I am Wayan, the first born. Everyone here has the same names, names that indicate birth order. Seriously, everyone has the same names both men and women. Just a few names around and so many smiling faces. Like these two ladies smiling up a storm in the rain at The Yoga Barn….
I am holding back selling paintings. I want to display them in a show. To gather a full collection and then show them off together. I could sell them after that. I feeling grinding gears when I go to sell them through my online shop. The intuition or something says no. I just announced I would sell them now and still, I will trust and obey my intuition. I believe if I follow it on matters of business it will sing louder and clearer for me in all other areas of life, there for me when I need guidance. It is fair to say I am where I am right now because I followed my intuition again and again. Somehow it’s working well.
I’m practicing painting with green and studying the shapes of the leaves that surround me. I love the splashes of tropical pink and orange.
The men who are my lovers have made me feel alive in different ways. Alive in danger, alive in connection, alive in temptation, alive in creation, alive in presence. I am writing about them here. When The idea first occurred to me to travel to Bali it was bundled with the idea to write a book telling the love stories I’ve lived so far. This would be a healing project. I sense (again with the intuition) a deep need to express these experiences, to release them from repeat, drain them from my body into ink, so I may be a little lighter and my basket of journals will be a little heavier. I wonder how many pounds of ink I have written in my lifetime. — I am writing in a house that is completed hidden in the bushy palms trees, in the middle of a field surrounded by wet rice paddies. This is a picture of my house and you cannot even see the house. I am hiding inside that green jungle in the middle. I took this photo before the rain turned the sky moody grey.
From 1-4pm, the monsoon keeps me inside. I’m grateful. It means I sit down and type. I get work done while the rain pours. It’s ridiculous to even try going outside. The roads are empty. Humans clear way for the falling rivers. Around 5pm the roads, now damp, are swarmed by humans, beeping scooters and crawling car traffic. Rush hour hits and smoke fills the air. Fires are grilling meat along the sidewalks; skewers of chicken.
It’s impossible to escape the rain. Even when I shower the rain is participating…inside the house. The open roof bathroom is lovely and it makes me skin crawl with fear of bugs touching my hand if I reach up to scrub my hair or snails sliming onto my shoulder if I recline in a bath. For me, an outdoor bathtub is too exposed in the jungle. For at least a 10min shower it would be relaxing to be cut off from the outside elements, to soap up my body without wondering if a giant spider is somewhere nearby. It’s the wondering and looking under the table, under the pillow, under the shower curtain, inside the toilet paper roll…it’s the wondering that keeps me on edge.
It would be nice for just one moment to know with confidence the bugs could not touch me. Perhaps, I’lol pay a little extra to visit a fancy modern sanitized spa in the city center today where bugs are less present and the only creature enjoying the comforts is me.
Love and Rain,
Cha Wilde