…And The Stars Closed Their Eyes

Batuan, central Bali. A Wednesday at the beginning of February. The night’s darkness still blanketing the earth.

I awoke cold and shivering, huddled under my duvet with the wind causing my mosquito net to billow over me. I screwed my eyes shut and drew my knees to my chest. Knowing I needed to shut the windows behind the bed and close out the draught if I was to have any hope of more sleep. I ignored it all. Willing sleep to come anyway. It had been a late night, by my standards. Gone midnight. The previous evening spent listening and dancing to vibrant live jazz in Ubud.

As I stubbornly lay getting colder and colder I turned my mind from my goose-bumped skin to the stunning beauty that I had fallen asleep in just scant hours before. A cloudless sky. Midnight blue velvet punctured with the flickering neon white lights of stars and planets. A half moon. Her potent luminous energy bathing the world, reflected in the glassy mirrors of the recently flooded paddy fields around the house. Night music from the crickets and frogs. So still. Dreamlike. Breathtakingly beautiful.

A sharp gust of wind running over me drew me from my reverie and brought me back into the moment. I had to get up, close the windows and put a jumper on. I wanted more sleep and this was the only way I was going to get it. Begrudgingly I rolled over and slipped out from beneath the mosquito net. As I pulled my sarong around my shoulders the light beyond the windows caught my eye. Just a hint of deep magenta red to the east lighting the blackness. And there across the rice fields the shadows of Gunungs Agung, Abang and Batur. Bali’s sacred volcanoes waiting patiently for dawn.

The demon in my head told me to stop dilly-dallying. He was cold and he wanted back to bed without delay. The angel in my heart sang in my ear. Telling me to step outside ... to celebrate the birth of the new day, to absorb the magic of the moment. It wasn’t much of an argument. The angel won hands down. The demon slunk back to where he belonged. Sulking.

I slipped a shirt over my shoulders, wound a sarong round my waist and wandered out into the garden. To the bale’ next to the lotus pond. The geese greeted my arrival with loud cackling and much flapping of wings momentarily shattering the stillness. To my left the family temple. Next to that the towering silhouette of Agung. In front of me, beyond the pond, flooded rice terraces spilled away down to the river in the narrow gorge at the bottom of the valley.

Sheets of cloud with rippled bottoms painted pink lay across parts of the sky, laced through with ribbons of rich incandescent gold and bright turquoise blue. The water-filled clouds above reflecting this artist’s palette of light onto the water-filled fields below. Perfect elemental harmony.

Slowly, imperceptibly, the sun began his climb from below the edge of the world bringing with him the hopes and dreams that are woven into the tapestry of each new day. I watched, spellbound, as the cool wind traced his fingers sensuously over my cheeks before threading them through my hair. Across the fields cockerels crowed. A dog barked. Brightness replaced darkness and the stars closed their eyes.

In the moments before the sun raised his head over the feathered line of the horizon the world was ablaze with intense coloured light. Red, gold, orange, yellow, turquoise, lilac, emerald green, pink, white. The earth, air and ether vibrating with rainbow energy. And amongst it all, Agung. Majestic. Omnipotent.

With tropical swiftness the sun suddenly made his appearance above the world, casting bright shimmering golden light across all in his path with uninhibited abandon. Shouts from unseen faces in the fields. Clouds of tiny brown rice birds flew up as one into the air. Swooping this way and that. Their joy-filled aerial ballet echoing the emotion dancing through my soul.

I have never witnessed, never felt, a sunrise more beautiful.

As I sit here now I have tears in my eyes. Overwhelmed by the beauty that surrounds me. That welcomes me to each and every day. That embraces me as I fall asleep each night.

I am reminded once again that nothing happens in life without reason. Had the windows not been open, had the wind not been blowing, had I not woken feeling cold, had I listened to my demon instead of my angel, I would not have been drawn out into the world at 5.30am. I would have missed this most glorious dawn.

I am reminded of the need to Be. To go with the flow, as a river to the sea, because there really is no knowing what experiences are waiting for us just around the next corner as we journey through our lives. Experiences that could be missed because we’d rather be tucked up in bed than venturing forth into the unknown.

© Jacqueline Le Sueur 2006