a WAY, kin to MAGIC...

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magic magic everywhere



there was so much magic today.

i asked my friend yona twice how to say "magic" in bahasa indonesia...
the second time she finally said "ZANI! why you love magic?"

we had an incredible conversation that i can't even really translate/transpose because it was in so many languages... english, indonesian, body language and energy.

She picked up my rose quartz ammulet and held it for a little while and then closed her eyes. Then she looked up at me like she understood. "magic" she said.

apparently she has seen terapis (i guess some kind of healers) use rose quartz to heal people.
and here i am telling her i believe in all kinds of magic and synchronicity and i wear a rose quartz chunk around my neck that sasha made and tied around me in venice before i left...
i have a rose quartz ammulet that erin and i were gifted in santa fe and i never travel without.
and a rose quartz heart that a reflection connection spirit gave me after the car accident.

"zani-merah jambu magic" (rosy pink magic) she said...

i told her i am a "bagus penyihir" (a good witch)

she said "merah jambu magic bagus penyihir terapi"...

magic is everywhere.

i see it in the sunlight on the palm frawns... i see it in the way the raindrops fall... i see it in the reef and the vines and the trees... i see it in every set of eyeballs i look into. but i hear so much magic when someone laughs.

it's everywhere.

i walked out of the bungalow about midafternoon to find Ainsley near the driftwood castle using this SUUUPER old school lawn mower on the grass that grows under the clothes lines that are tied between palm trees.
I got so excited by this lawn mower that you push and blades spin... almost as excited as i get to use a clothes line that's tied between palm trees to dry my sarongs and bathing-suits in the island sun... i relieved Ainsley and started pushing this giant, heavy thing around that you literally have to use all your upper body and core strength to make it move... and i seriously did not want to stop. it might be my new favorite pasttime/form of exercise.

the monkey, beaker was sitting up on the roof of the outdoor shower, next to the rain reclamation jugs (that would very soon be getting a filling) - she sat munching on a banana watching me with my silly grin, giggling every single time i pushed and pulled the mower.
yona was giggling to herself too, as she pulled weeds and made the little dirt circles around the trees perfect.

they say if you don't maintain the landscaping, jungle will completely take back the island in less the a year. i don't think i can even explain the climate here.
there are about 500 coconut trees on this tiny island, kamani trees (hawaiian flower trees that smell like honey infused jasmine), orchids, climbing vines, just seemingly every single kind of flora and fauna that exists. it's just SO lush. everything blooms and flowers.

even my fingernails and hair are growing at rocketspeed. (although that might be because i ate fish!! yea. its true. i did it. i overcame my fear and i tasted a tuna that cahn had caught that afternoon in front of the island... as he does every night.)

i'm feeling rather full of life to be honest... more then i ever have really.

but everything is ALIVE.

last night i lay in my bed and just listened. it was SO loud. the symphony of crickets and lizards and bugs and geckos all singing at once from deep in the jungle squaring off to the booming waves that crash upon the coral reef.
there is a serenity in the movement and the noise though. it's so still, and yet SO active and moving.
i think about that a lot, that all round me on this 12 hectare island, is moving tides... sometimes i get almost feelings of vertigo like when you are sitting in a car and the car next to you starts reversing and you think your car is rolling forwards but its not. it's actually still.

ya. like that.

another bit from my book "The Twelfth Insight"

"When we feel convinced inside that our spiritual experiences are real, then we must live them fully and openly and tell everyone about them, because if there really is an influence - and i believe there is- then it helps everyone get to a higher level of experience faster."

then i read "We have to stay awake and help others stay awake."

my mind wandered off to staying awake in the car with Mikey.

Mikey was my best friend before life lead us in different directions. He and i went on some pretty insane adventures together though in that year we spent absolutely inseparable.

A few times i drove him to Las Vegas to play music with this ridiculous, satyrical punk-rock band he played in. He dressed up as this motocross racer and got all bro-ski on stage... little did the audience of x-games pick-up truck driving americans know that under that suit he wore a peace sign and a wooden burning man symbol and eyes that ached for deeper meaning in life.

We had a habit of talking for hours upon hours - literally ALL night - and then we'd "sleep" during daylight hours using a blackout curtain- but completely infiltrate one another's dreams-pace and continue our conscious conversations.

We kept each other "awake" almost like a game.

One time driving back from Vegas - we left the Hard Rock after his show at 5am... He needed to be in LA to work at 9am... so i floored it and drove through the night in my little convertible with the top down. Mikey had it in his head for some reason that if you slapped the inside of eachother's thigh really really hard it would keep them awake.
(i got back to LA with completely bruised and welted thighs.)

But we made it.
And we had helped keep one another awake.

Ironically, the Twelfth Insight chapter I am quoting from about keeping eachother AWAKE in the last two blogs, is called "conscious conversation"...

which is exactly what i called my corners at the collective shows (a by-product of being awake as a community of musicians and artists)... thecollectiveca.com
this picture is me, courtney, colin and peter moon at a manifestival for the collective... i made those signs to hang above this little corner i would sit in and just make a little zen zone and encourage people to speak their minds - set intentions.... dig deep into conversations.. and bounce ideas off one another - since we are all conscious beings that have been magnetically drawn together on that night.
it was a pretty awesome time, and this picture is one of my favorites. courtney berman used to photo document all our events and it's crazy that on the other side of the world i can still look at her pictures and be brought right back to those moments.
i love her. (and it's her sister who gave me "The Twelfth Insight" before i left... what a cool family)

I almost had to shake myself to bring myself back to the island after drifting off to those mikey memories.
it felt like a million years ago, even though they were very recent. (last year this time he was living in my apartment... and i was about to leave him to housesit while i came to THIS island, which was the beginning of the end of the Bay street flop house and the beginning of the OM hOMe.)

Coming back from that train of memory my eyes were all black and bubbly, trying to adjust to the driftwood castle. i guess i had been staring straight at the sun while i was off in memory land.

I was sitting next to Cahn.


Cahn is pretty amazing, actually. He lives in this three walled hut and i don't think he owns a pair of shoes or a shirt. and he creates all this incredible stone work on the island (i.e. the shower of the bungalow i have been sleeping in.peep that pic. its unreal)
He doesn't have a computer. No email address, and only got a cell phone a year ago. He reads all the time and thinks deeply, but lives simply.

We started talking about a myriad of things, but mostly the symbolism in everything.
The reflection of nature in itself.
several things stood out in our conversation as mindblowing awesomeness, that i sat and chewed on... rolled over in my mouth like a sip of mezcal...
He told me that

after we are born (from our 100% saline amniotic sac) .... WE are 70.8% water in our bodies. The earth is covered by 70.8% ocean.
The word for "month" is the same as it is for "moon" in bahasa indonesia.
BULAN.
A woman's cycle is 28 days. The Moon cycles every 28 days.
The moon controls the tides... you wanna tell me that the moon doesn't control our emotions too?
BOOOSH.

And if you have ever taken a yoga class from me, you have probably heard me relate the breath to the ocean waves...
as we inhale, its like the sea drawing the water back into the body of the ocean, and as we exhale its like the waves crashing towards the dry sand.
it even sounds like waves.
if you close your eyes and meditate and just listen to the sound of your breath its like being inside a conch shell.

He also told me that coral released these pheromones into the atmosphere that causes clouds to form above them (to protect them from the sun)... which causes it to rain.
(ironically this was a part of the conversation Mikey and I had in my bay street apartment that lead me to call Time Warner and cancel my cable forever.... As Mikey believed that the government had gotten ahold of this and made a technology so they could control the weather and then mind control us with our TVs to cause fear and panic)
typical.

I told Cahn that i believe everyone has a brilliant mind and a pure soul and is inherently good and all love... but we get covered in shit... like barnacles that grow over us in our sedentary state. or filth that builds up on a window that doesn't get cleaned. and once we are able to dig through and clean it off, pick off the barnacles and release all the shit we own and have been bogged down with... we can be free..
and return to purity and simplicity.

but it is hard to release and let go of the barnacles that have essentially become part of us.

Cahn said to me something that was like BONNNNNG - a giant bell getting tolled in my head.

"Barnacles won't live on anything that is in constant movement."

This is how i feel.

I think this might be how i got to where i am right now. I had this feeling like i was just COVERED in barnacles.
i was bogged down.
i was connected to too many people... too many things...
i was plugged into too many sockets at once...
and i felt clausterphobic.

so i started to shake.
i started to panic and have anxiety attacks that i couldn't get ahold of.

and finally i just started picking the barnacles off one by one and then i started running and dancing... and i danced right out of los angeles... and i am dancing on this island... until it's time to move on...

and i just wish that everyone could dance out of their clausterphobia due to stagnation... and then everyone could see what i see.

everyone would wake up.

everyone would see what colors actually look like when you see them through eyes that are awake...

i didn't realize an ocean could be this many colors of blue.

i run and dance and twirl towards the sun... towards spirit...

but in order to be free...
we must first be able to be.

so i guess sometimes we have to fit inside a box, before we can break out of it.

but my friends....

when you're ready to break out... come join me.

i'm waiting in the wild with open arms.

you're all invited to this party.

come run.
run away with me.
we'll run away from running.