Before we begin, you can click HERE to receive my full library of yoga, meditation, and breathwork resources!

June 20th, 2024

Sanur, Bali, Indonesia

I’ve returned to the magical island of Bali to greet Natalia, my fellow ‘02 baby and New York City native.  Having stepped off a plane no less than twenty-four hours ago, she’s just reunited with Balinese sand and soil for the first time since a three-month sailing voyage led her here back in March.  I remember springtime vignettes, when I would recline in my Brooklyn backyard, watching tree branches sprout promising buds of hope above me, listening to the colorfully verbose voice recordings that Natalia would send me from Bali, which thoroughly depicted the buzzing environment I was soon bound towards.  These transmissions pollinated my exuberant anticipation to join her on the island.  Within the audio messages, laced between detailed descriptions of Balinese life, were memoiristic fragments of her brick-city upbringing; stories from her time in youth music ensembles and Manhattan public schools illuminated the depth of our similarities, and acknowledgments of compatibility expressed themselves as sincere invitations to become travel companions.  

Today, that vision has been actualized.  The brief time we’ve already spent together has affirmed our harmony, yet highlighted our enriching differences.  For instance, Natalia’s musical identity stems from her impressive role as a trombonist in Lincoln Center’s Youth Jazz Orchestra – in that field, there’s no band more prestigious – while mine was forged playing aggressive rock music in sweaty, stinky nightclubs.  This afternoon, I spent an hour sitting in bed, soaking up intricate and unfamiliar big-band arrangements by Count Basie and Thad Jones, while Natalia frenetically danced around our bedroom, scatting every single note, maintaining perfect pitch and rhythm.  

The metaphor of our musical disparity ripples out into our immigrant parents’ nationalities – hers Polish and mine Israeli – our native Manhattan neighborhoods – hers East Village and mine Tribeca – and the stubborn thorns currently hindering our perfect health – hers digestive cramps and skin irritation, mine throat soreness and sinus stuffiness.  As we align our presence around identical travel experiences, I look forward to further navigating these inherent differences.  We have lots to learn from each other.  The complimentary contrast speaks to the power of our partnership.  

The two of us joined Raja this evening at the grand opening of a local Sanur restaurant serving vibrant Hong-Kong-style fare, owned and operated by Raja’s former schoolmate, James.  As the trio’s only pig-eater, I bore the mantle of tearing through samples of James’ pork-and-lard-ridden menu.  Natalia nibbled on a plate of steamed Bok Choy and Raja politely downed a scallion pancake while I moaned my approval of James’ crispy pork belly and spicy pork broth.  With the eatery’s mastermind comfortably lounging beside us at our table, we were shown selfless hospitality and cheerful conversation.  Through his comprehensive accounts of life in Hong-Kong, his fond reminiscing on adolescent Raja, and his devotional explanation of his menu’s personal origins (all recipes were passed down from his father), James won my unconditional affection and admiration.  After our plates were wiped clean, we shared a lengthily enduring four-way group hug, thanking James for his culinary service.  

Once we were out of James’ earshot, Raja leaned over to me, teasing, “You know, back when we were twelve, James and I fought over the same girl.”

I cackled in disbelief.  “Really!?  Well, y’all have clearly let sleeping dogs lie; you two seemed so friendly and cordial in there!  How did that love triangle even resolve?”

Raja confessed, “Once, the three of us went to a movie together.  The girl, Katrina, sat between us.  Halfway through the movie, she put her head on my shoulder, and James knew it was over.”

“Oh, to be twelve again!”

June 21st, 2024

Renon, Bali, Indonesia

Tonight marks the full moon, the summer solstice, and international yoga day.  Temples all around the island hosted the vibrant spiritual celebration known as Purnama, during which Balinese Hindus, dressed in sarongs and white headbands, flock to pray, dance, and make music under lunar glow.  Raja and I watched the Strawberry Moon rise over the swaying and rustling trees of Lapangan Puputan Park as we sat, cheek to cheek, on a marble park bench, eating our choice snack of baked tofu and tempeh, drenched in peanut sauce, served in a paper cone.  The park, boasting boisterous winds that invited dozens of kites to soar high above treetops, was the final stop on my private tour of Raja’s native neighborhood, Renon.  

“It’s so crazy that you’re here,” Raja admitted.  “I’ve crossed this exact spot hundreds of times.”

“Well,” I reasoned, “You’ve spent so much time in Bushwick that I simply had to come see what your stomping grounds are all about!”  Not only did Raja let innumerable hours waste away inside the air conditioning of my Brooklyn apartment last summer, but in a few weeks time, he’ll be keeping the place warm while I continue traipsing his continent.  I beamed, “My parents are having so much fun getting the apartment ready for you.  They got you a new dining table and shower curtain!”  After the immense hospitality that Raja has shown me during my tenure in Bali, I’m discovering immense joy and relief in the prospect of welcoming him into my vacant New York home.  

“That’s so nice of your parents,” Raja blushed.  “I can’t wait to take them out to dinner when I get there!”

Raja’s infatuation with my hometown, and my obsession with his, has turned us into foils of each other’s international paths of self-discovery.  Our wingspans form two sturdy cables on the suspension bridge between Indonesia and America.  Currently, we both stand with one foot firmly planted on the island of Bali, the other foot nimbly toeing the island of Manhattan.  

After leaving Raja’s childhood playground, we retreated to his family’s home, where we deepened exploration of this binational dichotomy by watching Eat Pray Love.  The narrative film, an adaptation of true memoir, depicts a recent divorcee’s escape from New York City to Bali.  Needless to say, I resonated with the story.  

During one of the movie’s opening scenes, which follows Julia Roberts’ stroll down a Manhattan street, Raja conjectured, “Is that SoHo?”

“Why, yes it is,” I applauded.

“I’m getting pretty good at this!”

However, while the two of us watched Julia Roberts gorging on the affluent gastronomic spoils of Indonesia, the only thing Natalia was eating, back at our homestay, was plain white rice.  She’s tragically come down with a gnarly stomach virus.  She was bedridden all day.  As I’m still recovering from the gashes of my motorcycle incident, and unpleasant sinus congestion induced by the dusty roads of Gili Trawangan, I feel Natalia’s pain.  

Handicapping illnesses are demoralizing, degrading, and debilitating, but they leave us with overflowing gratitude for healthy life.  Sickness must be viewed as a necessary feature of our system’s wiring rather than as a mere bug, blip, mistake, or nuisance.  We must listen to our ailments’ demands rather than hurrying to outrun them.  

That’s easier said than done, though.  The feverish desperation of slothlike biological recovery can be maddening.  I pray that we both wake up tomorrow fit as fiddles, but I will not complain if my body invites me to rest another day.  

I will forever observe and obey whatever it may say.  

June 22nd, 2024

Renon, Bali, Indonesia

Raja, Natalia, Zoe, and I piled into a movie theater tonight and watched Pixar’s Inside Out 2.  We were surrounded solely by young children, all chaperoned by their parents.  Although we didn’t fit the film’s target demographic, its poignancy nonetheless left us gutted, wrecked.  The plot, which follows the changing emotions of a pubescent high school freshman, reminded me of the importance behind equally honoring all feelings, regardless of their baggage or connotation.  

But, the violently branded machismo of the society I was raised in has programmed me into the ludicrous belief that men must remain permanently strong and stoic, burying emotionality and vulnerability.  For me, the journey from neglecting these sensitive feelings to honoring them acceptingly led me through a valley of impassioned impulsivity, a desert of ennui apathy, and a forest of elusive escapism.  

The brilliant animation I saw dance across the theater’s projector screen tonight assured me that, as this journey continues indefinitely, I’ve already paradoxically arrived at its end, for simply being a freely emotional being is all that’s required of me in this life.  

The emotion that erupted from my heart as the theater lights faded up and the film’s credits rolled was unencumbered joy.  Looking down my row of seats, at three dear friends that I’d met at vastly different times in my life, I sighed heaps of love, baffled by the serendipity that brought us all to this theater together, halfway across the world from my point of origin.  

June 23rd, 2024

Renon, Bali, Indonesia

Natalia, my current roommate and travel partner, has spent the past four days in surrendered victimhood of fever, digestive pains, spreading eczema, nausea, and fatigue.  As tonight’s dusk dimmed the light that reflects our white bed sheets into my corneas, I watched the silhouette of Natalia drown under her piles of pillows and comforters.  She’s hardly left this position all day.  Our room was nearly dark by the time I sat at the foot of our bed and helped brainstorm plans of recovery.  Amidst making countless unrequited calls to acupuncturists and traditional healers scattered around Bali, I profusely dissuaded Natalia’s sullen confusion.  Mustering words of soothing molasses, I assured her, “All you need to do is stay in this bed and listen to your body.  We’ll get somebody to help you soon.”

Burrowed in her linens, hollow and furrowed, she maintained, “I’m sorry.  We had such big plans for adventure, and now we’re just stuck here!”  But, before I could interject, she corrected herself, realizing, “Well, I actually think this is what we both needed.”

I agreed, “Definitely.  I’m not completely back to my healthful self either, so I’m glad we have this time to rest and recover.  There’s no use in suffering through an irresponsibly ambitious adventure.”

Floating away from our rapport, Natalia turned her thoughts towards potential explanations for her illness: “I did eat sushi on my first day in Bali.  Maybe it’s that!”

I raised the caterpillar of my eyebrow playfully.  “Girl, haven’t you gone from the Thar Desert to the Himalayas to the equator in the past two weeks?  Your body has been through it!  That circadian rhythm is certainly confused!”

In fact, the past fortnight’s volatility was just the tip on the iceberg of Natalia’s fierce and thorough globetrotting.  As she’s stampeded across Asia like a muscular rodeo bull, her health has been teetering violently like a lanky cowboy white-knuckling its steed’s mane for dear life.  Six months ago, she boarded a modest sailboat that careened her between Filipino and Indonesian isles for eleven weeks straight.  Rather than emerging from the nautical voyage with an appetite for rest, Natalia continued her voracious exploration of sensory input, zooming her motorbike through unending remote dwellings of Bali, Thailand, and India.  Her recent return to Bali, and the stark latitude-leap that it entailed, was the final straw for her physiology.  

I, as a freshman traveler merely on my second month abroad, look upon Natalia’s epic route as both an inspiring feat and a cautionary tale.  

Reflecting on her tangled fractal path, Natalia wondered, “Maybe it’s time to go home.”

A breath of stillness in New York would serve her well.  She’s just been accepted, with an unprecedented merit-based financial scholarship, into the first graduating class of the Tetr College of Business; should she choose to accept, she’ll walk into her first class in under three months time.  Upon receiving the news of her admittance, my knees buckled in pride and admiration.  The university’s unique curriculum is perfectly suited for Natalia’s global mindset and scrappy resourcefulness: every semester, Tetr’s student body is flown to a new country and prompted to start a lucrative business from scratch.  From dropshipping stores in Dubai to non-governmental-organizations in Ghana, Natalia faces a world-class education in transmutation, resilience, and cross-cultural communication.  

Her official decision, in response to her acceptance, is due in two days.  Should her immune recovery fail to outrun that impending deadline’s olympic sprint, I’m prepared to remain sat at the foot of our bed, pontificating on the momentous decision with her.  Although the thought of further travel and exploration may now make Natalia queasy, I cannot shake my faith that this opportunity she’s acquired is nothing short of an entrepreneurial Noah’s Ark, a golden ticket promising entry into her next phase of evolution.  

Her current frailty and sensitivity is no reflection of her ubiquitous vigor and sparkle.  My memory faillessly trails back to the kinetic jazz scats she performed, running around our bed, on our first day together.  I imagine her cunning web of synapses is woven in a similar fashion to Thad Jones’ layered orchestration.  When she revs her motorbike’s throttle, making flowingly wispy flags of her pastel-colored garments, her vehicle’s velocity mirrors the quick confidence of her cranium.  Even from behind the fog of her hindered health, her bubbly curiosity and observant humor feeds my soul.  

We need not adventure to make lasting memories.  Without even leaving our bed, Natalia has enhanced my life immeasurably.  As she prepares to take her final bows atop the stage of Asia’s splendor, I wait in the wings, studying her performance.  When I take the spotlight, I’m destined to carry her spirit with me.  

June 24th, 2024

Renon, Bali, Indonesia

Akira, an eighteen-month-old sprout of whimsy and obliviousness, joined his mother (Karen, a reiki healer from Japan), Natalia, and I for an evening meditation led by Babaji, the gentle panda-bear patriarch of our current banana-plantation homestay.  As we ascended a moonlit flight of stairs to Babaji’s elevated shala, I grew alarmed that Akira was also bounding up the steps on all fours, claustrophobically close in tow, because he’d only moments ago stomped his little crocs atop our mahogany dining table and deliberately smashed a jumbo case of q-tips against the tile floor, violently scattering the fuzzy white sticks with no intention of rectifying his chaos.  

I hadn’t pegged him as a meditator.  

Still, I abandoned all my preconceptions and projections of his place in the disciplined ceremony, surrendering instead to delusionally naive faith and trust.  Karen, nonchalant and undisturbed at his chosen involvement, eased my worries further, but, in the back of my mind lingered a stiff doubt that Akira was equipped to handle what we’d be doing at the top of the stairs.  

Sure enough, as soon as we four adults assumed sukhasana, closed our eyes, and rested our hands on our knees in gyan mudra, Akira behaved as if we’d turned into marble statues.  Any attempts I made to hermetically withdraw from my five senses were mercilessly blocked by the abrasive sounds of Akira’s frantically desperate and angrily confused actions.  He wailed helplessly for his mother.  In his unintelligible cries, I discerned sincere, unrequited cravings for maternal affection and attention.  I couldn’t blame him for struggling to understand where his loving queen had gone, or why she’d been replaced by a static tableaux of uncompromising stillness.  I could hear his puffy hands slapping her bare back, wordlessly pleading for her to stir.  Karen, on the other hand, I did not hear at all.  I squinted an eye open to a slit, unable to curb my curiosity, and saw Akira, with a hand on Karen’s skull and a foot on her thigh, attempting to climb his mother like a tree.  Karen’s meditating figure, firm as living lumber, ignored her son’s message in a bottle.  

Before long, Akira’s unaddressed shrieks and blows led him away from his first victim.  The few seconds of eerie silence that ensued made my heartrate elevate for fear of Akira’s next scheme.  But, before I could even direct my eyes-closed imagination towards interceptions of his toddler plots, I felt a meaty thwack across my cheekbone and nasal cartilage.  Akira had slapped me in the face, hard.  Against better judgment or wiser hindsight, I followed Karen’s lead and stayed still.  I did not reprimand Akira.  I did not even open my eyes or bring my hands to my throbbing face.  I employed the same pathways of self-control that prevent me from swatting intrusive flies during my morning practice.  Akira toyed with me – grabbing my gestured hands, shoving my torso about, and giggling as he fell into my lap – until I bored him.  For the remainder of our hour-long meditation, Akira ripped leaves off plants, dissected his mother’s purse, threw shoes, and yelled as if he was the last human on earth, but he never fell still.  

What would it take to yogify a baby?  Is such a feat of focus and maturity plausible?  The stoic strength, orderly tranquility, and composed equanimity that Karen, Natalia, and I employed tonight rubs with hissing friction against the freeflow sandbox fantasies of young children.  The paradoxical concept of an infant monk borders on hyperbole.  When we were babies, our perpetual stamina and unwavering presence negated our need for structured practices of grounding and cultivation.  But, seeing as it takes towering mountains of persuasion to convince infants to focus on anything – even their dinner – wouldn’t our adolescent offsprings benefit from mindfulness habits just as much as we grown-ups do?  The task of guiding toddlers into transcendental states is horribly daunting, but I’m unquenchably curious about the potential fruit of this challenge.   

If nothing else, the opportunity to perceive my own practice through an infant’s eyes illuminated the hilarious arbitrariness of meditation’s genius.  I’m immensely proud to be a participant in this simple pastime that looks like nothing but feels like everything.  Akira’s panicked reaction to the act, juxtaposed against the overpowering bliss that it conjures within me, only feeds my desire to help elevate the art of meditation from obscurity to ubiquity.  

June 25th, 2024

Renon, Bali, Indonesia

Nearly all of the young travelers I’ve encountered in Indonesia are here on account of accumulating just enough finances from their domestic gigs back home that they’ve earned the luxury to flee from reality for a finite number of sunny, edenic days.  The looming crash of returning to their jobs characterizes their voyages with insatiable appetites for exotic adventures.  These vacationers sacrifice sleep, nutrition, and sound judgment in the name of wringing every ounce of dopamine from the wet rag of their roundtrip plane ticket.  

My travels, however, have no foreseeable end.  Despite peer pressure from the restless energy of the thrill-seekers circling me, I remain inclined to conservatively pace myself in interest of avoiding burnout.  

As such, although my spontaneity is impossible to wholly suppress, I’ve often declined invitations and appeared introverted to make room for the online freelance work that begot my financial freedom to indefinitely explore in the first place: music production.  

These artistic projects, abundant and continuous, have balanced the beautiful discomfort of experiencing foreign cultures with the homey familiarity of flashbacks to my past life as a full-time producer.  Thanks to the MiDi keyboard, USB microphone, acoustic guitar, and 16-inch MacBook that I schlep everywhere, I can quickly simulate a cozy studio environment that transcends geography.  I’m grateful for the ability to disappear into my sonic art whenever I feel too overstimulated to face this unpredictable world.  The practice has become nothing short of an anxiety remedy, a peace ritual.  

Since my arrival in Indonesia, I’ve been hired to orchestrate a musical, compose an album of R&B instrumentals, mix and master punk recordings, and prepare singer-songwriters’ intimate musings for release.  The inundation of projects has never stolen from my exploration time, but it certainly has discouraged me from the purely pleasurable act of composing my own songs.  My relationship with recorded music has undoubtedly shifted from innocent and isolated self-expression towards professional service.  Though that transition, in theory, sounds concerningly soulless, it honestly excites me.  I am confident that I’ll inevitably return to my own musical projects, but, in the meantime, I am gaining invaluable experience and perspective through helping collaborators actualize their artistic ambitions.  Just as my physical body has renounced domesticity so that it can learn from unfamiliarity, my musical soul has taken sabbatical from the self-centered introspection of a recording artist, turning instead towards education through karmically symbiotic energy exchanges.  I have no doubt that, when the time comes for my next focused musical project, its process will be inescapably informed by my current freelance work.  

Plus, every time I step out onto the Indonesian streets with my acoustic guitar, I watch my entire relationship with music get rebuilt from the ground up.  The simplistic immediacy of strangers singing together has no recorded-music equivalent.  Such bespoke, impromptu, amateur performances are godly snowflakes of unrepeatable vibration.  Paid collaborations aside, I see no merit in remaining shuttered behind a screen, hoping to isolatedly catch musical lightning in a bottle, when poignantly musical electricity zaps and flickers endlessly between the manifold songsters of Bali.  Sharing colloquial hymns face-to-face — with people I’ve never met before — feeds my creative education and progression endlessly.  It also serves as an ideal icebreaker and social lubricant.  There is no better feeling than huddling with fellow humans and collectively singing songs deeply loved by all.  

In this way, music continues strengthening the tethers that connect me to my past, while simultaneously building bridges for me to engage with my present surroundings.  Further, as powerful as I’ve already found this sonic mysticism to be, I’m sure that the greatest revelations are yet to come.  All I can do is continue showing up, every day, as an antenna for God’s vibrations.  

Love,

Etai