Some who know me really well know that Ragged Point, California, holds a special place in my personal biography / cosmology.
Ragged Point was the place where, in November, 1998, I reached my lowest point. And where I then took a decision to take an ethical responsibility for my own life and my own being, once and for all. It was a sort of atheist epiphany, where I realized I truly was alone in the universe, but that that wasn’t as bad as it seemed like. “Born-again atheist”? Sounds funny. But it hoves close to the truth.
It’s where I got the name “raggedsign” from, that you see applied to my online identity here and there. The sign at Ragged Point… is deeply significant – like Saul, on the road to Damascus: but for this Saul, all there was to be seen was my own soul, laid bare.
It’s not always been smooth road, since then. I’ve not always done perfectly with the goal I set for myself that night. The first months and years after were exceptionally difficult, and Michelle’s suicide in 2000 was another low that felt like an inversion, in so many ways, of Ragged Point.
Anyway, part of my traveling, in general, is about seeing new places. But part of it is also about revisiting, paying a sort of homage to, old places. Important places. Re-integrating all the disparate places that patchwork together to form the narrative of my immanent selfhood.
This current trip back from Korea, all this driving around, has been especially like that. It’s almost only that.
So today, I’m returning to Ragged Point. It’s up the road a ways from San Simeon, on the central California coast. I’ll probably sit and gaze at the ocean for a long time.
Later, I’m having lunch with Wendy, my stepmother (well, ex-stepmother, technically, but still a very important person in my life and one of my most important role-models, growing up). She lives in San Luis Obispo, currently.
Overnight, up to tomorrow, I’m driving to Roseburg, Oregon. My aunt Freda passed away while I was in Alaska, and I’ve decided to go to her memorial service, there. It will give me a chance to see relatives I haven’t seen much of. And I’ll be re-integrating the length of California, along the way.
I took the picture below right at the county line between San Luis Obispo and Monterey counties, a few miles north of Ragged Point on Highway 1. The ocean that you can see is at least 500 feet straight down that cliff under the tree.
