Element
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.
A few days ago I lit an incense stick in the bathroom and as I shook out the flame a mosquito was drawn right into it, I think that’s what happened, it went so fast, it was puzzling, one minute I witnessed the collision of featherweight body with fire, the next minute there were ashes floating in the air. I blinked. Illusions hovered, visual errors, spots in my eyes, barely enough substance to focus on. Oh, I realized. I’m sorry.
Today in the pre-dawn I am awake, with thoughts like that, airborne ashes from a quiet but catastrophic combustion. Did a volcano erupt in my dream? I wonder, before I remember the mosquito that burned. A person I once knew with a career in pop music, social media plastered with lifestyle decisions, each phase earnestly renouncing the last, fast self-fashion. Hungry eyes, a curling thread of ash. The conventions of academic departments, offices stuffed with reading copies and slippery stacks of papers, white bundles bound by black metal clips, always slumping off to one side. Leaves, orange and brown and yellow, crackling under feet, woolen sweater, a chill in the air. School days. Time to light the first fire in the stove, curl up with a book.
Autumn. Or just, shifting. Sometimes you can catch the scent of seasons here, I mean the temperate ones, on a breeze blowing in, a tendril of air from a forgotten place. The monsoon is waning. Dry days ahead, clear nights, bright stars. Sharp horizon. Mountains without thunder.
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.
Grey is the coziest color. Dark grey camisole, dark grey sweatpants, light grey flannel, fuzzy grey ankle socks, my favorite outfit for a rainy afternoon, and when I go outside, grey glitter flip-flops, even a grey hair claw holding back my bangs. Carrying the bones and drinking peppermint tea on a grey day. Green and grey and toasty and warm. Didn’t even have to try, my oh, my oh, my. Oh, that giant mosquitoe biting me through my sweatpants. Oh, Ismail gone kamikaze on my smoothie bowl. Oh, smoothie bowl melting over and I’m a mess. But nothing can break this cozy, Alhamdulillah. Haha, just writing that down is asking to learn a hard lesson. Al-hamdulillah. Oh, I got that mosquito. And I have a peanut butter chocolate ball from Sayuri to eat, those things are the best.
Deep sleep last night with all that electricity in the sky. Thinking this morning about Shane MacGowan, some angel, as mosquitoes bite my hands, Jeki huddles in my lap, Lalah cries at snails. Nostalgia is a strange pleasure here, uneasy to hold, where even the seasons speak a different language.