Lovesongs in the darkness...

Like a continuous natural chant, the cicadas sing their lovesongs in the darkness. An awning of leaves spanning overhead from two trees, one on either side, are still. A dog barks ferociously in a neighbour's yard, perhaps at an intruding cat, and the owners come out, the woman speaking emotionally in Portuguese, then they go back in, and the silence which carries in its background the songs of the cicadas emerges again. I sit on a white wicker love seat under a spray of tiny white lit stars gracing the tree awaiting my lover's call.

A plane passes overhead and as I look up I see that a third tree fans over me, high up, leaves with fronds like palms. The plane moves across the soundscape invisibly except for its moving lights and soon the distant roar is gone. The stillness of the trees and the way I am canopied by them feels like a sacred grove.

After a hot, humid day of nearly unbearable discomfort, the evening is soft and inviting and enwraps me. A stone Buddha, seated in lotus, meditating, faces my direction; he sits before a prayer mat of washed white stones amidst a fan of leaves. Peace emanates from him, calm, serene. Near him a small statue of Kuan Yin stands; this house a veritable shrine to Kuan Yin. White clay and porcelain statuettes of Kuan Yin are everywhere inside the house, and two large hand-painted colour-glazed porcelain renditions of her, edged with gold in the way only the Chinese who worship her can create, reside in the garden house or yoga space or sacred little healing temple I am sleeping in at the end of the garden.

I feel blessed in the Goddess's radius of energy as it emanates from this house where I am staying, the house of my dear friend. The phone rings, and I answer it, my soft voice, his quieter one over the receiver, joining the singing of the lovesongs of the night.