Thank You, Leijay...

I said I was going to stay for 4 days. 4 days turned into 12. Me and Bandula were just darting through Galle city in his tuk-tuk, wrapping up what we needed to wrap up for me to get my passport back so that I can make it on a 3 AM flight out of Colombo this morning. The 5 day cricket match had just ended. Sri Lanka won. I don't know if Murali broke the all time mark of wickets broke but the city was buzzing. A magical haze was either floating in or out. I felt sentimental and attached to this place, then like we were men about town as we flew in and out of markets, in and out of shops, me and my boy. Whatever happened in Galle and Sri Lanka, I never expected. The comfort and pace I found here, at this place called Leijay in a literal corner of the world, I never expected. And now...now I'm leaving, always leaving.

Sri Lanka v. India

It's raining a lot here in Sri Lanka - so much that when it does, I feel like the world might be coming to an end. On wednesday, I finally get my visa to go into India. I don't know how much time I am going to be spending there, only that I recently decided I could not wait for another visa in another country anytime soon, could not allow anything in this world to be in control of when and where I am going but me...

Unawatuna & Galle

I'm pretty sure I've started posts in the past with a line that goes something like let me tell you how precious I am...

And I'd use it again, but for fear of redundancy, I'll go in a more direct direction and not try so hard to sound cute - the last fucking thing I would ever try and sound like. I don't know why I am the way I am - I think we all have nuances that to others would seem petty and not exactly favorable and easy to break or reform...but in reality, make us exactly who we are - like we lag in some areas only to thrive in other, unidentifiable ones. I was standing in line for Sri Lankan customs, realizing I had done self check-in at the airport in KL, realizing no one had looked at my ticket and passport at the same time, realizing that there was a very real possibility that the visa restrictions I have been trying to ignore for the last 2 months would finally catch up to me. I walked up to the guy checking me out in Colombo with my fingers crossed from the yellow line, literally. If you were behind me in line, seeing me sweat, believing in voodoo...I'm certain you would have been certain a mule was slipping through before I slipped through.

Two days ago, sitting in my room, not sleeping, I had this feeling about the kingdoms I was about to enter, India and China, and that traveling like a cowboy, light and sexy as it may have been up until that point, was going to have me waiting for visas in two countries for at least 5 business days each...which turned out to be both true and then not as bad as it could have been. I am at a house away from town, in the middle of what fees like a jungle, staying with a group of people that feel like a family, entirely not worried about my own survival.

Sri Lanka...

Yvonne tells me to make sure that if I want to go swimming at night, to wear shoes walking across the grounds, that at night, the bird that eats the scorpions from the grass is gone or sleeping or can't see them. Then she said something about lemon and drawing the poison but not to worry too much because they're not the ones that will cause death. There are two dogs living at the house and they both growl at me. Monkeys, big black ones, are swinging in the trees 50 yards away. Their babies are everywhere. Bandula says that on Sundays, they surround the entire complex. I am comfortable here.