lets try this font...hopefully it reflects how i feel, and also is legible...
what a jam packed day of experiences! starting with just walking to the beach to have breakfast...and all the flowers along the way...and meeting hetti and hedda as they came out from swimming in the very stormy sea, and it was nice getting to know these two women and i am happy we will be staying here together for the next couple of weeks...it is interesting talking with them...we think the same...nice. then madie happened to walk by on the beach and we had a nice reunion after my last visit here with her feeding me and taking me everywhere and teaching her daughter ariza how to hoop, and watching her make all of the bamboo decorations for offerings etc...she took me to see her uncles who lives down the beach and has 2 rooms for rent, at the high price of: $1 a night! and me with my camera taking photos every second because along the way so much is happening! and once we were there i realized why i am where i am...i need wood floors, doors, a breeze,servants...aesthetics....and not just a cheap clean place by the sea...sorry...so is out all the photos and captions from that already...
since madie is a massagist i realized i can ask her where to get some nice massage oils sinee what i brought back from thailand 2 years ago is ending...and she kindly brought me some coconut oil that her friend makes, adn it smells so nice...and also showed me olive oil which she uses on people, and it was so cute, with 3 black olives in the bottle, like how in israel we put red peppers...then she took me to see her place after the big eruption that happened in december...apparently a volcano erupted in the sea and has heated the water by 1 degree and is causing all of these extreme changes in the sea, being extremely strong and forceful and ruining all the houses along the beach, including parts of hers...but in every corner of every place there are "offerings" to the gods...the god of the rice fields, of the water for the rooms, for the sea, for the house, etc...and dewah explained that they are all really only one god since there is only ONE in the universe, but the physical offerings and statues and names etc, help people to approach this ONE god that has no shape or form or name...and you can just feel it in the air how EVERYTHING has been blessed or been given attention in a conscious manner...whether while dusting or cooking or whatever...
then when i started to walk back to my room i heard the gamelon chimes...who, where, how??? so i tried to follow the music into the rice field but it stopped, and i went to the workers here and asked them if they know who was playing the chimes just now, and thank god the old gardener who had his son translate my question, knew that one of the farmers a few houses down knows how to play...so off i went...since one of my dreams for this trip is to learn how to play their music on the gamelon...and as i walked i discovered a man sitting in the middle of the rice field in an open hut with a handmade gamelon ...the gardeners son, who works for security here, and also speaks english came from the other direction and we met and i was so excited, and he explained to the farmer what i want ( a gamelon chime and some lessons!) and them man knows english and agreed to make me one (some pieces of bamboo...just lovely) and he played a little tune and went off to the rice fields, and it turns out that also the gardener and his father know how to play too...so hopefully i will have lessons ....great! and next week a chime of my own to practice on...
then i went back to the room and heard such a noise from the other rice fields and when i peeked over the cement fence i found a young man PUSHING a tractor in order to cut the sheaves of rice stems in order to start to plan another crop of rice...it was so fascinating watching them work with these primitive and inventive machines, and tools...love it...and just seeing the entire cycle of things, and how there is a wholeness and simplicity to it all...
and i laughed when i saw them burning all the stalks after the rice had been collected from them, because when i was a potter i so much wanted to make ash glazes and all the recipes i liked were made from "rice ash" and for the life of me i couldn't figure out how to get enough ash from some grains of rice!! even though i tried!! (you need a kilo of ash!!!!) and how i laughed as i saw the rice fields full of piles of burning ash from rice stems, and realized that the chinese that had written these glaze recipes were simply using what was natural by them...
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