in the universe. We have to get acquainted to this idea that there is no harmony as we have conceived it. But when I say this all full of admiration for the jungle. It is not that I hate it, I love it, I love it very much, but I love it against my better judgment.”--Werner Herzog

Amazing Places to Stay

These have been on my to-do list for quite some time:


SLEEP IN A WORK OF ART
Near Quemado, NM: You may have heard of the Lightning Field, an art installation spread across a Southwestern plain, but did you know you can book a front-row seat?
At the edge of this desert scrub that's stuck with 400 electricity-attracting poles sits a lone log cabin. Linger on your porch and watch the lightning dance. May-Oct; from $150 per person; 505/898-3335. —K.A.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/07/uniquevacationrentals040710.DTL#ixzz0kUKUw6dm


SLEEP IN A FIRE LOOKOUT
Mt. Hood National Forest, OR: One of the world's cheapest rooms with a (killer) view comes with a price: a four-hour uphill kick-and-glide over a groomed snowmobile trail. Destination? The historic fire lookout on Oregon's Clear Lake Butte, one of dozens of U.S. Forest Service fire lookouts around the West.
It has a full-size bed (BYO bedding for additional guests) plus a gas range for fixing dinner, a potbelly stove for staying warm — and a 360° panorama that'll keep you mesmerized till it's time to turn in. $50; book at recreation.gov
Tip: For a list of fire lookouts around the West, check out firelookout.org/lookout-rentals.htm —Ted Katauskas
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2010/04/07/uniquevacationrentals040710.DTL#ixzz0kUM1q6EP

Thanks to the SF Gate for the info and Peter for the heads up.

Shelter

This is a lovely little film featuring the editor of one of my favorite books, Lloyd Kahn. http://jasonsussberg.com/SHELTER.mov