Travel Diary> May 2000> The Henry Miller Library

...The inside brims with books and memorabilia of Henry Miller, his friends, and people of like mind, including me.

I was particularly struck by an article on one wall explaining that Henry was first introduced to the Big Sur area in 1962 by artist Jean Varda, who, in 1967, when I lived on the houseboats in Sausalito, was one of my mentors. My mother taught me perspective, rendering, anatomy in drawing. Varda's influence brought out my playfulness, spontaneity, surrealism. Varda, a Greek celebrant of life and color, was, at seventy, the object of adoration of countless women, including me, at age eighteen.

He taught joy by example. He created not only wonderful collages, but a lifestyle that included a home on a beached ferry boat, the other half of which was occupied by Alan Watts. Watt's half had an austere Zen look--dark wood, stone, bamboo. Varda's half was all bright, faded and chipped colors of paint, colored glass bottles, colorful flags, and roomful of theatrical costumes for his dinner guests to wear at his massive dining table--and he entertained often.

He had the only sailboat in San Francisco Bay without numbers painted on it. Why would one need numbers to identify a boat painted pink, orange, and green, with eyes on the prow? I sailed in it with him and two others around the Bay for three days.

I was also the last of his friends to see Varda alive in the United States. In September, 1970, on the day Living On The Earth was published in Berkeley, I hitched over to Sausalito with the first copy and presented it to him. The next morning he flew to Mexico, where he was murdered by a street thief. I dedicated my next publication, a colorful 1972 calendar called Earth Time, to his memory...