Avocado Shake [Shannon]

It's not easy saying good-bye to Bali. Time syrups here. The whole island is a dream: Don't wake me. Days just lounge out, and people smile the loopy grins of actual happiness. I wonder if I can ever go back to the world where it matters if you're right. Bali is a place where you can just be.

Some days we were going to head for somewhere, and we just stopped. The rhythm of Bali got us, not inertia, but sway. All this incidental beauty is not accidental. This is a synergistic place, where the placement of a flower elevates both the flower and the place it adorns. Ritual becomes consciousnes, as simple as breathing. We're weightless when we swim.

No painting in the museum captures what Bali is like, or the suppley slinkiness of the people, who glide around with assured posture and mocking eyes, then crouch still as stones to watch the world. It must be a secure place, to know your world, seen and unseen, and to learn the choreography of its cosmic interactions from birth.

I'll miss the monkeys, the black sand beaches, five dollar massages, frangipani trees, rambutans and mangosteens, the sound of the river in the backyard, the white herons flying home every sunset, the friends we've made, and avocado shakes with chocolate sauce.

And I like it when we're loose on the road, going where we want, reaching a far shore and picturing what's across the way -- Java! The Philippines! Fiji! We've never been here before. There's the Southern Cross! We're below the Equator. There's a lizard on my leg.