The Kindness of Strangers

 Well Nyepi Day just flow by this year, hardly knew that it happened. Not sure what I did all day, but now it is already evening and beginning to get dark again. No lights and so on until 6 o'clock tomorrow morning. As it turns out, they left the wifi on this year, presuming, I reckon, that internet silence this time around would have been cruel and unusual punishment after these year long trials and restrictions due to COVID. I will try to stay up late enough tonight to see the stars, if indeed the sky is still clear by nighttime. With no lights reflecting at all in the city, it's a pretty amazing sight under a clear night sky. 

Although we are not supposed to go outside of the house during Nyepi, the young man from next door showed up at my gate this morning with a plate of food for breakfast, yellow rice with a spicy bean soup. This was a total surprise. What a nice guy, right? Moreover, he showed up again at dinner time with yet another plate, while a second neighbor offered to bring me some chicken. Gosh, it's nice to feel cared for, isn't it? 

Louis escaped to a resort in Ubud for Nyepi, were the restrictions are less severe. Lights and other appliances allowed, given that the resort is enclosed, and of course there is a swimming pool and a restaurant and such-like. Louis has never, in all these years, spent an authentic Nyepi in Bali, because the silence and isolation would be sure to drive her mad. 

Speaking of Ubud, which is a popular tourist area up-country from the beaches, I read in the latest issue of the Sanur Weekly that an "orgasm retreat" scheduled to take place there--specifically, The Tantric Full Body Energy Orgasm Retreat--has been cancelled after being castigated by the local populace and authorities as tainting the dignity of the island. Participants were to pay a fee of 600 dollars apiece "to go deeper into their energetic sexual expansion" and to "open tantric energy pathways to support heightened states of sexual ecstatic full-bodied orgasmic bliss". Lol. Yeah, that's Ubud. 

Ubud, by the way, is the town featured in the novel Eat Pray Love. 

Well, I'm typing now by candlelight and it has begun to rain outside. Tomorrow the island will be back to bustling and one will never even know that Silent day had happened until it comes again next year.