another year gone by...

Here I am, one year and eight days since I landed in the Maldives and was greatly surprised by the captain's "Welcome to the Maldives...the cabin crew are going to walk through spraying insecticide...." which was immediately followed by the lovely flight attendants spraying the plane down with bug spray. I hid under a blanket.

I remember seeing the beautiful atolls from above for the first time, like a painting or a dream. The first night, sipping cocktails on the sunset jetty, seeing the view from my dreams of 7 months previous. I knew it was right. Seven has always been my lucky number. In Jewish mysticism, it's the number that represents God. It's always appeared as a signpost for me that I was where I needed to be. The only place I've ever lived for more than a year? 5747 Richmond Ave., #7. There were 7 apartments aside from mine. Here? My room is number 7 and I came 7 months after I dreamed of a place I'd never seen or imagined. Of course, I never see the sevens until after a choice, as a reassurance. It's kind of like guessing which turn off you're supposed to take and seeing a sign when you're a mile down the road which tells you that you are on the right track.

You don't believe in signs and numbers? No worries. We each have our own ways of making our way through the best that we can. Mine has signposts, like road signs to help me on my highway of life. It works for me. I hope yours works for you.

It hasn't been easy. There are good times and bad times on an island this size. While it's true that there are good and bad times everywhere, it's intensified when living in a microcosym. There are days when you hate being here and every molecule in your being longs to be anywhere else so that you feel as if you might explode. Then there are days when you stroll across the silky white sand, you laugh as you snorkel with the millions of brightly colored fish, you breathe in the fresh air as you take in the water color horizon...and you're happy to be here.

Of course, it's much easier to talk about how happy I am to be here when in four days I'm leaving for 45 days, and I've at least another 25 days off the island (in addition) in October!

I am happy though. I'm also happy to return to my beloved Barcelona for a month and a half.

immense fish glide through the sky...

Days here come and go with astonishing rapidity. Already two weeks gone is my sushi fight and hostility. Rain has returned, and two weeks from today I will be flying to Colombo, then to Amman and finally Barcelona. I will spend a week with my best friend in my favorite city, followed by over a month in said city, then a trip to Amman (Jordan), back through Colombo (Sri Lanka) and finally home to Maldives.

There are good and bad times mentally and emotionally for all of the ex-patriates here. Now is a good time, except that I'm still convinced I will fail my upcoming grammar exam, and I still need to finish my projects (and have only two weeks to do so.)

I leave you with good wishes, happy thoughts and a Neruda poem.

March returns with its secretive light,
immense fish glide through the sky,
vague terrestrial vapors move along quietly,
one by one all things succumb to the silence.

In this crisis of the wandering weather, luckily
you joined the sea's lives to the fire's lives:
gray motions of the ship of winter,
the shape that love impressed on the guitar.

O love, O rose moistened by the mermaids and the foam,
fir that dances adn climbs invisible stairs,
that wakes the blood in teh tunnels of sleeplessness:

so that the waves may exhaust themselves in the sky,
the sea forgets its goods and its lions,
the world drop into the shadowy nets.

______________________________________________

El mes de marzo vuelve con su luz escondida
y se deslizan peces inmensos por el cielo,
vago vapor terrestre progresa sigiloso,
una por una caen al silencio las cosas.

Por suerte en esta crisis de atmosfera errabunda
reuniste las vidas del mar con las del fuego,
el movimiento gris de la nave de invierno,
la forma que el amor imprimio'a la guitarra.

Oh amor, rosa mojada por sirenas y espumas,
fuego que baila y sube la invisible escalera
y despierta en el tunel del insomnio a la sangre

para que se consuman las olas en el cielo,
olvide el mar sus bienes y leones
y caiga el mundo adentro de las redes oscuras

-Pablo Neruda