Girl Talk (and No Talk)

There are three major objectives to Anna’s Greatest Hits Tour:  1. Reunite with dear friends in significant environments.  2.  Create space for inner/spiritual exploration.  3.  Visit places that I have long thought of as intriguing. 

I had heaps of friend time in New Zealand and Australia.  I had some new horizon exploration in Java.  Then, I had some quality New Age Anna time in Bali.  So, it was time to loop back to objective number one with my visit to Singapore.  Girlfriend time!

Truth be told, Singapore has never really captured my imagination.  In fact, in a highly uncharacteristic act, I completely skipped a flight to the country four years ago when I decided I was having too much of a good time in Southeast Asia’s grittier zones.  However, as more people I love have visited and settled there, I have found myself quite fascinated by this orderly city and its ban on chewing gum. 

I would have rocked up to Singapore if I found it totally uninteresting, though.  It didn’t matter where I was heading because I would be hanging out with Sumin Ahn and Anna Costley.  I was certain we would have a grand time just about anywhere.

Anna and Sumi are friends from New Zealand.  I met them through one of the people I am most obsessed with in the world – Elinor Chisholm.  Actually, it was Eli that really introduced me to (or is in some way connected to) the best of my kiwi world.  Anna and Sumi are no exception.

Sumi and her wonderful fiancé, Ben, have been living and working in Singapore for two years, so our reunion was straightforward.  However, it was divine intervention that came into play with the intersecting visit of Anna Costley.  We realized our similar timeframes during my trip to New Zealand and almost immediately committed to a joint Singapore visit and Thailand beach bum experience. 

After a decent bit of alone time in Bali, chatting and chatting and debriefing and pre-briefing and laughing and laughing and laughing with two women that I already understand to be ‘on my page’ was so wonderfully luxurious.  I was in the Four Seasons of social stimulation.

And, get this:   As if a gift from the girlfriend socializing gods, in these initial days of reuniting and sharing, I also had a date arranged to see my ex-boyfriend (for the first time in two years) as well as meet his new, serious girlfriend.  Now, that is one glorious goldmine of girl talk.

I cannot overstate the greatness of spending uninterrupted quality time with two amazing women who are so willing to share with deep honesty and ridiculous humor.  Emotional intimacy and unfiltered humor bring me to life.  One of the things that I find most nourishing is a sense of connection, so this girlfriend time made me feel plugged right into The Universe. 

Great credit to the patient photographer, Ben, who tried and tried to capture a clear photo of the cackling trio

…but, I won’t bang on further with clichés about friendships, specifically those between women.  I am sure you get the point.

What I might bang on about a bit more is something slightly less cliché – the beauty of shared solitude.  After a few days of Singapore’s equatorial heat and air-conditioned shopping malls, Sumi, Anna, and I headed to Phuket, Thailand.  We were such motor-mouths – we couldn’t even shut up for 30 seconds on the plane ride.  We were quite aware of this, too, wondering if the people around us wanted to join our fun or tell us to take our party elsewhere.  Like I said, this banter and sharing was brilliant, but when Sumi left us, Anna and I began to settle into a quieter existence.  Oh, we still had our fair share of giggle fits and exchanges of life stories and speculative analyses of the people around us.  However, we also spent a lot of time in each other’s presence without speaking or joking.  We spent nine nights on Ko Lanta (a Thai island off the Andaman coast), and much of that time we were silent.  We read.  We wrote.  We stared at the sea.  We generally did this while sitting on the same amazing bungalow balcony.  We were two Annas together, but we were also in our free, independent Anna worlds.

So, while I cherish the uproarious moments, I also cherish the ability to be in the presence of a dear friend and feel just as comfortable and grateful for her silence.  Relationships become so much richer when we understand each other in multi-dimensional ways.  I feel lucky to have had the time and space to know Anna both in the dimension of her speech and the dimension of her silence.  

Team Anna Headquarters -- bungalow in Ko Lanta 

The view from our porch