Hawaii called. The ancestors want a word.

There I was, drinking my morning chai with the blooming moonflowers, watering the garden, like I often do at sunrise, just pottering around minding my own business, slapping mosquitoes and snuffling the heavenly mix of morning garden scents: creosote bush (Larrea tridentata), chocolate flowers (Berlanderia lyrata) and moonflower (Sacred datura/Datura wrightii) when suddenly all was bathed in brilliant luminosity. And I mean brilliant.

Had I inhaled too deeply of Madame Moonflower’s morning breath as I crouched close to the earth, transplanting mint roots into the arroyo which recently opened up in the Lizard Lounge paving?

Around the corner in Cafe Paradiso, the perfect half circle of prism pure colour was still up there, calving a subtle double.

The arc of radiance was so big I had to use my phone camera‘s widest angle setting to capture it. I promise Cafe Paradiso isn’t really tilted at the edges and falling in on itself. Though sometimes one does get to wonder about this enchanted place.

In this one wild and precious life, I’ve been lucky enough to encounter a number of traditional cultures In Zulu, native Hawaiian and Dine stories, the rainbow, or a deity who takes the form of a rainbow, serves to connect humans with divinity or their ancestral spirits (which might be the same thing).

I’m not saying I saw god this morning. Besides in all those cultures I mentioned, the rainbow is feminine and I did admire Madame Moonflower’s goddess worthy blooms this morning… But the numinosity was tangible as I bathed in the wondrous, fleeting and oh! so exquisite brilliance of a monsoon season sunrise light show

Is it just coincidence that, a few hours before, after tossing and turning and tying myself up once too often in the tangled sheets of insomnia, I got up to work on sewing a night rainbow in the form of flags for bunting. Flags which are printed with the winged heart and dove design, inspired by Mexican tin folk art and paper cut outs. I call this design milagro. As an aside: yes, I often do my best “product development” in the funky skunky wee hours, a time of day which, in India, is known as the time of amrit, of divine nectar, sip of choice of Immortals. Consider the uses of chronic insomnia.

Psst: I think I’ve spotted the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow but there’s a leprechaun masquerading as a metal cow sitting on it…

So this is why it says Land of Enchantment on our number plates.

In this place, it’s easy to be bewitched before breakfast.

There are so many ways.