I've been away again for awhile, though I've not actually been anywhere except my room, because, as has become quite natural for me, I've been ill again for awhile. This time the problem seems to be the flu, a regular guest whom, as I have said in the past, sets up house in one's body here in Bali and then comes and goes as it pleases, and indeed stays as long as it pleases when it is at home. Already a week now with fever and various unmentionable etceteras, and not showing any sign of departing any time soon. Gosh how time passes when you're busy being sick! But we shall change the subject.
As is my usual entertainment, or burden, when ill, I've spent long hours, especially when I might have been more happily sleeping, ruminating over various random things. Such as:
1) Blueberries. Picked straight from the bush by a high mountain lake, round, plump, moist, ready to burst. My son gathering them in a pail we had used for morning coffee at the campsite, blond hair busy at somersaults in the breeze. Later, we will use some with pancakes in the morning, or as close as you can get to pancakes using a black iron skillet over a temperamental fire--gooey, rubbery things, one edge crisp the other oozing, blueberries bleeding veins of nectar into the dough sometimes jam-like sometimes crusty. And indescribably delicious. The finest restaurant cannot produce pancakes like these.
2) Bert and Ernie, and the recent acknowledgement that they were indeed gay. How can this be? They were hand puppets, right?
3) How to say any number of things in the Indonesian language, including the thoughts I am obsessing about. Ruminations alone are not enough. They must be transposed to another language.
4) Donald Trump. How he is not simply a quirk that will go away with the next election but more like an illness that has set up house in the body. He is merely the manifestation, the latest strain of a virus, a malignancy that will only grow and spread. He is the vomit, the mucus, the pus, the shaking chill, the myalgias and arthralgias, the rales and rhonchi, the necrosis, the death rattle, not the disease itself. He is permanent, we are not. This is the least favorite of my sick-room fixations.
5) The unspeakable bliss of simply feeling well, and how we ought to sing with overflowing joy, spilling over with grateful astonishment at this singular miracle, intent in every blessed second to immerse our entire awareness in this one incomparable, impermanent gift. Every minute is a treasure. Don't make plans. Don/t think of tomorrow. The treasure is bottomless but the time is short. What is not withdrawn cannot be given nor received, and tomorrow the lid is closed.
As is my usual entertainment, or burden, when ill, I've spent long hours, especially when I might have been more happily sleeping, ruminating over various random things. Such as:
1) Blueberries. Picked straight from the bush by a high mountain lake, round, plump, moist, ready to burst. My son gathering them in a pail we had used for morning coffee at the campsite, blond hair busy at somersaults in the breeze. Later, we will use some with pancakes in the morning, or as close as you can get to pancakes using a black iron skillet over a temperamental fire--gooey, rubbery things, one edge crisp the other oozing, blueberries bleeding veins of nectar into the dough sometimes jam-like sometimes crusty. And indescribably delicious. The finest restaurant cannot produce pancakes like these.
2) Bert and Ernie, and the recent acknowledgement that they were indeed gay. How can this be? They were hand puppets, right?
3) How to say any number of things in the Indonesian language, including the thoughts I am obsessing about. Ruminations alone are not enough. They must be transposed to another language.
4) Donald Trump. How he is not simply a quirk that will go away with the next election but more like an illness that has set up house in the body. He is merely the manifestation, the latest strain of a virus, a malignancy that will only grow and spread. He is the vomit, the mucus, the pus, the shaking chill, the myalgias and arthralgias, the rales and rhonchi, the necrosis, the death rattle, not the disease itself. He is permanent, we are not. This is the least favorite of my sick-room fixations.
5) The unspeakable bliss of simply feeling well, and how we ought to sing with overflowing joy, spilling over with grateful astonishment at this singular miracle, intent in every blessed second to immerse our entire awareness in this one incomparable, impermanent gift. Every minute is a treasure. Don't make plans. Don/t think of tomorrow. The treasure is bottomless but the time is short. What is not withdrawn cannot be given nor received, and tomorrow the lid is closed.
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