Locked In

Locked in, in a dress I can’t unzip.

It took so long to zip it up. Physical issues usually preclude wearing this dress when travelling solo, but I do like this dress, so I persisted. 

It is so hot my skin prickles from the inside out. The ankles are swelling, the skin on my calves is stretched to breaking point and I’m remembering an elegant and skinny lower leg area I didn't inherit from mum. I don’t feel like looking at that manuscript, and don’t tell me not to worry. I know all about this stupid process. I’ve read Stephen King’s On Writing four times (written, interestingly, when he was locked inside; to be precise, after he was squashed by a lorry while out walking); I’ve started Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and her early pages confirm that I’m totally, awesomely on track when it comes to dithering.

It’s supposed to hurt, this writing thing. We are a narcissistic bunch,  prone also to bouts of self-doubt. This is an irony Joan Didion has noted more than once.

Getting locked inside the villa has meant I am learning new things: like never start a writing project in December. Or on a Monday, which of course is the day I flew here to write. When it comes to common sense and the wisdom of experience, Ms Lamott is on the money. I feel better now.

I have time to think, here in this pretty, compact, tidy villa, when otherwise I might have been distracted: in a café overlooking rapidly disappearing rice fields or face down in a salon, having my back walked on by a dainty Balinese woman with pretty hair or walking the streets, eyes down, trying to avoid the gaping holes in non-existent paths alongside building sites and discarded bags of rubbish (worrying how beautiful Bali will attend to its increasingly evident waste problem). I might have been hailing a Blue Bird taxi and praying the meter works or marching across a six-lane Denpasar street or dodging scooters with a hand up demanding they stop or at least swerve. I might have been out searching for bargains I don’t need.

And so I have concluded the body might be temporarily restricted, but the spirit is not. Besides, I can always read.

Since heading to Bali in the rainy season, and let’s leave the rain for a moment, there’s been gifts aplenty to compensate for a lack of words. Relative silence, if you discount roosters, scooters and the occasional beep of an incoming text; few decisions (the true, cruel crippler of lightness of self); good health (no sugar consumption, save for the glorious black bean pudding Putu’s mother makes) and schedule-free sleep (though this stubborn body clock seems set for daily 6am wake ups).

Something I didn’t count on is a dodgy lock. But sometimes the unexpected is a blessing.

Brief back story: Putu arrived in a flurry of apologies for her non-appearance yesterday. “Celebrations” occurred, so she otherwise preoccupied. I suspected this; I saw the street parades from inside a taxi, and the Hindu driver explained what was happening as best he could, considering our mutual language deficit. The important and best bit is that yesterday was a happy day for celebrating Hindus. This morning, Putu mopped up after the rain. She placed sodden shoes out to dry and removed the rubbish while I dozed. It had been a long night. Continual, thunderous crashings and wide, heavy curtains of water just beyond the glass door of the bedroom. The eaves overflowed, as did the pool, and everywhere in this otherwise wall-free villa, it still feels clammy and moist.

Putu might have deadlocked the gate, or perhaps the lock seized. In last night’s downpour, anything is possible. If I could get it open, I'd try smothering the hinge in oil. 

I won’t starve. I have rice to cook on a stove with a recently refilled gas cylinder. I have muesli and fruit in the fridge. I won’t die of thirst because the water filter is full, thanks to Putu, who, incidentally, came laden with celebratory treats all wrapped in banana leaves. On inspection, their gelatinous consistency turned my stomach a little and I must find a way to dispose of them before she swans in tomorrow morning. I feel like a celebrity with garbage-exposure paranoia. I don’t want her to find my discarded tastings in the bin, but I can’t get to a street pile outside. Maybe I'll try the coconut version: maybe it will be saved by the chewy coarseness of dessicated coconut. 

The overflowing pool was attended to by a tiny bow-legged gentleman with bare feet who arrived as Putu mopped. He disappeared beneath a cement manhole and emerged to tip buckets of excess water over the tropical green postage stamp patch of lawn. The water ripples and glistens and if I could get my dress off, I’d jump in.  

I suppose the daily massage can wait. 

In the meantime, about the dress...