Element
Sound of rain, to look up, and admit that morning’s reverie is over. The incense of an offering, long since out. The fact of having eaten, (or an empty plate, sitting there), without clear memory of it. A heavy sigh as day changes position, rolling over into evening, and shifting atmosphere blows trees into an ocean, cooling. Jeki appears, we choose an herb responsive to the coming dark. Feed her and strike a flame. Turn it into smoke, inhale a little nighttime air, and go to bed, quite early.
Blue is the moon in her transparency,
And dark the sky, when she looks to the star
Without whom we would all be rock. We would
Be third person, un-personed remainder
After love, with unbound freedom, to scream
Anything and go unheard, unspoken.
So, blue becomes the face of unrequited
Silence. Earth, displaced from selfhood, touches
That, the final leaving off, so that it
Might grow conceivable. And that being
It, empty of form, pure as blue, still as
Clear water, shows her, heavenly, a home.
Indifference remains unwed, yet breaks
Open in the absolute reflection.
Sky from home (2).
Stirring the cauldron. // Today is the last day of the waning crescent and it seems I am borrowing her shape, words keep surfacing these last few days that just aren’t ripe enough to make fruit. So instead of putting out, I add them back into the whorl of thoughts, wondering, (about unruly kittens), if they can break down and remix into a shape more suitable for survival.
The Darwinist, with his recommendation of adapting, not for the present, but for the future, thereby advises that she who wishes to survive, become versatile. (“And do the right thing, as quietly as possible.”) We work on this project. What is more versatile, human life or the written word? What will prove itself thus? What words could survive us? Questions for history and technology.
Of course, the first (woman’s) question was (and always has been) what, if anything, is worth anything at all? What of this life is worth living, whether I am (always) anger or (possibly) grace, and whatever could it be that I am trying to save from the burning city. Because it isn’t my visible self, in the sense contained in these dying words. The heart of someone I have never reached, whose emanation I am sensing with every cell, for whom I attempt transparency, self-finding through self-erasure.
(Perhaps, one works to save fire.)
Tomorrow is dark moon, rest day. So the work of today is preparing for sleep, negating the slim shape, and mothering oneself with a soothing song. That there is nothing more versatile than the churning depth of a dream.
Wijaya kusuma (2).
But cats are only ever half-tame and you’re never sure which half is in play, which one aflame. Familiar look, at any moment liable to anger (or just disappear). Stranger-purpose, brought intimate. Cuddly soft, leisurely cruel. Wild cherished messenger. Children to be kissed, cradled, and obeyed.
I guess I live now in a world of rain. Always about to rain, and sometimes does, and if I wash dishes, my face beads with moisture, from me or from the damp air, pores open, passable, sensitive, vulnurable, and everything must be said in a whisper, as at a funeral. Borderless, spherical. Thoughts too cutting for snails and frogs, who would breathe them in like blades, must be shared without syllables. With touch, immediate, tears tasted by skin, and that this world could dissolve in compassion.
Wijaya kusuma (1).
It started with the ants. The ants are being pesky today, (small beady black ones), doing this thing they sometimes do when it rains: they come out of the ground, running in circles with nowhere to go, so they find (my) food more quickly than usual. Then a pink and purple salad with inky black elements (no, not the ants!) next to pumpkin electrifies the day. Something I love is the always-everywhere freshness of vegetables, here. Still full of midnight air. Strings of raw, grated cabbage and beet are juicy and sweet-bitter, like the best Saturday ever, (or, as Sappho says, like love). I immediately want to share, with E., who is in Java today. So I add it to a list of things that need sharing. The list will solve problems of place, and time. Whereas love solves the problem of
Easy gloom, gentle periods of rain, and barely a transition from sleep. Or at all. Water, earth, air, at an even temperature. The wet doesn’t dry, the dry doesn’t wash away. Coffee blends into a universal container, as the dream becomes lucid, and atmosphere moderates a few simple questions.
So cloudy this morning that the air gets darker as the sun rises. Everything outside is dripping wet, water-heavy, steamy muffle. Good for frogs, orchids, snails, mushrooms, mold… sleepy farmers. A touch cool, perfect flannel shirt weather, the monsoon holds, the atmosphere keeps wringing out rain.
To understand the meaning of rain here, it’s useful to know that we live half outside. This is typical in Balinese villages. When it rains, that means staying dry in the bedroom or going outside to living areas and getting a little wet. The kitchen and bale (our little “living room”) are covered, but walkways get slippery, stray drops are always blowing in, the more wind and rain, the less dry, the less safe for cats and electronic devices. Huddling in from the edges. It can be… inconvenient, but I mostly like living close to the weather. And the garden, and the bugs, snails, bats, frogs, geckos and tokays, occasional birds, snakes, monitor lizards, stranger cats, etc., that visit.
That little bale is also the place where we socialize at home, and it’s visited daily by members of our Balinese family. Writing and my yoga practice demand a sustained level of privacy that’s not typical of family life here. (And not good at all for social anxiety.) I’d always heard that “Asian culture” was “more family-centered, less individualistic” than Western, but I never understood it until I lived (sort of) immersed in it. (I say sort of, because we don’t live at the main family compound, but at a nearby offshoot. Even so,) it seems to me like a drastically different lifestyle that has profound effects on mental, emotional, social, psycho-spiritual development. Not least because families take care of their elderly. I think treatment of elders sets a strong foundation for how people think and feel about death and dying, what comes to be and passes away, and what, if anything, is deathless.