being back

it's funny to be back. i'm different and lisbon is different and the world is different. yet it feels like i'm back. somewhere, somehow, in a way. i'm close to my best friend and we're close to my ocean. in "the honorary consul" graham greene says that the friends you share your childhood with, seem to never grow old. and i think it's really beautiful how they keep parts of you that no longer live anywhere else. this usually blows my mind. but now i'm in such a tranquil acceptive mood that i just smile at it and think that of course it is like this, and i think it's lovely :)

meanwhile i got a crazy allergy on my last days in indo. i have a rash all over my body and it itches like crazy. it started on the first day of the reiki course and i actually think it came from all the moving of energy through me. skin is something that always fascinated me (some of you with fabulous skin diseases know how much i admire them!) and i think it's the perfect part of my body to show me how strongly this reiki course affected me. my skin makes the border between me and the world, and other people, and other things. as you know, i often don't feel it there, and merge into the world, or another being or another thing. of course with all the bali healing and all the exchanges of energy and all the demons and the spirits around me in bali... that has clearly been in revision! also... the allergy is making me be all swollen and it makes me look at how much space i take in the world. and at an embryological level, skin comes from the same cells that later create the nervous system - at some point in the beginning of this great adventure they are together :) and that brings me back to a part of me that has been totally shaken up in the last however many months and has been changing and adjusting and exploring and this rash for me shows how things get so much out of balance to find equilibrium again, it shows it visually so that i don't forget that this great feeling i have at the moment is the result of a lot of work, a lot of determination and a great deal of inner strength :) it's not that i just feel like this because i'm having a good day, but i worked hard to get myself here! and that is a different thing entirely :)