I asked Linda to teach me how to make the kopi terkuat (strongest coffee)...
it's like dirty car oil that cracks out everyone on the island
...we had to stop making it for a while cuz it was causing heart palpitations in surfers when the swell got too big i think.
but I feel like i need it this morning.
last night, I lay under the shitty pop up mosquito net feeling the mozzies buzz around my face and land on my feet drinking me up as they always do.
my eyes were wide open but still not adjusted to the dark so I was blind and just listening to my inner voice inside my head babble on.
"well... what if there IS a tsunami? how would I choose to react? what would i want to be in that situation? could I possibly not freak out and get scared and instead just be patient and move consciously and quickly without being crazy?"
I wondered how the kiwis had gotten here so fast.
our new zealander guests must have run from their bungalow across the beautifully raked paths that I pulled roots out from juat a few days ago... coming up the stairs of the uma I wonder if they expected to see all the staff and guests wide eyed and waiting for instructions to either climb the tsunami-is-coming-and-we-have-no-time tree or get in a boat quickly and head out to sea.
instead they found me sitting upright like jojo the dog who was next to me with his ears at attention and a passed out birdie who mumbled from his sleep "it's cool. it was small and under 40 seconds... just the plates releasing a little pressure. no worries fellas. no worries"
the uneased kiwis went back to bed, most likely walking back the way they had run over here moments before.
i lay back and waited for my eyes to adjust back to the darkness
releasing pressure...
like one of those big 64 ounce bottles of soda in America. when they get shaken up you have to untwist just a quarter of a turn and let it go "tssssaaaah" and then wait a sec.. and then a little more.
sometimes little spurts are necessary... but we can't let things go too long... and I think this goes for everything.
before I fell asleep I had googled current events and world news.
earlier i had been sitting at dinner with our guests and someone said something about chile.
i knew absolutely nothing about this current event and figured the mention was further to conversation i had just had with our guest Brian, who was telling me about he and his wife - lifelong world travellers who met in a bar in London and then went all through South America together finally ending up to raise a family in Sydney...
sighhh.
i am so enamored with travel.
i don't think there is anything more romantic then leaving all the STUFF behind and just living for the mere sake of living.
Cahn said tonight "if i die healthy i'll think 'what a waste of a life!"
I don't know if i would go that far... but what an idea.
Someone said to me recently "I'm here for a good time... not a long time..."
Maybe this is everyones justification for being alcoholics and being destructive and smoking cigarettes or something...
But what an idea.
Like Birdie's song from the day when my Dad told me over the phone that it was the prophecized rapture or whatever it was called "If i Knew the world was gonna end... I would just hang out with my friends."
Seriously, i think i would.
The only thing is that i would invite all my friends from all over the world to come hang here with me on the island and we'd all transcend together.
after reading about the world and pondering all these thoughts... i had found my friend cary's name on skype.
"Is this really you!? like, really really?" I typed in the little box next to her name.
the internet is too slow to actually see her face.
we chatted for an hour or so and realized that we both felt so distanced from one another. she was looking at flights to meet me in bali this week and i didn't even know she was still planning to come out here.
she told me that she had a feverish dream/hallucination the other night in new York city. she was freaking out, convinced that the little wooden sculpture I made for her that she keeps above her bed had fallen out the window and down the fire escape, blown away out her east village apartment with the wind.
she thought she had lost this thing that represented me.
I felt lost from her too... i told her I felt like I couldn't even see her eyes when I closed mine.
I missed her so badly it was easier not to communicate... but then we realized that too much time had gone by with no communication at all. we had grown TOO far apart and were aching to start coming back towards one another.
She and my goddess girlfriend from San Fran named Laura are going to come meet me in Bali after Jessica leaves in August. then I can carry on to India and possily Australia with a little pressure relieved.
that pressure on my heart.
we did this in new york last year - the three of us - one of the best times of my year spent laying on cary's bed passing a bottle of wine around and just tssssahhhhhh - letting it out. everything.
I need to drink the strongest coffee today because I feel I need a kickstart
I need my blood to run a little faster...
funny we refer to this coffee as "oil"
yesterday I got a little energetic kickstart from my friend nick "wallaki" who dropped by the island for a couple hours to visit.
we both exist in a slightly different reality from the rest of the world.
we see magic in the mundane... the poetry in the trees and the faces in the clouds.
as my ex would say "we're woo-woo"
in the hour or so we spent together yesterday we seemed to talk a million miles a minute, covering the gamut. from awakening chakras to dreams to new songs to a brief catch up o the last 3 months we hadnt seen eachother.
he has returned to the Mentawais for goodsies and is living in a small village across the bay from where I live.
he has returned with purpose... all his recording gear, a PA system and plans to record all the Sipura village children singing on his tracks. it's genius.
the Mentawai people are singers.
all of them.
I am so happy he's back personally so i can have a woo-woo buddy out here. someone to vibe out with.
(us Venice beach types are few and far between out here in the islands.)
I felt like I got charged up hanging with nick for a little while. I just needed that little spurt... just a set of ears that understood my language so i could just let it out and bring in some new woo-woo off him.. i guess it was not unlike the earthquake that happened that night.
...releasing pressure.
when nick was leaving the last two things we talked about as he stood at the bottom of the uma stairs waiting for his canoe to be brought around...
was touching on global warming and environmental concerns we both had- and a bit about the earth's oil and how we believe it's like the coolant or lubricant for the tectonic plates.. and as we drain the earth of it, we cause this chafing of the plates of the earth.
(case in point 12 hours later)
he shared a little indo knowledge as he said goodbye for the tenth time.
adding ter- as a suffix makes something "the most"
so kuat is strong
terkuat is the strongest
my coffee this morning is terkuat because I need my oil. the strongest oil.
I think I have unknowingly been chafing, aching for my sisters... for my woo woo friends... for deep conscious conversation that doesn't involve the direction of the wind.
because what I care about today is the wind itself.
I miss writing poetry about the wind.
Cary asked me last night "please tell me you are writing?"
in all honesty... I'm not.
I haven't had the space.
i know that sounds weird when i think sometimes that space is all i have...
but i just feel somtimes like i don't have a space to myself to write... everyone walks in and assumes I'm on facebook. I don't think people get that I am in church when I'm writing.
but that's an excuse.
it's the same with yoga... I could just unroll a mat and practice in the middle of the driftwood castle but there is this pervie member of staff on the island that walks out of the kitchen and stares at me while I'm practicing and I get weirded out and stop.
again... probably just an excuse.
maybe I am just unmotivated and that's okay.
maybe this chapter of my life isn't the most creative, but it's okay. i can hostess and make friends, take photos, write my thoughts here on this blog, give massages and meditate in the tides like I did yesterday at sunset.
it was the soulstice yesterday... since I am in the southern hemisphere it was the winter solstice.
the shortest day of the year.
the longest night.
maybe that's why I felt like I had to squeeze in my visit with nicko... and why i felt like I lay there in the darkness waiting for my eyes to adjust for hours after the earthquake.
maybe that's why there seems to be magic everywhere.
--------
hours later.
i wrote that this morning.
now its bed time and i am back under the damn pop-up mozzie net i keep forgetting to get a real one that strings up that actually keeps the bugs out.
anyways - after i wrote all that this morning, i found a zen zone.
it had been here all along.
the perfect yoga studio.
i made the gudang (the little storage shed closet under the kitchen) my zen zone studio-
i lit candles & turned the lights off
i played meditation music through my laptop
i kind of practiced asana
i breathed
i lay back and felt warm.
it rained.
hard
i loved it
every mOMent of it.
and then i emerged back into the driftwood castle and almost immediately, my big brother, Brent - the reason i came out here in the first place... he showed up.
i saw his boat tearing through the water beyond the break and my heart swelled up.
everyone started yelling out "pixi! pixi!"
and then the sun came out
literally and metaphorically.
we went to town in his boat.
he was in SUCH a good head space.
he treated me like he always did in LA. he had my back.
he took care of me.
my brother i never had and somehow always had.
i felt safe and happy and cared for just hanging out with him.
he made everything i had been stressing about all better.
we laughed
hard
and then he left and i got an email from my soul sister liz.
she wrote to me that she had been right where i was... and reminded me that we were in this together.
and we forgave ourselves for everything
and recongized the light and strength in one another as we always do
and then i realized that i didn't need the strongest coffee.
because i can be terkuat... as long as i have mirror reflections from friends i love and that love me... and we all have eachother's backs and are here to remind one another that we are beautiful and strong...
like ainsley - the queen of the driftwood kingdom, who has faced the odds, charged the waves, dealt with the testosterone and still come through with grace and strength.
she reminds me...
and liz reminds me...
we have to love ourselves because we're not really gonna get it anywhere else.
this is island world... every man takes care of himself and is an island unto himself.
there is not much unity, but it's okay.
we are the strongest.
together we stand. as individuals. the strongest.
i'll still take that dank strong coffee though. it's incred.
and my idol/hero/guru KG said...
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