Still....in Ubud

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"Rain falls, drip drop, leaning a slow, steady din into Ray Charles' crooning voice, aching strings. The roll of thunder. Wine slips down my tongue. Lightning softly flashes. Katie's fingers gently fight with ehr hair. Thunder echoes again. Again, I am feeling my heart swell, my gratitude release in tiny pulses of invisible energy, tenderly rustling the flower petals, the grass in the rice fields; lifting the wings of the flock of birds that dip and swerve, swoon in the cool air that glides low in the sky."

I have many passages like this in my worn, leather bound notebook. My parents gave me this, and other notebooks like it, to fill with my reflections on the journeys I was to have one day. I wanted so badly to fill them with the details of my many adventures, climbing cliffs and conversing with characters from places I only dreamed of...

I am fortunate enough to say that I had such adventures, but it seems that these details don't make the pages of a worn, leather-bound notebook. Those details are committed to memory, to be shaped and wrought into new dreams and images by times relentless manipulation. It's true, we really only ever have now. But the images and ideas that make their way from pen to paper seem to always be the emotional rantings and upheavals that are a necessary part of travel. They are the words that come from the person within, the human being experiencing it all, and not the arbitrary onlooker taking an unbiased approach to the serendipitous ceremony, or the afternoon thunderstorm. And every attempt I made, specifically in those days where I was confined to my bed and the 100 metre radius that surrounded our homestay, to account mere details of the scene around me, became an aching moan of emotional anguish and appreciation for each flower, each raindrop, each note from the piano or gamelan group that played on and on in the hotel next door.

Long story short, I spent the next days of my trip FEELING a whole lot, and feeling inclined to reflect it in repeated prose on the pages in my book. I also did a whole lot of...nothing. No side trips to the beach, or the volcano, or even the holy spring that Made and Katie and co. visited one afternoon while I watched the end of season one of Weeds on Katie's ipod, and scribbled words on a page that outlined all the things I felt grateful for....

I became your regular pied piper of positivity, with no one around to lead (let's be honest, even if someone was around to listen, NO ONE would follow my mangled face anywhere).

But eventually the swelling subsided enough that I could see out of both eyes, and my leg healed enough that it didn't take me an hour to walk down the path from the bungalow to the street, and day after day I felt...normal again. But all the while I couldn't help feeling like this was exactly what was supposed to happen to me. A lesson was learned...no Shawna you can't do anything you set your mind to without the practicalities of it coming into play, like LEARNING how to ride a bike before hopping on....and it was I that was injured, not Katie (after Katie stating several times her concern with our plan to explore on the back of bikes we knew nothing about and my stubborn responses of "oh Katie, what could happen? You only live once..."). And most relevant was the fact that my original intention in coming to Ubud, before meeting Adam and before I ever thought I would have any company whatsoever in Bali, was to sit. Still. And write. And it's really hard to do that when you want to use every second of the day exploring the nooks and crannies of the Balinese countryside at 60 miles an hour.

So still I was. And write I did.

We went to the beach one day. It was the first time I had ever seen a black sand beach, and it was incredibly eerie and beautiful. Made and her son took Katie and I, and a fabulous couple from the states with their two year old daughter one evening when the sand was cool (the mother was from England, the father from the States...she a yoga instructor, and he no longer employed, living their travel dreams with the sweetest little girl I have ever seen. Inspirational, but I don't think anyone was envious of their situation. Not easy...). There was, almost expectedly at this point, a ceremony of some kind going on by the sea, and the children in full traditional wear running across the black silt, with the thick smell of smoke on the air from neighboring volcanos, was enough to transport me to a different universe. And only half an hour from "home".

And soon Amy, Sophie, and Dave arrived, bringing a whole new color to our context. Forgetting that they were on their way, Katie and I were on the patio one night playing cards when a strong Canadian voice echoed from below "Kaaaaatie, Shaaaaawna.." and there they were, as if it were only natural that these people I spent a year with in Korea would now be on our door in the jungle in Indonesia.

We spent our days eating a lot (as you do when everything around you tastes like heaven) and chatting. We attempted to get up to the volcano one afternoon, but a terrential downpour destroyed visibility and road conditions enough that even fearless Made suggested we turn around and try again at a later time. It was a spectacular drive through the nearby hamlets nonetheless. And the afternoon before was also defined by rain. We took them to the organic cafe that Adam, Katie and I had stumbled upon a week before in the middle of the rice fields for a hearty lunch and were almost carried away in a gale that tore through the open air of the cafe and almost took with it everyone's lunch. At the very least, we have a very funny memory of the five of us huddled in the center of the "room" with a whole restaurant full of strangers, trying not to look too panicked by the rain and wind eating apart the canopy above and around us.

But we survived. Evidently, I am a survivor.

And whether or not I consciously devoted any time to thinking about leaving, it was inevitably on the back burner of my thoughts. As the day approached that I was to leave them all and jorney alone to Java, our nightly dinners seem to lead, at one point or another, to a tear or two. Not surprising or even noteworthy with me really, but considering the amount of emotionally charged experience and change I had undergone in the past few weeks (and months), the fact that a few tears over pasta and cheesecake was all I had to show for it all, it is worth mentioning. Things were coming to a end, and with that, my self control.

But they went their own way, west to the seaside town of Amed, and I to a little charter plane that was to take me to Jogjakarta, and my long awaited venture to Borobodur.....

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