Wake at Dawn...

At Dawn in Seminyak, Bali.

"Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving."
-my numero uno home skillet, Kahlil Gibran

I awoke at Yuko's house on a bed she made me that has purple sheets.
The last time i was here at her beautiful little home, i commented on her purple sheets that were on her bed and said how beautiful i thought they were... they're exactly the color i visualize my third eye chakra to be...
(the chakra for psychic perception and awareness that i believe is like an amethyst in the center of your forehead that guides you on your travels like Saint Christopher's energy.)

I could just make out the color purple on the sheets beneath me as the first light started creeping in through the little Bali-style windows in the wall above me. The various roosters, geckos, birds, and frogs were singing their dawn song outside in all directions.
On every island i have been to, it seems that Indonesian animals are so vocal... or maybe its just that i have spent too long in Los Angeles.

I wrote this poem a long time ago called
"a bullfrog's lament and a lost soul in a sea of silicone and starbucks"

The crooked river winding...

Bundles of sage and muddy palms.

Wildflowers bloom beside the trail.

...We are seeking our salvation...

Bullfrogs groan at human footsteps.

As we march through fennel smelling meadows, twigs crack and snap beneath us.

Sunlight peeks through between the shadows cast by twisted branches bound together like an arborous canopy overhead.

We are seeking life.

We live in a city where
LIFE
dwells
so
far
.
below
.
the surface
of the concrete and oil...
silicone and starbucks...

... that we flinch in fear when a ladybug lands on our hand which holds a cigarette out the window on the 405.

Are you lost little friend?

Perhaps the bullfrog asked ME the same question...

When did we become so radically removed from the nature that we come from,
...the nature that we WERE and ARE and WILL BE?

How can one lose sight of their own inherent nature?

Perhaps because there is none
(nature that is)
here
in this toxic-waste-dump-movie-set-sprinkled-with-people-who-live-in-a-bmw -and -a-briefcase-and -represent-the -people- that -read-a-script-and-agree-to-play-a-role-of-an-environmentalist - provided- that- their- contract - includes - an - 80' -trailer -with- constant- air-conditioning -stocked- with- slave-trade-coffee- brewed-in- blood-diamond-mugs...

Its no wonder everyone hates LA.

Why is no one else seeking their salvation by this crooked river winding?

Reach your hand out to me and let me pull you up from the sea of blindness and into the blinding sun where we will collect bundles of sage and muddy our palms.

And we will know life.

And we will know love.

And the bullfrog will ask us to stay a while.

And the ladybug will ballroom dance with my pinky finger....

____________________________________

Any way, it seemed that the choir of animals were singing together this breaking morning like the Mentawai children on Sunday mornings at church in their costumes singing their little hearts out, and i found myself waking up and immediately hearing Kahlil Gibran's words echo through my head...

"Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving."

i stretched silently as not to wake up my pregnant hostess Yuko - breathing and taking some spinal twists and hip openers. My knee is still very sore and seems to be getting more and more frozen after the sea urchin incident... is it a bite? a sting? a poke? what do you call that?

I honestly have fallen asleep multiple nights now thinking of that and never have remembered to look and find an answer... what is it when a porcupine gets you?
an attack? ya - but the sea urchin is so not interested in attacking. if anything i attacked the urchin! poor thing - drunkie 27 year old girl trying to swim across it's reef home in extremely low tide. unprofessional zani.
Anyways, my sea urchin injury is making my knee totally arthritic somehow which is totally lame.

Yuko just woke up (i'm sure the babbling going on in my head was enough to pull her out of her sleep)... She just handed me some coffee. WHO needs starbucks in indonesia... Java, Sumatra... we are in Kopi Heaven! i love me some good stuff though and shockingly people are way down with their instant garbage here.
I must say, i went through a faze for quite a while in England when i was totally and completely useless without coffee... i would basically just stagger into the kitchen, shuffling across the freezing cold tile floors (bundled of course like an eskimo in all the blankets and sheets off my bed - leaving jamie, my husband totally bare and shivering while he slept in... serves him right for not having to get up like me... ha) and i would make myself instant coffee and marvel at its power to pull me right into the day.

Many years ago, a taxi driver told me that it takes a full hour for caffeine to be completely active in your system - and it's all in our head thinking that sipping a coffee instantly makes us awake. I obviously gave him NO tip and angrily got out of the black cab and slammed the door.

How dare he insult my precious coffee.

Wow... i am digressing like its my job.

Wait... what was the point of this one?

Oh good. i am just babbling. i like these ones...

So, Russell, my friend who is in town is asleep on Yuko's couch as i sit on my purple bed post yoga stretch, and write. Russell and I both bought surfboards yesterday. He got a new one in Kuta down on Poppies Lane.
We went on a buying mission and ended on the "flying fish" board bought from an adorable lady named Misty who i totally chatted to in Indo and then hugged when we left.

We went and had a "zanimal" - tequila, soda water & lime to celebrate the purchase.

Mine i had been renting in Balian Beach and i really liked it so i bought it from the rental guys for super cheap (plus dua cium - two kisses)... i drive a hard bargain.
the board is totally beat up. not fancy like Russell's at all. i keep calling it a "hooptie" - which apparently nobody knows that word... ya know, like a "piece"... like a fully old, shitty thing that works great but looks a little worn out. Most of the cars in Indonesia are "hoopties."
Anyways, i rode it out in Balian with Jen yesterday and as we were sitting in the lineup I just visualized myself painting the chakras down the front with acrylic paint so that i could have a frame of reference as to where i like to have my feet when i'm standing and my boobs when i'm paddling.
sometimes i need that marker.
I remember when i was practicing hatha blend yoga in Los Angeles with the genius Jasmine Lieb, i thought i would like to paint foot marks on a yoga mat... but then i realized that i should just let go of the perfect physical alignment and just be in the moving meditation with grace, so i never painted a mat like that.

This radical new/old hooptie blue surfboard is totally getting a paint job.
I am just so very much looking forward to being able to run around the wave world and not worry about hurting someone else's board. I AM destructo, afterall...

Think about my shoes.
ya.
i go through shoes like nobody on this planet.
it's true.

ask any of my friends.

Cary has probably commented on this fact more then anyone... but its true.
I walk HARD... or something.
i just always destroy shoes.

I think its kind of awesome that i live a life now where i don't actually wear shoes.

Before i left to get on the plane to come out here to Bali, i had put on shoes twice in 2 months. Once to Cahn and Sue's wedding in the village where i OBviously sported my boots, and once to Tua Pajet. (the Mentawai town - i went into to get supplies on my birthday)

It's funny though, because if you look at my feet it looks like i have a disease or something. My feet are riddled with scars and wounds... my new surfing injury (yessss), the blisters on my feet from actually WEARING shoes in Bali, bug bites and cuts from the island...

i love it.

there is nothing i don't love about being so rugged. okay okay... i guess i didn't love each thing that made me hurt and bleed that now are scars... but i'm just sayin... i am so f-ing rugged.
hahah.

it's been fun having Russell from LA here - my first familiar face that has reminded me where i come from and who i am... I have come a long way.
literally and metaphorically.

I am so grateful he is here on his surf mission, as it is totally inspiring me to be on a surf mission which is the kick in the ass i needed.

We actually hired my friend Jen to take us on a long weekend surf trip around Bali. She is such an inspiration and a really good guide, as she has been living on this island for 7 years and knows exactly where it is not crowded but perfect. Plus i really like her, so we get to chat while out in the water. Once she wakes up we are going to head out.

On Tuesday i am heading up north to Candidesa to stay at the Gandhi Ashram. I am so excited about that... even though part of me just wants to keep surfing... but it is so true how surfing and yoga/meditation are so closely linked and very similar.
there is this connection with spirit that is so profound...

i just wish everyone in the world would do one or the other.
surf or practice yoga...
and everyone could wake at dawn with a winged heart like mine right now...
if only...