Breathing Underwater at Manta Cove

When I was walking along the beach last night, an Indonesian man told me they needed one more person for a snorkel trip in the morning. They were going to see mantas he said, and to stop at other beautiful underwater spots while circling the islands of Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Penida. Time of departure, 9am.

“Ooh, that’s early,” I said.

I had arrived the day before on Nusa Ceningan for a solo 2-week writing retreat.

“I’ll see how I feel in the morning,” I said.

And so when I awoke this morning I thought, “Robin you are here to write your book, so write.” Another voice, “But it’s only 3 hours out of the day, and you want to exercise anyway and you can write all afternoon and evening.” A third voice, “Let’s see how it flows.”

A few minutes later, the electricity went off in my bungalow. It was 8:30 am. I’ve noticed that the electricity “goes out” for a couple of hours in the morning and again in the afternoon. My cabin, which sits in direct sunlight on the beach all day, was quickly turning into a sauna. Oh what the heck, I’m going. I climbed out of bed, dressed, packed my bag and met the boat at the harbor.

Our first stop was Manta Cove where there is a cave where the sea water is breathed in and exhaled out. Into the cool cerulean soup I went. And drifted towards the cave.

In less than 5 minutes a large dark shadow appeared like a space ship, coming to within inches of me, and then gliding out of site.

Oh my God, I have seen a manta ray, and up close!

Before long there was another and then another. Darth Vader-like, the manta rays arrived with mouths agape. I floated quietly gazing into their eyes saying silently, “You are such a beautiful creature”. Each one (there must have been 8-10 in all!) would appear, look me in the eye, then swoop away, bank like a plane, and return. Flashes of light sparkled through the water from divers wielding cameras on the ocean floor. I flapped my arms slowly, gracefully, mirroring (thank you NLP training!) their movements, and I did not follow or approach them, but waited for them to come to me, and come they did. Again and again.

It was as if they knew that I was loving and appreciating them, and they were digging it.

They had wing spans at least 5 times the length of my body, triangular bodies, heads rounded, mouths open to display gills and hollowness inside. Underneath they had large evenly placed gills on a white torso. And a long tail from which I noted no stinger or threatening barb. We curved around each other, beings of light and love.

I wondered briefly if they were dangerous (vaguely remembering a recent story about an Australian travel adventurer who was stung by a ray directly in the heart) and then was glad I hadn’t asked before we left. Again and again they came and we practically greeted each other with a kiss.

AMAZING!!!

Exploring the over and underwater world of Nusa Ceningan, Indonesia

In snorkeling, breath is the main event, loud, and present, like a metronome. I-Am-Here-Now-in-This-Moment breaths. What irony that I’d felt a tinge of disappointment this morning when I realized there would be no time for my breath practice – because here I am now breathing, deeply, rhythmically – underwater.

Hypnotic, soothing, effortless while all around is the beauty and wonder of the underwater world. What better way to go with the flow than snorkeling, where with the smallest effort you move like the fish with the fish?

I spent 3 weeks last month trying to push through a last minute visa to India so that I could attend a trauma release breath work class in Goa, India. One day while driving back from Danpasar after yet another failed attempt, the words “No more pushing the river” came, and I surrendered.

A few days ago, the trauma release breath work teacher I had hoped to train with emailed that he and his girlfriend, a tantra teacher and life coach, will be coming to Ubud in March and would like to trade a room in my home for personal training. Both tantra and trauma release are modalities I’ve wanted to incorporate into my breath work. Two teachers, coming to me, now that I am floating effortlessly.

I kept riding the current through February and ended up in Thailand where I met with old friends and new ones who re-invigorated me with their love. I interviewed Chiang Mai expatriates for the Thailand chapter in my book, and rode elephants bareback at an eco resort, which just happened to be perched over a flowing river. It was there where I met the owner Alexa, whose story will bring light to the chapter about Thailand’s expatriates – a chapter which had been leaning a bit too far to the dark side.

I will return to Alexa’s Chai Lai Orchid Eco Resort next year to offer trauma release breath work to the girls she donates her profits to – girls at risk for sex slavery. A greater purpose for my Clarity breathwork training last summer had appeared.

And as if that weren’t enough, 2 screenwriters and several writers have appeared in the past few weeks to support me with my book.

Life is coming to meet me where I am. Bringing me exactly what I need and much more now that I am still.

There is a popular meditation and way of being called “Following Life”. I like to think of what is happening to me now as “Life Following Me” when I stop pushing and directing it.

I love warm seawater

In the water I am transported to a primordial world where I once lived – Mother Earth’s underwater show of sacred geometry, repeated in shapes underwater as overwater and within and without in every living and non-living thing.

I’m sure I once lived in the sea as I am so at home and happy here. We all began, come to think of it, floating effortlessly, safely, in the wombs of our mothers complete with our own private snorkels, until our time to be born and breathe on our own arrived.

I think of my home of Ubud, Bali as a womb – warm, wet, and feminine – a bubble in which I have gestated, received nourishment, and grown. And I’ve been feeling vague contractions lately, a knowing that my time to emerge and to meet life in the light is nigh.

When I first attended a Transformational breath work session 3 years ago, I met the Divine within in such a cathartic way that the name “Transformational” was a an understatement. I was hooked. For God’s sake, it was here, inside all along. All I have to do is breathe deeply, evenly, for at least an hour to access it.

It’s occurred to me since I began breath meditation, that the things I have loved most throughout my entire life – riding a bicycle as a child, running through the woods with my dog, swimming, cross country skiing, ecstatic dancing, hiking in nature, connecting intimately with a lover, meditating, to name a few – all involve breathing deeply, evenly and consciously. Nourishing every cell in my body with oxygen, love, life force, the Divine. It was about the breath all along.

I have missed my Ubud community and our group breath sessions this past month – and I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

Breathing under water.

Taking a break from writing at Dream Beach, Nusa Lumbongan, Indonesia

Robin Sparks is a Level Four Clarity Breathwork Facilitator, available for private and group breathwork sessions. She’ll be leading a weeklong workshop at Kumara Sakti in October 2013 in Ubud, Bali called Breathe Life Into Your Book.
For details email Robin at Robin@RobinSparks.com

Dreaming at Dream Beach

Feb. 19, 2013
Nusa Lumbongan, Indonesia

I dreamed 5 nights ago that I met the Pope.

He was walking down an avenue surrounded by many people. A group of men were with him, bald, wearing vestments. The Pope, kind, soft and warm, approached me and looking me in the eye said, “Will you prepare a meal and bring it to me? I am hungry.”

I said, “Yes, I’d be honored,” and I turned to go home to prepare a plate of lasagne (of all things). But as so often happens in dreams, I could not find the lasagne I thought was in the refrigerator. OK, there were a few bites left on a plate, but that would not do. And so I sat out to find a meal for the Pope.

I met some women in the street and told them of my dilemma and they handed me a plate of food, their food, and said, “Here give this to the Pope.” It wasn’t what I’d had in mind, but it would have to do. And then I began to look for him.

So much time had passed. Had I lost him? Where was He?

I had promised.

“He is up ahead,” some people said. “You can still find him.” I began to walk looking for the Pope carrying the plate of food in my hand.

And then I woke up.

No big deal right? That’s what I thought. Weird, I dreamed about the Pope.

I rarely remember my dreams – maybe one or two a year is my average – although I’ve recently made an effort to change that.

And so I casually mentioned the dream to another guest dining with me at Dream Beach – yes, that is the actual name of where I have holed up for 2 weeks on the island of Nusa Lubongan to write.

Tescha looked startled and proceeded to tell me that the Pope has been in the news lately. That he is going to step down. “You know about that right?” she said.

“What?” I said, goose bumps coming up all over my body.

It was the first I’d heard regarding the Pope.

I haven’t read the news since I left San Francisco on November 1. I have blocked it from coming up on the internet. I have been around no television sets for several months, and have no clue what is going on outside my very immediate world, per my choice, when I am in Asia. I am not Catholic and the Pope rarely, if ever, enters my consciousness.

What did it mean? I wondered. And why now? The fact that I’d dreamed about the Pope when he is in the international news gave me the heebie jeebies. The good kind. A dreamtime example of collective consciousness?

My personal dream translation:
I have received a call for home delivery. A big one. And the Pope is hungry.

THE LUTE WILL BEG

You need to become a pen
In the Sun´s hand.

We need for the earth to sing
Through our pores and eyes.

The body will again become restless
Until your soul paints all its beauty
Upon the sky.

Don´t tell me, dear ones,
That what Hafiz says is not true,

For when the heart tastes its glorious destiny
And you awake to our constant need
for your love

God´s lute will beg
For your hands.

Hafiz

food!

Indonesian sunset

I have come alone to an Indonesian island called Nusa Lumbongan for a writing retreat.

Why a solo writing retreat when I live on the bucolic island of Bali? Because in Ubud there is just so much life, friends and distraction, that I have to hide away at least once a year to focus on writing. I am most creative when still.

And so here I am on February 14, 2013 on an almost deserted island.

“High Pea Allen Times,” the waiter said placing a young coconut in front of me on my table just a few feet from the sea. “Excuse me, what did you say?” I asked. He said it again. “High Pea Allen Times.” What??? I thought. I didn’t want to ask him to repeat it a 3rd time. And then it came to me, “Ooooh, Happy Valentines?” I asked. “Yes,” he said with a sweet smile of connection.

The sand is ivory, the sea sapphire, and the air a heavy damp blanket.

All that is left to do is write.

Robin at Devil\’s Tear

Back together again

My children and my former husband are boarding a plane in Bali at this very moment to return to California. As 2012 dovetails into 2013, I’m here to share with you something that is big for me. A long time dream of mine has come true.

My family is whole once again. Different and whole. We are one.

We were a unit decades ago and then something common happened. We grew in different directions, but instead of acknowledging what was happening and arranging paths that would serve all of us, it was as if a bomb exploded, leaving in its wake, a battlefield of injured and bleeding, with scars and pain that went on for far too long.

I’m here to tell you that, as of this past holiday, the war is over.

A few days before Christmas my 2 adult children, my daughter’s boyfriend, and my former husband arrived from the other side of the planet to the tiny island where I now live in Indonesia. We lived together in a foreign country with crazy drivers, rented motorcycles (oh yes, we were a motorcycle gang of 5 in Ubud, each with their own Honda…Did you see us weaving through cars all in a row?) My son surfed, we snorkeled in Lombok, relaxed in my jungle home, dined at new restaurants each night, attended a concert in Kuta to bring in the New Year where Michael Franti wrapped his arm around my son and danced with him. We ran and rode through the rain, waited out the rain, soaked up the sun when it made brief appearances, swam in the pool, surrendered to nearly daily massages, shot off fireworks over the rice paddies (“Man! You’d never be see anything like this in America!” my son exclaimed as the rockets did flare.) Laughter – lots of it. Accepting. Loving. Appreciating. Listening. Loving. Being.

We are family once again, sama sama in Balinese parlay, setting out into the world on separate paths, only now, with common heart. We’ve got each other’s backs and we respect our individual journeys. It is OK that we no longer meld in one direction as once we did. All faux pas, hurts and trespasses are forgiven and forgotten. Hoʻoponopono – I am sorry. Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you.

As expatriates, it comes with the territory that living far from “home” can result in not only physical but emotional distance from our families of origin. Healing at home and more time with our families is something I’m wagering that most of us long for. I know I do.

This concept of Oneness has been a biggie for me since I can remember thinking about these things. I was born into a family in California that believed that the human race is divided into 2 camps – the saved and the unsaved. I never could wrap my child heart around the fact that our neighbors not to mention foreigners – all those “unbelievers” out there, were, well, “bad”. They didn’t seem all that different from us. I sensed something in them that was beautiful and born of love – same as us. Seven years ago, I named my Turkish company – a business to place western tourists in real Muslim neighborhoods – Oneworld. And in retrospect, it seems that my whole life has been about scaling the metaphorical walls that keep us apart. It’s the reason I’ve spent the past decade not only meeting, but living among the Others on 4 continents in 7 countries.

Them as it turns out is Us – in business, politics, love, and life.

I have discovered that every single one of us – White, Black, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Asian, South American, European… rich, poor, powerful, disenfranchised, young, and old…wants one thing more than any other. Love. Unconditional love.

We just go about trying to get it in different ways. If I can remember that every annoying behavior, every hurtful word or action is a cry for unconditional love, I can love each person as they are, including and most especially myself. When I offer unconditional love in the face of “off” behavior, so called perpetrators melt into the love that we, every single one of us, crave. And then they, make that we, no make that me, no longer need to hate, hurt, or separate.

Yep, this holiday was a big one.

I celebrated the coming and arrival of 12/21/12 – the end of that world as we knew it – with my Ubud tribe. All the discomfort, the pushing, the fear, the struggle, the pain, of this past decade, has been childbirth.

And life begins, as all we know, at home. It was essential to my own healing journey, that I set my familial relationships right before I could hope to heal anyone else.

Yesterday my former husband shared with me his experience of his mother and then his wife dying within 2 weeks of each other. Followed a few months later by his own near death – a sign from God he believes, that his life as he knew it then (60+ hour work weeks) was over. Within a year he moved to Mexico to do surgery among the Tarahumara Indians in the Copper Canyon of Mexico. He stops at the drug cartel blockades between Mexico and the USA as he drives supplies back and forth. (Another doctor who tried to outrun a blockade saw his wife shot to death) He flies in small planes to deliver care to those who cannot walk the many miles through the mountains to the tiny hospital. Amazingly, I had a vision many years ago in which I saw him doing exactly this, and I shared it with him then.

My daughter will go back to researching and writing public policy on America’s education system in the hopes of helping the children she so dearly loves. Her boyfriend will return to creating entertainment in Hollywood. And my son will go back to engineering weather satellites that open windows on our world illuminating the fact that we are, after all, Oneworld.

I will keep writing the stories that remind us how much more we are alike than different and I will continue bringing together teachers and students around the world. I’ll pick up again, what I began last summer as a Clarity Breathwork facilitator (my latest jet fuel for re-remembering Oneness).

There is most certainly a bend in the road ahead that’s not on any road map I am currently holding. I don’t need to know where the next turn is. With my family beneath me, love restored, forgiveness complete, I am now ready.

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND HEAPS OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
TO EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!!!

[caption id="attachment_1598" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Lindsay and her boyfriend Vince with Bruce at Balinese performance"]

Ryan Surfing

Sultanahmet Skyline

I am up hours before the sun speeding in a taxi to Ataturk Airport in Istanbul to assist Iraqi refugees who are headed to the country that I have voluntarily left behind.

Refugee: One who has crossed an international border and is unwilling or unable to return home because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

If I count the rednecks in America including some who have been in political office recently…nah, I probably still wouldn’t qualify as a refugee although I often feel like one.

So who are these Iraqi refugees and why are they leaving, and why are they headed to the USA?

They are Chaldean Christians, one of the world’s oldest religions, in existence since the first century. They constitute what remains of the original, non-Arabic population of the Middle East. All use Aramaic, the language spoken by Christ. Despite successive persecutions and constant pressures, Christianity has continued in Iraq since brought there allegedly by Thomas the Apostle.

Before the toppling of Saddam Hussein, Christians and Muslims lived together peacefully in Iraq. Chaldean Christians were mostly middle and upper class professionals. But as a result of the US-led surge the struggle with al-Qaeda moved to the city of Mosul, the home of Chaldean Christians. In misplaced anger towards the West, Muslims have increased demands for Chaldeans to convert. Death threats, the looting of homes and businesses, kidnappings, bombings, and murder have become increasingly commonplace. This past March the Chaldean archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul was abducted and murdered. Numerous priests and deacons have been tortured and shot or beheaded. And at least 40 churches have been burned to the ground.

I am here today because the United States requires an American be present at the airport for a final identity check of all political and religious refugees headed to the United States. The job pays little and costs a night’s sleep, but I come at least once per week because it pulls me from my ant hill existence and lands me in an experience that is raw and real.

Fifty adults and children stand in line at the check out counters – next to 2 bags per person, each weighing a maximum of 23 kilos, containing all the belongings they will take with them into their new lives. They have waited for months, some for years for this day. It is 5 AM. They’ve been here since 2 AM after a 6-hour bus ride from various satellite cities throughout Turkey. They are excited like children the night before Christmas.

Sweden has taken in the most Iraqi refugees — 40,000 – while the United States, which had only taken 1,608 by the end of 2007, has implemented a program for receiving up to 15,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of 2008. Around 500,000 people have fled Bush’s new Iraq and its violence, mass abductions and economic meltdown and most of them have been Chaldean Christians.

Arim standing with his family of five says, “My life is in Iraq, my work as an English teacher. My home. My friends. But lately they are making it impossible for us to stay. When my daughter entered university to become a teacher like me, she was told to convert to Islam or she would be kidnapped and raped. It was then that we knew we had to go.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to convert to Islam?” I ask.

“We would never do that. Our fathers, our grandfathers, their fathers, for 2000 years we have been there. We will die before turning our backs on our ancestors, our faith.”

Arim and his family

After hours in the checkout line shuffling through all the documents, checking passport photos with faces, police letters, sponsor letters signed, the group is ready to go.

But wait. There’s a glitch.

Someone notices that the photo on a security letter for one of the young men does not match the photo on his identity card. A government bureaucrat hundreds of miles away in the Turkish capital of Ankara apparently transposed photos on the documents by accident. Calls are frantically made, but government offices are not open at this early hour. The International Office of Migration officer here with me tells the family that she is sorry. They will not be able to go.

The mother collapses to the floor, pressing her hands together in the universal sign of prayer and begs, “Please, please, help us. We have no money.” The officer looks away, there is nothing she can do. The woman’s sons and husband try to console her, veiling their own disappointment behind cultural machismo. The IOM employee continues trying to call offices that are not yet open. She cannot find a solution.

After at least an hour of pleading and crying and desperate attempts to talk the IOM officer into letting them go, the family concedes that their worst fears have come true. The other passengers look on with a mixture of pity and relief as the family shuffles out of the airport, the father and son holding up the mother by her elbows, daughters trailing behind, heads hung low.

“Where will they go?” I ask the IOM personel. “I don’t know, “ she says her face a blank mask, and turns back to processing the remaining 44 refugees.

They are checked through, documents combed repeatedly at checkpoint after checkpoint, and then the only remaining gateway is passport control where once approved, the refugees will be granted entry to the other side – the side of the airport full of glittering duty free shops and restaurants, a sort of paradise before getting on a plane to heaven. Even I, without an airplane ticket, am relegated to watching from outside the pearly gates.

One by one each passes through the barrier after saying goodbye to family and friends on the other side that wave them on. Only one elderly woman remains, melded to a young adult man, her tear racked face glued to his, bodies entwined as if to imprint a memory.

I’d been looking away all morning gulping down rising emotions and silently repeating the mantra: be professional Robin, be professional. But it’s useless now. The tears spill in a torrent and I gulp down sobs that rise up in my throat. I watch this mother saying goodbye to a son she will likely never see again.

My son is in America and I am in Turkey. She will go to America and her son will remain in Turkey.

They pull apart as her name is called over the loudspeaker, and the old woman goes through the gate that separates her new life from the old one, turning to gaze one last time into the eyes of her son. At that moment she scans the crowd behind the barrier and our eyes meet. Unbelievably, she returns to where I stand, reaches over the barrier and wraps her arms around me. We stand there, a woman whose name I do not know, whose language I do not speak, holding each other. And in this moment she knows me, and I know her.

And then she is gone along with the others to America.

Today is Thanksgiving, and I will eat turkey in Turkey with American friends. I will celebrate Thanksgiving as never before, grateful that I am free to be here because I am an American. And I vow to never, ever complain about filing my taxes again. (A vow I have admittedly broken since writing this article).

Postnote: The family that was turned away at the airport in this article, boarded a plane for America 6 days later.

How You Can Help:

Church World Service (CWS)
www.churchworldservice.org

Domestic & Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS)
Episcopal Migration Ministries
www.episcopalchurch.org/emm/

Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC)
www.ecdcinternational.org

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
www.hias.org

Bureau of Refugee Programs
Iowa Department of Human Services
www.dhs.state.ia.us/homepages/dhs/refugee

International Rescue Committee (IRC)
www.intrescom.org

Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service (LIRS)
www.lirs.org

U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI)
www.refugees.org

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)
www.usccb.org/mrs

World Relief (WR)
www.wr.org

Ganesha and Central Shopping Center share real estate

I love gnarly shiny Bangkok with its jarring juxtapositions. Vendors selling anything and everything you didn’t know you needed (vibrator anyone?) for miles and miles along potholed smelly sidewalks, next to towering air conditioned shopping malls, the likes of Terminal 21 – a play on a 5 story airport, each floor representing a different country. The ease of speeding from one gristly or glittery part of the city to another on the Sky Train. Thais holding smoking incense sticks at their heads while bowing to temples with golden Buddhas in the shadows of mega skyscrapers.

Billboard in Bangkok as seen from a sky train station

I ate a hurried meal of naan and curry on the street of Bangkok’s little Arabia, and watching the people pass by in the streets was like being on the film set of Arabian Nights – not entirely surprising considering both the Pakistani and Dubai embassies are located nearby.

Bangkok reminds me of Bombay in “Shantaram”, the book I am currently reading. It is the biggest, most bustling, economically alive melting pot of a city I’ve seen in the world. It’s good, bad, beautiful and ugly all stirred together. And it works.

I am here to get my visa renewed. Easy enough to speed to the Indonesian Embassy across the steamy city on the highly efficient and cooled sky train. And it was no surprise when I arrived at 1PM – the hour advertised on the Indonesian Embassy website that they open – that someone had pasted a piece of paper with the number ’2′ over the ’1′. So to kill time, I thumbed through hundreds of pirated movies and music at the nearby Phuntip Plaza – a 4 story shopping mall entirely dedicated to all things digital.

I am also in Bangkok for my yearly physical exam at one of the world’s most medically advanced and inexpensive (by US standards) hospitals. Kings and queens and just about everyone else with even a little bit of money or means in Asia come to Bumrungrad for medical care. Today in the waiting room I met a pilot from Ethiopia, a woman from Bangladesh, and an American couple living in China. I saw women wearing black burkas with only eye slits sitting next to women in flirty, silk lace-edged veils, and men with table cloths on their heads and white pillboxes, some wearing white flowing gowns (and these weren’t hospital gowns), and I have no idea who and where all these people come from. But come they do.

See the story I wrote on this hospital in 2003. (Scroll a ways down on this blog roll).

I stood next to an older guy outside the elevator in the hospital who when I asked for directions to Building A, sounded like he was from Iowa, and then I noticed his name tag said Chief Executive Officer, Bumrungrad Hospital. Dennis Brown showed me the short cut to get to the next building over for my next appointment.

Next time I come to Bangkok I’m going to check out the Chulalongkorn Hospital where they have a snake farm out back.

With Love from Bangkok,
Robin

International Healthcare in Bangkok

Bumrungrad Hospital

Remember when nurses in the U.S. used to wear these cute hats?

multi-lingual elevator buttons

From my favorite blogstress, Daniel LaPorte:

“I want my day to feel like jazz.
I want kissing to feel like eating an orange off the tree from Tuscany.
I want my next success to feel like Adele must feel with her latest album.
I want my body to feel like a Jaguar in a new open field.
I want smiling to feel like mangoes.
I want my friendships to feel like sandalwood oil, and bowls of popcorn, and hand-knit, with Vodka mixers, served up in a red tent.
I want my nervous system to feel like The Buddha must have felt when he discovered The Middle Way.
I want my gigs to feel like Jimmy Page playing Kashmir, and Gaga doing a Born This Way finale, with some Leonard Cohen tenderness.
I want my neighborhood to feel like a new Jason Mraz song.
I want my integrity to feel like the Hope Diamond.
I want my money-making to feel like walking though a vineyard, surveying ripeness, a production of sun and earth for craft and pleasure.
I want my word to feel like gold bullion.
I want my laughter to feel like electric pineapple children.
I want the end of the day to feel like a happy quiet baby.
I want being of service to feel like a Squaw mixing herbs into healing paste for warriors.
I want my philanthropy to feel like a cosmic Queen on her best day.
I want my challenges to feel how Siddhartha felt when the left the kingdom.
I want my love to feel like a gorgeous secret that only he and I know. For eternity.
I want my writing to feel like Citrine, and Jack Kerouac with a fresh buzz on.
I want my ideas to feel like sunrise.”

Nice huh? Thanks Daniel LaPorte for sharing your yummy way with words.

In 2009, I moved to Bali. Three years later, I still consider Istanbul one of my “homes”. Last week I returned from a whirlwind business trip to Old Constantinople. Here are a few visual memories from my 10 days there.

Photos were shot with an iPhone 4.

Sunrise on the Bosphorus

A Turkish lamp shop on Yuksek Kaldirim Caddesi near Galata Tower

Balat neighborhood

Turkish teapot in my apartment

Balat

the making of manti in Balat

fresh squeezed juice for sale on Istiklal Cadessi

durum and fresh juice for sale on Istiklal Cadessi

alley off of Istiklal Cadessi

Trolley on Istiklal Cadessi, a 2 mile long pedestrian (mostly ) walkway in modern Istanbul

Istiklal Cadessi, the dining and entertainment center of Istanbul

Turkish sweets

Islamic gravestone at Cihangir Mosque

Olives and tea, quintessential Turkey

Lunar eclipse over the Bosphorus Bridge

The view of Sultanahmet from Terrace Three