Noisy Thoughts

In the evenings, I've grown used to clouds at night (my favorite) and endless lightning storms. The rains are coming more often, and it gets hotter much earlier in the day. By 10 AM my back is sweaty under my tshirt, and even after I shower at night I feel a little clammy when I brush my wet hair on the veranda.

I couldn't sleep last night. As you friends may know, my life is a bit up in the air at the moment. Not sure where home is or when I can go back there, though I'm doing everything in my power to do what I need to do. It's easy to forget these things when you're drowning yourself in chais and warm beach water, or trying to save the children. I'm trying my best to take care of what can be taken care of, practice a bit of letting go of what I can't control, and live day by day, hoping those honest days become weeks, and those weeks months, and eventually, I'll just end up where I'm supposed to be. I've tried to plan many things, many life strategies, and can even say I'm pretty resourceful at fulfilling these desires, but I guess there are some lives you're just supposed to live, no matter how much you've worked to live the one you planned.

If you asked me a year ago where I would be now- this is the last place I imagined. I was supposed to be a hot young art director now making really classy coffee table books about L.A. signs, published by Taschen or Phaidon. I was supposed to have a work visa and not have to think about my immigration status for another 5 years, when I would be applying for my green card. Maybe I would finally have my loft decorated properly. My laaundry would be done.I was supposed to meet a really nice boy, maybe even a man (should they exist somewhere), and it would be chill, not full of drama and longing like it was when I was younger, now that I can't deal with such bullshit. I'd be talking to my mom every week and not thinking twice about a valet parking if I was in a rush. I'd be in Palm springs with my girlfriends drinking margeritas while doing my toes beside a postmodern pool. I'd be studying when I wasn't on a project, travelling to Scandinavia for design and to Central America for Spanish. My hands would be clean, pretty, and manicured.

Here,I wash my hands a million times a day and the water is still black. I can't seem to ever get this dirt out of under my nails. This is the last place I thought I would be. If you look down our coastal street, you will see my current home, the Beach Inn. Everywhere, everything is destroyed. As far as you can see to the left, as far as you can see to the right, it's all rubble. There's a graveyard with tombstones overturned and thrown halfway down the street. There's a bare lot with just a toilet and half a fallen wall that reads "Chinese take away". In the middle of all the rubble is us, the beach inn. Indica's family started rebuilding December 28, and we are the only standing structure for miles.

I haven't been sleeping. There was no electricity again last night. The fan stopped, the air in the room stagnant with the smoke of the mosquito coil, my elbows irritated from the mosquito net. I put some chairs together on the balcony, and threw a sarong on it. It was the first night I saw such a big moon here. It was bright. I could see the fabric float as I spread it in the air. I had bought this in Bali, I remembered. But this night it looked exactly as it did the night I spread it out on the grass on the English countryside, at the Big Chill festival with Megan. That was a really good night, a long time and place from here. I eventually fell asleep, even though the ocean was louder than ever. Maybe it was the heat, or the loud thunder. Or the nervous energy in the air of everyone waiting for another proposed tsunami. Mothers taking their kids out of school, people canceling appointments with me because they don't want to go into town (closer to the sea). Every week, people are afraid of another one coming. The worst I think was last week, when thousands of people were crowded in the streets, and the main road was a full traffic jam of everyone trying to get out of town. Several people at our hotel (right on the sea) told us to leave our dinner. This was the fastest our dinner ever came, because the cook wanted out, quick. At the end it was a false alarm from smalltime organized crime. The plan was to get people first out of their houses, second, rob them as they carried all their valuables with them in a small bag, third, pick up young daughters alone and tell them you can take them to a safe place on higher ground.

Today is Poya, full moon, and the 26th, 4 months since the tsunami came. People are dressed in white, giving alms, meditating, praying for their lost loves, meeting at the temples. Purple flowers are everywhere, white petals on the ground, candle wax from finished candles, flames from tall new ones. It's been a rough week, and it was a comfort to be around the energy of people stopping to pay respect to something that is bigger than them. Heather and I went for a swim. On the beach is a huge pile of trash, and the biggest of the litter was an overturned cardboard box, reading "TSUNAMI RELIEF ITEMS". I still can't get over this transfer of goods from faraway, little brown barefooted kids with fancy pencil cases donated from a school all the way in La Rochelle, France, with doodles of some little boy named Pierre all over it and a logo of some video game he's into.

The water was warm, and we swam against the current and stayed in the same spot, like a treadmill. The sun went down, again. This ocean is salty, and you float easily. The water is good for me after these long days, though I can't say I'm fully comfortable in it. Maybe half of it is the fear of the ocean that so many still have. Maybe it's because people tell me they see bones in the ocean. Though I try to brush it off, I have to say i still cringe a bit when I feel some coral on my toes. And sometimes it really is quite deep and you're chest will suddenly hit a big slab of concrete rubble. I'll say it again, it's quite surreal to have things be so beautiful and so destroyed at the same time.

But amidst the rubble, even in just the last 2 weeks, you can see people are starting to rebuild again. Beside a house with only 3 walls and a girl sweeping from her living room into the street, there is a pile of bricks. There are more trucks carrying wood and cement, than medication and food. Everything has changed for everyone forever here, and strangely I realize this the best place to be going through my own struggles. It's completely devoid of any relative point of how I felt my life should look like, helps me ensure that I get what I need in that day, and let's me know that this is enough. That I'm kidding myself thinking I can have anything figured out- who do we think we are? No match for just one big wave, regardless how successful, rich, intelligent or planned. This environment, this chaos is helping me take risks and ask for things without anxiety. I realized my green card and my lattes, making my momma proud and all this, these things will too pass, so I might as well do what my heart tells me, and it changes everyday. I'm finding fear more and more useless, because if everything I am gets washed away tomorrow, I would hate my explanation of why I didn't do this or that be that I was too busy planning or being afraid to make a definitive decision, when all the time, life was right in front of me.

Steph and Heather are asleep, and the rain and wind are strong outside. I'm surprised the thunder hasn't woken them up. I've got to take our clothes and shoes off the balcony, so they do not get wet.