Dawn at Danu's

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Pengosegan, Bali           

            The smell of incense wakes me. It is part of the morning offering, so I know Danu’s wife Ketut is about though I did not hear her over the sound of water cascading past on its way to rice fields. Roosters crow, birds and insects chirp; the geckos are quiet after a long night of orations.

            Frogs sang me to sleep, though my body rebelled at being asked to go to sleep at an hour when it is broad daylight at home. Day turned night abruptly as the jet engine’s hurled us across the Pacific from San Francisco.

            I woke at 4 a.m. resolved to lay in bed time dawn, sleeping in short bursts, relieved at the daylight at 6 a.m. I’ll go for my morning walk now, then breakfast at 8 served by Ketut on my lovely terrace surrounded by palms and bamboo and birds with bright azure, brilliant yellow, trilling calls. Ketut and her children will help teach me Indonesian and I will exchange English with them. She will teach me how to weave palm leaves into small offering baskets filled with flowers and rice to greet the gods each morning and evening. I am here and can hardly believe it.