Tropical Pleasures

Roostered awake into the bird-song morning, the perfect temperature air erasing the boundary between inside and out, the day embracing me with its open arms and a smiling “welcome back.” Because I’ve been here before—in India, Bali, Fiji, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Rio de Janeiro, those tropical climes that bring me awake in a way that washes me clean and invites me to forget the pain and isolation of the human body/mind. “All lives, all dances and all is loud” is the spoken poem of an indigenous group that I once read in a poetry collection and that’s the delight the day begins with. Me just another two-legged creature without a name taking part in it all.

 

Back at my old friend Zukhra’s house in Bangkok by river’s edge and two days before putting on my chosen identity as teacher again. An outfit that clearly fits me and brings its own form of joy. That “somebody” who seems to be a necessary part of a human incarnation. 

 

But he’s not the whole story and how I love the return to the “nobody” who is just a stranger passing through this wide, wonderful world, in company with the morning birds, the rolling river, the tropical trees. I greet that fellow, feel the echoes of him in all those other places and all those other years, and welcome them all. It’s a beautiful way to start the day.