An inevitability; with so many tomatoes, after making sauces, chutneys, and salads galore, etc. that it would come down to bloody marys. Got to do what you’ve got to do.
How discouraging that we are still, in 2020, having to contend with people who feel they have the right to remove the choices of others. If you don’t believe in abortion don’t have one, there is nothing simpler than this. But to believe you can forcefully impose your morals on another person shows either deep seeded ignorance, or the more sinister belief that women’s bodies are not their own. This is proven over and over again by the fact that the very people who oppose abortion have no interest in caring for those children who are already here - unless they belong to their immediate circle, class, religion or race. The hypocrisy is monumental.
Multipurpose bath tub, thawing some coconut juice, softening the coconut oil dressing - and of course for me later.
Just spent a marvellous day scootering across the back roads of Bali with a lovely friend. Several villages were harvesting cloves, so we had to stop and buy some... and now my whole world smells just as heady and divine as the air around those villages. The friendliness and beauty of this island never, ever ceases to amaze. Our garden is going gangbusters. Learning so much that I find myself getting philosophical and a little chicken soup-ish - plants and their quirks and how they are so much happier in certain locations is so like us humans needing the right environment to thrive. Glad this is mine.
There are days and events that slap you with the reality of how fragile and tenuous democracy and fairness truly are. We lost a champion and gained uncertainty. I know I sit here in Bali and weep with millions of women across the Pacific Ocean who feel the same. And of course men also, but RBG changed female lives beyond measure.
We grieve and then we must rally - for all the generations yet to come.
Listening to Joe and Kamala is like tasting clear fresh spring water after a long bout of only stagnant poisoned cesspit muck.
Garden caterpillars, I know they turn into butterflies, but they are also the most astonishingly voracious little creatures - and those here in Bali all seem to be causers of itchiness beyond measure. I am being far less than zen in my treatment of them, but what else to do?
My trusty scooter and I took a jaunt along Bali’s smallest back roads to the north east coast. Didn’t see a single tourist until the destination, and there is hardly anyone here. Following all lockdown guidelines, (primary danger being the fab Italian restaurant next door that is happy to deliver to my lounger, I’m already one whole pizza down). From jungle sunsets to ocean sunrises. Armed with books, studies, solitude, 2 sarongs, 2 bathing suits, snorkel gear, a box of wine and time.
Charity Shops/Thrift Stores... a great shout-out for these wonderful bastions of recycling/charitable donating. At least half of my wardrobe at all times was acquired this way.
Russell Brand on “The Crown”, all the furore around its accuracy, and the power of storytelling.
“It has more truth in it than facts alone would ever afford.”
Wholeheartedly agree.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. - Agatha Christie
Love our gorgeous new, (refurbished), yoga shala floor. The last one did not have enough room underneath it to breathe, this one has plenty.
Just had one of those very rare, snake close encounters. Literally had my hand in my little yellow cherry tomato bush picking them, when I realised I was touching a snake. It didn’t flinch or move, or luckily strike, but I believe it’s a pretty harmless one anyway. Went back to get my camera which was quite a distance away, came back and it was still there. Meditating perhaps?
It appears there will be no Australian travel until at least the end of March. This will have a huge impact on Bali and everywhere else that depends on their tourism, let alone the Aussies themselves. There are so many of you that I miss seeing.
I swear a spider just wove a perfect web of Africa outside my bedroom window. I’m taking it as a sign that my next trip should definitely be to Madagascar.
Listening to my Balinese friends chatting and laughing raucously, I can only understand about 10% of what they say,(they speak Balinese usually and even my Indonesian is wobbly at best), but what is crystal clear is that they have genuine community. Of course it is far from perfect, plenty of pettiness and jealousies, (humans will be humans wherever they are), and uglinesses that have to be contended with, but from what I can observe, ultimately everyone still belongs, and even with conflicts everything eventually passes. What an art.
"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured."― Kurt Vonnegut
A very good start. We at Rahasia Manis along with Hati Suci have together sponsored our village of Bayad in a rice for plastic exchange programme, that we hope will be ongoing. Very good turnout, together we CAN clean up this beautiful island and raise awareness.
Okay, I am as passionate for astrology as anyone, and it has been central to my life for as long as I can remember. However, when we have a major transit coming up like the one on the 21st of December, which by the way is not actually that unusual... we get a Jupiter/Saturn conjunction every 20 years, and yes they do tend to be very powerful universal markers, and they are closer together than in centuries, and it is the conjunction widely believed to have been “the star” that the wisemen, (astrologers), followed at the time of Christ’s birth, still I find myself a little squirmish at the sense of specialness, exclusivity, and all the rest of the new age hype around it.
“Sudden shifts in consciousness”, and other such amazing things are being predicted right and left. But does this apply also to the people of Yemen and Syria, who are currently starving and having their lives devastated daily, and the refugees all over the world who are stateless, hopeless and in grave danger, or the countless souls who are currently repressed and/or persecuted? Are their lives also going to be suddenly and instantly transformed, or is it just for us, the already highly privileged?
Sorry, but not really, for sounding so jaded about it, but the longer I live the more I see these astrological markers as calls for us to face our collective demons, hopefully do better, be kinder and more honest, be more aware... but often failing as much as we succeed... and are any successes even possible without casting the net of awareness and caring out over our whole tiny planet? And once that has been done, isn’t it pretty darned hard to feel that cosmically wise, special (smug?) or enlightened? I am genuinely curious and open to hearing other’s thoughts.
I am an Aquarius and this conjunction is in my own most paradoxical sign.
Excellent day. Raw chocolate making, (we now have it down to a delicious fine art). Our very first homegrown beets - despite them not particularly liking the tropics, we persisted. And our super smart manager Ketut has started teaching English classes to the staff. They had a ball, and laughter rang around. It’s all those little things that add up to contented times...
How life changes. I used to go to fancy salons for professional cuts, now one of our housekeepers (thank you, Nyoman) gives me a trim with the scissors they use to cut the grass. And I’m just as happy especially as my hair goes directly into the compost.
Yowza... the thunder and lightening is so close that the smell of sulphur in my house is overwhelming. I did not even know that could happen.
You can plan the garden all you want, but ultimately if something wants to grow in a particular spot it will. This is just a random little drainage hole in the wall and a renegade group of plants having a party all of their own.