bringing the island home

The first time I travelled to Bali was almost exactly nine years ago.

I was a young yoga teacher and I was madly in love.

I arrived solo.

The moment I stepped out of the airport that day I fell in love harder still. With the heat, the heavy, wet air, the scent of incense, rice, frangipanis and motor oil.

Despite my ancestry likely crawling out of some cold, mossy grove, I feel most like myself when the temperature is high. In my ideal climate, the morning sky is obnoxiously blue, with humidity that rises and rises until the entire atmosphere becomes pregnant with rain by early afternoon, eventually bursting over big, fleshy leaves and down onto hot concrete.

The clouds clear for sunset, of course.

My idea of luxury is to be at cafe while the sun is high, wearing silk, jasmine oil, my favourite jewellery and a good hair day. Either writing or laughing with the people I love, multiple beverages being consumed at once, and later, on my bed, reading, with all the windows open and incense burning when the rain comes and comes and comes.

I remember watching the world out the window during the car ride from Denpasar to Ubud. Back then, what feels like a minute ago, the world was very different. Closer to the one we romanticise now. Nine years ago, I could not just switch onto a local sim card from the car. It was just me and the window.

Thank god.

There is little that comes close to the thrill of a new place to explore. The unfamiliar hum of a language that slips right by, flavours that wake sleeping parts of the tongue, adopting new ways of living via osmosis, if only you can loosen the grip on the ones you already hold.

The immersion into a new culture reminds us there is not only one way to live. Maybe we cannot always do this by physically being in a new place, but it is important to at least attempt to float in it for a stretch of time. Not just through reels of morning routines, but in films and novels and biographies. Through long conversations with people who live on the other side of the world.

When I arrived again in Ubud this March, the first thing I did was shower outdoors beneath the stars.

On any given day the mere thought of stars has the potential to fill my body with a great well of gratitude, the acknowledgement that life is a gift so incredibly precious and amazing we simply cannot help but forget it over and over and over again.

It is just too good to be remembered all the time.

Perhaps that is the way with most things.

It is too great a miracle to have a warm home, kitchen cupboards with food inside. To experience the sensation of being loved. Laughing until you cry. Animals who await your arrival with excitement. Beds, blankets, books, the ocean, sunrise, a hug, a hot bath. Warm water that comes straight out of the tap. A favourite mug.

With all of this piled into our arms, how is it that we feel we still don’t have enough?

Ubud is an alternate universe to Tokyo.