I am in Bali.
It is my first solo trip out of the country, and I don’t know what to think about my adventure yet. I am here because this year at the age of 41, I have experienced my great awakening, which was triggered by one question: What am I waiting for? I’ve always wanted to travel, but I thought I would wait until I was financially stable, the kids were grown, I was remarried … the list goes on and on.
Bali is an inspired choice (a choice I made in a bookstore while looking at a picture book of the world’s most beautiful spas). And I am staying at the hotel/spa that inspired it all. I managed to get an amazing deal at this five-star resort from an online travel site, and I teach extra classes at the career college where I now work so that I can afford the trip. The property is in Ubud, and the land belongs to the king. Sometimes I see him eating his dinner alone at the hotel’s open-air restaurant. He wears a long batik skirt, a polo shirt, and leather driving shoes. He sits in the worst seat in the house – a small table facing a stone wall. The waiter says he prefers to be left alone, as he is too busy attending royal functions that keep him away most of the time. When he is in town he does not want to be bothered.
I also prefer to be left alone. I refuse my young taxi driver’s invitation to spend New Year’s Eve with him in Jakarta, and I also refuse an invitation to dinner from the woman who did my bikini wax. In Bali, I wander around until I find things: the sacred monkey jungle, the ancient temples, the silver village, the wood village, the bird zoo. I take a very touristy river rafting trip. I walk the path behind the hotel leading up the side of a mountain past scattered farms and rice paddies that line the landscape. I wander among stray dogs and villagers. I stop at art galleries displaying prints of local artists, mostly of scenes depicting gods and goddesses of Hindu myths and fiery dragons. I eat green coconut donuts, and I get massaged with herbs and flowers.
In my room, I listen to Louie Armstrong’s “Life is a Cabaret” and polyphonic music (CDs I borrow from the hotel’s music library, which has very few selections). When I eat my meals of rice porridge, spicy noodles, roasted chicken or grilled fish at the hotel restaurant in the open-air garden, I stare at the lotus flowers in the pond that in the shadows of the night look like big, white, beautiful faces. I fall in love with the two varieties of bamboo on the island, the grassy one and the more popular woody one with the stems that grow outside the window and balcony of my hotel room, which faces a jungle. Every morning, I eat the exotic fruits left for me in a bowl on my balcony’s coffee table, fruits such as mango, guava, mangosteen, rambutan, salak … with skins the color of a rainbow. Some are hairy and some smell like dirty feet.
I am not here because Indonesia is the destination of choice for yoga aficionados or American women who come for cooking classes. I am here because I was mysteriously pulled here although in the months leading up to this trip I questioned my decision-- worried about terrorist attacks, like the ones on the island in the late 90s, and worried about dying in a plane crash and leaving my the children without their primary parent and caregiver, I came to Bali because I had to. My instincts told me so. Here I visit the famous medicine man, Ketut Wayan, who predicts I will be married two more times and do something in a creative field. He sees a “garden” growing at the tip of my spine, and he says I make him happy in his heart.
In Bali, I once again learn to breathe, something I have not done for four years because I was getting over a divorce, two major housing moves, and three teaching shifts at work. I also had financial problems, young children, demanding students, and housework. Right now, though, I am so relaxed I cannot feel my pulse, and sometimes–because I am a hypochondriac–I worry about that. I am so relaxed I cannot remember the phone numbers of loved ones back home, so I don’t call my mother or children, who are with their father, to wish them a Happy New Year. When I take afternoon naps in my canopied bed with the luxurious mesh covering, I recall only the essentials: my brutal divorce is over; my children are fine; I have loved; I have been loved.
In Bali, I am so relaxed I fall in the streets many times. Westerners always fall on the uneven, crooked, and slanted pavement; We do not have the graceful gravity of the beautiful Balinese, who walk straight and with ease while can carrying four times the weight of their bodies on their heads. In one of those falls, I hurt my foot very badly. It swells and becomes blue and purple. The pain is excruciating, and that night I sleep fitfully. I dream about a man I do not know; he is all shadows but he offers me a rose, and I know I am in unconditional love with him. I have not dated since my divorce, but I see the dream as a good omen.
In Bali, I am in love with the night. It is thick and luxurious and falls over me like an oversized wool coat, both comforting and overwhelming. Even so, the night is everywhere and nothing stops it, not even a few scattered streetlights. So I face my fear of the night by sitting on the lounge chair in my balcony and staring into the jungle and its darkness. Even then I see the bamboo, palms, and the fig, milk-wood and silk-cotton trees take on outlines of other life forms, like elephants and tigers, and I begin to understand a bit of the Balinese belief in animism as the living spirit in all things. I do not know if I will ever fully process Bali’s effect on me, but if it is true that heaven has many tiers, then Bali is the tier of heaven closest to the earth. Read My Exciting Memoir, "The Continent of Ruby," available at: http://www.amazon.com (Because sometimes love, hate, living and dying all feel the same)
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