I touched down in Bali and within hours was back on the superhighway that sometimes can be life here. Go directly to Writers Club, no unpacking necessary. Ideas flying, poems read aloud, voices rising and falling like waves. I sat, listened, deeply listened. The listening empties you out and fills you again.

Afternoon meditation under a banyan tree, rooted in the Plum Village tradition, Thích Nhất Hạnh’s teachings drifted through the air. Gratitude is our practice. Gratitude in the ley lines, gratitude in the vortexes that hum beneath this volcanic island. Gratitude in the chaos - and gratitude for my own internal chaos, too.

The next day I traded the stillness of breath for the rough of the sea. A trip across the strait, tanks loaded, fins dangling. We dropped into the deep at Manta Point, and there they were, grace itself, winged and weightless, gliding through light. Next site, SD (Bahasa Indonesia for Primary School), and the drift carried us gentle and slow, along coral walls, the current in command. It was immersion in every sense, salt mixing with my tears until I couldn’t tell one from the other. The ocean reminding me how to feel safe, how to belong, how to feel cared for by nature.

Living between two worlds can feel like being crushed by a meteor, but underwater, the pieces fit again, Kintsugi style. I came up almost whole.

November in Bali is its own season. The heat thickens. The air is heavy. Clouds stack up like gray mountains on the horizon and the first rains fall. The island exhales. The energy shifts. The frogs return. Ants rearrange their empires overnight. It’s no longer the postcard Bali most people imagine.

Wet is the season of resilience. The time when prayers are louder, the offerings are soaked with humidity, the streets flood just enough to slow you down. You move through the water, through the noise, through yourself. The inner journey begins in earnest.

My first time at the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival, and what a magical blend of storytelling, activism, connection, and conversation. Days of masterclasses, ideas, laughter, new friendships filled mind and heart. Listening to Pico Iyer talk about his friendships too, with Leonard Cohen and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, felt like sitting at the feet of grace itself. Love, simplicity, kindness. And more love.

Craig Leeson shared his hero’s journey, parasailing from the tops of glaciers into valleys endangered by them. His optimism on display and I share it completely. The same spirit echoed in the words of Augustinus Wibowo, Thomas Mayo, Melati Wijsen, and Kinchem Hegedus. Poetry slams, performances, and stories carried through the days and nights, alive with lushness and the joy of creating together.

And then the reminders. To slow down. To breathe. To remember that we are not machines. To rediscover the art of stillness. We don’t do nothing enough, one of the presenters remarked, echoing the words of his grandfather, speaking of a childhood spent fishing the rivers of the Northern Territories.

While I was fangirling my favorite authors, my crew was surfing Medewi, hosting a beach barbecue, and watching the Dodgers win the World Series. Something for everyone this week in Bali.

The island, as always, holds its contradictions with grace. Bali lives between worlds, ancient and modern, sacred and commercial, real and replicated. Spirituality here has been borrowed, blended, distorted, but somehow the truth remains. It is the gift of the Balinese. They still rise before dawn to place offerings of flowers and rice at my doorstep. The smell of incense. The sound of gamelan. The rhythm of devotion.

Here we are, traveling through our cycles of becoming. Facing the challenges. Learning the lessons. Returning changed. The mud and the lotus. The chaos and the calm.

That’s November in Bali.

That’s the journey, always.

Aham Brahmasmi

I am the universe.

I am rupture.

Broken open, expanding, remade.

I am exploding.

I am breath.

I am where life begins.

I am the crater still warm from the kiss of a falling star.