Musings

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.

Homeward bound....home to/from home.
Floating eastward towards the International Date Line, into yesterday, I woke from a dream 30,000 feet in the air. Between my two worlds, multiple time zones and cultural fragments, the airline ride back is a transition space I often use to begin my re-entry to this world. But waking up fuzzy I gazed out the window into the dark vast sky sandwiched between stars above and below me. How could this be, soaring on top of the galaxy?

Happy Balinese New Year or Selemat Hari Raya Nyepi!!! Today is the day of silence in the land of lush cacophony of sounds from motorbikes, guttural laughter, temple bells and prayers, birds, frogs & geckos galore, and the constant chatter of locals in both deep and casual conversations. For 24 hours, no one - and I mean no one - leaves their family compounds to venture out on the streets to work or to hang with friend (no planes land or take off, no traffic/cars on the road) as it is the day that the Balinese believe that they must fool the gods into believing the island is abandon so that the "low spirits" will leave them in peace and saunter off to find other places to exist and wreak havoc on for the next year.