phewf! no more nasty dreams, half-hearted self-pity, what have you... :)
i think a bit of what was going on was having to recalibrate to solo status again after the warmth and camaraderie of greg & katie's place... that, and this heat and humidity, under the weight of which one is motivated to explore nothing more than the controls of the air con unit! how fortunate, indeed, that i have such a modern amenity!! anyway, a pretty mind-blowing snorkeling experience today. met some great people, almost kissed a few manta rays, and saw an unbelievable variety of fish and coral formations, all in this cool, clear, pale mouthwash blue water! as i have never snorkeled in real coral reefs before, i did not know enough to be depressed by what some later told me was a disheartening lack of brilliance in their coloring - so there i was flipping out over the dusty purples, chartreuse greens, pinks, orange-ochres, etc, not to mention shapes/particular formations... some like brains the size of wheelbarrows, giant honeycombs, huge fungus-like growths, on and on and on - i could never have imagined such beauty and variety. tomorrow i am heading back to bali proper, to Ubud, up in the highlands (where it's COOLER!!!) (at least at night). a few days there, back to G&K's for a party, then a 5 day silent retreat, then... we'll see...surf or service :) PS Pat D - i had fresh tuna cooked in banana leaf with lemongrass and chilis over rice and vegetables for dinner tonight. thought of you <3
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wow. have just woken from an absolutely furious dream - a one scene play, starring A and i. i am screaming at him, enraged by his leaving me, having a lover, refusing to try, everything… at one point i am just yelling “fuck you! fuck you! fuck you!” over and over again from another room. and he is, as per usual, as reasonable & dispassionate as a bowl of oatmeal. it was quite awful, and more awful still to think that that anger (pain, really) must still be in me somewhere. ..? i guess i can take some comfort in the fact that such feelings are not part of my normal day-to-day consciousness… : /
hormones playing a big part, for sure - i arrived here quite crampy, and soon thereafter fell into a decidedly blue funk - couldn’t face walking around to explore by myself; alone alone alone was all i felt. alone amidst vacationing lovers, old and alone amongst the young and coupled, alone and absolutely unmotivated to do anything about it, like put myself into the mix and go order a drink at some beach bar… what a drag! i am not taking it all too seriously, just a bit disappointed…i’m in Bali, for god’s sake, but might as well be in Daly City for all the enthusiasm and curiosity i feel. i did, of course, eventually walk down the beach to the “dock”/ “town” once i’d settled in; found a place to rent surf board tomorrow (today!), and then walked back via the road, noting massage places, a few shops, and restaurants to check out over the next few days. in response to this malaise, i tried to contact possible volunteer places (without much luck) - i figure a good dose of helping others and not just more “lounging about picking at my own scabs” (!!!) would probably be a good thing right now! no go with the places i had previously researched, but maybe i will find something “useful” to do my last week here, rather than hunting down surf…? 6 am thursday - Full Moon Day, and from far off in the distance, i hear a long prayer/chant/song that Katie tells me is part of every full and new moon observances, in the mornings and evenings. we may be able to witness a ceremony this evening on the beach if we are lucky <3
not yet hot out - a treat! today is a planning and wandering day for me. tomorrow i hope to go with Pak Made, G & K’s friend, for a daylong tour to several out of the way temples, a mountain inside a volcanic crater (!), and villages, and then back for, unbelievably, Pizza Night with G & K and Suma and Made!!!. saturday, i will head off, probably for Ubud. the more i learn about indonesia and all the possibilities within, i “fear” i may just have to spend the rest of my life here… but for the fact that i suspect i will have similar sentiments in thailand and sri lanka!!! still, there are some plans forming in my head, some things i will research in the hopes of manifesting. i know myself well enough to know that i am a fantastic Planner (or Dreamer, more accurately), but perhaps not always the most realistic person, so i am trying to temper my enthusiasm with a little patience. it’s not that i lack followthrough, just that the things i dream up are often bigger than life-sized, and my cart often rides miles before my horse…so we will see - i am configuring a methodical approach to realizing said dreams, and i am right where i need to be to take the first steps. can’t beat that :))) ok hot now - SWIM!!!! not much time to think today, so won't write thoughtlessly (plus i fear i am getting boring), but here are some pics from temples-&-volcano daytrip. i will say that i've learned i prefer the living devotional spaces (at intersections, bridges, gates in every family compound and village) to historical temple sites peppered with other tourists.
here are a few corrections that have come to mind and i have been meaning to make, in some cases, for a while. i’m sure there will be more, but for now:
Thames (NZ) is on the Firth of Thames, not the Bay of Firth (which would roughly mean bay of the bay, i think)!!! the large geckos are not in fact the size of cats - by the size of their poop and the loud and deep calls they make at night, one would think so, but i finally saw one and they are about 6-8 inches long (plus tail) … and look just like the insurance company character!!! it’s Katie not Katy… (sorry!!!) it feels as if synchronicity is a magical result of traveling, but i’m sure it must be more a matter of having opened, surrendered, to what’s happening, as one does in travel, and the fact that one has more time to be mindful and pay attention to how things are unfolding. nonetheless, it has been impressing me of late - a very mundane example being that of my evolving reading list. after finishing the books i brought with me, and one dense tome of historical fiction written by a new zealand author that i bought from the sale rack of a used book store in raglan, i decided to give my reading list over to fate, just to see what the universe, speaking through the shelves of every hostel i stayed in, would offer up for my edification and enjoyment. it has been uncanny - one week i felt myself quite preoccupied with musings on mortality, in what felt like a very healthy and positive way; at the end of said week i stayed in a hostel where, so weirdly, and hilariously, i found not one or two, but EIGHT novels with the word “death” or “dead” in the title!!! i didn't actually read any of them, but had fun stacking them together in a new and special Death Section of the bookshelf - meant to take a picture but forgot.
another time, i had Emile Zola’s “Germinal” come into my mind completely out of the blue, which i probably read 30 years ago and have probably not had much cause to think of since, but now felt driven to read again ( to the degree that i thought i might even have to “break the rules” and buy)…lo and behold, tho’, at the next hostel, what should i find on the book trade shelf, but… (oh, and it is such a great and brilliant book!!!) then, on the morning i was in the auckland airport with “extra” time on my hands before my Bali flight (that day, by the way, ended up being 24 waking hours long : ///), and was poised to enter into this new phase of the journey, with its meditation retreats and rededication of my focus to that end, what do i find the in the airport bookstore (kind of amazing in and of itself) but Christine Toomey’s “The Saffron Road - following Buddha’s daughters”, which is all about the women who choose to dedicate their lives to the Buddhist path, the abbeys and monasteries they live in/run worldwide, and the historical and present-day role of women in Buddhist communities…! it’s a phenomenal book (i read 300 pages straight without being able to stop!!!)… but have i ever seen it in a bookstore before now???… truly - anyone out there interested in the Buddha’s teachings, in dedication, in the triumph of human spirit over overwhelming adversity, and kick-ass women… READ THIS BOOK!!!! lastly (for now), and more of a weird fluke, but what Australian city, of all the Australian cities there are, should i randomly be rerouted through but the one and only Australian city i’ve ever been in, namely Adelaide, where, in 2000, Geoffrey and i came to perform our duet “wingspan” in an arts festival…it’s a little kooky…:) Felt like a wee pilgrimage flight in homage to my beautiful brother and dance partner… i guess my point, if indeed i have one, is that i am getting the sense that the universe is perhaps not the random haphazard place that it can seem, but that actually there is flow and a harmony at work, and it is a blessing to experience this poetry in motion., and life is pretty awe-inspiring… (think i’ll get that job at hallmark…?…! :) i think i have always sensed the possibility of this deep organizing principal, been attracted to the idea (my serial obsessions with quantum physics, fractal geometry, etc), but to just be in it and feel it is another thing… …obviously books on shelves is the least of it, just, as i said, a simple and mundane example :) 1) plane sky 2) house front gate 3) Ganesha 4) Goa ("cave", from which she was rescued as a pup) 5&6) Greg & Katy's house 7) pool 8-11) "MY" house 12) Suryani's house 14-17) flowers and wall gate 18) one of 4 cardinal-facing temples (each Balinese compound will have these, plus a shrine to their ancestors)
8 am. - been on the deck since 6:30 loading photos for blog post. have gone from a mere glistening with sweat to now dripping with it. once download is complete, asana practice under the shade of the frangipani tree and then a swim. later today, Greg and i go to a different market, lunch at his favorite west Sumatran (if i remember correctly) restaurant, then pick up Suma from school and go to his volleyball game. very exciting.
oh, also, they have squirrels here the size of gerbils and geckos the size of small cats - their poop is the size of a deer pellet!!! :) practise i am working with 2 things now, the first being “The Insect as Agent of Enlightenment”. so far, Bali seems the perfect training ground - the mosquitoes are crepuscular, so not an issue if i Sit before dusk; the ants, unlike their nasty NZ cousins, do not seem to bite; the flies, well, are just flies, curious but not malevolent in their intentions. so i am working with tolerating their investigations of my skin, against the overwhelming desire to brush them off. i’m not sure what kind of critters i will encounter in Thailand, but i want to be “good at this” before the next retreat; maybe i’ll even come to love them :) the second is just a simple “mantra” of “here” (in breath), “gone” (out breath) - a simple noting of the breath on the one hand, but having, on the other, far deeper implications. i think travel can teach one a lot about meditation, given the lack of control one often has with regard to time - no shortage of opportunities to practice with surrender and presence on a travel day :) Suryani, bless her soul, just gave me a quick lesson in the correct way to wrap a sarong - i wasn’t far off, actually, but for the final tying…i had hoped there was a way to avoid having to walk with the minced and in my case awkward steps of a giant geisha… but nope, that’s just how it is. god forbid i should ever have to run for the bus…:))) ...with Bali. with Greg & Katy. With Suryani and her children Suma and Made (“mah-day”). With the sense of humor, lightness, and beauty with which the Balinese seem to carry themselves and relate to one another. With dogs Goa and Manis. with this house. With the shrines and temples EVERYWHERE.
Greg and i went to the market yesterday to get me a few sarongs and it was a riot to watch Greg and the women in the market haggle and play with one another - there accumulated a throng of about 10 women, all laughing at/with (at!) him, hassling him, and he just ran with it and dished out as good as he got. it was truly delightful. after a little tour of what’s what in the area, lunch at a warung (roadside stall-cum-“cafe”), we drove back and happened to pass a cremation, the ceremony and gathering of and for which were in fields on either side of the road. well, last night, after Katy returned home from work (she is the director of a school here), we all piled in to Greg’s VW Thing with the top down (G & K, me, Suryani’s kids , and the dogs) and drove to the beach. a lovely walk, etc, and on the return, i heard and then saw a gathering at the water’s edge , from which the most beautiful gamelan could be heard, mixed with the sound of the waves…it was most likely the very same cremation ceremony we had come across earlier - the last part of a Balinese cremation involves scattering some of the ashes in the river, some in the sea, and a final bit gets taken up and scattered on a rather sacred mountain one can see in the distance from here. it was quite moving to see, and listen to…something particularly powerful and gorgeous about gamelan on a beach, in a “real” context… Greg said he has asked people and the average percentage of their time people say they spend in activities related to their temple seems to be about 30%!!! …oh and i love Balinese cows, too - they are particularly beautiful, and look a bit like a cross between a cow and a deer. one day old calf in the field above the beach…<3 rained last night, and this morning a heavy mist hangs over the hills behind and around us, there is a hint of the coming swell, but it is windy and the ocean is a bit of a mess. even still, there is a tropical warmth to the air,, and it is quietly beautiful. this is my penultimate day in New Zealand… there will be laundering, and packing, and i’m not sure what else. i passed up a trip to the Cape, which I might regret, but it seemed like it could make the necessary tasks too hectic…and… forgive me for saying this, and apologies to any i might offend, but i couldn't face being surrounded by the german language anymore! so, the wonders of Cape Reinga, with its giant sand dunes will have to wait until my “Someday” return to New Zealand. tomorrow will be spent on buses, making my way back to Auckland, and then i must be at the airport at 6 am Monday morning. i’ve found the website Virgin is posting updates about flights to Bali (volcanic ash from Lombok eruption has stranded people in Bali for over a week)… seems Virgin is now daring to fly, but i’m sure it’s a day to day thing, depending on winds, etc. so i will hope and pray that i don’t get stranded in the Sydney airport for any length of time. not much else to do :) peace be with you all. - flowers like fireworks
- billie's doghouse, where all good rugby balls go to die |
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