I recently signed up for a 10-week creative writing course and have been loving it! Today’s post is an excerpt from last week’s assignment. The task: to write about a season in the context of place. This piece was inspired by my time living in Bali early last year.
There is a faint musk in the air as I get out of bed and open the curtains to the bright green rice paddies just outside my balcony. It’s 9 am in Ubud and the night’s AC has me shivering in the morning light of my white tiled bungalow just off Monkey Forest Road. I am both giddy and stressed that the day’s itinerary is, yet again, uncharted. I don my regular attire: a green bikini, a black tank top and a floral sarong. A smearing of coconut scented sunscreen on my face and I’m out the door.
The ground, still moist from the night’s rain, shimmers as I scamper down the stairs into the steamy sunlight. It’s going to be a hot one. I can feel it. The crickets, quieter now, buzz a lazy greeting as I rush through the lush, wet courtyard still dripping with dew. Oh the pure pleasure on my body as the moist morning weaves its way through every membrane of my clothing. Already, everything feels damp with a day’s worth of walking. I grin with guilt as Asia’s sweaty breath makes it’s way down my cheek, across my neck, and around my shoulders, arms and legs. This must be the reason couples head to the tropics on honeymoon. Already, we are making love, Ubud and I, and it isn’t even noon.
The sun is different here. It kisses and burns. I shiver in the heat, condensation quickly forming on my temples. I pull my hair into a high ponytail as I greet the bungalow manager goodbye across the open air lobby and into the street. Like stepping off the plane in Cairo, Bali also smells third world: a hint of open sewer, over-ripened fruit, wet moss and damp wood. Mopeds whizz by as shop keepers sweep the night’s rubbish from their front steps.
I’m a local here, or so they think. They greet me with a passing glance, like we share a secret that I am supposed to know. I am not the blond haired, blue-eyed American who can be weaseled into paying too much for a sun hat. I am Indonesian, or I could be, and so, I’m not worth the effort to harass.
Pretending to be a local here and getting away with it is a simple pleasure that overcomes me each morning as I walk to breakfast. It’s as if Ubud has always been mine; the thick jungles and bamboo bungalows so much a part of my blood, Southeast Asia pumping in through my veins. It is familiar and exotic at once, the dichotomy so intoxicating, I just might never leave.
