The Room in Jalan Sandat

So, about this place I got in Jalan Sandat...

The structure is similar to traditional Balinese family compounds. A patch of fenced family land sectioned into separate blocks of smaller rooms and houses.

Our compound has only two buildings, two storeys each. Every storey has a separate entry. My landlady and her husband lives on one side of the house, I on the other. In the other building lives a Western, middle-age lady who doesn't believe in the covering of boobies in daytime. She also has the habit of confirming her beliefs by crossing the yard and blessing our compound's surrounding fence with organic(?) trash.

Anyway, one day, things changed for the residents of Uma Dangin. New residents arrived. A mommy and her two sons, aged six and twelve.

من كثر ما كلنا شطار و عاقلين و نوايانا صافية، و عشان و لا أحد منا فكر يولع له سيجارة كيف أو يعمل جناية ضد الديود المشمسة، الله أنزل على سكان الكمپاوند شقيقين أمريكيين، يتراوح أعمارهم بين ٦-١٢ سنة. 

And the two brothers became mildly popular with the ENTIRE CHILD POPULATION OF JALAN SANDAT.

Just in case you're wondering why naps have been cancelled indefinitely. And why our fence hasn't been blessed by beliefs in liberated boobs: There's been a serious watergun battle waging all afternoon and ammunition has been running low but thankfully someone needs to pee.

Playground

(just add a bit of color)

Theme park. 

That summarizes my idea of Ubud. An unoriginal thought. As unoriginal as any tourist spot in the world. Stretches of shops and convenience stores. Grownups spending the time and money they’ve saved up to make up for lost time and selves. And I’m in it for two whole weeks.

One thing that makes it so fun is that Ubud is not that big. Took me a couple of hours to walk from Jalan Sandat to the very end of Jalan Bisma, then around the Monkey Forest then all the way back up to Sandat again. Ubud is like a theme park but with beds.

Old habits don’t disappear just because you’ve moved places. The most persistent of my habits, in spite of all the good intentions in the world, had to succumb to afternoon naps. So we’ll start there. I know I did yoga sometime in the morning, but it was the nap that started my first day in Ubud.

Because, after the nap, I would be giddy with invincibility. Like I could do everything in that one evening. A state of inspired. We don’t argue with gifts like that. We accept and treat it gently. Allow it to build and balloon. Allow the muses to calm their chatter and receive our offering of selves.

I’m still time managing, albeit absentmindedly. I know now that mornings are for yoga and writing. And that noon times are for naps. And that evenings may or may not be for laundry. But one thing for sure is that, at the strike of 3 PM, management bites the dust and that state of inspired restarts.

That’s when things get really, really nice. The tilted sun sprinkles magic dust all over the place, making everything golden. And all that gold is within walking distance. And walking distances are easier to traverse with motivational bragging rights. And bragging rights are easily earned with GPS enabled toys. And toys are more fun with friends. And friends create peer pressure.

Peer pressure consists of Valin, who is eight years my senior and hikes across the Alps. And Mamad who, at my age, runs five kilometers at a breeze, every morning. And the people in my yoga classes who bend and twist and hold impossible asanas in spite of deep wrinkles and angry ankles.

No apologies. That’s the point to this reminder. I’m not going to apologize for half-minded blog posts and uncharted ramblings. I’m not going to apologize for leaving home and indulging in the banality of touristy attractions, for two whole weeks. 

And I’m definitely not going to apologize for naps, due in 23.2 minutes from now. 

Anchor

Grace Bait

 

Day's Bounty

"You spend money to make more money," the businessmen chant, in shameless materialism. 

It's true, though. It isn't hard to want to accept Grace, when a day has been spent offering it.

Grace comes through patches of hush. Grace seeps through the pores of dusk and twilight, announcing the changes of roles. Grace is to be able to witness ourselves morph from our dutiful selves to our magical selves.

My cue to receive grace usually comes in the groggiest moments after a nap. (A nap marks the change of day. The switch in my ultradian rhythm, from machine to magi.) There is usually a moment when groggy is actually an invitation to join the muses in their play. To ignore the world and just write.

To succumb, yet again, to another kind of Unknown.

Compassionate detachment is easier to cultivate and harvest by the end of a busy day. It isn't hard to find the drive to be creative when you've spend eight hours being boring. It's easier to stoke the primal energies when you've spent the day being straight and square.

Ha. After so long, finally the rebel stirring in my loins got its logic satiated: "Not never. Just not yet."

A Bargain

The Offering

"One writing held me up through the next. And the next. And then it all held up our losses and wins together in this bulk of general, impersonal compassionate detachment."

Compassionate Detachment

That. That was the trick I was supposed to remember.

To be able to love and practice compassion without getting personally attached. To be able to attend others while trusting that the karmic auditors do not miss. To be able to trust that the love we offer will be returned when we need it. To be humbled when random acts of kindness are offered from strangers. 

(Kindness can only be passed on. The kindnesses that come out way are but ripples of our past offerings. And they, these karmic ripples, are never linear. They...well, ripple.)

The absence of logic in the way that karma ripples takes all the faith in the Unknown. The choice to say something nice, or to write an enthused document publicly, or to refrain from a cruel word, take a generous exertion of willpower. A generous offering to the Unknown.

Inno, okay, Universe, here's one for you. Here's one less mean word at the back of my throat swallowed. Here's one for you, bullies. May this sacrifice of not cussing my heart's content ripple back in goodness for us all.  

Bargaining with the Universe

The years spent in angry rebellion has made me impatient with Karma.

While Karma's patience with me is infinite, I have yet to learn how she works, in order to allow this moldy trust to strengthen.

If I'm as square and straight as I imagined my ideal self should be, I shouldn't be wincing at any kind of writing. I should welcome blogging and tweeting and SEO bullshit.

Nevertheless, even the darkest hearts have a shot at it. Even if willpower is finite, I still take credit for all the minutes I must spend being trying to be a good girl. All the while I'm spending on my stock of willpower, I am getting paid in credit to unleash my creativity elsewhere.

Fine, Universe, I'll pay forward my dues. I will be good in daytime, so that I can unleash and unwind in long words and paragraphs about detachment. About letting the garbage out. And allowing grace to come in.

Because grace, when she comes in all her crushing glory and vivacity and pomp, is inevitable. She's worth it.

 

How Writing Has Been These Past Couple of Nights

These Past Couple of Nights

I have been writing faster and with better concentration in the evenings. I trust the muse, the urgent dictating and dictatorial voice in my head at night. Particularly if it's a day spent productively at other things besides writings.

For instance, yesterday, I attended people, Bugz and mba Titin and mas Aidin. I attended the clean shirt pressed on my face to stifle a heartbreak. I attended the master's lunch. Attended a trip to Tegal. Attended the master's connection with the rest of the world.

By evening, I wasn't hearing words anymore. The Voices' urgency had lost their linguistic cues. What remained was primal drive to write and be swallowed in that writing. A primal drive that abandoned all worries about coherence and cohesion.

Even when Maghrib called, and the New Hijri Year's prayers lasted late into the night, the urgency remained. Even with the break between writings to attend dinner, the last sentence waited for the next thought. I wrote without looking up. I wrote without editing. And no questions about which, what, why, who or how.

There was only writing.

I wrote, last night, to reach a thousand words. Then a couple of hundreds more. Then the night wrote through me: The attachments that fed that writing kept me up until past midnight, long after it was sent and discussed and appraised.

Similarly, the writing session in the previous evening too was as fluid. It started right after tea and lasted until the evening call for dinner. It came out as a shy letter to Kris and a Volunteer Info sheet for the UWRF group on Facebook. I fed off the afterglow of that writing until the next session.  The public writing fed the private. It held me steady through the next day, when I attended others and went to Tegal. It held me up when Bugz and Wawung asked about lunch. And it pressed down grief with infinite kindness: "Not never. Just not yet."

One writing held me up through the next. And the next. And then it all held up our losses and wins together in this bulk of general, impersonal compassionate detachment. 

Edited with BlogPad Pro

The Call

“It’s in the house. I’m scared. I think it's in the house.”

“Where are you now?”

“In the bedroom. Light’s off. Yeah, it's locked. I’m scared. I think it's in the house. Shh. Wait. Oh God. It's at my door. It's him! He knows I'm here! He's calling my name from under the door. What do I do? Where do I go?

“Can you get out of there?”

“No. I can't. I'm too scared. What if he around the other window? What if he climbed up the balcony? He might catch me before I climbed down the balcony. I could give it a try. I don’t know where he is now. Shit. He’s not at the door anymore. I think he’s gone. I don’t see his shadow under the door anymore.”

“Get out of there.”

“No. No. He’s at the window! Help! Help me! He’s in…”

“Hello? Hellen?”

Static.

He stared at his phone. Noted the time. He might need it for evidence later.

What evidence? Who’s going to ask?

Then he heard it. A cutting silence. The sound of a held breath. He looked up. People were staring at him with terrible understanding. He didn't realize how loud he was. They swayed away from him like rows of grass in the wind. (It’s just the bus stopping.) He excused himself and squeezed out of the crowded bus. They avoided his gaze. The frantic excusemes. Bad news. He was all bad news.

What was he supposed to do? Go back to her house? Get an ojek and make sure she’s alright? Or find what’s left of her? Get implicated? But she’s – how could he say it? How could he explain himself?

It might have been a mistake. A misunderstanding. Or the neighbor’s TV. It might've been a hyperbolic imagination. And why would he need to explain himself to anyone? And about what?

He tried calling her again. Recorded. He tried calling her house. No answer. She lived alone. It was for his sake that she left the girls dormitory. For their quiet lunches and long Tuesday evenings.

So he stood there. Frightened. Furious. Frozen. All that moved, and that at chaotic speed, were the thoughts in his head, battling the paralysis of uncertainty. Eyes met his and accused him with the vilest of sins: Indecision. A cowardly indecision.

His phone rang. The screen a blur. It took him another blink to realize that it was Home. And he took another breath before sliding the lock to answer.

“Daddy.”

“Yes, my love.”

“Are you still far? I think the TV is broken.”

“Almost there, my darling.”

“Mommy wants to talk to you.”

“Hey, honey.”

“Could you pass by the ATM on your way? I forgot to pay the cable.”

“Of course. Anything else?”

“No, we’re alright. Are you still far?”

He paused before answering. Watching the approach of another bus. Stepping into the queue. “I’m almost home.”