Lessons in Letting Go (15 page)

‘Of course I’m really upset, Adam. How would you feel if I told you that I hated you? I thought the world of Thomas and now it turns out that . . . I don’t know. It hurts. I feel like . . . there’s no words for it . . . I think it’s . . . it’s . . .’

‘Life.’

Adam was staring down at me with a businesslike look on his face.

‘It’s life, Corinne. Shit happens and you get hurt. It happens to everyone. You’re not going to be able to find the words for it because it’s too universal for that. Ooooh!’ He looked delighted with himself. ‘I sound like Dr Phil! Might I suggest that you don’t spend the rest of your life wallowing in self-pity?’

‘Dr Phil doesn’t speak like that, Adam.’

‘Well he should. I’m sorry, sweetpea, it’s just that I can’t stand you being this miserable. Maybe you should go to Bali.’

I wrinkled my nose. What a hideous ‘woman in her thirties trying to find herself ’ cliché. Next he would be telling me to enrol in an adult education course in leadlighting.

‘Go to a yoga retreat. Sit somewhere warm and meditate.’

‘Does it have to be Bali?’

‘Stop being such a snob. It’s very un-Australian not to like Bali.’

‘Have you been?’

‘Lord no! That place is for bogans.’

A yoga retreat did sound appealing, if for no other reason than I would fit in better at a place like that than at a glamorous health resort. Those posh places were full of models and people who had paid surgeons a lot of money to make them look like models; they probably did nothing but drink vegetable juices, meditate and have daily colonic irrigations. I wanted to go somewhere where I could wear tracksuit pants and stretch a bit; I didn’t want someone shoving a hose up my yoo-–hoo. And I wanted—needed— somewhere gentle. Perhaps Bali was the right place for me.

Now that I had arrived, in the wee hours of the morning with a bottle of wine still sloshing around my brain, it felt bizarre. From the bubble of the four-wheel drive all I could see were the lights of the shop signs, all written in English: furniture shops, clothing shops, McDonald’s, McDonald’s, McDonald’s. I could have been anywhere in the world, except that here it was hot and humid and smelt just slightly greener, even at one o’clock in the morning.

We got to the retreat and I carefully followed a staff member up and down a confusing number of steps and paths to my room. I smiled politely and said, ‘Thank you’ in the careful, over-enunciated speech of the smashed. Then I dropped my bags, pulled a Bintang out of the mini-bar and went back outside to sit on the balcony. My room was enormous, and because of the way the retreat had been designed, I couldn’t see any other buildings. I was completely alone and looking out into blackness. I had no idea what was in front of me or behind me or beside me, and all I could hear was the scurrying of a (hopefully) non-venomous animal in the foliage. I watched a gecko crawl along the railing until he leapt off into invisibility. I drank my beer and collapsed into bed. Tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow, I would be on holidays. I was glad I had drunk the extra beer; my brain was now too sluggish to think about how pathetic I was.

The next morning I woke early. I had forgotten to close the curtains and the sun was now sliding across my half-opened eyes. Surprisingly, I wasn’t annoyed. No matter what state I was in, I was still on holidays and the little things that would have annoyed me at home (like waking up at 5.30 a.m. with a hangover) now seemed exciting. I was lying on my side, looking out through a wall full of windows at terraced rice paddies, speckled here and there with coconut trees and tiny figures ambling amongst them. I hadn’t seen any of this last night. It was ridiculously idyllic and I couldn’t help laughing. I was an idiot to have thought I didn’t want to come to Bali. Who wouldn’t want to wake up to this every day? Maybe I should move here permanently. I could leave Thomas and my house full of stuff behind and start again. With a warm breeze coming through the windows and the palm trees swaying against the cloud-covered sky, he already felt too far away to worry about.

I wandered down a different set of steps from last night, following the sound of a gong, to the first yoga class. I passed fresh offerings of flowers and rice laid at the feet of the stone gods that were placed in niches and on plinths at regular intervals. All the pebbled paths were scrubbed clean and somewhere below a stream gurgled. The retreat was carved into the side of a mountain and designed in such a way that you could only ever see tiny portions of it at a time. Everything smelt of water and earth and frangipani and I could hear the swish of the palm trees like gentle rain. Even the air, with its comforting wet warmth, felt easier to breathe than the air back home.

The yoga class was conducted on a platform built high above the stream, with palm trees and tropical flowers surrounding it. A rattan roof spread above us and at the front sat our instructor, Adi, leading everyone in meditation. I awkwardly shuffled past twelve other women who were sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed. I grabbed a mat and settled down on the far side of the pavilion. I didn’t close my eyes like the others; instead I looked around at my classmates. Some of the women were my age, a few were older, and there was one lady who looked to be about eighty. She was sitting on a chair instead of the floor. And she was wearing her nightie. A woman on the other side of the pavilion with long black curly hair opened her eyes and met my gaze. She grinned broadly and winked at me. She looked like fun. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on being in the moment.

The yoga was challenging. I was not as adept as I had expected to be. I couldn’t keep my balance when everyone else could. My Tree Pose was a joke and even basic poses like The Warrior—where all I had to do was stand still in a half-lunge with my arms at shoulder height—proved impossible. What the hell was wrong with me? Even the elderly lady (whom I later discovered was called Vy) was doing a better job than me. Of course, because her hearing-aid was on the blink she couldn’t hear Adi’s instructions, so she was doing a lot of improvising but, still, she was on her feet and I was sprawled on the floor.

The more I fell over, the more annoyed I became with myself. I disregarded Adi’s mantra of ‘Do no violence, especially to yourself ’ and focused instead on hating my stupid hamstrings for being so unresponsive. How was I supposed to find my ‘truth’ if I spent most of my time flailing around and knocking over other people? I had already poked one woman in the eye with my right hand and used the rear end of another as a sort of bounce-board to keep myself upright. I had envisaged meeting people politely over breakfast, not by head-butting them in the arse.

That afternoon we went for a walk past the rice paddies and up into the mountains. I stayed at the back of the group where I would do the least damage. The woman who had winked at me turned out to be a Texan called Lucy. She was striding purposefully at the front of the pack and she was fabulous. She wore an enormous sunhat and her deep brown eyes were permanently crinkled with either joy or mischievousness. She was chatting away, making friends and asking questions.

‘Adi, what do you call that?’ Lucy was pointing at a plant.

‘
Bunga merah
,’ Adi replied.

‘And this one?’

‘It’s called
bungan soka
. The women use it in their offerings.’ Adi was swishing through the grass, squinting up at the sun and shooing away the stray dogs that crept towards us.

‘What about that, what would you call that?’ Lucy was pointing at a butterfly.

‘Brian.’ Adi started giggling helplessly.

That night there was to be more yoga (which would give me a few more opportunities to fall over), and after that, we were to go to a Balinese temple to take part in a cleansing ritual. It sounded like just the kind of thing I needed—until Adi mentioned we would have to walk into a pool of freezing water fully clothed. I didn’t want to get wet. With all the associated palaver of taking extra clothes and getting changed in the back of a minibus, the spiritual aspect of the trip lost its allure. I was feeling too fragile for all of that. I was relieved when he said that menstruating women were not allowed to take part. Technically I wasn’t menstruating but I convinced myself that I was close enough that it would be culturally insensitive for me to join in.

Two other women—one of whom was Lucy—were in the same position as myself. We all decided to go to the temple anyway, as immediately after the cleansing ritual we were to start a thirty-six-hour silence challenge. This would be our last opportunity to speak to each other for a day and a half. ‘See?’ I thought. ‘I can look like I’m a joiner without having to actually do anything.’ I felt like I was back at high school, getting out of Phys. Ed. by rattling a tampon box.

The drive to the temple took an hour, winding up a mountainside in the darkness. We were in a convoy of three vehicles. In my four-wheel drive there were six of us. The driver and his wife sat up the front and murmured to each other in Balinese. We sat in the back, listening to the comforting sounds of their quiet domesticity, not understanding a word of it. Occasionally we would pass a brightly lit shop with nothing inside but a couple of plastic garden chairs and a TV. We passed a local night market where trailers, vans and stalls were packed in tightly next to each other, their sides thrown open to display all kinds of different foods, none of which I recognised. Roadside shops that sold a mumble-jumble of things and advertised public telephones and internet access sat in the middle of nowhere. Then we were in darkness, apart from the occasional house light. I’ve always liked driving in the dark. Seeing the lights in the distance that signal other people’s homes, I imagine the inhabitants are loved, happy and warm inside. Perhaps it really was like that in Bali. The couple in the front almost made me believe it was possible.

We pulled into a car park, empty at this time of night, which butted up against an outdoor ceremonial pavilion, with giant pillars stretching from its giant cement floor to its giant cement ceiling. It looked even more enormous in the dark, with stray dogs growling in its depths, only discernible by the shine of their eyes. Ahead of us the temple complex glowed dimly and to our right a larger ridge swept up into blackness. Just beside the gate leading into the sacred area was an oversized sign that read: ‘Attention. It is prohibited to enter if you are during your period.’ And after that was added ‘For the ladies’. Were there really men who thought that sign was for them? Perhaps the Balinese thought us Westerners were a bit on the stupid side. I thought of all the footage I had seen of drunken Australians on Kuta beach and understood their point of view.

Everyone else went ahead and Lucy, myself and a stunning Dutch woman called Dael stood behind a locked wrought-iron gate and watched as the rest of our group went through the prayers and offerings of the purification ritual. They were sitting on a stone terrace, hundreds of years old, with their hands clasped in the prayer position in front of their foreheads. The spring in front of them was hemmed in by more stone. Ornate carvings ran along its far edge, serving as fountains from which the water poured. Vy was in there with everyone else but had sensibly realised her knees wouldn’t hold up to all the dunking in the pond. I watched her gently amused face as the others squealed when they walked into the pool and the cold water rushed over their heads.

Our little gang were not the only people in the temple; local men wandered through the sacred site, smoking and butting out their cigarettes on the ancient stones beneath their feet, and dogs roamed around them, howling and biting each other. Us three and our unholy lady bits sat outside and watched through the bars of the gate.

As the ritual went on I was distracted by a noise behind me. I turned to see a skinny white dog chasing down an equally skinny ginger dog. Eventually the white one caught his companion and, without even offering to buy her dinner first, launched himself upon her and started doing what dogs do best. I shrugged. As long as they were distracted by their own business they weren’t biting chunks out of me. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that dog-rooting slightly detracted from the spirituality of the place.

After the ritual in the water was finished, the group walked into another part of the temple and we lost sight of them. Not wanting to tire herself out, Vy came and joined us. She stopped short and looked past me into the dark.

‘What’s going on there?’ she asked, confused.

I turned around. The dogs were stuck together. The white one, rolling his eyes and appearing to grit his teeth, was trying to pull himself free of the lady dog and then, as we watched, he turned himself in a sort of yelping half-rotation until he was facing away from his companion. Their rear ends were now joined together by the most delicate of links. They were like a filthy Scotch Finger biscuit. The bitch had a look on her face as if to say, ‘Well, this is what happens when you don’t ask first. I’ll let you go when you’ve learnt your lesson.’ Somewhere in the distance we could hear chanting.

I had nothing better to do, so I took a few photos of the dogs. Then, as they tried to hobble off together, I thought I might film a little of it. Then I stopped. I was at a Balinese temple witnessing a ritual so strict that menstruating women were not allowed to participate. It was probably not appropriate to be shooting dog porn.

‘What are they doing?’ It was Vy, still peering curiously at the two dogs in the shadows in front of us.

‘They’re stuck together.’ It was a stupid answer but I didn’t want to go into detail.

‘How?’

I really didn’t want to explain this. Vy, with her little round face and flowery kaftan, looked like she came from a world filled with gingerbread houses where sex did not exist, let alone between dogs.

‘You know, Vy, they’re stuck like two people with piercings get stuck.’ That was Lucy, the helpful Texan. Both she and Dael were laughing.

‘Piercings? What are they piercing?’

I felt like we were taking Vy’s innocence. She was obviously far more genteel than us, and if she had lived this long without knowledge of fetishism and barnyard copulation, then it was probably fair to say she could do without finding out now. But she kept asking questions and, having no other choice, we gave answers (Lucy’s more detailed than mine) until Vy not only had a clear understanding of what was going on in front of us, but of all the various parts of the body that young people pierced and the dangers of heavy petting if both parties had bits of metal poking out of the same general area. Then, with nothing left to say, the four of us silently watched the stuck dogs limp around the concrete together as we waited for the others to finish saying their prayers.