Bali is Balance

On whitewater, demon goddesses, and thirty years of self-management coming undone in the best way.

Ubud is Balance

My flight arrived into Denpasar late. I wouldn’t get settled into my room in Ubud until after 2am. I saw Nano’s message when I landed:

“I’m wearing black top, black pants, and adidas shoes :)”

I exited customs in a brain fog of travel fatigue, saw the line of drivers, each holding a sign with the name of a weary traveler, and diverted my eyes to the ground, scanning the lineup of shoes.

Adidas shoes … ‘What kind of adidas shoes?,’ I wondered. 'Sandals? Sneakers? What color?’ This was asking a lot of my brain, but the fog lifted when I saw a sparkling-eyed young Balinese man walking toward me with a blinding white grin, hand outstretched, and adidas shoes. “Welcome to Bali!” said Nano.

Nano was my host for the week. On the journey to Ubud, he introduced me to his home with this simple phrase and - I realize in retrospect - advice: “Ubud is balance.”

Ten days from that moment, I would learn that balance is not a graceful stillness, held like a mountain pose, or tree pose. Balance is the stillness of a spinning top, found inside and amongst chaos, when you stop fighting the current and your ride it. Breathless, soaking, and stupidly alive.

A Balinese guardian figure, possibly Twalen, who is wiser than he lets on.

My ride through the rapids

I came to Ubud to center my artistic spirit at the Artists in Residence (aka AIR) Ubud, expecting the energy of a lazy river pool, but instead found myself in a ten-day trip down a whitewater river.

The rapids were embodied in the crowds of tourists, flocking to Insta-worthy yoga shalas, plant-based everything, sound baths, crystal healing, and luxury spa days with dirt-cheap price tags.

The rocks of the river were made of the Balinese culture, holding urgently to the river floor — sandalwood incense, frangipani flowers, Hindu temples, warungs, coconut leaf offerings, rice paddy villages, silver- and batik-making, and statues of Hindu gods.

I was reminded of my trip on the Zambezi in Africa, after which I swore I would never touch whitewater again. But since this is only a metaphor and not actual whitewater, let’s continue to ride it…

I became swept up in the first of many rapids on the Ubud river - a realization of gentrification, challenging my authenticity values directly. My way of riding the raft involved a ruthless Ashtanga yoga class (at Radiantly Alive Yoga), a multitude of fresh fruit juice and smoothie bowls, and a near-orgasmic spa day in which I submerged into an underworld hot/cold plunge encased by stone carvings of Hindu-inspired fantasy creatures at the Hotel Tjampuhan Spa.

After the next series of rapids, my coping expanded. I traded moldy clothes packed in NYC two months prior for Bali boho-chic fashion, a pack of Marlboro Lights, and 2am conversations - deep and dirty - with people spanning more than 40 years on either side of me.

Continuing down the river, hitting calmer waters, I was purified in a temple and learned the art of silver-making (at Okta Silver Class, friends of Nano and his mother).

More rapids, and I surrendered to the freedom of wrapping my legs around the passenger seat of a motorbike enveloped in the Bali night air, and a spontaneous snorkeling trip on Nusa Pineda to swim in terrifying circles with a school of manta rays.

And there I was, living Nano’s phrase, Ubud is balance. Several contrasting things can be simultaneously true. Ubud catalyzed this truth that I’ve been too controlled for too long to live out loud.

Ganesha - Hindu god worshipped as the remover of obstacles, the patron of arts and sciences, and the deity of intellect and wisdom

Just to feeling something

After a couple days, I accepted the whirls of unexpected chaos that Ubud was delivering, but was not prepared for what the universe delivered next.

A woman with a melange of ethnicity and accents and cinnamon curls with honey highlights that resembled Vogue-era Madonna in look as much as attitude. In the physical sense, she was in her late 20s, but in the metaphysical, I’m certain she was reincarnated a dozen lives or more.

She played with spiders — 3-inches in diameter — letting them crawl on her face “just to feel something.” She had a face-off with a manta of a 6-foot-span, as though she owned the ocean instead of the other way around. Her sensuality was uninhibited, and her idea of intellectual foreplay was impossible questions about consciousness and the universe.

Being in her orbit made me aware of my own inhibitions — in my words, my mind, my body. She gave language and appetite to things in me that were dormant or unreachable. At first it was electric. Then it felt like a demon goddess had locked my gaze and demanded I take advantage of this moment before it slips away forever — electricity morphing into terror. The terror that my most voracious, vivacious self is already behind me. That the door is closing on me.

But Ubud looked that demon goddess dead in the eye and called her on her bullshit. The door is not closing. It is wide open. I have many more playful, electric, wild, sensual, demon-slaying stories to live and tell. That is a promise.

Bought this earlier on my trip in Costa Rica, and gave it meaning in Bali

What Ubud Unboxed

Over thirty years ago, I declared a part of myself broken and unworthy, and put her in a box. The part of me that is unguarded, unabashedly sexual, and unwilling to ask permission or offer explanation.

I didn’t throw her away but I separated her from the rest of me, convinced that her proximity to the “good” parts - the tenacity, the empathy, the humor, the strength, the ambition - would contaminate them. That she was the thing most likely to undo me.

So I kept her contained in that box. And when I did let her out, it was never freely. It was strategically - for control, for attention, for survival. Weaponized, not integrated. Useful, but not whole.

Ubud unboxed her. Not with a single dramatic moment I can point to and package neatly for you. With ten days of accumulated electricity: a tending to my body with wellness regimens, a woman who showed me that spiders can crawl on your face without killing you, night air on a motorbike, uncensored communication, and an inspiration for erotic writing - sparked by a woman beside me and a man a thousand miles away - that consumed an embarrassing amount of brain space. ALL of Ubud was showing me the way I’m supposed to be. ALL parts of me coexisting, refusing to stay in separate boxes.

I am not two different people. All of it belongs in the same body, in a messy entanglement. Separating them was not protecting me. It was self-abandonment dressed up as self-control.

Well, that was scary

Excuse me while I take a couple deep breaths…

Articulating this has been terror-filled. Hitting the ‘publish’ button will be another whitewater rapid to run, with the help of these promises to myself:

• I will not conform to a story of who I’m supposed to be at this point in my life.

• I will not apologize for my appetite - sexual, material, fantastical, or otherwise.

• I will not let fear or past trauma censor my thoughts, words, or actions.

The door is open. I will walk through it with all of the tenacity, humor, and strength I’ve always had, but going forward I will be wearing boho-chic and a playful smile, carrying a chronicle of feminist erotica. I can leave the cigarettes, helmet-free motorbike rides, spiders, and 6-foot mantas in Bali.

May your day be filled with kisses, gratitude, and contrary 😘🙏