The Look

Now that I'm sixty, I'm having a problem communicating with most people under thirty. Those arrogant young whippersnappers! When we arrived at Harbin, we were greeted at the reception desk by just such a one, a tattooed chick in the uniform of her tribe, a batiked sarong. We told her we'd been coming up to Harbin for about thirty years and commented on how much it had changed during those decades.

"Change? What change?" she challenged us.

"Well, there's been a lot of construction," we stammered in response to her feisty attitude. "New buildings and such."

"New buildings? There aren't any new buildings," she said in her know-it-all, sassy young whippersnapper way.

We crumbled under the pressure. "Well, how about the gate? That wasn't there before. And additions to the old buildings. What about The Dome? That's new, isn't it?" But our voices faded off in response to her impatient stare. You know, The Look, the one young people give to old people when they're being a nuisance. I know The Look well since I used to give it myself to The Invisibles Ones when I was but a haughty young girl.

The truth is, there's been constant construction at Harbin since we first discovered it in the early 80's. Back then, there were only a few rundown buildings on the property, inhabited by the so-called "residents" (seedy hippies and crazies living a marginal existence "off the land"). But there were the warm pools, of course, and the beautiful unspoiled land, which is why we put up with their bullshit.

Since then a veritable labyrinth of buildings, remodels, and additions have sprung up, not to mention an actual labyrinth, built for spiritual purposes, of course. Everything at Harbin is built for spiritual purposes: the serpent gate, the gardens, the restaurant, the Internet cafe, the conference center where New Age workshops are held, the Temple where people gather to dance and practice yoga, the movie room, (a tiered space covered with cushions where rented DVDs are viewed nightly ) and the new dome, which looks like a science fiction movie set. Actually, it resembles the buildings in Woody Allen's movie "Sleeper, " his 70's comedy set in a pretentious New Age future. Welcome to Harbin.