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I am so free here in Bali, it’s almost ridiculous. The only thing I have to do every day is visit
Ketut Liyer for a few hours in the afternoon, which is far short of a chore. The rest of the day
gets taken care of in various nonchalant manners. I meditate for an hour every morning using
the Yogic techniques my Guru taught me, and then I meditate for an hour every evening with
the practices Ketut has taught me (“sit still and smile”). In between, I walk around and ride my
bike and sometimes talk to people and eat lunch. I found a quiet little lending library in this
town, got myself a library card, and now great, luscious portions of my life are spent reading
in the garden. After the intensity of life in the Ashram, and even after the decadent business
of zooming all over Italy and eating everything in sight, this is such a new and radically peace-
ful episode of my life. I have so much free time, you could measure it in metric tons.
Whenever I leave the hotel, Mario and the other staff members at the front desk ask me
where I’m going, and every time I return, they ask me where I have been. I can almost ima-
gine that they keep tiny maps in the desk drawer of all their loved ones, with markings indicat-
ing where everyone is at every given moment, just to make sure the entire beehive is accoun-
ted for at all times.
In the evenings I spin my bicycle high up into the hills and across the acres of rice terraces
north of Ubud, with views so splendid and green. I can see the pink clouds reflected in the
standing water of the rice paddies, like there are two skies—one up in heaven for the gods,
and one down here in the muddy wet, just for us mortals. The other day, I rode up to the her-
on sanctuary, with its grudging welcome sign (“OK, you can see herons here”), but there were
no herons that day, just ducks, so I watched the ducks for a while, then rode on into the next
village. Along the way I passed men and women and children and chickens and dogs who all,
in their own way, were busy working, but none so busy that they couldn’t stop to greet me.
A few nights ago, on the top of one lovely rise of forest I saw a sign: “Artist’s House for
Rent, with Kitchen.” Because the universe is generous, three days later I am living there.
Mario helped me move in, and all his friends at the hotel gave me a tearful farewell.
My new house is on a quiet road, surrounded in all directions by rice fields. It’s a little cot-
tagelike place inside ivy-covered walls. It’s owned by an Englishwoman, but she is in London