I adore my soul partner. He's my best mate and makes me laugh. We pretty much do everything together, and that's the way we like it. A good friend of mine couldn't imagine her life being so glued to her man and they spend a lot of time apart. We're all different, I guess. In fifteen years we've only ever spend a handful of times separated, due to necessity over choice.

Yet there are times that the need for solitude feels like an irrepressible urge, like a wildness in me pulling. I'm not sure I need to explain it to him, such is the privacy of my thoughts in this regard. I know I'll be back, but it's like that feeling when I was a teenager, creeping out of the house - the tethers that bind need to be stretched, as if by doing so, you return a little more free, a little more you. A little more new.

I often get this space in the yoga room as practicing pulls me into a field of awareness that gives me this longed for freedom, but as we're on holiday and there's not a lot of decent yoga in this town, I'd have to practice on my own but in the room with him and that just won't do.

The roosters start here about 3 am, loud as fuck as they herald the I dont know what. I doze until 6, but my feet are twitching, the sea calling. As the dawn begins to lighten the sky I steal out of bed, pull on clothes, ease the sliding door open and slink down the laneways to the blackened beach.



The beach is black because we're under a volcano, as you may or may not have gathered from the last few posts. It's hard not to let the volcano filter into your thoughts around here, but for now, she's a sleeping under the shrinking moon that hangs like Agung's watcher in the breath hold between the night and morning.



The sea curls her fingers up the shore and plays with the pebbles in her bubbling fingers. They click clack together like rice inside a rainmaker. I am glad to be alone with these thoughts, my skin alive with the space around me, all mine, bar a dog or a chicken or the Balinese that are up too, smoking or throwing a pump in the water to pull the sea up to soak their bamboo to stop it drying out.



Ahead the sky is pulling on a new shirt, discarding it and tugging on another. The camera darkens it somewhat, giving beautiful images for instagram but not truly capturing the light.



A dog rushes at me with a stick, and I turn to throw it, to see Agung too is up and smoking at dawn. Turn your back on a volcano, and she'll do what she does it her own time and won't call you to see it - she's rather removed from the world of men and woman, altough I'm told an offering may appease her. In the 1963 volcanic eruption that killed hundreds, the Hindu temple was saved, seen as a sign by many that the worshipping was worthy enough.



And so I dance between sunrise and moonfall and Agung, feeling the warming rocks under my feet and expanding outward into the space around me. I want to swim, but I didn't bring bathers, and don't want to be arrested for swimming naked as I want to. I collect white coral shaped like hearts, black stones that I fancy. My backpack always secrets these tiny remnants from foreign lands where the best might sit on windowsills as little reminders of moments like these - broken crockery from Bagan, a piece of a stone windowsill from an abbey in Wales, a sea smoothed green tile from the bombed hotel in Dubrovnik, a glass vial of sand from the Sahara. What precious tiny things they are, meaningless to anyone else.



Returning, I lose my way a little. Jamie will laugh and tell me I shouldn't go out anywhere without him (he is joking, of course) but I like getting lost. It's how I find myself again.



By breakfast time I've found our topsy turvy laneway and found my way into the jungle where J. still lies sleeping. The roosters are still being cocks, and the pigs are grunting with hunger. Before long, the terrible Asian pop songs will drift over from the building site next door, the woman will start sweeping the paths of frangipani and asking if we need fresh towels, coffee, the room cleaned. But it's all do-able now - I've found my time alone, and everyone can come at me, because I'm new again.

---

Strange flowers, broken crockery and beachside accomodation. We choose jungle side as it suits our introverted nature.

---

And J. lies waiting sleepily, warm embrace and a willingness to look at my trinkets as if he too thinks they're precious stones. HIs favourite is the armless bug space man. I think he might be my favourite too. Did he go out walking, and get himself lost too?

---

---

Want to find more quality posts about helping the Earth and humanity and generally making the world a better place? Check out the #ecotrain and #tribesteemup trails, and consider adding them to your autovoting. Please ask if you're unsure what this might mean for you.

You can read about the 8 Pillars of TribeSteemUp here