ramai.

Ramai




Just days ago I took a few of the kaimana guests into the South Pagai village of Malakopa.
This is the second time I've been to this particular village and was excited to use my new mentawai phrase I learned last trip "anai layo ita" - which is a greeting to someone you already have met in the past... Like "nice to see you again"

I visited an elderly woman who 3 weeks ago showed me her leg which was badly injured in a machete accident... Upon returning to her house this time, I brought obat (medicine) for her in my dry bag.
She was so thrilled that I remembered, her sweet toothless smile made my heart so warm.
We sat and ate mananam - some weird little sweet fruit you peel open.
My collection of little village kids all came running over, putting flowers behind their ears like mine (even the boys)... All singing and dancing and taking turns rolling my name around in their mouths, testing it out- only to find (as usual) it came out as "Jenny".
We walked back down to the beach (as the newly rebuilt post-tsunami village is high up on the hill now)... All the little girls held my hands.
I think I had at least three on each hand- gripping onto various fingers and holding my wrists, running their fingers across all my various bangles and hippie bracelets, giggling and smiling as we skipped down the dirt path, catching a view of the big black and white boat anchored next to a big wave. I could see them all wondering, imagining what that was like- these big boats anchoring outside their village daily- so close and yet so far.

The Aussie kaimana guests, sweating and slightly shell shocked by the village life as they usually are- kept saying I was the pied piper, winding down barefoot through the wreckage of the old village... My anklet jingling with each prancing step we took as a clustered team of flower adorned girls.

We had to walk through narrow coral paths that inadvertently lay between over-turned palm trees and I found I could not get through so easily being the wide load that I was, flanked by my little friends who were attached to my arms.

They gripped so tight and wanted to be exactly side by side with me. As they scuffled over who had to let go and walk ahead I heard the word "ramai" rattled off by the girls a few times. I shuffled through my mental vocabulary list, knowing I knew the definition but unable to remember in that moment.

Blowing kisses and skipping stones goodbye, the tender boat came an retrieved us to return to the boat.

Onboard I grabbed the kamus dictionary and found ramai.

Ramai: crowded.

I laughed remembering the stories my mom tells of when we were living in Switzerland. My parent's close friends had young kids too and lived in a teeny tiny Bern apartment. When our whole family (who take up a fair amount of space) would come over... The little daughter would crack the door open and say "kiene platz, gaila! Kiene platz!!"
Meaning "no room! No room!"

In Malakopa, the little girls were calling the coral walkway between the palm trunks "too crowded" for all of us to go through.

Perspective, huh?


We made the bumpy crossing back to Padang last night... 

At 6am got packed up and picked up from Bungus and taken to the airport.
Shayno, Craig & I jumped on a plane and landed in Jakarta, Java around noon the same day.

The boys went to check into the hotel and do some of the boat stuff they were here to do and took all my luggage with them (cue: copeland's life in a suitcase song)...
With just a handbag, feeling rather naked, I got in a Jakartanese taxi alone to find the Indian Embassy.

I need my visa stat - time is of the essence.
Of course, I was told to return at 9am the following day. (big surprise- the ordeal of doing ANYthing in indo!)
But at least I got the application and my passport photos and a very kind man who offered to help me when I would make the hour taxi trek back to the South Jakarta embassy the next morning.

Back in a cold overly air conditioned taxi alone, I stared out the window and started to think and digest the very full day that began at the dock in padang as i watched the jakarta world whiz by outside- though whizzing at an incredibly slow pace.

Padang is insane- it's the wild wild west over there in West Sumatra... Cars and motorbikes fly every which way- lawless and rule-free.
Everyone seems to zip around with a yee-haw attitude.
Jakarta is all that and a bag chitato chips.

The word RAMAI takes a new definition here... Where there is an emergency lane or even (believe it or not) a concrete center divider- there are cars and people all stuck in gridlock throughout this hazy, steamy, teeming city insanity.
It's industrial and metropolitan, yet poor, defunct & filthy all at once.
The noise is endless.
The atmosphere feels like... 
Horns, whistles, buzzing, humming city chaos vibrating and pulsating in a cranial compressing way.
The essence of Jakarta reminds me of a smudged, dirty window that even degreaser and windex can't clean... Just clogged and stuck. 
Macet. (muh-chet)
This is the word for when a shitty bali DVD sticks or a CD skips... And the word for traffic jams.
This is Jakarta.
Maybe yet another preparation for my arrival into Delhi.

Apparently I have to prove I have booked a hotel the day I arrive (which, of course, I haven't)
Because they don't want poor, waify, wind-carried gypsies and mermaid-like hippies just floating in and getting lost around India.
(which, of course, was my original plan).
Damn.
We will be here in Ramai world jakarta for just 2 nights and then I return to the mentawais just one last time this season.
One more swoop through paradise before I fly into Delhi October 14.
There is something about the islands that has a hook in me... 
There is a call that I hear... Like the echo from inside a conch shell (or maybe that's from dancing too close to the speaker in the Jakarta dance clubs!)

But seriously, my soul is drawn out to the mentawais in such a real way.
I am so happy on land or at sea.
I want to make a difference out there.
I'm not sure how just yet but I have my entire life to do it...

In the meantime, I will be crossing some more items and places off of my 5 year old post-it written bucket list.

By my calculations, I will have been on every continent but Antartica within 2 years.

Manifest publishing deal for Zani that will fund this project/lifestyle choice... GO!!

My mommy does call me zanigo afterall.

Love light bliss kiss to all.

47 palms & a bat cave

i woke up late this morning down in the cabin...
the hum of the engine and gentle rock of the moving boat lulled me peacefully and also told me that there were no waves today.
If there was a swell and we were shifting spots, the boat would be rocking and swaying much harder as we drove over the forming waves... but more then likely, if there was good surf today, we would be parked at a break and the guests would undoubtedly be in the water but i could hear them all sitting around the breakfast table drinking coffee and laughing.

Today was a peaceful day and we were on the move to somewhere.

Grabbing my coffee and coming into the wheelhouse as i always do, i heard "Bat Caves" and figured the crew was referring to Shayne and I who have both been fighting bugs and hibernating down below in the cabin on and off throughout the trip.

I came up around 3am the other night and the boat chef, my friend Safir was sitting on the back doing his shift on watch.

"You're Batgirl!" he said... "Boss is always like Batman. Always up late at night. Batman and Batgirl! Haaaa."
(he thought it was hilarious)

8 months ago i would have been terrified to the bone to see a bat in real life flying anywhere near me.
Now, when they swoop down over the boat or into a restaurant or get stuck flying around the driftwood castle on the island, i just smile and wave.
They have such good spacial awareness with that sonar stuff.

Maybe I have that sonar stuff too!

I used to perform the entire sugar plum fairy suite in my Grandmere's kitchen. My family thought it was amazing and hysterical how I'd never smack the oven or stools when i'd develope or padachat.
Padachat is the cat jump move in ballet.

Cats & Bats...
Both are so agile and spacially aware.
Ironically, I have been wearing a turquoise and gold anklet that Jessica had made for me on Koh Tao in Thailand.
It has a little golden bell on it and since the last trip on Kaimana, when the guests hear me coming, they yell "JINKSY!"

I've since adopted the nickname Jinksy Bell or Jinksy Cat.

It transfered to this trip I'm on now... Both boatloads of guys I think appreciate the early warning sign of the bells that tell them I'm coming down the hallway and give fair warning for them to put some clothes on.

This morning, after I jingled up the hallway and into the wheelhouse... I had a little look at the GPS to figure out where exactly we were...
Off North Pagai Island a little marker on the screen read "Bat Caves" and up ahead through the window I saw a tiny perfect idealic island plopped in the water... brilliant white sand, 47 palm trees and a reef in a ring of crystal clear water.
Just beyond this postcard-like island were these magical looking caves in the side of the mountainous island...
The caves seemed to form a McDonald's "M" arch in the stone that looked a little like a bat... (maybe where the bat cave name came from).
I wonder if Mother Earth has to pay royalties to the McDonalds Corp. for using the sacred symbol in its natural landscape.

We weren't allowed inside the caves.
The crew said there were hantu spirits in there, No good to explore.
It looked a little ominous, dark and scary anyways, so instead the tender boat dropped me and the guests at this little tiny island paradise instead.

A few guys surfed the small 2/3 foot right that peeled around the island.
I should have.
It was a "zani-sized wave" as Johnny would say.
But I was lost in a poetic wander around and around the island.

It was low tide, so i crept carefully like a cat out on to the reef ring, careful not to step on or destroy anything, as i stared into the tidepools, transfixed and transported to my childhood and entire life spent walking the carmel beaches with my marine biology loving mother, exploring the tidepools and caves at the North end of Main beach, where Pebble Beach golf course hung above us and gifted us with lost Titleist balls buried in the sloping grass and white sand dunes.
I could see my family playing beach golf here today on this little paradise island.

As I wandered around the corner of this short circular island, I saw something sticking out of the sand and immediately thought I saw a Virgin Mary effigy.

Lots of missionaries have infiltrated this part of the world, brainwashing the Indos into becoming Christian, but I thought that maybe some converted tribe or village nearby in the jungles behind us had used this island as a place of worship and created this wooden turquoise Mary here to protect them or something...

As I got closer, I realized it was a piece of an old ship or boat, maybe a canoe. No way to know for sure.
It was buried deep and sticking straight up... The blue paint was worn away by the tides to reveal several layers and shades of blue paint, clearly coats of paint from years and years, worn away by the tides...
It looked like the tides.
Shades of light and dark turquoise waters layered out to the deep sea that had washed this piece of a sea vessel on to this little island snuggling it deep in the warm sand like the way you'd snuggle down into the warm sheets in the morning, refusing to get up and go to school.

I thought it was so funny that i would see a Mary initially.

Back when my house burned down (the first time)... there was very little left on the lot... just ash and twisted metal... a few bricks in a pile from where the chimney was, and the occasional strange plate or piece of blackened ceramic something or other.

My parents found the ceramic head of the Mary sculpture they had in our kitchen, perched in a burned out bush on our blackened property. They had an artist fit it into a piece of the foundation of the house and make an art piece that they still have to this day...
My dad almost has a collection of Mary effigies at this point.
I remember one time he bought a white Virgin Mary in Mexico or something and put it on top of the refrigerator, not knowing that it was glow in the dark.
Our Guatamalan housekeeper came in the kitchen one night and fell to her knees seeing this Mary floating up near the ceiling in the pitch black of night.

I love magic stuff like that.

I kept on wandering around the little island and my eyes were drawn to this shell that was cracked open, both sides next to eachother... on one side was this harsh, rugged, green and brown bumpy shell, but the inside was pearlescent, shining iridescent silver... like mother of pearl.

It reminded me of my father... and the way he was encouraged and taught me to see all people on earth...

There is a divine light inside each and every one of us.

We have a choice of which side we want to see. Behind this idealic island were these dark ominous caves... but we came to the island.
And I picked up this shell and chose to flip both sides to the pearlescent side, facing towards the sun, because that's where i chose to stand today, and that's where i choose to be!
Among 47 palms beside the bat caves.

alone

...from a few nights ago
********

"Why have we chosen to be alone?" Tia asked me tonight.

I was standing on the roof of a rocking surf charter boat under a blanket of stars smack in the middle of the Indian Ocean nowhere near anything recognizable. The anchor was down, the guests were asleep and for some reason i had cell service for the first time in the last five days as we have been out at sea on this adventure.

I saw the bars blink one, two, three, four and immediately i dialed across the world to my little sister Tia.

Before i left Padang to come back out to sea I talked to my Dad for a long time who told me all about what was going on with my family down in San Diego, my older sister at law school in love in Seattle and currently in Alaska on a cruise... and then he told me about Tia, my younger sister and inspiration in so many ways i don't think i can really even explain all the why's -- but i guarantee you, anyone that meets her understands in an instant.

She radiates sunshine.

Tia got hired to work for Greencorps, and after going through a grueling training in Boston has been positioned in Holland, Michigan to spearhead a campaign to change the power plant that sits on Lake Michigan to use natural resources so that the residents stop getting sick. (very Erin Brokovitch sounding, right?)

But my beautiful prism-like sister who is every color in the rainbow, is living in a glass of milk, from what it sounds like.
A staunch republican, conservative Christian town.
These are the people she has moved there to befriend, convert and inspire...
(not an easy task my any means... especially when you are there fully alone without any prior friends or contacts)

If anyone can do it... it's Tia. (like i said... meet her once and you'll get it)

I got through to her from the roof of the boat in the Mentawais as she was sitting at a Michigan coffee shop on a corner waiting for a girl who she had recruited off the street to come and help campaign with her.

"I've never been so lonely." she said.

I felt like i understood so much, having spent the last 7 months on a solo mission, albeit I HAVE spent the majority of it in paradise with amazing friendships that i have developed... and currently I'm actually not alone for the first real time since my divorce, but last February, I too made the choice to let go of a killer amazing life, spent perpetually surrounded by mirror reflections and amazing california power point energy.... to go it alone...
To walk fiercely and bravely into the unknown totally by ourselves.

I felt compelled to tell her about a conversation I just had with Shayno a few days ago as we walked down the wet streets of Padang on a rainy afternoon after a monsoon came down while we were inside getting massages.

Skipping over puddles and garbage, meandering around steaming potholes the size of bathtubs with the sound of the afternoon prayers echoing out of the mosques as motorbikes buzzed by and thunder clapped again further down the road, I randomly started telling him about my friend Doug's funeral, which was almost exactly a year ago.

The eugogolizer (That's a zoolander joke btw) - stood at Kehillat Israel and LAID into the 300 or so friends who had gathered to bury our brother... yet another LA life sucked away from us way too young.

This guy stood up at the pulpit and looked around the room at all these faces that keep gathering for funerals like Doug's... because we are all Palisades kids. We pretty much all grew up on the West Side of Los Angeles in some of the wealthiest and most prestigious communities in America. And we all seem to keep dying in the last few years.

He asked us to think about why we were here. Why did get the opportunity to grow up together in these really really nice areas.
The answer of course, is that our parents all did really well for themselves...
Our parents were the best in their fields...
Our parents (mostly from the entertainment industry being that we are LA kids)... but they are the best of the best - they are incredibly talented, capable, intelligent, often famous people who had us kids and passed down the fire.

Yes, we have incredible genes... all of us in that temple. We were passed down a fierce fire of potential... but he pointed to us and asked us "WHAT IS YOUR CAUSE!?"...

What are we fueling with that fire we possess?

He asked up what did we have in our lives that we were fighting for or working towards?

So many of the faces as i looked around were just pissing away their trust funds, with no cause or purpose and they too were on the path that ultimately lead to so many of my friend's too soon deaths.
So many of my friends in that temple could not tell you something that they were passionate about. They lacked a cause or a purpose... and that fire that they inherited at birth was slowly burning them alive... they were self destructing, combusting from within, killing themselves with drugs and alcohol instead of fighting for something or stepping up and out and taking a stand being a rebel WITH a cause... instead of the rebels without causes that self destruct.

I tell my sister how impressed I am with her every single day, but I know she is like me and needs a WHY.

I get that way too... sometimes people tell me i'm great or something and it's like okay. thanks... but WHY? what is it? I don't know where that need for the reason comes from, but there it is...

I had a reason for Tia tonight.

I told her... Tia... you are literally standing on the corner of this street in Michigan, a million miles away from the comfort of the California sunshine energy, because you are the angel of sunshine handing out causes...

I'll bet you anything there was someone today who woke up, staggered out of bed... made a cup of coffee, put on his shoes, and went walking down the street in a bored sort of lethargic, meaningless way walking to a job that they did day in and day out, and felt like something was missing in his life.
Maybe they would have gone down to the pub later that night and drank too much and chain smoked cigarettes and stumbled home and gotten in bed alone feeling worthless...
But instead, today they walked by my gleaming radiant sister who basically handed him something to fight for... something to LIVE for...
She is living with such purpose and she is igniting the light of purpose in so many others too.

THIS is why she inspires me tonight.

And the alone part?

Well.. maybe we have both taken this time to live it and charge it out into the world alone to prove to ourselves that we have this incredible strength from within.
And i reminded her that we are human...
We are allowed to have days when we feel like shit and we are over it... homesick and frustrated.
We are allowed to feel the human range of emotion... but at the end of the day we follow the manifesto and chose our reactions and always come back to the light, like our mother and father taught us...
we rise above it with the strength that we were born with and often times forget we have. But are discovering daily on these solo journeys.

This time of being alone is so powerful for us and perhaps for others too...
Maybe we will inspire other light carrier, amazing beings from our California communities to unplug from the mother power point and come out into the world to share their fire for a purpose for a while-- and then we will all come home for Christmas and love each other and plug back in and bathe in each other's energy and remember how lucky we are.

I came back down into the cabin after I hung up the phone with her and Copeland "By My Side" was playing on my i-thing in that moment as i came in the door.

Of course, me being me has to arrange the pillows and blankets just so... and always have a little soundtrack right so when i open the door and walk into the cabin i can sigh... ahhhh...

I love my own space for this reason... even though, in all honesty, i haven't really ever had a space that was all my own, except for briefly when my ex husband moved out before another person moved in and then we moved again together to share a space with a tribe of musicians in a house we came to call the OM hOMe.
It was from this tribe - this togetherness in venice beach that I discovered so so much... including Copeland... and this soundtrack which was playing as i entered the boat's cabin i'm playing house in tonight...

It was in this time of togetherness with my beloved venice beachians - our gypsy love tribe that i think i really understood the concept of love on a unity consciousness level.

I often refer to Venice as this giant energy depot... we live there and juice up... all plugged into one another's psyches and hearts - and then once we are charged up we can go venture out and spread this love consciousness around the world.
When you're plugged in, everything flows and can occasionally get weird and shitty, but for the most part, we live love every day, and there is nothing that feels like that.
a TRIBE of like-minded, beautiful beings all juicing up on each other's energies together.

and then i walked away from it all.

all of that.

i chose to be alone.

"i need you to tell me... you'll be right by my side. when i feel alone... you'll be right by my side, in a crazy world."

Those are the lyrics that were being sung as i walked back into the cabin alone.

So, Tia... I think those lyrics are for you...

I'm here tonight (even though i can't post this or email it or anything until next week when i get to land)....
Tonight I am here to tell you that i am by your side.

Always.

IGYB
I got your back

... and i'll be right by your side.

Thank you for doing what you are doing.
I am forever in gratitude for you and your spirit.

p.s. sorry for kicking you in the face and breaking your nose when you were 7....
oh... and for throwing you through the plate glass window when you were 4...
and... ya know, stuff like that
love you boo boo.
congratulations. you have found the clock.
go raincheck.

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.

blessings.

life.

lately life is full of living... staring at the full moon from the bow of a boat as we crossed the channel from the mentawai islands to padang... endless words spilling out of me... writing and writing and writing... meditating... saluting the sun... walking down the wet streets of padang with a scarf my mother gave me fully wrapped around my head... eating spicy street food with my hands and making smoothies chock full of tropical fruit goodness.... drinking jus terung nipus (a purple fruit that is blended and strained into juice and is meant to cleanse your blood).

Fully present.

It was actually chilly last night, something i am not accustomed to after spending the last seven months dancing across the equator like a balance beam routine in the olympics...

I have been spending every day with a south african counterpart who makes me laugh constantly and asks me to read him things i've written. he closes his eyes when i read out loud. it flatters and inspires me. i have written my whole life, and finally am certain that i want to be a writer first and foremost as my identity.

It seems that every day of my life an author's monologue seems to narrate the story as i live it. i write until my pens run out and my i-thing dies... and then i charge it up and buy a new pen and write some more.

this has been such a phenominal journey and somehow every day gets more and more amazing.
is this possible?

my mind skips backwards in time to living at the OM hOMe in venice... (my mind does this often)... i transport to days gone by of bike rides on the boardwalk, bellies full of papusas and dirty chai blended with hemp milk... catching the gaze of a hOMie as our beach cruisers roll side by side and we shake our heads, smiling, in shock that this is the case.

every day trumps the last.

even on days like today... a wet day in padang - the wild wild west of indonesia.

i woke up in the maranatha havilla... the hotel i have called hOMe my last three stints in Padang... Shayno and i decided to go straight to the massage place down the road for the killer 20,000 rupiah massage. (about 3 dollars)...
i breathed deeply, counting my inhales and exhales as the indonesian man worked through the knots and blockages in my feet and calves... the awkwardness of the initial discomfort of having a blonde girl in a sports bra quickly evaporated and the body work vibe came over our private room. just four bodies breathing and working. shayne, me, and two indonesian masseuse men with healing hands.

from time to time my awareness would come back into the room and i would hear the stray cats meowing and the indos sitting in the cafe outside the window blabbering in minang (i have picked up bits and pieces and can recognize the YO-LAHs and MASUAs)... the smell of clove cigarettes and burning trash wafts in through the slits in the window and somehow i love it.

in a post-massage daze we wandered to spice homestay and had a cup of coffee and visit with some friends for about an hour.

as we were leaving we saw another friend pulling up who gave us a ride to the fruit shop where i loaded up on the aforementioned goodness... bananas, pineapple, probiotic yogurt, citrus and pears before heading to planet fitness - the gym in Padang that i have seen before but hadn't even really thought to explore.

We both joined for a month - 175,000 rupiah (about 18 dollars) for the month...
the bottom floor is full of machines and kanye west style music, blue lights, a sauna and some dressing rooms.
up a flight of stairs a huge smile spread across my face.
there IS a yoga studio in Padang!

a huge, empty room with glass doors completely slid open looking out over the Maura where all the boats are docked.... a pile of mats and aerobics blocks and steps stacked against the wall and nobody in sight.

i unrolled a yoga mat and sighed deeply as i connected my third eye to the floor in child's pose.

FINALLY - i felt like i had a space to practice.

it's amazing when you think about it... space, that is.
all there is, is space.
especially in this part of the world and even more so out in the islands, but to have a room that felt like a yoga studio and had the essence of a space i could practice in peace just filled me up with joy and made me so happy.
i fell right into the practice i have been waiting to give myself for such a long time.
when i practice alone i often skip the poses i don't really want to do or don't particularly like... but today i taught myself a class that i would teach a student at my level.
i heard my inner voice - my sri gurubhyo - speaking in my head and followed as a devotee of her wisdom.

Ironically (or maybe not at all)... shayno was doing his krav maga training workout that will be taking him to Israel to train when i head to India.
Fully physically worked and taking a break from an arm balance sequence i looked over and giggled to myself at the yin yang polar opposites we were holding in that moment.
Me, visualizing my arms spreading honey-like peace through my finger tips and toes, sending OM peace vibrations to the tectonic plates that shift and shake beneath us here... sending love to the people i know and don't know... visualizing myself infiltrating the dreamspace of the unhappy and uncomfortable and giving them peace.
my counterpart was visualizing attacks and fights... self-defense fights.
there are always two sides...
duality is in and of itself... balance.
how beautiful a moment.

i wiped the sweat from my eyes and looked out the window before me, over the Maura and up the hill, remembering 7 months ago, arriving in Padang at the beginning of this adventure - me all typically bright eyed and bushy tailed, enthusiastically climbing to the top of the hill that i could see in the distance with a stranger/new friend...
http://aloveninja.blogspot.com/2011/03/i-climbed-to-top-of-hill.html


Indonesia and this part of the world specifically has meant so much to me in so many different ways.

It has been a nest, a womb, a place of rebirth, a hiding spot, a learning experience, a challenge, and a hOMe... and each day has been a miracle.
Life really is a miracle i think.

We had dinner tonight with Shayno's business partner Ferry and his very pregnant wife who is due any day now.
He asked us to help them chose a middle name.
The first name will be Jason.
I suggested Kai.
Jason Kai.
They liked it.

They told me that Jason means "present from God" and of course Kai mean "ocean"...

the Oceans really are a present from God... every Ocean I've been so lucky to know... the pacific, the indian, the mediterranean, the atlantic, and of course my fairy godparents and driftwood kingdom king and queen - JohnE and Ainsley Ocean... withouth whom i would not even be here - on this journey through Indonesia and southeast asia.

again... my mind flickers back to the OM hOMe... post my visit to Indonesia in 2010 (the apres-divorce gift i gave myself that landed me on Pitojat Island with the Oceans)...
I remember the night over a year ago, i fell asleep in my room called the jungle room under a huge painting of a Lion in my giant marshmellow bed, giving thanks and asking the universe for direction.
i will never forget waking up to the blinking red light on my blackberry signaling me that i had an awaiting email.
The message was from Ainsley asking me to come live on the island to hostess, teach yoga and do massage this year...

It's like our stories are already written - and we get to just read - flip each page with that mouth watering excitement of ya? and then what happens next?

I can't remember if i have shared this email my mother sent me back in April when i was living on the island somewhere in this blog... but this is what she wrote me and i think about it and reflect on it often:

Your life is so exciting and you are definitely dancing on the EDGE out there! I hope you are able to do a lot of yoga as this will slow you down and get you in touch with your intuition
I loved what you said in your blog about yogis say if you practice deep breathing you can extend your life by years. I want to see your beautiful child someday and look into their eyes and see the amazing genetic connection . We are such miraculous beings made of stardust and millions of years of evolution! I know this sounds preachy but try not to be impulsive ( that comes from fast instinct - lower chakras). Try to always listen to your amazingly highly developed intuition and you will be guided to make good choices. Its hard to do in the moment but the more we slow down the more we can access that intelligence .We Aries are such impulsive action people it is a challenge to harness that energy and slow down but your yoga certainly is the key.


firstly - how freaking cool is my mom?

secondly - its true... its so so so true. and i have found in this life that whenever i practice i get these immediate gifts and signs and unfolding blossoms from the universe. it's like a no-brainer daily cosmic affirmation i get when i practice yoga, fully committed to my intention and breath.

back at the hotel, again in a post-workout endorphin filled daze, i realized that i needed to book a return flight out of India in order to get my visa, so i started researching and found that Virgin Atlantic flew from Delhi to LA... (about 900 dollars)

On a whim i called Virgin and inquired how many miles i had and if maybe i had enough that i wouldn't have enough to help with the cost of the flight.

the British angel on the other end of the phone informed me that i have over 70,000 miles and i will be able to fly for free using only 25,000 miles - only having to pay for the airport fees and taxes which are about 200 dollars... and not only that... but i lay over in London (my old hOMe that i have not had the opportunity to visit for the last 3 years)...

I have my flight on hold and am planning to book it through tomorrow, taking a four day layover in London to visit with my long lost spirit sisiters and dear friends and family in the UK.

I emailed a few friends to see who might be around and got an overwhelming amount of immediate responses and offers to stay and visit while i am there and a few from California anticipating my return which tickles my heart.

i am truly truly blessed.

THANK YOU UNIVERSE... for all the abundant blessings.
THANK YOU MY FRIENDS AND LOVED ONES ... for all the abundant love and support.

As i speak and think and teach very often - i am focusing on not gripping or grasping... not holding on to anything.
my palms move from a prayer position of humble gratitude to be open, palms up to the sky.
You cannot give anything to closed, clenched fist. (the proverbial drop the cookie in order to get your hand unstuck from the cookie jar analogy)
only from this place of openness, can we receive the gifts that continually fall into our open arms...
gifts that somehow trump the last.

life just gets better.

keep on truckin'... keep on lovin'.... keep on giving.... keep on releasing... and we will all be blessed to keep on receiving.

balance on a boat...

balance on a boat



Laying on the top deck in the sun...
I'm on kaimana- a surf charter boat with 10 guests, 8 crew and me. Out in the mentawai islands chasing perfect waves for ten days.
Our little speedboat dingy zips back and forth carting surfers to and from the crashing reef break at telescopes.
The sun dips and peaks behind clouds hovering overhead...
There is a haze but it's another divine day in paradise.
In the distance I can see the silhouetted outline of pitojat island... The piece of heaven on earth I've been lucky enough to call hOMe this season.
I spent nearly the entire day on land yesterday with my island family... Repeatedly hugging and snuggling everyone that I have somehow come to miss deeply in the 4 or 5 weeks since I've been gone- gallavaning around the telos islands, Thailand and bali with three of my best friends from America who came out to visit me in two consecutive groups.
I finally booked my ticket to australia. My heart was in my throat it always is before I book flights... 
Within 24 hours I was emailing garuda to cancel it.
I'm not ready to leave Indonesia... Again.
This has really become my home over this year and I want to bask in the beauty and love of this country more before I go to India...
Australia is a dream...
I think it's good to have some dreams. Save some for next year--- or further down the line... And save several thousand dollars and possibly make some money to take to India with me by massaging the guests out here...

Also- being on a boat is new and exciting... So different and gives me an in-depth look into the life of my spirit sister liz's life on the boat. She has been on charter boat-trips with her fiancée all season... She is the barefoot bride at sea.

It's ironic that had i gone to australia, I would be coming to see Liz... She was planning to pick me up from the airport... And then at the last minute I decided not to come and now I am living a version of her reality and writing to her regularly.
I love relationships like liz & mine... where everything is an evolution. A self discovery... A journey into these deep realms of our own human psyches.

Yesterday on the island, ainsley and I sat on the back steps of the driftwood castle with the new hostess/surfguidesss who came this week from working on super yachts in Europe.
We talked about past relationships and the lessons we have learned that have enabled us to see where we need to stand now...
The mistakes we repeat, and perhaps need to repeat because we clearly didn't learn the lesson the first time around...
The new surfguidess shared a story about a relationship she was in that when she emerged and came out she shook her head and said to herself "what have I been doing??? I never even went to school like I was here to do... I have been feeding ducks in the park every day instead.... That's not what I wanted to do?!"
Ainz and I just about died laughing deciding that would be our euphemism for that moment looking back at a poor decision that was made blindly in hindsight and having the clarity to see that holy shit! I thought I was living! And really I was just feeding ducks.

I think going to Australia would have just been me feeding ducks.

I don't need Australia right now on this journey into myself.. This time I have carved out to discover and learn and become.

Australia will always be there... It's just a hop skip and a jump from Indonesia which I believe will be my home for a long time.

I'm still not sure exactly what my plan is for the four weeks between The end of this boat trip and india will be- but I am pretty certain want to stay in Indonesia, unless I forfeit my India tickets and go early and mer Aaron like I was always going to...
Though I don't know how many more tickets I can forfeit.
I think indo is the go...
Maybe I will feed ducks, but at least I find life lessons at every turn out here.
I feel like this place is just a constant canvas for creative self expression and discoveries.

I wrote on paper later on:

(sept 4)
Finding balance on a boat...
Mentally, physically, and spiritually.
Ray Pfieffer the amazing Venice beach Rolfer/masseuse/teacher of mine.... Taught me about own unique self.
My body doesn't actually necessarily have the correct muscles developed to be able to do what I can do...but I've found a way to precariously stack my bones and achieve an unexplainable balance Nonetheless.
This to me signifies that i must be very capable and intelligent even though I have seemed to swing so far between poles in my life...
So high to low, light to dark, hazy to centered... 
That I don't actually know how I do it.
How I stay alive and safe, healthy and sound when my extremes are beyond extreme.

I think it may have something to do with this balance thing

I practiced yoga on the boat this morning and found that a part of my mind- perhaps the monkey mind swinging from trapeze to trapeze had to stay very focused on balance.
I had to  really keep that "ADD" - wander and flit off to do cartwheels in the desert- part of my mind totally still and focused on maintaining balance as the ground beneath me move and swayed with the tides.
My tricks of being able to stand without trying are fruitless out here.... When your earth is in constant motion.
And this gypsy mermaid lifestyle live chosen to subscribe to does not at all warrant or provide a firm, solid earth beneath my feet.

I must learn these lessons and learn to balance on a boat.
Over the seas.
Overseas.

Yoga is my passion.
My life.
And my favorite thing on earth, but my practice has invariably faltered and fizzled when I leave my beloved Venice beach yoga nest.

I can continue to teach abroad but I find that maintaining my own steady practice of asana and meditation incredibly challenging.

And yet, this morning as I set myself up to practice in the main room of the boat I'm on for the next 10 days... I was beyond capable.

I was centered and focused and practiced intelligently, long and hard. I gave myself a solid vinyasa flow class and then sat in meditation for about 30 minutes gingerly fingering each of the 108 beads of the mala I bought at the Temple of Dawn in Bangkok.
Shayno and I have both been wearing these beads lately and encouraging one another to go slow and find that balance.
Im feeling grateful.
I am grateful to be here - a little uneasy, out of place and of balance because RESTORING balance is one of the most rewarding sensations in life I believe.

Also... From this stable, focused place, the lower chakra monkey energy get hypnotized... Following the metronome of balance and breath...
Engaging fine muscles to stay standing.
The quieter, softer-voiced, yet more developed higher chakra mind was able to take inventory of myself...
Where am I holding on?
Where am I gripping or grasping?
In the past... Present... Future...
In my body and soul...

I was able to feel where I stood.
To be truly present and release pieces of the past that have persistently plagued me.

I am that which I seek.
I am that which I avoid.

------
 

8 days later...
I'm sitting on top of the boat again....
We are down south quite far from where I've been living and have not yet had the opportunity to explore.
We spent a few days at macaronis. One of the hardest hit areas from the tsunami last year at the bottom of north pagai...
Shayno stood on the front of the boat with me one sunset pointing out where everything was...
Land that looks like beach for at least 2 kilometers inland completely wiped out.

I keep singing the Brett Dennan song "nothing lasts forever... Not even the mountains. Someday they will be swept away and swallowed by the sea. We all shall be blessedly released."

We went much further south to a break called "thunders" that was so heavy and gnarly only one guest had the guts to surf it.
The bellowing sound of the gargantuan waves crashing on the reef shook you to your core a little bit. Also the wind howled and howled.

I came out last night around 2am and snapped my fingers at the sky- in the way a preschool teacher might... I just said "shhhhh"

When I woke up it was calm and glassed off.
"I did that." I said.

The boys (Shayno, Craig and our 10 guests- mostly australian and two canadians) are all getting barreled in front of me as I write this... There are two other boats anchored right now beside us in this spot... The guys take turns gliding along the perfect circular cyclonic waves.. As the wave wraps around the reef I lose sight of them unless they come up above the wave doing an air or something fancy.
Occasionally the surfboard gets waved back and forth signaling our speedboat driver to come rescue. Like a white flag surrendering to the power and force of the mother... Nature takes and gives beatings in this part of the world.

This morning I went into land- to a village called malakopa... I went in with our mentawai captain and deckhand who I have befriended and sit in the back talking to and singing with when I need a little break from the "oye-oye-oye-ing" and bin tang smashing.

We got to land early in the morning and walked through a destruction zone--- mostly overgrown grass and weeds... But there are still remains of houses and churches... Boats and roads...
Everything was destroyed, captain told me.
He pointed out where family of his used to live.
Everyone survived somehow in malakopa but the village a few kilometers back lost many many people.

We trekked up the hill to where the village has been rebuilt... Much higher on the mountain... Understandably.
The villagers were shy at first and then became infatuated with me as they always do in a new village but I quickly made friends and had my usual pied piper dance where all the children follow me around. I pick up more and more little ducklings as I go...
Singing with them, playing and dancing around.
I picked a red hibiscus and wore it behind my ear as we walked up into the newly built higher malakopa village.
All my little friends followed me and wore flowers behind their ears copying my every move giggling and running to hide behind one another.

Captain introduced me to his sister who is thankfully from medan so she spoke indonesian instead of mentawai and i could fully understand instead of my usual half comprehension when conversations in villages happen in mentawai though i am picking up more and more...
We sat in her house for about 30 minutes as she recounted the story of the tsunami for her brother who she hasn't seen.
When the water pulled back into the ocean everyone knew what was about to happen so they woke people and grabbed what they could... She tried to run up the hill with everyone but fell... Then grabbed a coconut tree and it was ripped out of the ground as the surging waters came forcefully and brutally crashing through her village literally and metaphorically uprooting everything. She got thrown to another tree and the same happened. The palm tree she was wrapped around was pulled from the ground. The third time she held on and then managed to get up to high ground somehow. Everyone did.

I look behind me at the 30 or so kids all with flowers behind their ears sitting near me and think of them... Telling a 6 yr old to run for their life.
It's heavy.
They all hold bibles and had big joyous smiles and spirit tickling giggles.

It's Sunday and the church bells started to ring... It must be 10 o'clock. I could see why she wanted to get moving and go to church. I would be wanting to give thanks to something powerful and greater then me as often as possible too.

In their conversation captain would ask about a person - family member or friend and so often her answer was that he or she died.
Everyone would nod...
Ya.
That's too bad.
He got sick.
Thats all.
No prognosis and heavy dramatic fight for life. The earth giveth. The earth taketh away.
It's just part of life here....  
But then... In reality it's part of life everywhere. I mean, death and destruction... Its the only thing you can depend on.
It's the only guarantee... So doesn't that make the rest of this life just such a phenomenal adventure?
It's like keeping the ball in the air in volleyball... Staying alive... Living, surviving, rocking it at existence simply by giving thanks for today... For some it's out there in front of me... Riding the waves and howling as they carve across the ultimate expression of life... The guys are in church right now... For most of my past I've watched my friends make communion and give thanks for life writing music and creating...
For me it's this meditation... It's the inhale. It's the take it all I'm because someday we might be swept away and swallowed by the sea... Blessedly released.

We all will die.

I hereby would like to ask that my ashes get sprinkled along the California coastline... I think of it often... Dreaming of the ride up big Sur towards my grandmere's house and birthplace in Carmel... I think of Malibu and driving to nowhere like it was our job with Jessica- every weekend... Jeep or convertible... Top down- wind through out hair giving thanks for being alive with our arms stretched out wide open... And of course the palisades bluffs... The place I have looked out at and stared into more then anywhere else.

I learned how to be alive on that coastline and want to give it thanks along with this beauty that surrounds me today.

A guest came in about an hour ago his foot totally sliced open and gushing blood... Smiling and woo hoo-ing saying it was the best sesh of his life. Worth the entire trip... Worth the injury shayno was about to clean up for him...

Isn't that the way to live?

It was all worth it because...
I want my answer every day to be ...

It was all worth it because of today.

I wish the same for you.

May we all find balance on this rocking boat of life.

OM, peace