The Nature of Water

I 

You can’t escape the sound of water—the ocean, the waterfalls, the fountains, the infinity pools. Caught in afternoon downpours. Glistening dew suspended on the tips of rice stalks stretched out over bright green fields. Lushness hangs in the air. Dreamy mist envelops the volcanoes, the jungle, the hidden water temples sprinkled across the island.

Five years later, I’m back on this watery island where the raw, wild energy is force to be reckoned with, snaking its way across the volcanoes, over the rice terraces, and along the narrow roadways that crisscross over the land, where I’ve been knocked to the ground, where I crawled away swearing to never return. I am back to ride its fierce, watery energy and make peace with the intense lessons I’ve had here. Because, I intuit, intense lessons bring intense healing and perception and wisdom.

II

The text sent me into an immediate panic. There appears to be a flood coming from your room, was all it said. What do you mean? I replied. Surely this was a mistake. A message sent to the wrong tenant. No reply came, so we made a mad dash from the restaurant back to my apartment. Turns out, it wasn’t mistake. At some point that day, the bidet hose exploded, causing the snake like contraption to flail wildly, spewing water everywhere for who knows how long—long enough to seep out of the bathroom, across my kitchen and living room floor, and out into the hallway of the building wrecking enough havoc a notice had to be sent to all the tenants asking about water damage.

 

The fix and cleanup turned out to be easy enough, but the fact it coincided with the day I swam my first kilometer was rather uncanny, like the universe decided I loved water that much it wanted to reward me with as much of it as possible.

***

I glide slowly and smoothly across the pool, back and forth, building momentum and strength and resilience in the water. A moving meditation. A mental cleanse. A space of fluidity. I untangle stories and rewrite them in my mind. I analyze them from different angles and perspectives and points of view, through different colored lenses and psychological landscapes. How much stories can morph when you step in and out of all the different ways to tell them astounds me. This is the steady flow of where I remain. I don’t try to solve the big problems of the world or worry about my life on land. In the water, it becomes easy to build and retain energy and strength that the world seems so intent on stealing.

 

Being in the water, living by ways of the water, I will work with water and learn from it instead of trying to control or fight against it, instead of running from its uncontrollable strength and overwhelming power.

III

I felt it coming before it fully formed—the way the tide pulled back so far and with so much strength it nearly knocked me over. Then the build of the swell that was far taller than I was sent me into a panic, so I turned my back to it and ran. The wave caught up to me and crashed at my heels, thrusting me forward faster than I could run, knocking me to the sand.

You can’t run from the waves, especially big ones, I was told. You just have to face them, hold your breath, and dive under them when they come.

 

So, there on that nearly deserted Thai island in the Andaman Sea, I learned to face the waves and dive. And once I learned the secret, I became addicted to it. Give me what you’ve got, I wanted to scream into the ocean. But, I also knew not to tempt it. Not respecting water, fearing it, and hiding from it, only feeds its strength. I needed to humble myself around it, learn from it, and work with it if I wanted to truly understand its nature. Under the water is silence and calmness. All the violence and crashing takes place on the surface. Much like meditation, I needed to go under the surface, to find the calmest place and face it. It’s the only way to come out the other side unshaken and with a sense of having surrendered and survived.

IV

The majority of my natal chart is full of water signs. I’ve spent my life navigating this world of mystical water—my flowing emotions and creative impulses, like unstoppable forces of nature. The earth is 70% water and humans 60% after all, so perhaps it’s only natural to want to understand its nature and ways. It puts out fires, it floods the earth and spreads uncontrollably, it amps up and runs wild with wind. It’s natural state is uncontrollable and free flowing. If left to stagnate, it breeds disease and cultivates sickness. It kills. Perhaps this speaks to something of my own nature as well.

***

Lying on the beach at the northern most tip of Borneo after dark with no light pollution for miles, I sank into the sand and listened. The star filled sky and roar of the ocean swallowed me. The milky way stretched across the sky. Millions of miles away from the stars. Million miles away from worry and the stresses the world creates. Somewhere floating in the liminal space. Terrifying, yet comforting. Buoyant and timeless. My natural state.

Little did I know then that my next visit to Bali not too many weeks later would leave me hospitalized with a scar etched down my forehead. Only in retrospect do I understand what it means to hold so much water (and fire) that it can lash out at any given moment, putting you in your place, demanding respect, forcing you to face its wrath when you think you have all the control.

It’s my first time back on Bali since that moment. No wonder I vowed to never return. No wonder my body had been so tense at the thought of going back. No wonder the only way to ease the discomfort is by immersing myself in water, moving with it, respecting it, dancing with it. Strengthening the navigational system I was born with.

V

Raja Ampat off the coast of Western Papua, where more life teems underwater than above it, I swim through these translucent waters with purpose and confidence, with fluidity and grace. And I face all these watery, wild islands of Indonesia the same. 

What is your relationship to water? Do you fear it? Embrace its power? Or have you been forced to face it and make peace it?

Eyes Wide Open

Satisfying things that stave off uninvited waking nightmares:

The fake camera click on my cell phone each time I take a picture
Long conversations unpacking the nuances of writing craft and literature
Hats that cover the bandage that cover the scar of freshly removed stitches

It could have been worse. It could have been a lot worse.

Cracked open in Ubud. Healing in Amed.

I cling to the back of Wayan as he speeds over steep, mountain switchbacks and narrow, rocky, unpaved roads. No one would dare drive on these roads unless you grew up here--which I decide, is precisely why they've been left in this condition. The deeper I explore this island the more I realize it's not near as ruined as people like to think it is. The natives of Bali know exactly what they are doing. They know how to protect what is important to them, what is sacred.

We stop at the peak above the clouds to watch the sun dip below Mount Agung to the west. Family compounds and terraced rice fields cut into the mountain sides and nestle into the crevices. The silence is deafening. The air crisp. The colors sharp. I've never felt more alive.

When I first came to Amed back in 2016, a local told me that the last time Mount Agung erupted was 1963. The entire Amed coast was wiped out. Since my first visit, Mount Agung has erupted roughly 15 times, the last being June of this year. Like the natives to this land, the island knows how to protect itself.

We make our way down into one of the valleys, to Wayan's home. His three little girls study me like a strange new toy, and I show them the pictures that I had taken 3 years prior when I first met them--their eyes big with surprise. The twins were just babies then. His wife brings me a small glass of the strongest and sweetest coffee I've ever tasted. It takes me nearly an hour to drink.

I loop the compound snapping photos, inadvertently scaring the chickens and pigs. Night falls and it's time to head back to the coast.

The full moon rises, and I fall asleep listening to the waves lap the shore.

Only a week prior I was exploring the dusty roads of Labuhan Bajo on Flores, hiking the arid ridges of Padar Island, sinking my toes into the pastel sand of Pink Beach, and standing feet away from komodo dragons and manta rays in Komodo National Park. A surreal and magical experience. The kind I disappear into far too easily.  Little did I know what would happen the next day.

As I prepare to leave Bali, I tell myself won't return, but I always do. And each time, it reveals new layers of itself. Eyes wide open, it says to me this time. Not in a whisper, but a shout.

I drive south down the winding coast road--a steep cliff on one side, a scattering of small, coastal villages on the other. I rarely pass another driver. I stop and take in the raw landscape. Images forever imprinted in my mind, in my writing, in the pictures I take. My life a series of patchwork stories, stitched together with nothing but photographs and old journals.

Our past is always in flux, never fixed. Do you ever look back on old photos or writings or revisit a place and see new layers? Do they tell you new and different stories each time?

It's been a month since the accident. The waking nightmares have subsided. I'm overwhelmed with relieve and happiness and gratitude to be back in Thailand, to be back in my little hut on the island. But before I move forward with island life posts, I'll step back two weeks and tell you stories from Greece! 

The Play of Maya and Lila (Or Dancing with God)

"I see the game and the game it sees me, and we will dance until they bury me." ~the Devil Makes Three

I narrow my eyes to a point on the map and make it my destination. I drive north for what feels like hours. When I finally arrive, my body fills with awe at the scene all around me--the wide, expansive beach deserted except for the few fisherman scattered over the jagged rocks and the small group of Balinese holding ceremony. They walk slowly to the edge of the water where waves crash hard on the shore and make an offering.

I find my way to a small, cliff side warung overlooking the beach. I didn't know places like this still existed here, I say to the ladies minding the place. They look at each other and smile as though they'd been waiting on me to show up and unlock a secret only I could see.

Back in Canggu, I walk from Pererenan Beach as far north as I can and back again. Wading in and out of the water, I let the waves crash around my legs. One of the streams running to the ocean had risen so high since I'd first crossed now looks nearly impossible to cross back. I lift my bag over my head and put one foot in front of another.

Midway and up to my waist in water, a man in a mild panic runs out of a temple shouting at me in his own language. I smile and wave once I'm across letting him know I'm okay. He stands and stares at me for a long moment before turning around and walking back into the temple. Perhaps it was a foolish decision, a dangerous move. I'd probably not given it a second thought had no one else been there to witness it.

One day folds into the next. Same same, but different. I capture the environment around me and play with light. Snapshots of a world in motion. Turning waves into particles. I drive down the peninsula and stretch out on Bingin Beach and read about the quantum world, about qualia, about consciousness giving rise to the material world. As long as we are players in this divine play of life, there is only the subjective universe seen and felt through each of us.

In an instant, a month has passed, and I'm already in Ubud. Kundalini yoga, kirtan, singing bowl meditations, and classes on yogic philosophy and mysticism fill my days. Our teacher paces the shala and talks about Maya and Lila, the illusions of this world and the divine play. To become too enmeshed in the game, in the world, the matrix (call it what you will), the mind will conquer. Suffering will prevail in one form or another. Fine tuning discernment in order to navigate the game, the play of Lila, is key.

One day folds into the next. Same same, but different. Most days I hum at a place of peace, and it takes a lot to knock me out of this realm. Sometimes it takes a bike whizzing at me at top speed to knock me out of it. One minute I'm crossing a nearly deserted road. The next, I'm in a panic and being whisked away by an angel to the hospital with blood pouring from somewhere.

Lying back on the stretcher as the nurse carefully stitches my wound together, two thoughts go through my head. The first, why? The second, why can sometimes be the most pointless question to ever ask. Sometimes there are no answers to why? There is only the unfolding and our dance with it. I breathe deep. I allow my mind to rest, to not get involved. I allow the miracle of healing to take flight. And all I feel is grateful and at peace.

Some better why questions to ask: Why not dance with the divine? Why not become all? Why not live from a place of peace, of creation in motion? This is where we find miracles. This is where magic happens. But of course, I can only speak for myself.

What is your relationship with your reality? Do you see it as a dance with God? Or something else entirely? There are so many perspectives and stories. None are wrong, none are right. They just are. And I'd love to hear yours. 

Wisdom From the Trenches of 2018

"Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right." ~Grateful Dead

January: Loss. An extraordinary, but complicated friendship ended. Our soul contract had ended years prior, and maybe I should have seen it coming--we've done this for lifetimes. I sent out a prayer of gratitude and burned the last of the damiana. I also lost my bank card and a bit of my sanity. But such is life.

February: Excess. Between two jobs, teaching yoga, tarot classes, writing workshops, and coven gatherings, when do I have time to just be? I will tell you: In the moment. Just be present. Be the eye of your own hurricane.

March: Release. What would happen to my life in Chiang Mai if I quit the job I moved here for? All I know for sure is when a void is created be mindful of what goes into all that empty space.

April: Connect. I landed on Bali with Meno's question lingering in the back of my mind: How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? Through the alchemy and magic of human connection.

May: Allow. What would it be like to move out of the city and into a rustic little hut in the jungle? Step carefully. Ease into this new life and let the ever morphing nature of Chiang Mai fill in all around.

June: Stillness. I've nothing to do most days except sink into the still quietness of this jungle life. This is where intuition strengthens and the journey to other worlds begin.

July: Expansion. In what new ways can I move out of my comfort zone? My soul knows better than I do so I head to Vietnam. Challenging and eye-opening and at times shocking, I adapt and I learn to navigate through this strange new energy.

August: Discover. Epic rides along the coast and through the jungle--the freedom of the open road sparks inspiration and ancient memories. I didn't just discover hidden layers of Vietnam, but a story tucked deep inside of me that began to inch its way out.

September: Integrate. Detox, meditate, integrate, repeat.

October: Alignment. My third birthday on this magic island in the Gulf of Thailand. I'm lured back here each year to reevaluate and realign, to walk the labyrinth and ask more questions. Hammock naps hold the answers to everything.

November: Discipline. Thirty days and 52000 words later I have a very rough draft of a new novel. Discipline is not just mindset. It's also structure and a solid, supportive community of friends who are on the journey too.

December: Healing. Sometimes it takes extreme circumstances to bring me back to point zero. Some times it takes going off grid into the heart of Laos and falling off a motorbike to get me there. Lots of rest and recovery. It took three weeks for my body to fully come out of shock--and to finally heal.

I slid into 2019 with ease. I was asleep well before midnight and woke up to a new year. A calm blanket of peace washes over me as I move slow through this first week of January. It is going to be an amazing year of curiosity and creation and, of course, magic.

I dare you to tap into your unlimited potential and work it to your advantage this year. What will you create? What magic will you cultivate? 

The Blue of Distance

"The blue of distance comes with time, with the discovery of melancholy, of loss, the texture of longing, of the complexity of the terrain we traverse, and with the years of travel...Blue is the color of longing for the distances you will never arrive in."  ~Rebecca Solnit

I had been dozing in and out of consciousness and finally came to when I heard a voice. Take your time, the voice said. The last thing I remember was pointing to a lawn chair in the distance and saying something like I'm just gonna go lay down for a bit. Apparently, I had wandered from the small poolside cafe onto someone's bungalow and collapsed. The result of walking 5.5 kilometers midday in the equatorial sun to the only bookshop in Amed.

I'd like to think this is an isolated story of misfortune or bad planning, but as my track record shows, this is just how I function. There are countless examples here in this blog and throughout my life in general (some of which will never be discussed outside of the small circle of folks involved). The point isn't about the incidences themselves, but the miracles and lessons and stories that unfolded from them. And from this unfolding, something unknown and new emerges. The result, I'd like the think, of being curious, my compass always pointing toward the blue of distance.

I landed on Bali with no plan, too much luggage, and an urge to get lost in the magic of the island. I wasn't out to repeat any of my experiences from the months I had spent there in 2016, but to find something (as I mentioned in my previous post) that was completely unknown to me.

In four weeks time, I moved across the island from Canggu to Ubud to Amed to Sanur connecting with old and new friends along the way--some of them completely unexpected, all of them surreal as though we were all plucked from our lives and brought together on an island that only half exists in the real world. In these moments of connection, I learned a little more about the dynamics of souls coming together and sharing stories and energy. Sometimes what we give or take away from a place or another person isn't always obvious, not at first anyway. It's that lingering feeling that something has shifted, that we have somehow stepped closer to those very things we never knew we needed.

I've been back in Chiang Mai a month now, but it's not the Chiang Mai I left. I wasn't returning to my old job or my old apartment in the city, but to those things far more important to me--only when I returned, those things weren't here waiting for me at all. They had drifted out over the horizon where everything fades to shades of blue, but never completely disappears. I had somehow landed in a Chiang Mai completely unknown to me.

I stepped off the plane onto what I thought was familiar solid ground only to find myself swimming in the open ocean of possibility. Over this past month, my life here slipped from one of the most dynamic and busy existences to one of ungrounded solitude. But those new (and until now unknown) things and people emerging from this space are those very things I need to move in unknown directions. If this blog is truly about chasing miracles and following curiosity, then I need to allow the unknown to flourish and release all those things I've come to associate with Chiang Mai into the inaccessible blue of distance where memories and dreams live.

Here in a small teak hut in the jungle pressed against the base of Doi Suthop I awake each morning to a surreal life that feels like a new chapter has only just begun. The monsoon wind and rains wash out everything that no longer belongs. What is left? The glistening deep jungle greens and the blue of distance. Everything that keeps me chasing fireflies and miracles.

What is it that keeps you moving forward? Does something need to give you a push? Or does it come from a curiosity, a longing for the unattainable, the unknown, the blue of distance?

South of the Equator, East of the Past

I am driving down a dark, desolate street in the village of Penestanan just west of Ubud when I abruptly stop and look up at the sky. It is not the sky of my Ohio childhood full of fireflies and telescopes, nor the sky of my post-collage Wyoming summers nor of my Big Sur and Clearlake midnight escapades chasing meteor showers and miracles, but it is the sky here on an island 8 degrees south of the equator, somewhere east of everything that came before.

I first came to Bali two years ago and planted myself in the heart of Ubud whose intense energy un-grounded me and un-nerved me and forced me to surrender to it before I short circuited. And in surrendering, I found a stillness and peace that lead me to getting lost in the energy and finding the unexpected mystery and magic of not only Ubud, but in the raw and wild energy spread across the island.

Two years later I've eased my way back. I started on the west coast in Canggu then headed east toward Ubud, but not quite Ubud, just west of Ubud in the quite village of Penestanan where I can look up into a dark sky and see stars and forget where I am, where I can get lost wandering through rice fields or driving through the jungle, where I can lose track of time, lose track of place, lose track of everything that came before.

I have been on Bali for two weeks now, and I cannot stop thinking about Rebecca Solnit's book A Field Guide to Getting Lost. The book begins with Meno's question: How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you? And like a meandering and haunting guided meditation, Solnit lures you into her ever shifting world of personal stories and historical landscapes, leading you to those unexpected things you find while lost in the unknown, terra incognita.

I first read the book in March 2012 during a thunderstorm on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. Then I re-read it on the flight back to San Francisco after having been stuck at JFK for over 24 hours. Somewhere in the sky over middle America moving at hundreds of miles per hour west, I intuitively knew that coming back to California was walking into certain unknown doom. I had left California living one life; I would return to live out a completely different one. Losing everything that came before is where I began to find those things whose nature was at one time totally unknown to me--those things of strength and forgiveness and grace and ultimately freedom and serenity.

Perhaps getting lost is the only place where we find those things we never knew could be found--those indescribable moments and scenes and feelings that cannot be captured by words or a picture. That point of transformation you never knew could be possible until you surrender to losing everything that came before.

What does getting lost mean to you? Like Solnit, do you see it as a point of transformation, finding those things totally unknown to you? Or something else entirely? 

The Seasons of Yin and Yang

To say Amed is a sleepy fishing village might be an understatement. A stillness and calm permeates this short stretch of land along the east coast of Bali--encapsulating it and folding into every aspect of it. Cut off from the rest of Bali by Mount Agung, the largest volcano on the island, Amed sits between fire and water, living in a state of perpetual equilibrium.

My first six months of travel were very active, very yang, very external. I saw a lot, I did a lot, I met a lot of people. At the six month mark, it all came to an abrupt halt when I landed in Otres Beach, Cambodia. Life suddenly became very still, very yin, very introspective. Not to mention I became very productive on my manuscript which I have savored and loved.

Things will be changing again very soon. If all goes smoothly, I will be planting myself in Chiang Mai, Thailand for the next six months teaching, living, and writing--where I will hopefully find my tribe of writers and yogis and miracles workers.

Perhaps these past three months are the the calm before the storm. Or maybe I'm sitting in the eye of a hurricane about to hit the other wall. I don't mean a chaotic, destructive storm or hurricane--just a more active and involved-in-things-around-me kind of life. And as I move into this more active, yang state of being, I will hang on to some of this yin where I'm able to stand still and see clearly as life swirls around me--so to be able to maneuver my way around all the flying cows and trees if they happen to be heading right toward me. Maybe I'm thinking of tornadoes. But you get the idea. 

Today I will linger in this incredible hidden Balinese gem called Amed before I begin to slowly transition to an altogether different reality.

Does your life move through seasons of yin and yang, of stillness and motion? How do you handle the transition?

The Logical Song (or the Art of Divine Timing)

I attempted to go to a yoga class a few days ago. I had been here in Amed for almost a week--it was time. When I arrived at the studio, I found the class had been cancelled because a group on retreat was using the space. And since I was already there, the group invited me to join them for their class. Great!

Turns out this retreat group was from Spain, and on that particular night, it was a Vipassana inspired meditation class. I stayed because why not. During the introduction, which was entirely in Spanish, the group leader whipped out a selfie-stick and began to wave it about wildly as he spoke. I have no idea what he was saying, but the group looked a little terrified. He then briefed me in English that the meditation would be approximately 45 minutes, and he would clap 3 times to indicate the end. He did not wave the selfie-stick at me.

About 10 minutes into the meditation, I felt a solid bop on the head and my eyes flew open. The leader was walking around bopping folks on the head with his selfie-stick. He made his rounds every 10 minutes or so--in order to bring us back to the present moment, he later told us.

Later that evening back at my bungalow, something happened. I opened my manuscript file and a few aspects of the story I had been struggling with miraculously began to fall into place. Most surprising was a new character--someone who simply did not exist until that moment. From a blank space, he appeared tying a big sloppy bow on my story. This was not the first time this has happened. Let me rewind.

About 5 or 6 years ago, I was driving home from somewhere when a CD fell out of my car sun visor and hit me in the head. I'd never seen it before nor did I have a clue where it came from. I popped it into my CD player and proceeded to drive around my block several times listening to the first song on repeat: The Logical Song. Something was happening.

As soon as I parked, I flew into my house and began writing. Four characters introduced themselves to me and begged me to tell their story. Well, what is your story? I asked. They took their time telling me in bits and pieces over the next few years. Then one day I stopped writing. For about 2 years or so, each time I would open this manuscript, I would stare at it and cry. It was a mess. It made no sense to me at all. In retrospect, a complete reflection of what my life had become.

About a month after I left California, I was able to start wrapping my mind around the story in a new way, but it wasn't until I was in Cambodia that I really began to focus and restructure it. But there were problems. Yes, life is messy and sometimes does not make sense, but I am not Murakami--I cannot get away with leading you down surreal paths of strange and leave you dangling there.

And then the selfie-stick bop on the head. And then the new character. And the realization that my four original characters never left me. More often times than not I hear stories of people who put a manuscript to the side for various reasons, and when they go back to revisit it, the inspiration is gone. 

This did not happen to me. My characters stuck with me through it all. They chose me to tell their story and didn't abandon me. I am incredibly grateful and honored. I have no idea if this story will even make sense to anyone else. But I love this story. I love these characters. They are not always the most likable, but they are mine.

Divine timing has always played a huge part of my life. For reasons I can only speculate, I don't think this story was meant to be told until now. I don't think I was mentally ready to tell this story until now.

We wake up each day and can see the world as logical or illogical as we please. We have the power to change our perception. We have the power to invent our universe. We are made of star stuff! It doesn't get much more miraculous or magical or beautiful than that. Why in the world would we let anyone convince us otherwise?

The Logical Song still fits (and in my mind, will always be entwined with this story and these characters). The Vipassana class congealed it. Here in this small stretch of Balinese fishing villages called Amed, I found a stillness that allowed this story to continue unfolding.

Do you feel divine timing has played a role in your life? Have you ever felt like something was withheld from you until the perfect moment? I want to hear your stories!

And what about creative projects? Do you feel divine timing has played a roll when it comes to them as well?