The wind

The wind

"In love with life, my soul lives a subtle passion, each day a new house, each night under the stars, a gypsy life." -Rumi

I love the wind.

This is something I won't admit too openly around surfers as they will probably try to throw me overboard for saying such a blasphemous thing.

On the last trip, some old friends of shayno's who were out on their private boat, came on board kaimana to hang on a particularly windy stormy night.
Everyone was winging about the conditions which blew out the waves and made it even uncomfortable to sit on the roof...
Windy weather makes for a rocky night spent indoors on a charter boat.
One of the visitors was a yogini from Australia who would soon be on her way to Bali to get her teacher training up in Ubud at yoga barn.

We talked at length about yogic philosophy and Ayurveda which she was reading about preparing for her course... She crouched in  a sort of ball behind a wall in the wheelhouse on the boat hiding from the wind as I sat directly in front of the cracked door letting it blow across my face- tangling my hair. I saw my reflection in the window and saw this medusa-esque undulating movement coming off my head.
It looked like the black and white ular (sea snake) I'd seen under the floodlight off the back of the boat a few nights before... Dancing through the water in a chaotic beautiful squirming writhing goddess-like dance.

She told me from her crouched position how much she hates the wind... She said she was just reading about her Ayurvedic Dosha, and finding that she connected with the type that hated wind.

"it makes everything so ruffled, messy, chaotic" she said...

I sighed and inhaled this chaos-making wind that was blowing past my face, caressing my closed eyelids.

I had a moment of realization... Swadyaya is self-study/awareness... And I think I have really been on such a powerful Swadyayic journey lately.
Seeing my reflection in others, understanding truths about myself and recognizing the puzzle piece-like clues in the messages the universe sends to me.

I think I invite chaos in my life.

I wrote to my spirit sister Liz about

"It's weird Liz" I wrote... "this chick hated the wind. She kept saying it and
I kept thinking about how much I love it.
Lately I keep thinking about it in a poetic symbolic sense... and inadvertently writing about it."

In the book I am writing, my character gets left by her gypsy boyfriend. He leaves a handwritten note poetically referring to the wind that has carried him away from her... (very Mary Poppins like)

Just before I left for the last trip, I cancelled my ticket to Australia at the very last minute.

I got a response from Aussie mike when I told him I had cancelled my trip.
He said
"No problem sweetie, I love changing my mind with the wind so I afford everybody the same luxury."

I truly believe it is the wind carrying me through this gypsy life I lead.

I love when it rushes through my hair...
I love my convertible... 
I love boats, especially fast speedboats like pixi's...
I love snowboarding fast down a mountain.
Skydiving...
Rollercoasters...

I love it. Surfers hate it.

The wind make things all guyang-guyang... (choppy and chaotic and stormy)... 
Maybe I like when things are guyang-guyang in my life...

I think maybe something in me actually craves and invites chaos and disaster.
Maybe that's why I attract the people I do... 
Maybe that's why my psyche has drawn in all the loss and destruction...
Brought forth all the chaotic happenings and disastrous people in to my life.

This realization made me feel like I needed to tap into Shiva energy.
Shiva is a Hindu Deity, the God of death, destruction and transformation.

Ironically, I was having this conversation with my new yogi surfing girlfriend and contemplating this sitting in the windy mentawai islands while burning man was spread across black rock city, utah... Undoubtedly blowing gypsum playa dust storms that blinded and terrified some and acted as a welcome cleansing to others...
My tribe were the windy desert.

Exactly 2 years ago I was at my first burning man festival.
I taught a yoga class at the shift camp under a giant 60 foot wire sculpture of a woman dancing holding fire in her hands at her heart.
I taught with two other dear friends and teachers, Sage and Chris...
We taught a Deity journey - i took the third and final section of the class which was dedicated to Shiva.

That wind blessed event 2 years ago drastically changed my life.
That was the year I left Jamie...
And on the playa that year
I also met "the wind". My spirit brother and love, who blew out of my life as dramatically and mysteriously as he blew in.

He once wrote me a song for my birthday - all I remember is the line 
"she rides on the gypsum breeze."

I am a fire sign through and through- Aries sun, Leo rising...
And I have no air signs in my whole chart.
Sometimes I think I need the wind... The air I need to breathe.

Fire cannot exist without air.
It becomes soul suffocation.
And a flame dies.
But a strong wind can blow out that flame too.
There is a balance as always, in everything.

But maybe my flame is so strong I can take a strong wind.

Sure, our boat rocked and swayed intensely last night as we crossed the channel from Padang out to the islands... It made several guests sick... But it lulled me to sleep. I could handle the storm.

The other day I wrote about hummingbirds and how fast they move... Creating what must feel like a tornado next to their tiny bodies...
Their wings beat so fast it's almost like they are about to disappear into the sky..

It made me think... Maybe our spirits speed up like the wings of a hummingbird until they take off. The highest vibration in death transcends you to another dimension.

And once again we are carried away like the wind.

-----
I listen to the wind,
To the wind of my soul

Where I'll end up
Well I think only god really knows

I've set upon the setting sun
But never wanted water once.

I listen to my words but they fall far below
I let my music take me where my heart wants to go

I swam across the devil's lake
But I'll never make the same mistake

-Cat Stevens (Yusuf Islam)

----

This entry was written and ready to load on the blog from my I-phone as soon as we reach land with wifi...

But last night I couldn't sleep.
I tossed and turned and finally gave up and just sat up breathing and listening to my rambling thoughts.

Shayno woke up and sat with me until the sun came up.
We tried twice to sit on the roof but the wind howled and we ended up coming back inside the cabin.
We talked about religion and metaphysics... Comparative theology and the metaphorical meaning in scriptures and stories from all time.

We listened to mellow music from my sleep mix, which of course included this cat stevens song that I love and had written this piece based on earlier...

I read this piece to him.
I love how much he loves to hear what I write. 
I guess sometimes I just feel like one of those obnoxious people forcing you to watch a slideshow of photos you don't actually really care about when I read outloud. It's my art and expression that i write for myself. I get so touched that people enjoy reading or hearing me read it to them...

I remember when this happened with my paintings back in LA starting at the white elephant party at Leo and molly's house last Christmas...

When I was getting rid of all my things setting myself up to move to Indonesia all my friends asked for my art. They actually wanted to hang my artwork on their walls. I was floored and so flattered... I ended up doing a few custom pieces for friends who requested... Margot even has an entire wall of my art hanging in her bedroom at the Donna House.

I guess I come from a family of artists so the standard is so high in my life, I never think anything I create is THAT amazing... And literally every time someone says they think it is, I get overwhelmed like a little blushing kid like "oh my god! Reeeeeally?"

Shayno said later on, as the light from the sun was already starting to dance across the white choppy water and the anchor was coming up this morning getting ready to take the boat full of eager Australians to some good waves. "ya know zani... There would be no surf without wind. Surfers can bitch all they want about conditions, but these waves had to come from somewhere windy."

I never even thought about that.
How do we always forget to give thanks for where it came from.
Everything came from somewhere but we are so accustomed to look at the end result... Like the way we treat the symptom not the cause or root of the problem in modern medicine.

So I give thanks to the wind.
Thanks to the thing that has birthed these beautiful waves...
As always...

From darkness to light...
From fear into love...
From a windy day a million miles away, we welcome the glass-off and perfect waves today...
They are just a result from a storm that someone else weathered a few nights before.