Category — Wonderful

Each day is pulled along into the next by the tendons.. I shake myself awake in the morning, get up, start skating on marble, throwing oatmeal into pots and draping clothes on their fragile fibers on the clotheslines.

In other words, we are busy.

I was very touched by my mother’s confidence in me in the comment section of the last post. “Did you make that boat?” she asked.

She asked. Although I have never to her knowledge constructed a boat. No time like the present! Perhaps Rae has taken up boat crafting! she thought tenderly. And why not?  Maybe I will.

No, the boat was one of these:

They are traditional Goan fishing boats, made of mango wood, and built with a sewing method and wood pegs. The technique is probably over a thousand years old.

It was a treat to be out in one.

Those are some huts.

I was headed out on a dolphin trip; a beautifully touristy event that I have never taken part in before. But when I was on my writing vacation, and a man approached me in the evening on the beach, asking if I wanted to go, I thought- why not?

So I arrived and the two fishermen who took me out pushed the boat into the water. I stood around looking helpless, until it was time to jump in. I didn’t want the boat to land on my foot or their feet or something.

The kids and I have learned that those wooden things are very similar to what they built the pyramids with. Although I think the Egyptian ones rolled. I’m not sure. Rolling ones would be hard in the sand, I think.

Fascinating boat detail:

The sun came up. (I had to meet them at the boat before sunrise.)

“Over there!” he cried!  “Dolphins!”

They kept laughing at me because I was missing the jumping dolphins. I finally saw a couple, but I didn’t get any pictures.

Just pictures like this:

And this:

You just can’t stop staring, though.  They’re just so beautiful.

Wait, here’s our guy again.

Let’s see another picture of him.

When I went to take the picture of them, they got very serious. This is the Goan Fisherman Serious Picture Face. As though they hadn’t been mocking me the whole time. “Eleven jumping dolphins and you only looking three times! Ha!”

Oh. This is a big fishing boat.

And these are some cool rocks.

And that’s all. Dolphin trips. Not only for people who can spot dolphins!

We’ve been having a deep retreat, covering meditation and other practices for those of the Jesus Way. So far we’ve talked about community life, meditation, contemplation and intimate worship, the practice of singing together, and loads of other stuff. And then today it was time to run away to the gigantic banyan tree that is down the road aways.  We packed food for an evening picnic and loaded up the scooters and cars.

On the way.

It takes about two seconds after we arrive for them to be up a tree.

They’re looking up because the Superstar Husband is way up here:

Can you see him?  He’s right in the middle.

This one just stuffed bananas in his mouth.

This is a monkey I found in the tree.

And these are shenanigans:

This is a man from Holland who has many years of experience in Christian community and with meditation.  We invited him to come and share some of his wisdom with us. I’m not sure that he expected this kind of adventure, but he got it!

We like to stick our guests in trees.

Also our Leafy boys.

I’m going to put this photo above my washing machine.

My internet connection has been so, so broken. It seems to be fixed now in all of its dinosaur slowness.

You are hearing from a woman who is a little worn out from a year and a half of blogging on bad internet connections.  Will it ever end?

(When one WILL choose to live in a small fishing village one WILL experience some technical difficulties. Okay, okay.)

I have some exciting news and a rumor.  The exciting news is that I ordered my oven today; a little metal box that I can set over my gas burner and make heavenly concoctions in, if everyone is lucky. Or maybe just meatloaf.  Beanloaf. Lentil-loaf. Charred sneakers. I’m very excited.

The rumor that’s going around is that Rae (that’s me) officially finished the first draft of her novel last weekend and is now working on revisions.  A novel that she started in the Redwoods, continued in Sacramento, continued even more in Goa, worked on in the Himalayas, and finished in this studio.

That’s the juicy gossip around here, anyways.  I can neither confirm nor deny it.

Here’s a conversation that I eavesdropped on:

Leafy: “What if I cut a bear in half?”

Kid A and YaYa in unison: “That would be really terrible, Leafy!”

Leafy: “But I would clean the knife!”

Kid A: “No, not terrible for the knife. (Laughter) Terrible for the bear!”

YaYa: “A bear is an animal, Leafy!”

Kid A: “Yeah, how would you feel if someone killed you!”

YaYa: “It would hurt the bear.”

Leafy: “It’s a bad bear.  If it tried to kill me I would cut it in half!”

YaYa: “A bear is a wild animal!  We can’t kill wild animals!”

Kid A: “If you kill a bear, then you should be killed.” (Overkill… heh heh)

Leafy: “MAMA! Kid A SAID…”  and then I stepped in.

*

A conversation I was a part of:

Leafy: “What’s for breakfast, oatmeal or mu-sell-li?”

Me: “I just woke up, I don’t know wait-and-see.”

Leafy: “What? (Laughter) “Who’s Andsee?”

Me: “Nooooo.  Wait. And. See.”

YaYa: “Yeah.  And Antsy is the lady who’s visiting Cate.”

Me: (Laughter) “No, YaYa, that’s Nancy.”

*

Chinua put together some beautiful calendars this year, and it’s not too late to get them before the New Year!

One is based on Color in India.

One is a year of India Faces.

And one is a beautiful abstract collection of photos of a carnival he happened upon, back in Canada.

*

And here is a photo of a very strange poster that I saw in Manali this summer.

“… and in His temple all cry, ‘Glory!’”

on the scooter, i see rice hay heaped golden in fields…

glory!

i move into the shade of the jungle, and the sweet cool air sweeps me clean…

glory!

back into the sun, there are hills covered in cashew trees…

glory!

the wind catches me as i cross the river, blasts me from the side and i take big gulps…

glory!

some flower somewhere has a heady scent…

glory!

langurs play on the road, staring at me as i pass with their old black faces…

glory!

the clouds pile up on one another, and as one covers the sun i am reminded of something, but can’t think of what, i only know that such a yearning has overtaken me, it pulls me forward and i just keep going.

When Goa became our home, all of YaYa’s drawings of houses became multi-colored, and always featured a few birds, some caterpillars, some worms, and at least one butterfly.

When we moved to the mountains, her drawings changed.  Suddenly there were large mountains.  Sometimes the houses were tiny in comparison, and the sun was just peeking over the hills.

Now we have come back and we have a new landscape of color around us.  Everyone is repainting after the heavy rains, the village is busy with cleaning and painting and the houses are the same, but wear new faces.  Next door the house is lime green with cantaloupe highlights! And out the back, what color was that house before?  I can’t remember, but now it is a brilliant blue. An eye straining blue that keeps coming even when you are no longer looking.

It is lovely.

Two things that Goan people love are fireworks and color.  Also fish.  As one man told me, chicken is for special, but fish is good everyday.

There have been late rains this year.  They’ve caused flooding and problems, but also this weather which is cool for the time of year. And they wet my laundry on the line when I forget to take it in at night.  I go out in the morning and it is sodden and embarrassed.

Did I ever not like palm trees? Did I ever compare them to sticks with hair, back when I was eighteen and I had moved to San Diego from my deep cool forests of Canada?  That must not have been me.  The palm tree is not only about coconuts or dates or the symbol of relaxation.  It is about a wild symmetry of lines and fronds and straight trunks with an explosion right where the tree touches the sky.

And then there is the sorrow of the broken times we live in. Trash in the streams, plastic on the beach, trash washing up on the river beds. The creation is tired, it is not being treated well. I hurt with it.

Beauty and pain always seem to come together.  Fear creeps in as well.  Is it okay to love anything so much?  I remember I felt this way when I first had the babies.  As if they would be taken away.  But what does this say about how we perceive God to be?  As if, after giving a child a birthday present, we would hover over them, waiting to see if they liked it too much and then snatching it out of their hands.

He gives us good gifts.  The appropriate response would be thank you, I guess.

So, Thank You.

This evening, after a day of hard rain and fog, there was so much sky that it seemed impossible.  Kid A and I glimpsed pink over the hilltop through the tiny kitchen window, and then we ran outside to see the rest.  I had Solo in my arms. Chinua was away, and the kids and I had just finished dinner.  Aloo Gobhi; potatoes and cauliflower– their favorite. I’d thrown in carrots for the orange.

We didn’t look down into the valley, because all the radiance was up and over the mountains.  Great swathes of pink cloud contrasted with sky of a blue that was the first blue ever seen; a newborn blue. YaYa danced on tiptoe in leftover puddles and said, “This is soooo beautiful!  Even as beautiful as a rainbow!”

To the left was an intense monochrome, layers of clouds tipped silver and grey and feather white. Steel clouds and platinum.  I looked for a minute, but loving color, turned back up to watch the pinks and blues shift and change for as long as they were there.

After a while, I looked around me, and there, down on the path, was my husband, holding a closed umbrella that was almost the same blue as that sky.  He was smiling, just watching me watch the clouds and their journey.  I had no idea how long he’d been there.

He smiled into my eyes from that far away and at that moment a whole flock of birds broke into flight inside me.  They almost carried me off into the sunset I’d been watching, but… ah well. Everything was shifting to dark blues and greys, and so we carried the color along inside with us. It was time for pyjamas and goodnight stories and the well lit circle of home.

I thought there might be nothing better than a couple of photos to show that although Solo is recovering from amoebas, he is certainly all right.

Better than alright, even.  Thriving, crawling, wrestling alligators, trying to steal bread from my plate, learning how to use his teeth and not to use his teeth, smashing me in the face with his mouth when I ask for a kiss, drooling on all of us, making friends everywhere he goes.

Yelling “No!” Attempting escapes out the front door. Wriggling and shrieking if he catches sight of one of his siblings. Cuddling up in bed. Dancing.

And laughing.

I have my hands FULL for the next year.  (Because obviously, my life has been too boring up till now.)

They are delicious.  And believe me, I used to be of the “they-look-and-feel-too-much-like-eyeballs” camp too.  Something about seasonal fruit really gets you excited, though.  And I’ve been converted to the “I-love-Litchis!” camp.