Gili Air - TLC 58

After going cold Turkey he began this episode between dawn and noon on a ten-day December reprieve from a private Jakarta school. He sat on a green pillow at a Sasak warung, a small simple eatery.

Gili means water. The small island, one of three off the coast of Lombok had 1,000 residents and zero motor vehicles. The bamboo pavilion where he enjoyed thick black coffee, hand-rolled Drum cigarettes and serenity faced the ocean or maybe it was the sea or perhaps the Straits. Either one was big and blue. Across water Rinjani volcano meditated above grey clouds at 3,500 meters.

A Muslim cemetery with twelve small grey plots decorated with coral borders and eroded headstones rested in a grove of small trees. Weeds, trash and buried lives treasured memories.

Roaming Earth he discovered cemeteries in Lakewood, Hue, Donegal, Bursa, Grazalema, and Ratanakiri animist sites in Cambodian jungles where dead dreamed and he slept with shamans.

In 1999 his stepmother carried her husband’s ashes in a carved box through Colorado fall foliage to Sec. 9 Blk. 9 Lot 11A, Grave NGSW/MGSW at Mt. Olivet west of Denver. She placed them in the ground near his mother, Elizabeth (42-cancer) and sister Martha Ann (13-leukemia).

*

He was in Morocco on 9/11. Chance. Aptitude. Timing. CAT.

Pure luck and perfect timing, the secret of everything.

He teamed up with Omar the blind, a Touareg seer. After six weeks they moved to Cadiz for a month polishing A Century is Nothing.

Omar returned to Cueva De La Pileta caves south of Benaojan where he created 26,000-year old Paleolithic cave paintings for archeologists and suicidal literary gnomes.

Lucky shifted to Grazalema, a small Andalucía pueblo for three months of winter writing with Little Wing, a weaver.

Across the valley was a cemetario near a small church. Empty white crypts held cleaning materials, rags, bricks and trowels. Behind iron gates plastic flowers, names and dates faded curling black and white photographs of the dead collected dust where a procession of men laid a forty-year old friend to rest. 

They slid his wooden casket into a long stone cold cement cavity and said hello to the blessed Trinity with fast fingers before returning to the tight white community of 2,300 for sherry and conversational memories about the shepherd who died alone.

Gray dolomite cliffs and peaks above crypts welcomed a watercolor sky as white, grey, orange and blue hurtled east. Egyptian vultures expanded wings on thermals. 

Lucky manipulated a rangefinder in fading light imagining interments with names and flowers, passages of memory in love and sadness, chiseled history and pueblo life. He focused down cavities cement shells and rectangular rows of empty passages named Eternity.

Invisible stories whispered desire, conflict, ambiguities, metaphors and silence.

Silence required air to reach the faithful. Silent stories evolving in silent stories exhaled a silent night of the pious silent in collective breathing. World’s cemeteries died at dusk.

Relatives watered red, pink, white, yellow roses in lost light.

A single drop of water on a leaf’s fragile edge reflected scattered clouds as an old Spanish woman, a sabiawith mystical abilities, stared over graves’ territorial expansion from her Grazalema balcony and down at a sleeping infant in someone’s arms as three juveniles wrestled near shuttered fruit shops among scattered orange skins.

She heard ash falling from a burning stick of meditation nonsense in Hanoi.

It whistled a white hair on a sliver of tongue’s laughter.

Hungry ancestor ghosts eating incense begged feed me, feed me.

The Language Company

A Japanese Couple

A young Japanese couple walked on the sandy path leading from the south end of the is-land.

He carried a heavy black back pack and white plastic bag. His face was light and happy. Filled with hope.

Filled with hope and expectations. He imagined they were lost on a deserted is-land, a paradise away from family, friends, work, pressure, stress, telecommunications, machines, sushi and caged animals.

His wife, a thin thing, wore a pink sun hat-bonnet, white shorts covering pale legs, a white blouse and low heeled brown open toed backed shoes. Her face was severe. She studied grounded sand with pinpoint black eyes. Her shoes were the problem in the sand - slippery, no grip and tiresome treading. It was a struggle to keep up with her happy husband. She was always behind.

She was always behind his long shadow.

She swallowed her displeasure, the apparently endless future sand path and trudged on in silence. Her Tao. Grains of sand in her hourglass.

He was a boy ant, seeing seas ceaselessly churning blue and white waves, distant flat deep blue waters, a rising volcanic mountain surrounded by clouds, feeling crisp air on his face, maintaining a steady pace. 

They didn't see the cemetery to their right, the green grove, rune coral fragments, solitary green and white headstones with Arabic script or a dancing delicate spider's web reflecting 1,001 points of diamond light.

Then they disappeared.

(Translated by Wave)

Water's heartbeat

Well now, such an elegant universe. Bamboo wind. A drop of memory carried by a pure and simple recall, shadowed reality of sand, coral, diffused surface light, edges of black glistening diamond sand, palms and dirt trails.

The water droplet reflected everything it dreamed, imagined and bird songs escaping from a single throated sound. Yes, this water sustained a yellow leaf on it's gently rising energy, feeding the green veins with harmonic flowing surge. Pulsating.

Metta.

Music between notes

Lombok images of weavers and temples.

Every feeling waits upon its gesture. Dawn clouds, east wind. 

Every morning before the tropical sun became to burning, before the skiffs deposited white tourists on white sandy beach so they could snork waving coral and eat lunch in bamboo shaded pavilions and well before the cidimo horse cart tinkling bells and weather frayed faded tassels dancing in the wind echoed through intersecting village trail dust, people opened their yawning mouths to wish each other "Happy Holidays!"

Along one trail leading from the coast in a field of grazing oxen and serrated coconut palms were a group of boys. They chattered in Sasak. One boy left the group and began climbing a palm, shimmering his way up, skinny dark arms wrapped around bark, feet at an angle supporting his weight. Push-pull-push-pull. 

He was young, agile and fast. He reached a cluster of yellow coconuts, selected one, pulled it free and dropped it. It thudded among dusty broken palm leaves and shards of wild bird songs. A boy picked it up, punctured it and drank sweet juice.

The climber selected another one. Cradling it like a newborn he returned to earth.

Metta.

 

One Air day

Someone else is writing this.

Now it is dark and I am sitting in a small private zone at Coconut. It is a raised platform with large comfortable pillows, a square table with a red and orange cotton runner. The hand carved flower vase holds two white frangipani flowers , hibiscus and bougainvillea.

The platform has a thatched roof and wooden railings on the sides. It is typical of Balinese - Lombok style. Perfect for snoozing, eating, reading. Delightful, clean simple and elegant in its simplicity.

Today's island walk was clean and peaceful. No motor vehicles, no merchants on scooters selling bread while playing a scratchy recording at ear splitting levels. No young "cowboys" hustling their 125 cc passive aggressive tendencies, such as you find on Lombok and Bali.

The day passed sitting, watching dive boats ply aquamarine blue, arching toward Lombok Strait depths. Lombok is across the way, beaches, palms, rising smoke from field burning, foothills and the rising dark blue clouds shading Mt. Rinjani and the volcano. Blue sky.

So it feels good to be sitting here in the garden. This is the University of the Garden. This blooming forth. Fragrance taken deep into lungs. A mask on the wall. Solemn eyes down, drifting. Yes, this bamboo wood-wind chime. Across the sea all blue calm, singing. 

White coral bones. A dreamcatcher. Feathers.

Swimming sand castles. Blue heaven light. Reflections and strong current desires dance the water.

Wind whistles through high wavering coconut palms.  

Metta.