Date: 24 May 11

Location of accommodation: Galle, Sri Lanka

Activities:  Walk about town, down to train station and back, clothes washing by hand.  finding a cheap food source in town (successful).

Money spent: 1000 Rs. Room

                         160 Rs.  Lunch

                           35 Rs.  Morning tea

                          160 Rs.  Supply shopping

Special experiences: meeting two best friends, a Buddhist and a Christian, in the ocean.

Insights:  Clothes washing by hand is an art. 

Even in super tourist town there is a locals-type rice curry joint for a decent      

meal at a decent price (

Thought of the day:  Embrace the skinny inside, cause you’ll never change the skinny outside.

Photo of the day:

Poem of the day:

She walks in to the apartment

in the city. She’s been numb

to loneliness for so long now:

a true believer in true love,

she knows when she’s not alone.

A green lantern light

is flashing through

the hallway of her residence.

She sees without her eyes and

knows there’s someone there.

“Ms. Kitty,” she calls out,

“S’that you?”

She forgets to turn on the light in her nervousness.

She follows the glow a few steps 

toward the kitchen door on the left,

sees Ms. Kitty eyes flashing in the dark

shining off the hallway wall

from inside,

breathes a sigh of relief,

until the lights fade out

and it’s still there,

the uncanny green ghost of a light,

shining through her bedroom wall.

She pushes open the door

half expecting some Clive Barker scene,

and stumbles slowly to the bed,

no longer holding the groceries she deposited

in the hallway beside the kitchen,

but rather clutching her cardigan at the neck.

And then she sees it:

a body,

wrapped in plastic,

all Laura Palmer Laura Palmer

lying on the bed,

sideways where the boots

won’t soil the sheets.

With trembling hand and fading heart

she turns it over,

and pulls back the plastic,

and the pounding in her heart

is swallowed

by a vast and hollow

emptiness

waiting to be filled:

waiting, against all hope,

to be filled

By This Man:

this Steve Rogers man

in his boots too old

for charity,

his rough necked

cacky trousers,

his Treat Williams hair,

and she whispers,

“He’s come back.

he’s come back not because

he had too,

or needed to.

But because he wanted to.

He’s come back because of me.”

Her mind racing back

filling with the vision

of the time when

she got lost in the Flower

Forest war,

all sparkling light

of poetry

written on every line,

and the sky enflamed

with hatred.

Crouching there between

the bombs and the fantasy

he had told her that she must go back.

“Go back to your home…” he’d said.

“No, I want to stay with you.”

“There’s nothing you can do here.

This is a war. Go back and wait for me.

I promise I will come.” His hand stroked her cheek,

the light was Camelot

and the armor of her knight

was the dancing of his eyes.

“I promise I will come,” he repeated,

yelling now above the blasts

of mortar shells,

machine guns firing tracers in the night.

“Go now, before it’s too late.

When the work is done I’ll come to you.

Follow the Word back home,

back to your bedroom,

back to your bed.

Follow the Word and don’t look back,

and when the work is done I’ll find you there.”

And so she had said goodbye to

the Flower Forest and its war

with the Spinning Wheel King

(for him the night has no stars),

and how long had it been

since she had forgotten the feeling

of her love?

How long had it been that she was

walking on faith,

inspired only by some vague

recollection of the light

of his eyes,

perhaps feeling it in her dreams,

but no more in her reality.

What if he had died?

What if he had lost?

No—these things were impossible.

She knew that they were impossible,

And now here he was,

asleep on her bed,

a refugee from the Twilight

Zone of dreamtime dream time,

the Flower Forest

breathing on the sheets

in her apartment in the city.

I walked down the hallways

Of the high school

On my way to catch a plane

To Gainesville,

The last place I wanted to go,

The only place I could fathom going to.

I passed her there,

She didn’t see me

But I saw her.

“Still not time,”

I whispered to myself,

And willing not to look back

I pushed ahead to my goal.

What goal?

What goal takes a man from love?

What goal must be accomplished

Before we can live in the Flower Forest,

Draped in rainbows

And laughing in the stars?

To my right a dance troupe

Practicing,

Rehearsing,

Auditioning.

I stop to have a look

And see a potential lover.

But why pursue another

When the one I want—

The one who is truly good for me-

The one who completes me

With herself not by complimenting me

But by magical unknowing

Just through being—

That one is behind me

And somehow I know I have

To circle back around to

Live again in the Flower Forest

With her. 

My rucksack’s tight,

The Spinning Wheel King

(there are no stars in his night)

awaits my entrance.

I must not be late.

And time out of joint

The hero of myself

Moves toward the higher

Harmony.

You might not understand why,

But I could give a damn.

Can you explain love,

Cause if you can I doubt you have ever

Experienced it.