Connections

Everything seems connected lately.. I can picture in my mind the information design graphic depicting the lines connecting topics, peoples and places in my life. It is funny how all different types of things can intersect. For example, I’m reading a book about an independent traveler finding “herself” or reinventing herself midlife and I meet a similar woman by the swimming pool and we start talking about things, she is from the same town as the main character in my book and a place that I have also travelled to. Another girl from England and I started discussing places that are in another book I’m reading. Three of the books I have read lately are similar... “Eat, Prey Love”, “Under the Tuscan Sun” type stories. I have been meeting many people in my business, one girl I met at the pool used to be a wholesale jewelry rep for 40 designers selling up to 5 million for one designer alone... Wow! I can’t even imagine. When I asked her where she lives she said "nowhere right now". All of her things are in storage... it reminded me of coming back to my storage unit after 6 years... none of the clothes fit, I did not want most of what I paid to store with the exception of photos, artwork, and some personal keepsakes.

Ubud in particular seems to attract a lot of travelers that are really free to do what ever they want for how ever long they want. I run into independent people here who seem to be in transition and or aren’t worried about having a particular path to be on... I like that, all of this freedom to do anything and be anywhere. Everyone should have this feeling sometime in their life.

I have read two more books and it has been nice because some are Australian and some from England with a different feel than all of the normal US books I am exposed to. I bring a suitcase full of books to donate after I read them and as people trade them at the hotel I read whatever they leave.

As I write I am sitting here enjoying the “source of mooo,” a pretty carmel colored cow with dark and light markings more like a gazelle than a cow. It is hanging out under a palm tree in the rice terrace behind my balcony.... it’s moo sounds like a creaky old barn door.