in foreign lands

I'm now in fair Bali, with boots on the ground, my home in a foreign land I have here found. New friendships they blossom, old ones re-awake, there's housing to manage and cops on the take. Horizons expanding, without and within, an old life is ending, a new one begins. Mosquitoes are everywhere, biting through skin – not where it is thick though but blood-fed and thin. The stars are aligning, and all seems just right, I'm learning to cherish praise, setback, and slight. The trick is to stay in the now and the here, to put from the mind what might happen next year, to fret not about what occurred in the past, to keep to the moment with daring and class. So onward, brave warriors, keep up the fight, until the unyielding should snuff out your light, whereupon the body then shuts down and dies, and into the aether your spirit soon flies. All hail to the Goddesses, who number ten, whose legends sustain us and shelter us when the hardships of human existence arrive, who love us if we are stone dead or alive.

© americanifesto / 場黑麥