Crawling To My Sunny Spot - Bali, Part 1
I’ve been feeling the need to ‘crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little’ for months while dwelling in my south London flat-share.
During long-haul flights, disorientation sets in. Time and place change so rapidly that the basic dimensions cease to exist: I am sucked into a black hole where there’s only the unceasing, psychedelic droning of the aircraft and some pimple-inducing airline food. After a thirty-hour journey on three aircrafts and in a car, I have finally found my sunny spot on Mendira Beach in east Bali.
My two-storey bungalow is nestled between clumps of palm trees and tropical shrubs. Thoughts about my life in London keep crowding in. My eyes are wide open, and I can see the Elysian palm tree jungle spilling onto my balcony. The robust fusion of different sounds roiling around me yanks me back to the here and now: the rumbling and sizzling of the waves reverberating through the magical thicket, the overzealous, tremulous trilling of the birds bouncing from tree to tree, and the distant undulating swells of the gamelan rippling towards my balcony. The smell of the salty air and the lush flora wafts into my room, and the reeling image of London must be from another planet. It is impossible to withdraw the senses here.
My bamboo hut has no air-conditioning, only an old fan whizzing above my canopy bed. I share my hut with translucent, goggle-eyed geckos, and a family of yellow vented bulbuls hiding somewhere in the roof structure. Everything is so simple now. I wake up early and go for a frolic in the clear azure water. I’m romping about like a mad dog. I can hardly remove myself from the ocean. Behind me is the lush greenery, mountains in front of me, and I just want to plunge into the waves again and again. Disturbing thoughts, however, still arise like a great white shark in knee-deep water. Worries beach themselves onto the shore of my conscious mind. But I don’t allow these thoughts to eat me alive. I want to make the most of what surrounds me.
Swelling Outwards
It takes me five days to leave this bubble and I decide to make a trip to Pura Lugur Lempuyang, one of the six main directional temples of Bali, 1,200 metres above sea level. I’m not religious, but I love religious monuments. After all, they were built to provide people with a serene ambience where they can reflect in silence on themselves and the world around them. Praying is a kind of meditation, and while climbing the 1,700 steps up to the sixth temple, I am submerged in sounds and sights which slowly become my exoskeleton. On the mountain top, people are praying at the sixth, holiest, temple. A battered Bali dog watches them, limbs splayed out. It must be his favourite place. My guide, Wayan, wants to pray with the villagers so I sit down to observe them. In London, my senses always want to withdraw, but here my senses are rapt and want to revel in the external stimuli. I just want to swell outwards.
Back at my accommodation, I sit down on the beach, staring at the billows rearing up at the coral reef and then coiling into themselves on the other side of it, foaming up and thundering until they fizzle out with a sizzling sound. I could sit here for eternity but I start feeling guilty that I’m not doing anything productive, so I go back to my room and try to work. I can only do a few hours of it, as this spiritual environment is not the most conducive to cognitive functions. I’d rather watch the sea and the mountains all day than slouch in my hut, so I go and pig out again in the next-door seafront restaurant. For only £5 (100,000 IDR) I can eat all the food I want. I just keep eating past the point of being full while staring at the thundering waves splashing onto my table, and occasionally on me as the high tide kicks in. I wobble back to my hut with a stuffed stomach and the low rumbling of the waves, the chirping insects and the rustling palm leaves provide the background noise for my sleep.
Almost a week has passed, and this is the first day when I finally manage to exercise some self-discipline and don’t give in to the urge to check emails or Facebook messages first thing in the morning. I don’t even switch on my phone until 3 p.m. I think I’m progressing. Never before have I enjoyed my company so thoroughly that I can hardly stop being with myself. I know that I have finally found my place, because this is my medicine.