Commonalities

She talked of "homesickness." All the letting go. How she was born on Air and lived in a small French town on the Belgium border for some time.

How her temporary work visa finally expired and she returned home. She wore French designer sunglasses and they fit her brown oval face to perfection. One day it was skin tight jeans. The next an orange and green flowing sarong. A fashion touch. She had the island ease, a long black thick mane, the divorced island hubby and the one boy-child over on Lombok going to school. Living with his "uncle," a tribal chieftain.

She worked part-time in a small cafe-bar near the beach, the white sunset sand, rolling blue apprehensions, French tongued memories. "I am so bored," she said.

"I want to build some bungalows. I own some land. I need to develop a source of income."

She chatted up the odd European. She mixed drinks. She spoke with her son using her cells, her DNA. She stared at the sea. It poured into her black eyes. It was everything she'd run away from. To find herself. To discover her island again and again and again when she ran in reverse through dreams and memories.

 A yellow butterfly sailed through a garden. Darting high, low, in, out of fragrant red, yellow, white glorious blooms.

A diver spoke about money exchange systems after coming up for Air. How the value of economic currencies fluctuates. A butterfly and turtle have so much in common. One in air one in water. Both floating.

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.

 

Water music

A photograph, the details of life, the random constellations of objects that surround us.

A plane to an is-land. A van through high, thick luminous green jungles, see sweeping oceans, gray monkeys along the road, sand and the Lombok Strait.

Waves, sand, water. A blue and white boat. 20 minutes after riding waves, all the deep currents you land on Air is-land's beach. You take a horse-cart along a sandy path.

Fresh sea air. No motorized vehicles. Music echoes from bells suspended from the horse's neck.

Water waves and bells. 

May 2009 bring you every happiness.

Metta.

Neural Buddhists

"The phrase "neural Buddhists" calls up the ways in which the conclusions of modern neuroscience and a collection of ancient meditation practices developed in Asia have come to similar experiential and empirical conclusions about a number of things, including the ultimate nonexistence of the individual self or surface social ego. Such ideas, of course, are part of a much broader interest in "mysticism" and "spirituality," themselves, perhaps ironically, markers of that quintessentially modern and eminently democratic turn to the individual as the most reliable source of religious authority and insight." more...

Aldous Huxley. Brave New World. Doors of Perception. Island.

Masks.

Metta.