Time Magazine
July 29, 1957

Life Magazine
March 5, 1956

Alan Watts, In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965
Pantheon Books, New York (1972), pages 297-298 (BL1473.W3a34c2)

    Throughout my work in San Francisco I was increasingly involved with the people of Big Sur, and took any excuse I could find to get down to those pelican-haunted rocks, aromatic grasses, and floating mountains. When I travel I usually have to pay my way by the equivalent of singing for my supper, and so it was that Margaret Lial, Laverne Allen, and Nathaniel and Margaret Owings arranged seminars in their homes. these were so regular that the place Big Sur and the custom of informal seminars about These Things became so connected as to result in the founding of the Esalen Institute by Michael Murphy and Richard Price (named after the Amerindian tribe which once lived there). In fact I gave the first seminar they held, and have returned repeatedly to work with them, not only because the atmosphere and their hot sulphur baths are seductive, but because I believe that they are doing something absolutely important for the future of both education and religion...
    But what has really kept me returning to Big Sur is, again, people— especially those who live or have lived on Partington Ridge... and Bill and Loly Fassett's joyous restaurant Nepenthe (with dancing around the outdoor fire at night)⁴... and cooking over coals of oak-bark at Margaret Lial's retreat in Coastlands, and searching for jade along the beaches with Janet Crew (who climbs as surely as a mountain goat)... and eating fresh abalone with fried potatoes for breakfast with Emil White, and sampling the extraordinary wine from Ruby Hill with Henry Miller... and doing tea ceremony with Douglas Madsen at his home on the edge of a precipice...

⁴ And with Kim Novak as a partner, just for one round, She dances
  as well as she acts and generally adorns the landscape.

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"Novak is an accomplished artist who expresses herself in watercolor and oil paintings, sculpture, stained glass design and photography. She also writes poetry." (Wikipedia) Here's a poem Kim Novak wrote when she was 17 years old, published on the last page of the German book Kim Novak: Hommage (1997) I found in the Stanford stacks. It's interesting in the first half of this 34-lines poem, Kim is on the express train traveling to learn, earn, and love, but achieved none of her goals and got burned. This is the life she has lived (17 lines = 17 years). Starting at line 18, she says "But this time I promise / I play it smart" (her future). Now Kim is not boarding the express train but getting out at every stop to explore and see. "And maybe I'd find the right home for me." Kim did find her right home (Carmel), right profession (Hollywood actress), and even her own prince charming (married veterinarian Dr. Robert Malloy since 1976). This poem seems quite prophetic as Kim wrote and weaved her personal fairy-tale life:

Rolf Aurich, Kim Novak: Hommage
Jovis, Berlin (1997), page 94
(PN2287.N58K53.1997)

A train makes me lonely
If you know what I mean—
I've longed so long for what I've not seen,
To go and to go and to be oh to be
The ideal girl but I am not she,
To travel and learn, to live and to earn,
To love and be loved when it came my turn.
So I traveled nay learned,
I lived and nay earned,
I loved and got burned
And I still never learned,
I long now to go
To where I know not
To go and to go
And to find a fresh plot
Where all is so new
All over I'd start.
But this time I promise
I play it smart.
I'd proud board the train
That's not the express.
The worth not the price
Would be more and not less.
But every stop I'd get out and see
And maybe I'd find the right home for me.
And somewhere out there
He'd hear my plea
Bring me his love and then marry me.
Oh marry me, please marry me
Please bring me your love and then marry me.
A train makes me lonely,
Oh now can't you see?
For I've not the price
For the trip nor the plea.

— Kim Novak, 1950