Lessons in Letting Go

by Corinne Grant

  I couldn’t wait.

  The next two days of yoga were much more enjoyable and, surprisingly, I could balance. I was a little freaked out to think that my mental instability had manifested itself physically. Adi laughed at me and said, ‘Yes, Corinne. That’s what yoga is all about.’ Oh. Well at least I knew now. It occurred to me that the only person who hadn’t lost their balance at all in the last four days was Vy.

  On our final afternoon we made traditional offering baskets out of palm leaves. We then decorated them with flowers and set them aside. Adi lit a ceremonial fire in a woven basket in the middle of the yoga room and one at a time we threw in our pieces of paper. I had the most and the watercoloured pictures on them made them somewhat fire retardant. They took a long time to burn. I was too happy to feel self-conscious about it; I had not only spent a day really learning about myself, but I was now burning away all the parts I’d realised I shouldn’t be holding on to. It felt great. I had not even made a copy of what I’d written on those bits of paper as a memento. I was finally, truly and completely letting go of something. Everyone waited patiently while my thoughts turned to embers and I added another few centimetres to the diameter of the hole in the ozone layer.

  Vy had the fewest pieces of paper. She threw in two, and asked us if she’d done it right. When we said ‘yes’, she shrugged happily and started chatting about meeting her son-in-law at the airport when she got home.

  We climbed back up the pebbled steps, through the frangipani and past half a dozen stone gods. We were on our way to the retreat’s main altar to make our offerings. Vy was just in front of me, taking her time on the steep steps and stopping to inspect the plants as we passed. She fascinated me. Surely someone who was eighty years old had a million things in their life to let go of. Vy had only burnt two little pieces of paper. I tugged the sleeve of her kaftan.

  ‘Hey, Vy, can I ask you something?’

  She stopped and smiled at me. Now I felt shy.

  ‘What did you do with your day of silence?’

  ‘Oh, I slept. All of that walking—and the yoga is quite tiring.’ She was still smiling at me.

  ‘You didn’t focus on getting rid of negative stuff, things you regret and so forth?’

  ‘No!’ She said it like I had just asked her if she was considering getting a boob job.

  ‘Good grief, if I spent my time rattling around inside my own head thinking about things that I regretted, I would have missed all the lovely things going on around me. And then I really would’ve had something to regret.’ She laughed and patted my hand like I was a simpleton. Which I guess I was.

  Vy didn’t come to the altar with us. Instead, she wandered back to her room, humming to herself.

  When we got to the top of the steps we placed our little baskets of flower offerings in front of the Balinese god and stood back. Adi told us that if we wanted to, we could pray.

  ‘Pray to this god, pray to your own god, pray to a butterfly called Brian if you like.’ Adi giggled. ‘What’s important is that you pray sincerely. Whoever is supposed to hear it will do so if it comes from your heart.’

  I prayed every night when I was a child. I prayed for my family, for my extended family, I prayed for all the children in my class at school, I prayed for the little girl in Waltons, I prayed for everyone I could remember and then I prayed for all the people I had probably forgotten. I used my prayers to cover all my bases, and as I grew older those prayers became longer and longer. Eventually, the burden of trying to remember everyone became too much and I stopped praying altogether. Ever since I was little, I’ve been rattling around inside my own head, focusing on the things I regret.

  Now, standing at this altar, in front of a foreign god in a foreign country, I closed my eyes, clasped my hands to my forehead, thought of the god of my childhood, and for the first time in my life, I prayed for myself. I asked for help. I didn’t feel guilty or selfish, I felt like it was about time. I opened my eyes and blinked. It felt like I had broken to the surface.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I had dinner on my own in Ubud that night, thinking over the last few days and congratulating myself on my decision to come to Bali. I felt light and free. I hadn’t even succumbed to my usual sentimentality when I said goodbye to the others. Some of them, like Vy, I hadn’t even seen before they left. I was okay with that. If I had learnt anything from Vy, I had learnt that the goodbye wasn’t the important part, it was the time spent together that counted.

  When I got back to the retreat, I passed the only other balcony I could see on the way up to my room. Dael was sitting out the front. I hadn’t realised anyone else was staying on. As I made my way past, she waved me over.

  She poured me a cup of ginger tea and I sat down awkwardly. Without Lucy or Vy or Adi to facilitate, I wasn’t sure we had anything in common. Dael was stunning, with a short black bob, deep brown skin and the kind of body that made Halle Berry look like a frump. She was confident—almost outspoken—stylish and immaculately dressed. She spoke better English than I did. I was struggling to find common ground until she pulled out some gossip magazines. I instantly relaxed; bitching about celebrities had to be a universal language.

  ‘Ugh.’ I pulled a face. ‘Britney Spears. What a bogan.’

  Dael looked up from her magazine.

  ‘What is a bogan?’

  Okay. Maybe it wasn’t as universal as I thought.

  ‘It’s an Australian term for someone who is uncultured. Sort of. It’s not always a bad thing to be a bogan. Aussies celebrate their bogan tendencies.’

  Dael looked at me blankly.

  ‘Bogans wear T-shirts with pictures of Harley-–Davidsons or Bon Jovi on the front.’

  She was still looking at me blankly.

  ‘They have mullets. You know, the hair that is short at the front and long at the back?’

  ‘Oh!’ She understood now. ‘Like what the Americans call “white trash”?’

  ‘Sort of.’ I was drowning here. ‘Sort of like white trash except bogans can be rich. They don’t often live in trailers either. It’s hard to explain. You’d have to see one to understand.’

  ‘I move down to Legian tomorrow for a week. Maybe you could come there one day and show me.’

  ‘Where’s Legian?’

  ‘It’s near Kuta.’

  ‘Oh. Okay. You’re going to see a lot of bogans then.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t know what you are talking about because we don’t have bogans at home.’

  I doubted that. Every country has bogans, they just call them different things.

  ‘I think you do, Dael—there must be people in the Netherlands that the rest of you laugh at and think look a bit daggy.’

  ‘No.’ Dael shook her head decisively. ‘Every Dutch person has class. We don’t have bogans. What is “daggy”?’

  Suddenly Lucy burst through the foliage, suitcase and sunhat in hand. Her fiancé had booked her on the wrong flight and she was stuck here for another two days. She admonished us for drinking tea instead of cocktails, sat down and regaled us with the story of her trip back into town.

  ‘The taxi driver kept asking me if I wanted to go to a bar with him. Can you imagine it? I said I was getting married and he just shrugged and said he was married too and it didn’t make any difference! Can you imagine that? So I panicked, and I’m sorry, Dael, but I told him that I was secretly a lesbian and I was coming back here to see you. That turned him off.’

  I held up my hand.

  ‘Let me get this clear, Lucy. You, with your long dark hair and perky little body told your driver that you were having a lesbian affair with Little Miss Hot Stuff over here, and the driver was turned off ? Is Bali in topsy-–turvy land?’

  ‘Maybe it was against his religion.’

  ‘And cheating wasn’t? Which driver was this?’

  Lucy told us and Dael instantly exclaimed that he had come on to her as well. In fact, it seemed that he had hit on nearly all of the women he had driven around
. It was the same driver who had picked me up from the airport on my first night in town. Forty-five minutes I had spent in his car, and he didn’t make a single move. Knowing my luck, he’d probably even had a crack at Vy.

  Dael moved down to Legian the next day, and Lucy was going to bunk with her until her plane left. I was staying in the sleepier town of Ubud, intending to spend my time doing worthy things: visiting temples, art shops and cafés, perhaps I’d take a batik class. Dael and Lucy wrinkled their noses at my plans and insisted I come down and meet up with them the next night for dinner. I shyly accepted their offer.

  The next night we went to the beachside fish restaurants in Jimbaran. We picked a restaurant at random and wandered out onto the sand. All the tables and chairs were set up directly on the beach and the sun was setting as we took our place near the water’s edge. Tourists wandered past buying hot, coal-smoked corn from vendors with barbecues on wheeled carts. Two children were attempting to fly a kite in the dying dusk wind. We ordered lobsters and mussels and Long Island Iced Teas and settled back. Now I really felt like I was on holidays. Here I was, timid little me, sitting on a tropical beach with two complete strangers, sharing a meal and laughing and chatting like a normal person. I secretly wondered how long it would take for the jig to be up.

  We left the restaurant late and went out the front where all the drivers were lined up, touting for business. We tried to find one who would make the hour-long trip back to Ubud but no one would do it for less than double the price I had paid to come in. I tried to negotiate, feebly, saying I could get a hotel room in Kuta for less money. They shrugged and walked away. Dael said, ‘Well if it’s cheaper to stay here, why don’t you? Why not come back to Legian with us and we’ll find you a hotel room?’

  I didn’t have a toothbrush or deodorant and the staff at the bed and breakfast I was staying at would be worried when I didn’t turn up. I was meant to be taking a cooking class the next morning, then I wanted to do some washing and answer my emails and check my list of things-to-do to make sure I was on track and not going to miss out on anything. Then I stopped myself. I was rattling around inside my own head again, worried about things I might possibly regret. Hadn’t I just decided to stop this kind of behaviour?

  Just a few metres down the road from where Dael and Lucy were staying we found a rundown hotel that charged less than fifteen Australian dollars a night—with good reason. Looking around at the other clientele (middle-aged men with young, heavily made-up local girls on their arms) I guessed I was the only person who was hiring a room for the whole night. I took my key from the receptionist, found my room, shoved the door open with the help of a little light kicking, and walked inside. I checked everything out. Neither the shower nor the hot water tap in the bathroom sink worked. I laughed. I supposed that this was what letting go was all about.

  The next day, I half-showered under the cold tap and called the owner of the B&B to reassure him that I was alive. Then I put on the knickers that I had washed the night before and hung over the bedside lamp to dry and strolled up the road to have breakfast with Dael and Lucy. The two of them were going to spend the day shopping and they asked me to join them. I hesitated. I was a hoarder, I didn’t need the temptation.

  ‘Come on!’ Dael laughed. ‘You have to show me a bogan!’

  We spent the day wandering in and out of boutiques. I bought two sarongs, a toothbrush and a pair of sandals to replace the heels I was hobbling around in from the night before. Then I bought some Bandaids to cover the blisters that the new sandals caused. I did not buy any trashy souvenirs or postcards to remind me of the area, nor did I take photographs of every shop we passed for a scrapbook I would never make. Instead, I enjoyed the moment and hung out with my new friends.

  I had bought everything extremely cheaply and that was no doubt due to the fact that I hadn’t done any of the bargaining myself. Lucy had been to Bali numerous times and assured us she knew the right price for everything. I was happy to stand back and let her do the negotiating; it meant I didn’t have to do any thinking, something which I was starting to enjoy. Lucy was ferocious, putting on a show that made Sharon Osbourne look like Bambi. She would roll her eyes, clutch at her heart and yell, ‘What are you doing to me? Do I look like a Japanese tourist? Do I look like I’m that easy? Local price! Local price!’ Twice when Lucy wasn’t looking, I snuck back into the shop we had just left and slipped the shop assistant an extra couple of dollars.

  By midday it was too hot to shop any longer so we lunched at a beachside Italian restaurant and fortified ourselves with cocktails. Dael looked out over the balcony, pointing at people and calling out loudly, ‘Corinne, is that a bogan?’

  Dael, I had discovered over the last day and a half, was one of those people who saw her opinions as facts. The night before she had grabbed my iPod, flicked through the song list and pronounced, ‘You are listening to the wrong music,’ before pulling out the headphones and putting it back in my handbag.

  At breakfast that morning I had tried the traditional rice bubur that was a staple of the Balinese diet. Dael stared open-mouthed at the porridge-like substance in front of me.

  ‘You cannot eat that for breakfast!’

  ‘The Balinese do, Dael. I’m sure if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.’

  ‘Well, that is just crazy and they are wrong.’ I couldn’t help laughing at her horrified expression.

  Now, she was leaning over the balcony and pointing at a pale young man in a sleeveless T-shirt. ‘That one with the bad hair! Is that a bogan?’

  He looked up and I pulled Dael back into her seat. ‘Shhhh!’ I whispered. ‘No, he’s just English.’

  After lunch we had a massage, all together in the one room. As I undressed, Dael frowned, pointed at my underpants and said, ‘This is why you are single.’ For once, her point was fair. Hoarding ancient underwear was one thing, wearing it was quite another.

  That night we had more cocktails at the hotel bar overlooking Kuta beach. Lucy was to leave in a few hours’ time and I was finally going to head back to Ubud. We talked about how much we were going to miss each other and what a great time we’d had. Dael laughed. It was her first time overseas on her own and she couldn’t believe that she had managed to land on her feet so well. Lucy smiled and said, ‘You two should buddy up for the rest of your time here.’

  Dael and I looked at each other.

  ‘Why not?’ Lucy encouraged. ‘You’re both on your own, you have no plans, there’s no reason to go your separate ways.’

  Dael looked expectant. I wanted to say no. I did have plans. In fact, I had an exhaustive list of things I wanted to do in Bali—there was a temple I wanted to see, a cookery class I wanted to take, a traditional dance show I wanted to attend. I had drawn up a timetable with carefully allotted hours for each activity and I was going to have trouble fitting in everything as it was. If I buddied up with Dael I would have to compromise and I did not want to miss something and regret it later. I was just about to say that I couldn’t join her and then I stopped myself. There was a real human being sitting opposite me, a real-life, possibly crazy, human being. Surely the experiences we would have together would be more fun than ticking stuff off a stupid list.

  ‘Sure thing. Dael, you up for it?’

  ‘Of course! But you can’t wear that dress again, Corinne. It is bad.’

  As the sun set, we watched the parade of tourists stroll past on the road that divided us from the beach. There were families, young couples, old couples, newlyweds. Then I saw a couple with matching mullets. They were so tanned they looked like they were getting ready to enter a George Hamilton look-alike contest. Their hair was almost white from what was probably a combination of too much sun and household bleach. The woman was wearing a bikini one size too small and it was struggling to stretch across her enormous bosom. The man was wearing nothing but a pair of fluorescent pink Speedos, his enormous leathery brown gut hanging down over the front, but not far enough to hid
e the most enormous pair of testicles I had ever seen. They knocked back and forth inside his Speedos like an executive desk toy. It was almost hypnotic. I snapped out of it and punched Dael in the arm.

  ‘Dael!’ I pointed in their direction. ‘Bogans!’

  As she looked up, they started talking loudly to each other in what sounded like Italian.

  ‘No!’ Dael said. ‘No!’

  ‘What?’ Lucy and I said it at the same time.

  ‘They are Dutch!’

  It was the only time I ever saw Dael distressed the whole time we spent together.

  Lucy left on a late flight and I grabbed a car back to Ubud. Before going our separate ways the three of us hugged and promised to meet up again. The next morning I packed up my hotel room, checked out, threw my list in the bin and moved down to share Dael’s room in Legian. I felt so carefree that I rang the airline and extended my trip by another two days.

  Dael and I sunbathed, took a surfing class and went white-water rafting. The only nod to my now-abandoned list was an afternoon spent visiting an art museum. I did this on my own while Dael let herself get spectacularly ripped off by a guy selling fake watches on the street.

  ‘But he came to the cash machine with me and showed me how much money to withdraw!’ Dael was protesting against my scepticism. ‘He was very helpful!’

  ‘I have absolutely no doubt about that Dael, but the watch isn’t even working.’

  She rolled her eyes and looked at me with sympathy. ‘Well of course not,’ she said. ‘they are special watches that work off the energy in your body. I have to wear it for a while for the electricity to build up inside.’ And then she carefully packed it away.

  That night, we were going out nightclubbing. I desperately did not want to go, but as I had convinced Dael to go white-water rafting with me the day before, I now owed her a favour in return. I have never liked nightclubs. There’s too much noise, the people are too drunk, the prices for drinks are ridiculous and they never, ever play any Bruce Springsteen. I used to go when I was a teenager but only because if I had said that I preferred to go somewhere quiet where we could have a nice conversation, my friends would have shrunk away from me like I had tuberculosis. The only way I’d got through it was to drink so much I thought I was somewhere else.