postcard from sanginngan

before the finger of sun touches the rice fields
i wake
life smells fleetingly of thailand

if you follow the tramp of my thonged feet on this small dirt path you will not step in the puddles. skirt by the muddy edges. step to the side for passing motorbikes. children will peer out from houses. women will look up from scrubbing clothes on rocks by the stream to greet us. turning we wander past fields of greens and corn that ebb into the spreading terraces of rice, spotted with coconut, papaya. banana; rooster, hen and duck.

don’t mind me if i lounge on the verandah watching butterflies dance with palms and orchids alike on the breeze that brings the rains. i am pondering the virtues of writing absent friends about the heat, the aesthetics of ubud cafe society, of bali life from three year old eyes, of lotus ponds and carp, of my quiet struggle with colonialism, of the vast and the domestic… but all of these subjects seem to melt away inconsequentially into the simple splendour of the afternoon.