Yellow Coconut in Balinese is Nyuh Kuning, which is also the name of a lovely little town south of Ubud, close to the school Clara will be attending come January 10th. Yellow Coconut is a variety you see on many of the coconut palms growing in this region of Bali (perhaps beyond as well).
I am accustomed to your typical brown coconut and especially love those yummy Thai coconuts that you can find in the U.S. The Balinese Yellow Coconut is different — it is actually yellow in color, smaller in size and it seems to have less fat and heaviness. A little more sour yet refreshing, like drinking aloe vera juice. Still sweet and light and produce yellow coconut oil.
Why Yellow Coconut? As I launch this blog and determine how and what to share — both on the inner and outer planes — the yellow coconut has presented itself as a vehicle for my expression. As I am fed by the fruits of Bali, I am taking Bali into me and allowing it to become a part of me, and thus to be transformed by it. This is how I want to express what Bali is to me.
Bali offers such an abundance in sights, sounds, flavors, traditions, etc. that I could easily be swept into writing a journalistic travel blog about everything new we are experiencing here. With all of tourists swarming the streets of Ubud flashing cameras at everything that moves (and standing still), I’m sure its easy to find this sort of account all over the web. While I will, of course, share accounting of our experiences here, my intention is to capture the quiet magic of Bali, underneath all of the rich sights and sounds.
Let me push pause for a moment here. . .as I meditate each day and connected with this land, I know enough to realize that one cannot capture the magic of Bali. The incredible profundity of magical tradition and inherent magic within the land, be it from some special cosmological forces or who knows what, is beyond anything I have experienced or can comprehend at the present.
I know enough after a month and a half of living here to realize that I have only begun to scratch the surface of what is available to discover. The route to that discovery not through anything one could understand with logic or in books — although I’m sure there would be a lot of fascinating things to learn. Bali wisdom is gentle like the desert — it doesn’t jump right out and flaunt itself to you.
Of course now that Eat, Pray, Love has sensationalized Balinese healers, there are plenty of opportunities to pay 500,000 rupiah and receive some sort of magical download. Its like a mystical dog and pony show. . .whatever works!
So when I say “I will capture the magic,” my intention is to allow the magic to know me and me to know it, thus being transformed by the magic of Bali and sharing that experience with you. In that, what I share is me, my experience and the alchemy of Bali.
So I look at this blog as alchemy and thus invite you to be a part of it. I would invite you to share your impressions, your questions, feelings and your own inner alchemy. In this way, this blog will be a living, breathing creation of those who share themselves here.
We arrived in Bali at 2:30am on November 14th. We were well worn after days of air travel and touching ground in five airports (Portland, LA, Seoul Korea, Jakarta and finally Denpasar — Bali’s international hub). The smallness of the Denpasar airport was comforting to arrive in after packing up our entire U.S. life and casting off into the great unknown on the other side of the planet. As we is small and the car was waiting at the curb right outside baggage claim. We flew into Denpasar, when is the international hub on Bali and a driver, who’s family lives in a farming region of western Bali, was there to greet us.
