The north winds blew in yesterday...
These particular winds torture this island and most of the Mentawai chain. The waves get blown out and it causes a grey, windy, stormy atmosphere that seems to never let up.
in 2010, these same North Winds blew in the day I was leaving for Bali, and apparently they didn't stop all season. Ainsley said she surfed something like 6 times the entire season.
When the winds blow like this, the Indos get sick and say its "Masuk Angin" meaning the wind got inside of you… they bundle up and try to avoid the wind.
I personally love the wind - i wrote a piece about this last year when i was leaving the islands to head to India. - check it - http://aloveninja.blogspot.com/2011/09/wind.html
But even though i like Wind in general, I can see why this wind sucks around here but it's even worse if you're on a boat.
The winds came in around late afternoon when the sun was hitting that angle that makes everything orange and gorgeous… I had taken a break from my wood carving project I've been doing out the back and was entertaining a group of California dudes from the "Bintang" charter boat who had stopped into the bar for the afternoon.
The night before I bartended and hung out with another group of Californians in for the night from Indies Trader 3.
I have definitively decided that i really really like people from California!
This is convenient since there are four of us living here at Togat Nusa right now.
The Bintang - which means "star" in Bahasa Indonesia but is much better known as the Indo beer that comes in a green bottle with a big red star on it… and also the name of the boat my friend Huntster surf guides on - was docked in the back. (here i refer to the boat, not a bottle of beer or a star that happened to be anchored in the channel behind the island)
The waves weren't really doing much, so the boys came onto the island to wander around holding bintang beers with the usual jaws hanging open at the beauty of John & Ainsley's kingdom. This is standard.
I love giving tours and explaining how this magical place came to be as I walk the string of little board short clad ducklings through retreat - weaving in and out of the bungalows and explaining how everything is recycled from driftwood found on the beach.
Yona said that this is the island of "keajaiban" - which means miracles... It's totally true and doesn't take a psychic to pick up on it when you arrive on this land.
I have been carving my Buddha sculpture out of a driftwood log that washed up on the beach, and thinking a lot about the life of the wood which is now taking shape as the fat Buddha, as my hands grow more and more calloused and blistered and my right shoulder aches in the most awesome way from hammering away at the log.
I keep on thinking about how this log was once a sapling… it grew in a forest which was probably nearby and had a long life as a tree, rooted in the earth… a home for monkeys and birds and bugs of all sorts, I'm sure… and then one day the tree died or was killed and it fell into a watery grave and drifted around the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean for who knows how long, until it rolled up onto the beaches of Pitojet Island, pushed to the dry sand by ebbing and flowing tides until one day JohnE saw it washed up and thought to himself that there was something inside that log… He saw some potential art piece or structure material - so he carried it to his pile of driftwood that sits behind Bungalow 4 where it lived until a few days ago when he walked back there with me and we decided that it was the right piece to use for my first wood carving project… There was a Buddha living inside that tree for its entire life… and now I am releasing it.
In my time at Tushita - the Buddhist Meditation retreat I spent time at last year in Dharamshala, India… I learned about "Buddha Nature"… the idea that there exists within each of us a Buddha - like this piece of driftwood that was hard and gnarled and had rotting bark chipping off the outside…
There was a Buddha inside all along…
And we, as humans are like this too… It's just about chipping away at the Samsara - releasing the old negative destructive thoughts we fall into lifetime after lifetime that cause us to build up plaque like the rotting bark around the outside of us…
I love this thought.
Across the horizon I saw the black and white boat I spent the end of last season on with Shayne, the South African pirate who took me captive last year and has been doing a good job of captivating me again as of late.
He arrived with a few guests off his boat, but was clearly just coming to see me (and to get me to sew his diving wetsuit)…
After excitedly showing him my Buddha - which after day 1 still looked like a log to the naked eye - we came to the bungalow that Ainz is letting me stay in while there are no guests to chat and catch up on the week or so since we've seen each other. (Out here in the islands, a lot can happen in a short time - and absolutely nothing can happen in a long time)… It felt like a lifetime had gone by since his boat had stopped by the island for the night at the end of his last charter and now, which is now about 5 days into a new charter and a 3 day Padang stay in between.
Just as we were talking about the thing we are most passionate about these days - the Gerson Therapy, juicing, alternative cancer therapies and our dream to create a self-sustaining, eco wellness clinic/detox center one day - his deckhand came to find us and let Shayne know that the winds were picking up and the boat couldn't stay anchored in the channel anymore.
We had to quickly say goodbye, and moments later the island cleared out and we saw Bintang and Kaimana motoring towards shelter where they would sleep for the night and leave early in the morning to find a wave that isn't destroyed by these winds.
I could barely sleep that night. The winds howled and beat against the glass windows, unlatching one and knocking it open. Rain exploded from the black clouds on a diagonal angle, making sure to soak anything and everything left outside.
My mind spun circles and all I could think about was the Buddha inside the wood, aching to come out.
It was actually kind of funny how fixated on it i was - i felt like Rainman.
The next day all I did was work on the Buddha until the mother of all storms came through and pushed us all inside with the blinds drawn. (I still managed to climb out onto the back patio and shape the belly a little more before it got too dark.)
At dinner, I was talking to Terrance, the new surf guide who just arrived with his own juicer in tow - he's a very successful magician in Bali (i KNOW! how cool is that!??!?!)… and super into health and wellness. We started talking about alternative cancer therapies and Terrance's eyes lit up… He started telling us about Sirsak (Sour Sop) - a fruit that grows out here and we eat all the time..
Well - apparently making a tea from the leaves has cured cancer in many many trials.
Of course, since this is all Shayne and I talk about - i got super excited to hear about this.
And whats even more crazy is that last night after dinner, Ainsley's friend had posted this article online about the results of eating Soup Sop as a cancer remedy. - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=230576347048037&set=a.107253652713641.8663.106873162751690&type=1&theater
CRAZY coincidence and fascinating info about how Sour Sop is 10000 times stronger then chemo and doesnt kill your other cells!
Once again I tossed and turned and could barely fall asleep while my mind spun circles about getting my nursing degree and learning about alternative therapies at the same time… Taking a stand against the blood money from pharmaceutical companies and learning about it, but never participating to make money from it.
How is it that we have gotten to a point where money is more important then helping to save your brothers and sisters on this planet?
How have scientists hidden this information while trying to make a synthetic version they could sell for millions and letting millions of people die painful deaths from the disease they have no interest in curing - but rather profiting from?
Yuck.
I woke up this morning and although I wanted to run out and get started on the Buddha I committed to giving myself a nice long yoga class, which is certainly was… long and nice.
I practiced for 2 hours and sat in meditation for a solid 20 minutes while Jo-Jo the dog sat in front of me and stared at me.
I started inhaling and saying the world "receive"
and exhaling as i said the word "release"
receive.
release.
receive.
release.
receive.
release.
then i broke down the word i was mantra-ing in my head and took away the "re"
sieve.
lease.
sieve.
lease.
I thought about a sieve - a strainer - and how as i inhaled, i would only let the good stuff through and into me.
I would filter out the garbage that was trying to infiltrate my energy… I would receive through a sieve.
Then I thought about releasing - i thought about how on the exhale I often visualize myself sending my abundant light to people who need it… But then i thought about how recently someone in my life mentioned to me that he felt like I gave my energy away too readily- that people ended up (intentionally or not) stealing my light from me when i let them hold it and share it.
So i thought of leasing it…
Lease.
I could let people use my light but i would hold it and therefore I would always get it back.
This might sound a little crazy, so just ignore it if it makes no sense to you… I thought it was pretty cool.
Anyways - day 3 and the winds are still blowing fiercely. It looks like it will be staying this way for a while so I am glad I have a project.
This is where I am at after three days of work and two nights of thinking about it.
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