I ended up in Thailand because it’s my philosophy that as long as you’re flying through a country, you might as well spend some time there. (Although this did once get me stuck in Brunei for too long.) I chose Chiang Mai because it’s known as a center for yoga, reiki, meditation, and Thai massage courses. Because I am very interested in and extremely afraid of (my two prerequisites for all my travel activities) touching people, a massage course seemed like a good way to end my trip.

I researched courses, asked friends for recommendations, and visited specific schools, but after a few days in Chiang Mai, I lacked the motivation to commit to 5 or 10 days with a hard-fast schedule, or pack up and leave my guesthouse, a tree-shaded complex in which I’d splurged on a $15/night garden-style room with a king-size bed and spacious living area. Resistant to signing up, I berated myself for my laziness. “When will you have another opportunity to learn Thai massage?” a voice asked. “When will you have another opportunity to live freely without your cellphone attacking you?” my own voice countered.

My first few days were marked by the decision-making fretting that has accompanied every new destination on this journey. I picked my fingernails, tossed and turned in my sleep, and ate my anxiety in mass quantities of mango, coconut, banana, and the occasional salted insect. The hardest decisions I’ve made on this trip have involved not doing something — not going to India, not posting the blog I wrote about trekking, and finally, not enrolling in a massage course.

Which left me faced with the backpacker conundrum — how to fill the next 10 days — move on to the river-town of Pai, volunteer at an elephant park, day trip to Burma? Everywhere you go on the road, if you take a look around, there’s always another destination, another must-see “monkey show,” another opportunity to miss. But here the activity touts were so passive, sleeping in their tuk-tuks or sangtheows, my only exchange seemed to be some version of:
“Hey, Mr. Long-Haired Guy, Where you from?”
“The U.S.”
“U.S.A., then why you so short?”

This “city,” especially the old city where I stayed, was so quiet and peaceful with its Wat (Buddhist temple) lined streets that I slipped easily into a near aimlessness, a daily yoga class as my only foundation.

Even though I’d launched my trip with a yoga retreat in Bali, I had not anticipated that yoga would become the through-line, the constant that I’d return to again and again at other retreat centers and studios, as well as guest house rooms and balconies. Here in Chiang Mai the class offerings and teachers were particularly strong, and I branched out beyond my usual vinyasa flow to take some special classes like “yin yoga for the digestive system,” “modified ashtanga series,”  and “mandala flow.” Each night I’d peruse the schedule and turn whatever class I chose for the following day into the main event, often surrounding it with a wander to a used bookstore or a vegetarian restaurant.

I kept to myself quite a bit for these two weeks, but by the end, I was regularly talking to people. It may be a universal rule of yoga that if you show up at the same studio every day, and the studio has a heart, you’ll eventually have friends. I started to feel at home at Wild Rose when I noticed that Rose would greet me before I’d even entered the place, catching me or my ponytail through the window.

On my last day, I booked the latest flight out so that I could attend a “visions and vinyasa” workshop led by Jenny Blake, a teacher and life coach from NY. I really wanted to take the opportunity for a body-centered inquiry into what I envision for myself when I return to San Francisco. Home had definitely been on my mind. My intention for this part of the trip was, as I’d written in my journal, to prepare for coming home.

This was the last leg (not counting a quick visit to a friend in Taiwan), my final chance to practice all that I’d learned without distractions. I ate most of my meals in silence (no reading while food was on the table), tried to walk everywhere with awareness, and sat for meditation in the mornings with a renewed focus. I also took the opportunity to dabble in my growing interests. I tried a one-day Reiki course and a half-day back/shoulder/neck massage course to see if next time a longer course might be for me. Mostly, I did a whole lot of nothing except rest and absorb, treating it like a savasana before I curled into the fetal position, sat up, and opened my eyes to face the Western world.

In yoga, savasana has always been my most challenging pose. To just lie there and do nothing is incredibly hard. To arrive in a new city and do nothing or close to nothing, emptying the space of activities instead of filling it with them is incredibly hard. ”Some people say that savasana is the most important pose of all,” Jenny said during that final workshop, “That it is the only pose that matters.” How true, I thought, how very true.

A dozen of us sit around an oval table, two candles offering the only light. In the main cities of Nepal, the electricity is out for around 12 hours a day. Load shedding (or rationing) it’s called, and the schedule varies day to day. Generators and solar power exist, but tonight, on the top level of the Sadhana Yoga and Meditation center, high above Lake Fewa, the candle flames set the perfect atmosphere for an impromptu concert.

A German guy has just returned from his trek, returned to this place where he’d previously spent a week, a place that feels like home. Those who know him hail his return with requests for songs on his portable traveler’s guitar. He opens with a narrative song about a monkey who yearns to fly only to realize he cannot land. Soon, I’m laughing harder than I have in weeks and singing along to a catchy chorus that goes, “Hey monkey, monkey… Hey monkey, monkey…”

On the far side of the lake are pinpricks of light from city of Pokhara, where every establishment caters to travelers — convenience stores that do your laundry, paragliding companies that will arrange your jungle safari, and too many restaurants misinformed about backpacker eating habits. I did not come to Nepal for white bread toast and spaghetti. Perhaps Lonely Planet can send a memo.

The scene in Pokhara is a more laidback version of Thamel, the backpacker neighborhood in Kathmandu, and a more uptempo version of the main town at Chitwan National Park — the other places I’ve been. Touts are significantly less annoying in Nepal than in other countries, but if like me, you don’t have a plan upon arrival, adventure-information overload is a danger. Whether you are ready or not, within a day almost any company can whisk you away to trek in mountains so high that altitude sickness is a reality. And I was not ready.

I came to Sadhana to rest my eyes from pinballing the storefronts, to find some likeminded and likehearted travelers, and to center myself before taking on the mountains, rivers, and as it would turn out, the sky.

The bell rings at 5:30 am, and we gather in the yoga hall for warm up exercises and morning meditation. The practice is centered around the repetition of mantras (“Om” and “So Hum”) externally and internally for concentration. My mind wanders as it always does during my own morning meditation, but I am surprised by lack of self-judgment, that in the past year it has become a tiny bit easier for me to sit still.

Following our morning herbal tea, Divyam rings the bell. “It’s Neti time!” he shouts from the balcony. When we are all gathered in the garden area, he begins, “Namaste and welcome to this nasal cleansing program.” All of the newcomers are nervous. Unlike me, they have never poured salty water into one nostril and watched it come out the other. Some people sound like they are choking or drowning, partially because they are laughing. The only appropriate way to end a group nasal cleansing is with a ridiculous physical exercises. Up and down we bounce, fingers tucked under our armpits in the chicken dance, forcefully blowing out excess water through our noses.

Our morning yoga session is led by the center founder, Asanga. He reminds me of a wizard and leads us in pranayama (breathing exercises) that I know but do not practice often enough. During the physical portion, we begin with pre-asanas that are like kindergarten calisthenics and then asanas (poses) that we hold for three minutes, timed by a stopwatch. It is one of my intentions to be open to a yoga style that is different from my regular vinyasa flow. I figure if I haven’t cut off friends in the States who practice Bikram the least I can do is be open to this branch of Hatha that extends back to India and the very roots of yoga. And while the method is very different, I have to admit that in this Himalayan land, “downward dog” looks a lot more like a “mountain pose” as it’s called here.

Every few days, we practice laughing yoga, a traditional (Buddhist) practice that has us squealing and cackling for no reason at all. At this time, Santo, a young guy who speaks little English and works in the background, runs up from wherever he is on the property, bursts into the room and breaks into a fit of hysterics that energizes us even more.

Usually, our morning walk is short and leisurely. We stroll past the “Great Compassion School,” or down to “Happy Village,” or kick around a soccer ball. The highlight of the day is breakfast, either because we’ve already been up for four-and-a-half hours, or because the banana lassi, lightly spiced like the masala tea, and the muesli with curd (yogurt) is amazing. One morning we count almost a dozen different items from coconut to apples to dried dates in our bowls. Because I am language inept, I learn only one Nepali phrase, but I practice it (and am corrected) at every meal. “Mitho cha!” Delicious!

The bulk of the midday is for hanging out. This means we sit on the veranda, watch the paragliders twirl above the lake, and engage in the typical backpacker banter. Q: How long are you staying? A: I don’t know, maybe 4 days, or 7 days, or maybe 10 days. Q: Where are you going next? A: I don’t know, maybe Thailand or Burma, or maybe I’ll just stay here? Q: Where is the best place you’ve been? A: India. Definitely India.

Surprisingly, I find myself looking forward to the noon meditation session. I’m headed into a Tibetan monastery for a Buddhism/meditation course soon, and I’d been afraid that I might OD on meditation. But the opposite occurs. I feel like I’m just warming up. As my larger trip begins to take on a shape of its own, it’s apparently unfolding around yoga and meditation. I seem to seek this out wherever I land, as if I’m taking a real world survey course in Eastern philosophy and practice.

And I’m a spiritual lightweight compared to the two girls who are finishing up their 21 days at Sadhana shortly before going into a hardcore Vipassana meditation course. I like them very much immediately, and in the couple days that our time overlaps, our connection feels effortless. I make friends while I am here, those I will catch up with when, on our own schedules, we all  re-enter civilization.

In the late afternoon, we practice karma yoga, thirty minutes of kitchen help, watering plants, cleaning the yoga space, or one time, shoveling rocks. I enjoy this tiny contribution to the upkeep of the community, but there is a deeper intention behind this practice. “Yoga is union of body and mind,” Durga (Asanga’s wife) says to me. “And in this karma yoga, the yoga of action, we unite our work with our body and mind in meditation.”

It is hard to practice this work-meditation if anyone begins jabbering away while we are peeling potatoes. But I observe it in Sunita, the cook who sings softly to herself behind us, and in Ganga, the workhorse and family elder who cleans, launders, and hauls firewood, always with a smile so deep and pure it appears ancient, as if she discovered joy in a time long ago, and only she knows the secret to maintain it. Karma yoga, perhaps.

And finally, the moment we all wait for. No, no, not the snack of masala tea and popcorn, but after. Chanting! “Now we will unite our beautiful voices in beautiful melodies and spread our beautiful energy,” Durga says, rolling her T’s. No matter how many times she says “beautiful,” it never gets old. Just like her smile, equal parts love and mischief. A leader of the village women’s group, Durga is strong and nurturing, exactly as her name suggests.

Every day, we pick three mantras/chants from the list, many that I recognize from home, but that Durga explains differently. While we sing, she plays the tambourine and her nephew, Kaushal, plays the drum. He often wears a Sid Vicious “Smoke the Herb” T-shirt, and sometimes in between sending text messages, he’ll casually and naturally fall into a few repetitions of “Om Namah Shivaya.” He is passionate about chanting, and he downloads a bunch of Nepali devotional music onto a thumb drive for me, an exciting surprise for when I get home.

Kaushal is my favorite. When he suggests I get up and dance at the end of one session, I climb over my own internal  resistance and rise in my spot. Prodded by the girls, and there are only girls, soon I’m in the center of the circle dancing alone to a chanting encore. I’m stepping outside of myself in this place, or maybe it is into myself. I am at ease in this environment, and I I soon notice that I am a resource for those who are new to yoga, meditation, and chanting.

Divyam leads evening yoga, which is always a mental challenge for me. Divyam is unadulterated sweetness, disciplined and dedicated, but he has a disciple’s demeanor and lacks the knowledge of Asanga. He passes on to us only what he recently learned and is unable to answer basic questions (asked often) like why we greet the morning with moon salutations and end the day with sun salutations. I’m not sure whether it is empathy, sympathy, or compassion but even as I’m regularly annoyed by stopwatch yoga, I alternate between these warm feelings toward Divyam, as well as myself for my own frustration and lack of focus.

After dinner, we do a quick candlelight meditation. When it’s over, Divyam places his palms together and ends this session in the same manner that he ends all of them. “This program is over. Thank you and Namaste.”

Seven days is a short time for me to experiment with a new form of yoga. Seven days is a long time for me to be away from booze, bud, internet, and especially coffee. This is probably the longest I’ve gone without those habits and substances since I was fifteen years old. I was so fearful about caffeine withdrawal that I brought a small bottle of emergency Nescafe that I never opened.

I felt at home the moment I arrived in Nepal, but it is only at the end of my week at Sadhana that I feel at home within myself. We practiced everything from extreme stillness to excessive laughter to stretching our eyeballs, and in the process, we received a lifelong foundation for yoga, or an addition to my existing foundation, something I’ll carry with me on the rest of my adventure. Some people travel to discover a new world, but I think I travel to discover myself in a new world, and it took a week of focus on my “sadhana” — my practice — to turn in before looking out.

At a literary event the night before I leave for my trip, a random in the audience gave me the contact info for his friend, a queer guy living in Munduk, a small village in the mountainous north of Bali. A month later at midnight, Qian knocks on my guesthouse door in Ubud (returning from a quick jaunt out of Bali to renew his visa) and climbs into bed wearing only his underwear. In the morning, we wordlessly unroll our yoga mats. Before we hit the road, we have become friends.

Sometimes when you travel, you have control, or the illusion of control — some knowledge of where you are going and what will be there. And sometimes, you are along for the ride, accepting an invitation into the home and life of another, accepting what is offered. I make sure of only two things, boiled drinking water andvegetarian food, the second typical since meat is a luxury.

Qian and I are dropped off on the side of the road near a sign for waterfalls, these the main tourist draws in a town that receives one page in my guidebook. After a 7-minute walk on a dirt path, we approach a clearing where cock-fighting chickens and bred pigeons (apparently birds are decorative) and a well-behaved dog wander. Qian lives on the second level of this humble home in a tree-house like room with glass windows on three sides and a balcony that overlooks the orchard and misty valley.

Qian is here to study, practice, record, and produce gamelan music. As I understand it, gamelan refers to a collection of instruments (loosely reminiscent of xylophones, although some remind me in shape of clay pots used for cooking ) many with bronze keys set above bamboo tubes. The keys are struck with mallets, some round while others look like hammers.

Gamelan is everywhere in Bali. Everywhere. And along with performances and lessons I often see a phrase: “playing gender.” I cannot wait to ask Qian and shout at him, “What does that mean!?” He starts cracking up. The gender (with a hard “G” and an “er” sounding like “air”) wayang is a type of gamelan. With two trans guys, the jokes are endless.

I am excited to meet, Made, the gamelan teacher. He wears bifocals, has an intellectual mien, and everything about him cries musician — he builds and tunes gamelans, as well as teaches, composes, and plays. Having toured in the States, he speaks decent English and eagerly talks to me about his work. In fact, gamelan seems to be the only thing on his mind. During my first day, he sits around smoking, drinking coffee, messing around on the flute, and praying it doesn’t rain so that village gamelan practice will happen.

When it starts to rain at 6pm on my first night, Made turns to me, “Very bad, Nick, very bad,” he says. “God does not like gamelan.”

In the treehouse, Qian and I fall into one of our effortless conversations — about queer San Francisco, artist colonies, art fundraising, touring, or gender (soft “g”). We do not notice the rain has stopped until Made calls up to us. “No, no,” Qian whines.

“This is what I hate,” Qian says to me. “I never know where I’m going, for how long, what will happen, and when I’ll be back.” I get it. I totally get it. I’m along for a brief ride, but this is his  daily life.

Made, Qian, and I put on our headlights, plod through the mud, and reach the road where two helmetless young men on scooters pick us up. It is dark, wet, drizzling, and for 2 kilometers along a very windy, hilly road, I think only of one thing — dying.

About a dozen men — ages fourteen to sixty — arrive slowly, cigarettes gangling from their mouths. The gamelans are aligned in pairs on a long raft of cement protected by a corrugated metal roof. Along the cinder block wall, bamboo flutes (sulings) hang. One coiled light on a string hangs from the ceiling. Water drips off of the leaves and roof, a pitter-patter of drops soon overtaken by the twinkling of keys.

Supposedly they are learning a new piece, but it sounds practiced. Up close, what impresses me the most is the way the musicians strike the keys with the mallets and quickly stop each key with the base of a hand. Their movements are so quick, like a magician’s trick, a sleight of hand that I hadn’t noticed until now.

They practice for a couple hours until coffee is served and the animated conversation eventually dies down. It is midnight before we are back on scooters and making our way home.

We are staying with Made’s daughter and her family (her husband and three kids). None of them speak English, and I am aware that I am communicating wholly with my body language, my face, my walk, and the few Indonesian words I know. My new favorite words are “Makan, Makan” — “Eat, Eat.”

This is shouted up at us constantly for we are fed constantly — fried bananas with palm sugar, chayote, bamboo shoots, greens that the son hands to his mother through the kitchen window, tapioca, cassava roots boiled and fried, cassava greens — and always white rice. We do not eat with the family for reasons I don’t understand; the cooked food remains under a dirt-caked fly protector, and people eat whenever they want.

Everyone in the family sleeps downstairs on a collection of mattresses, some without sheets, that rest on the floor in front of TVs that blare constantly. We all share the bathroom with a real squat toilet, not the kind at tourist spots where you bring your own toilet paper and leave it in the waste basket on your way out. No shoes are allowed inside the bathroom, or the house.

I do very little while here other than go on a short trip to the waterfall. The middle child, the son, silently guides me. This kid is beautiful, all of them are. He is lanky with fuzz over his lip, ears that stick out, and a kindness that makes me believe (mistakenly perhaps) that he will not become an angry, sullen teenager like those in America.

It is always raining, or about to rain, the water occasionally dripping through the roof of the treehouse onto the bed. Mostly, we work. While I write, Qian sits at a stool in front of his computer (using a modem that uses radio waves) engaged in the creative and business aspects of gamelan  — choosing songs for an album, doing the cover art, contacting producers.

I write about Ubud. It takes me such a long time to write the blog post, longer than it should; it always does. In the past couple weeks, I have been rejected (or waitlisted) by the three artist colonies/retreats I applied to for the summer. I have been falling in and out of that rejection spiral — the why bother, “I suck” spin — that every writer experiences.

I look over at Qian with his headphones tuned to his music, and I think of the lunacy of artists, the lunacy of travel, the lunacy of love — the passions that call us, the cultures that steal our hearts, the people who become family. Somehow, isolated in this treehouse on an orchard, high in the mountains of Bali, it all makes sense, for a second, anyways. For this is where the two of us ended up when we let go of the illusion of control.

***

Check out Qian’s blog to hear the gamelan, support his work, and learn a thing or two from the master about this pretty amazing music.

The faint moonlight silhouettes palm trees against a blue-black sky. Inside the open-air Yoga Barn studio, over twenty of us — travelers and ex-pats — gather for the first in a new bi-weekly evening series, Bali Dharma Talks, a lecture and discussion about local life.

A spotlight shines on a pull-down blackboard. “Mula Keto,” our speaker writes. It means, “That’s just the way it is.” It’s something parents say and reminds me of the American version, “Because I said so.” Except that here there is a nuance. It’s based less on about authority and more on faith. It means just do it, but also implies trust it, believe in it. “Mula Keto” is the response when kids question the many offerings, ceremonies, and rituals that define village existence.

Our speaker writes and connects “spirituality,” “humanity,” and “environment” — balanced in harmony. Above this micro-level is the macro-level, one word “Universe.” At the very top, he writes “God.” He explains that this organizational system does not come from a specific book, class, philosophy, or religion, but is the tradition imparted to him growing up. His lecture is a series of digressions, and I collect the pieces that resonate with me, tonight and at other times, creating a patchwork understanding of the culture, or many cultures (for each village is unique) here.

He describes Ubud as a village and shares a bit about his childhood back when the main street was a dirt road and the market a field, before the trees were cleared for the arrival of electricity in the mid-seventies. He is not romanticizing, but bridging, the past to present, and to the future, accepting his responsibility and teaching us about ours as the inevitable growth and change continues all around us.

Ubud is a thriving tourist town and my home base in Bali. On the surface it is similar in many ways to my true home, the Castro — a tourist mecca and a theme park that I call “Gay Disneyland.” Ubud is a Yogi Disneyland, a spiritual theme park. The stores and restaurants pull from Sanskrit and Hinduism — Satya Jewelry, Ahimsa Clothes, Atman Cafe, Lakshmi Books, Saraswati Bungalows, and Durga Burger — Ok fine, I made the last one up.

I absolutely love it here. I pretend the Yoga Barn is Yoga Tree and attend classes in the morning and events in the evening. A Kirtan led by a visiting Ozzie, Kevin James, is one of the highlights, a foot-stomping, hand-clapping, musical extravaganza, a beautiful co-mingling of voice and sound, celebrating community and expressing devotion.

With my ponytail, fisherman pants, and white (albeit tan) skin, I fit in well in this scene and am almost too comfortable. I branch out by trying a chanting night affiliated with a massage center and ashram. A candle flickers in front of a lone frangipani flower in the center of our intimate three-person triangle. A Balinese man, Putu, plays the guitar and leads us in familiar chants with unfamiliar melodies, including one with the twist of a local tongue that substitutes W’s for V’s. From our hearts, we repeat “Om Namah Shiwaya” over and over and over again.

I find it expansive to explore what I was first introduced to in my San Francisco yoga world in here in Bali. I like seeing a much larger form of the Ganesha I have on my home altar guarding the front of many of the temples, guesthouses, and stores, removing obstacles, clearing the entrance. I like seeing a performance of the Ramayana at the palace. Even though I do not take to Legong Dance, when Hanuman and his vanara army enter I excitedly poke the Canadian singer-songwriter I coerced to come along. “Look, Hanuman!” I say. “This is the best part.”

Unlike the rest of Indonesia, much of Bali is Hindu. I’m told that as time marched on, foreigners arrived, and Muslims conquered, Bali was safely isolated due to the coral that thwarted boats. The Hindu that remains is mixed with animism, and as I gather, because I’m always gathering, somewhat specific within each village.

A unifying trait is devotion, expressed in rituals and ceremonies that are so constant, time-consuming, and expensive (especially if a lot of deaths occur in a year) that I begin to wonder if they are excessive. On a long day of temple sightseeing, we pass a shocking number of processions and temple anniversaries. My driver, Apel, attended a cremation the day before. “Do the ceremonies ever get to be too much?” I finally ask him.

“Yes,” he says, laughing like I caught him. But in his laugh, I can also hear, “Mula Keto.”

I spend a big part of the day in the car with Apel, talking the whole time. He is married with a four-year old son, and he recently borrowed a large amount of money to buy a tiny piece of land, 125 sq meters, to build a house. “Every day, I wake up nervous,” he says, gesturing a hand over his heart, pumping it hard against his chest.

His English is terrific, not just the words but the slang and the sentiment. He calls one of his friends a “high-class playboy” with a hint of admiration. “But that is not me,” he says. “I have to be me.” He desperately wants to be a good father and husband, speaks apologetically about occasionally drinking Arak, the local spirit (made from palm leaves) with his friends.

He is so earnest and honest. My skin feels translucent, like it can no longer protect me. I discover we are the same age, a few months a part. He wears a Hurley T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. I feel a deep kinship with him. He teaches me much, including a new Balinese word, “taksu” — inner beauty, and I understand perfectly because I see it so clearly in him.

At Tanah Lot, I walk across the shallow ocean to the base of this temple; it’s so perfect it looks like it belongs in a snow globe. A couple hours later, I explore Uluwatu, another seaside temple, this built on a cliff so sheer and steep it is as if a sharp knife sliced off this bit of land. The view, the sense of the end of the earth, is the allure of these temples — homages to the ocean. It is a bit bizarre to feel the essence of God, then get in line behind a busload of Singaporeans to capture it in a picture. I enjoy my time in the car with Apel as much, maybe more than the temples.

On my last day in Ubud, I visit Sari Organic, the restaurant in the middle of the rice fields. I am thrilled to be outside the bustle of the town center. On the walk, I pass signs for places to rent by the month, and although I’d once thought I might seek a rental, settle for a bit and write here, I quickly realized that this trip is not for working on a project, but is a respite between projects.

I spend hours at this restaurant, many more than I intend, eating vegetables and chatting with a yogi and an Asia-phile who has been coming to Bali for twenty years. She is a New Yorker (it takes one to know one) but in the seventies, she lived in San Francisco, the Castro. She speaks with nostalgia about this time, a period along with the eighties and early nineties that I have pieced together from documentaries, archival footage, books, and friends.

The “Gay Disneyland” where I have made my home for the past 7 years may be full of tourists paying too much money for ironic underwear and bad dance music, but it is also the neighborhood where early liberation and freedom was experienced, community grew around enormous devastation and loss, and part of the foundation that allows for my queer existence was built. You can see Disneyland, or you can find the hallowed ground underneath.

As I walk back to my guesthouse on none other than Hanuman Street, I pass one of the places I have not visited on this trip, Taksu Yoga. In total, I’ve spent more than two weeks in and around Ubud, but I am only beginning to see behind the words painted on the storefronts, to discover what taksu means.

Perhaps next time I’m here I’ll rent one of those houses in the rice fields…

I am sitting on the veranda of my bungalow in a garden of blossoming flowers with Buddha and Ganesha statues shaded by the canopy of palm leaves. A mother’s foreign lullaby is punctuated by the crows of roosters, bird calls, and scooter engines. I slept for 12 hours last night, 10 hours the few nights before. I am not sure why I am so tired, whether it is the past couple years of busting my ass behind me, the emotional days of goodbyes from folks on my yoga retreat — the end of their vacation and the beginning of my adventure — or if hanging out underwater could possibly be that exhausting.

Scuba diving is the only “activity” I’ve been doing for the past week. And by that I mean watching a turtle levitating to the surface for air, a reef shark swimming amidst a school of barracuda, a sting ray flapping along the sandy bottom, a scorpion fish camouflaging itself into the wreck of a WWII U.S. cargo ship, the flatworms and starfish and clams gripping on to coral as I begin to let go of the grip on my mouthpiece. With each dive, the tiny bits of life become infinitely more interesting, the details of this underwater ecosystem more vivid.

I am in Amed (Jemeluk Beach to be more specific), a strip of villages situated on black sand beaches on the east coast of Bali. There is seemingly not much to do here. And so I wonder, “Why am I here?” This is a question I have been asking myself for weeks, with differing tones of fear and wonder.

It started with a retreat, something that felt like a mix between the Real World: Yoga Edition and yoga camp in a college dorm. Slightly outside the main part of Ubud, our compound was planted in the center of rice fields, a pool its only attraction. On that very first afternoon, a new friend and I, resting on the pool’s ledge, looked out into the jungle and eyed each other with the same trepidation: What the heck would we do all day after the yoga session?

The question was quickly answered by the two kids on the retreat, young girls who jumped into the water and proceeded to engage us both for the next one, two, or was it three hours with games — searching for my lost hairbands under water, catching rocks off the diving platform, racing to touch the bottom.

Time and space — the greatest burden and the greatest luxury.

I didn’t expect my yoga retreat to be full of Hide-and-Seek, Go Fish, I Spy, or that literally the only words I’d read during those ten days would be the book “Should I Share My Ice Cream?” I didn’t expect that my biggest adventure would be a rain-soaked, mud-drenched journey with the kids across the rice field to a temple instead of the day I climbed Mount Batur before the sun rose imperceptibly through dense clouds. That morning I fell asleep on volcanic rock heated by the earth’s core, but it was the heat of two girls sandbagging me on the dorm floor later that afternoon that warmed me the most. It’s been a long time since I’ve had friends under the age of ten. It’s been a long time since I’ve had this much time.

A white flag floats in the middle of the rice field. During yoga practice my gaze, my drishti, settles upon this flag, this symbol of surrender.

There is actually nothing that needs to be done after yoga. This is an event, the main event. Each morning, we dance, laugh, sweat, and chant. During these first few days, Michael Franti plays his acoustic guitar in savasana. There is a richness to these early mornings, as if I’m touching the depths of why I am in Bali, on this trip, on this earth, and it comes not in words but tears.

There’s a reason I’ve been following my yoga teacher around for the past couple of years. When every fiber in my being is resisting joy, the simple sight of her, all that she embodies, makes me smile. And when I’m ready to take on a challenge, but unwilling to step forward, she creates an opening, asks if I want to assist in a yoga class one morning.

This is something I’ve been putting off and would’ve gladly put off until returning home. It would’ve been safer to try it in the candlelit dark of my home studio, where I could clutch the wall, bathing in a stew of my uncertainty, discomfort, and futility. But I offer what I can, what little I can, relishing the moments when I can, and pocketing the “thank you’s” of my new friends as a reminder that a little goes farther than I think, that trying is enough.

Sometimes I feel like a baby, like I’m just learning how to walk and talk — to touch with love, to laugh with kids, to connect with my eyes — to engage with my surroundings, be part of the world.

After the retreat, I sloth around Gili Trawangan for a week with friends. A dirt road skirts the perimeter of this island, and the only transport beside bicycles are tiny horse-drawn carriages. It’s amazing to see the sun rise on one side of the island and see it set from the other. In between, we eat pizza, drink Bin Tang beers, listen only to Bob Marley, and gazebo-hop from one white-sand beach to the next. Occasionally, I take a break from maximizing lethargy for a yoga class or a dive with the batfish, sweetlips, and angelfish in turquoise water so clear it seems unreal.

It isn’t all perfect. The stomach ailments, bizarre rashes, earaches, sunburns, and flip-flop chaffing wounds remind me constantly of the fragility of the body. I have been outside almost all day every day, the elements (and bacteria) are taking their toll. The brown on my feet is either tan or dirt; my hands are peeling from the salt. I need to restock my medical kit.

The goodbyes have been the most challenging — leaving the kids, my teacher, my friends from the retreat. Each one felt like my heart was being extricated via my throat, like a clown pulling endless links of a paper chain from his mouth. Some mornings I wake up with an air bubble of longing behind my solar plexus. In these times, I breathe deeper, smile wider, wrap my loneliness up with all that I can find inside. I take out my yoga mat, my inflatable meditation cushion, and my mala beads — these, and band-aids, are my most prized possessions. They anchor me when I feel lost and afraid, when I spin on where I should go, what I should do?

I decide to stay here in Amed another day even though there are must-see things I’m missing and there is nothing to do here.

In the morning, I watch women leave out their offerings of incense in front of the bungalows and upon the altar in the cafe that doubles as a bird feeder. I read and write and say hello to all the Made’s, Wayan’s, and Ketut’s on the strip, making a note for each in my journal so I can remember the names that many of the men share based on their birth order. In the afternoon, I watch boys of all ages play beach soccer, sliding and falling on the sea glass and plastic bottles and scraps of coral. Men unfurl their fishing nets or cast a line from the shore or take out their boats with peeling paint.

I walk this black sand cove in the early evening to cries of Barack Obama as the locals call Americans, and from the sounds of the languages spoken around me, I’m seemingly the only one here right now. At the end of the cove there are a bunch of large rocks, one that is particularly flat. I sit here, next to a dead crab, and chant loudly as the sun falls behind Mt Agung. I think of the kids from the retreat, and how a laundry bin became a hiding spot, the spiders became personalities with names, the little hut behind the kitchen became a clubhouse — that compound became a wonderland.

On the drive from Amed back to Ubud, I track the white flags in the rice fields. In between our marathon singalong to American stoner classics, reggae hits, and Dido, I ask my driver about these flags, and he tells me they flap in the wind, scaring the birds and keeping them away from the crop. I nod. His answer suffices. But curving around the narrow windy roads, the vista opening to vast flatbeds of water-saturated fields, I find the white flags, my own meaning, why I am here.