Musings

This morning I thought I was having some bizarre dream with super loud speakers blaring right next to my bed, vibrations shaking my core with Adele singing “Hello” at the top of her lungs. Instead it was 5:45 AM and I was indeed awoken by a recording of Adele singing from across the rice fields (in English no less). This rallying cry was for the whole neighborhood to rise up and gather for go for a two hour walk together through the village, before the heat of day melts the locals and the traffic on the road makes our mass migration impassible. My friend said it was for relaxation to go together, a Sunday morning stroll, and for sure no one broke a sweat because we all ambled so slowly, not unlike the

As I lounged around poolside this morning, I found myself re-reading the same page of my book at least a half a dozen times. A florescent light green dragon fly sat on the corner of page 64, distracting me as I watched her preening herself (or whatever she was really doing, who am I to know?). Simply stunning as her head bobbed independent of her long thorax with her compound eyes scanning to and fro. Two of her six multi-jointed legs clapping and twitching to no beat in particular. The bright sun through her transparent lacey wings cast a shadow mid page as if she were a puppet in a wayang kulit performance (shadow puppet). Magnificence in the moment. Did I say lounging poolside?

An afternoon storm just blew through leaving soaked pavement, damp skin, and cooler breezes. The sky is still deep grey blue holding onto more humidity and the wind whips through the tops of the trees helping the leaves to shimmy to and fro. I am finally sitting down at my dear friend Kadek’s computer in the back of his family compound to write my missive of the past few weeks of non-stop work, being, loving, laughing, and taking it all in to every pore of my soul.

Here, back home in Bali after 4 days in Java, I write aided by a caffeine high from coffee grown and roasted locally and labeled called "Cosmic Coffee". Zip and Zen at the same time. The trip to Yogyakarta - an hour flight to the west in central Java where I used to live - was spent vising old friends, running around doing lots of buying, and enjoying one of my oldest loves in Indonesia, Linda. On Monday, my friend Meghan who is my family in Bali, needed to get out of town for the day and came with me as I headed to the airport to fly to Yogyakarta.

Sitting back at home Philly in a dream state of a muzzy time warp, I can hardly believe I flew halfway around the world to my beloved Bali, and back again to my beloved Bill and Daniel. The time away – though measured in hours, days, weeks – feels like crystallized moments that filled my soul overflowing with experiences and emotions, now banked away to be drawn on as needed throughout the year. Such a sweet month, healing and restorative with the needed salve of lots of laughter mixed with tears.