thePlace

Hermes has said:

 

            “Raise thyself above every height, descend below every depth, assemble in thyself all the sensations of created things, of water, of fire, of the dry, of the moist; suppose that thou art at once everywhere, on earth, in the sea, in the heavens, that thou wast never born, that thou art still in the womb, that thou art young, old, dead, beyond death; comprehend all at once, times, spaces, things, qualities, and thou shalt comprehend god.”

 

There is a spell of clear glittering sunshine that stirs the soul.  The horizon is once again a lucidly drawn line separating the blue gray sea and the wispy sky half-covered by long white clouds.

 

I watch the ‘same’ scene daily.  A sameness that unveils the interplay of the lights with the spirited air that illuminates shades and forms; a sameness that awakens a different sentiment every time I gaze out.  I could sit rapt for a long time at the breakfast table, as pigeons whistle sharply in circles through the crisp morning air, swiftlets skim-diving the swimming pool in the dazzling evening colors, the winged termites circling the lights came and went in the warm night wind.

 

I no longer observe. I feel the ecstasy in identifying with all existence.  Sometimes I am at rest at the center of the universe.  Sometimes there is a deep yearning – a dense miasma of longing to know, to know things that are beyond. 

 

Ah, how incomprehensive everything is, and here I am, asking if I am obeying my own laws of life. I am at the verge of detachment and total involvement- I want to be bliss-out, to be alone – to be mindless and drift with the space and nature…. 

 

Yet, I am totally drawn in; caught up with every decision and participate unreservedly in every process of catering to my guests’ best interests. 

 

How else can I share SamyogaBali, a Place that perfect union is found in space & nature…a sanctuary imbued with private dreams yet saturated with my longing to share?

 

So far, I have made the most delicious homemade cereal with sun-dried homegrown jackfruits, pumpkin and sunflowers seeds with Bali palm sugar.  I have also successfully made the creamiest yogurt (Austrian recipe), yummy Swiss homemade bread and cakes (as healthy and as delicious).  Kadek and I have also planned enough mouth-watering Balinese/Indonesian menus with occasion pasta with homegrown basil and greens, etc. 

 

By the way Kadek makes the most scrumptious Balinese free-range-hormone-free village chicken Betutu that takes hours of steaming and hundreds of spices – village style with full-hearted dedication and labor.  Of course, I am still constantly expanding and exploring new and interesting recipes.

 

Guests and friends all love the Place and the food.  They also suggested that there be air conditions, mosquitoes nets….

 

Now, I have a full head of ideas for designing the office and the café upstairs with incomparable view.  I see everything in my head but it’s hard to put it into drawing.  Big expensive ideas that lack the supporting cash….

 

And ah, I also need a second-hand utility truck – I consciously avoid the scooter after a nasty fall.

 

 

 

“What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter.

The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities.”

 

                                                                        Sri Aurobindo

The insects have laid siege to the House like a grisly army advancing on the good guy’s castle in the Lord of the Ring. In days, flies claim their territory shamelessly, mobbing everything in sight. The traffic of those black plump medium ants clot up every pillar going up to the room upstairs. In nights, insets of all kinds buzz round the lights, vying to kill themselves. The dead ones cling to every crack and fissure… more ants appear, loading and unloading the dead ones – a feast to be enjoyed in the secret of their home.

Dragonflies, butterflies and everything that flies stun themselves in the glass, wings buzzing, confounded; I end up having to engage in endless rescue missions or Blackie would just snap them up with his jaws at the right moments. He once caught a dazed little bird, dismantled and swallowed it bones and feathers without a trace in 2 minutes. Blackie is salvage - he recently killed twenty young chicken at Agung’s (while I was out of the island) and taught Orca, his Rockweller, to corner those poor chicken.

It’s the end of December, the monsoon is flaunting its mysterious power. The sky is perpetually heavy with unrelenting brewing dark clouds threatening to assail the earth with its cascading torrents that bring everything down the hills, into the breaking rivers and onto the churning black-brown Bali Sea. The street down the hill is peppered with hundreds of potholes and is clogged with grime of all kinds.

The horizon is a patch of gray – the sea and the sky inseparable. The country side has turned to an immodest green. The villagers begin to plant their one time money crop – the maize, the paddy fields scatter around the hills below.

These last days, after the guests came and left, the exhaustion sets in, a kind of tiredness that pervades as soon as I pick myself up from the bed. I was hard at getting the cottages ready for the first real guests. Spent most of the last 2 weeks fighting the traffic in the south, finding the right shops, bargaining…then another 2 ½ hours drive back to the North. Followed by the furnishing, training and directing the workers…an endless amount of work!

The whirlwind of preparation took every bit of my energy (plus all the pounds gained from my time away and more.) Although the rooms are finally ready, and looking good (after I nearly bled dry my account), the Place is still at the testing and learning stage, there’s still much to be perfected.

Christmas came and left. Tomorrow is the New Year. Here, there is no stressful holiday season, no people to visit – just a couple of friends that will come and stay for 2-3 days. With plenty of space and clouds in the sky, a patch of grey in the horizon, I am only aware of the start of the rainy season, it’s the beginning of an end – the dry season; everything is full of potential, once again.

I marvel at the novelty of the images around the Place, SamyogaBali – where perfect union is found in space and nature. When I alienate myself from nature everything seems so chaotic and annoying – the flies that get into your food, the ants that take up every space, the mosquitoes that sting, the threatening termites…. But once I loose myself in it; everything is so organized - so coldly precise, voluptuously real - gross, alive and unhidden, like the overturned beetles that try in vain to right themselves. Wood rotting, walls turning mossgreen, fruits decaying, insects eating each other up, termites invading the house and roots, ants parading, hopeful fogs cruising…everything is just the way it is, and it’s perfect. The only perfection that allows in here.

Everything depends on everything else.

 

And I, the ego-clinging self, is learning to shred slowly, painfully slowly; so to merge.

The door sprang opened, smelled of an abandoned house, a slight musky warm stench.  Agung flipped the switch on – the room seems empty and strangely dim.  It hasn’t changed in essentials, but shows and smells of desertedness.  Or perhaps I am just used to houses that filled with excesses and smelled of cleaning agents for the past two months.

 

After almost 2 days of journey (flying time totaled 18.5 hours, adding transit time at Taipei, airports waiting and car journeys) I’ve lost16 hours and fast forwarded to Bali, I’m home, back to the Place.  I called for Blackie when I stepped off the car.  Oh what a delight for both of us, and Jill too (he has returned, he got sick again when the owner took him) I spent 20 minutes snuggling up with one big brown dog and one small black dog -  dancing feet and wagging tails, licking, nibbling, scratching.  When I returned downstairs to give Agung his gifts, I smelled of dogs and dribbled with drools– to make up for lost time. 

 

Except for the strong-willed unwaveringly dim solar lamps scattered around the garden like an overgrown faraway constellation, it’s utterly dark out.  It rained briefly and I smell the quenched hot earth of the tropics – it’s the beginning of the monsoon.  I hang about the Place, establishing my presence or the smell of it, and in the same time, absorbing the world around me and in me.

 

I have been gone for 2 months.  Time rewinded and fast forwarded across the Pacific and the Atlantic and back again – the return to San Francisco, the invitation to Italy and Greece, meeting old and new friends, seeing new places, more eating than I could have done for the entire year in Bali.  The fact is after almost daily meals of fruits, vegetables and seaweeds in Bali, the rest of the world eats like fiends or so it seems.  So in 2 months, I have gained 10 lbs, overloaded my senses mindlessly – wine, champagne, weeds and tons of wonderful food in the best of the restaurants; all readily thrown upon me as invitations to become a honorary transient member of their worlds.  

 

In this short interlude from Bali, I have rediscovered my penchant for the fine things in life.  For a little while – I indulged to the brim and spilled over.   The fact that I would do all that only as a stopgap to the lean and simple way of living in Bali has somehow made me throw myself impetuously to the surroundings – to fully experience the excess and be sick of it.  Besides thinking of Blackie (especially when I passed a black dog) and occasional sms correspondences with a couple of people from Bali, I haven’t thought about the Place.  I have thrown the worries to the wind – I am good at it.

 

On the verge of returning, I almost had an urge to zoom right past the need of getting back, to keep on going, even if it were only in an elaborate set of circles, so that I can push the mindless self until she wore herself out or worked her way to a more natural end. I even tried changing the ticket – I didn’t packed till the very last minute and it seemed like an insurmountable task the day before leaving.   I did hang on to the responsible self – although only precariously; and now I am happily back to the simple life, to see my dogs, to feed the worms in the bin, to home grown fruits and vegetables diets – to cleanse myself and to loose the 10 lbs.

 

In all, I am thankful for everything that I have partaken. I am especially grateful to have met some beautiful people especially Marie Antoinetta, Antonio and Miriam.  Through their yoga center, I’ve rediscovered Aurobindo and the Mother.  I have bought over 100 books, mostly used cheap books from fund raising book fair and through the net.  I shipped 3 boxfuls to Bali for the library to be café I envision.  The post office said it will take 3-4 months slow boat across the ocean.

 

Ah, and I have accomplished something worthy while indulging.  I had the website done – after spending hundreds of hours pounding on the computer and figuring out how to work Dreamweaver, the website design program for laypeople like me.  It’s rewarding though tedious.  I kept revising it, editing, changing the words and photos I finally got so tired of it, I paid an Italian girl 25 Euro who didn’t speak or read English to upload it to the web knowing that they are not quite done. Yes, there are mistakes and I have yet to learn how to maintain a website. 

 

It’s official, the Place is now named SamyogaBali and everyone is welcome. 

 

Still imperfect but voila – here it is www.samyogabali.com.