Thinking About Nothing

What do you think about when you think about nothing? I arise early upon a bloated belly. I am drinking too much coffee these days, I am eating too late. I am trying to keep a heart afloat amongst the hum-drum routine full-time working life. I take a shower. I like the water hot, almost burning, as though a sadistic practice to thicken my skin. Drying myself off, I watch lines of condensation dribble down the largest emerald leaf of a Monstera plant: one of the many symbols of generation-rent. The plant belongs to Anna, my trusted friend. With her green children, our bathroom has grown into a mini-Jungle.

I crack my spine; I crack the window. I notice a second flurry of droplets racing down the leaves of the South American plant. They chase each other, one after the other. I stare and gamble time upon which one is set to win. I then lean in closer to notice more because there is more. There are two mopeds buzzing along a sunlit road, a road that is sketched between the lush hillsides which make up the Tegallalang rice terrace. One driver carries his entire family of five and his wife, whose hair trails behind them like the fanned tail of a fighting fish. She arms their youngest, who is perfectly sandwiched between her flat stomach and the curved outer ribs of the eldest brother. They are all helmetless, each drifting upon the shadows of the sun. The other driver carries nobody, only a luminous bundle of inflated helium balloons: three mini-mouse heads, four posing spongebobs and seven smiling Marvel characters whom I am yet to know about. He is an older man, helmeted. The two bikes weave around the bends slicing fragile lines into the dense landscape. They are ice skaters, I think, tropical ice skaters, carving out the edges of their river.

I listen in closer to hear the vehicles purr as they slide further down the damp country road. Do they know that they will fall soon, I wonder? Do they know just how far away and hard and dirty our bathroom tiles are? I drop my towel and cup my hands ready to catch them as they blindly reach the tip of the leaf. But they fall straight through the gaps of my flesh and bone. They splash, bursting into a thousand stars, and fuse into the small pool of water that had surfaced from the strands of my wet and dripping hair.

***

When I was twenty, I travelled. It was not an organised nor pre-booked excursion. It was a manic attempt to escape a confidential family issue and my self-created angst about who I was. I had convinced myself that who I am existed out there and so, I ran out there to find it. The confusion led to four solo trips, none of them I have come to regret. I returned home after each one once I had run out of money or I was due to work the tourist season at the local Submarine Museum. I used to have to hoover that great lump of war metal.

My third escape around July 2016 was to Bali which, unlike my hometown, homed sensible tourist attractions: beautiful beaches and art museums, not crowded pubs and Navy vessels. And looking back, out of the four, that adventure was the most cliche quest of introspection. Think of a spotty and cigarette smoking Julia Roberts. Every moment was thrilling but typical, unrepeatable though totally obvious. I was a rambling, western girl GIF.

Though in the end, Bali served me well. I received the feeling I was seeking, a deep sense of confidence and bliss and I discovered that who I was already, was enough. Whilst buzzing around the island on an illegally hired scooter, alone and free from others’ expectations, every one of my senses was stimulated. It was enough for me to forget about my family problems and questionings of my tiny self. For three weeks, I volunteered to teach English at an afterschool club for young children in the South of the island. The women there, every morning, placed religious offerings around the learning centre and I remember smelling the incense that burnt up and into the nostrils of Heaven. That delicate and graceful appreciation for each new day was new to me; it was a release. It made me feel the furthest away from who I had grown to be and what had become familiar: the hard and fast.

The natural world too was presented new, almost alien. Whilst sitting alone on a on a secret ledge, a secret ledge upon a hillside which grounded two small graves and looked out across a verdant scene, the largest cricket landed upon my leg. It was so beastly it almost appeared Jurassic. It was made up of every colour and pattern imaginable, all swirling across its insect shield. God - and I realised then that there had to be one - had so carefully painted this creature like an antique toy. It had been dunked into a Golden Lake, perforated a thin layer of petroleum across its waters. It had then been varnished with melted sugar. It was delicious, kissed by creation.

The most humbling experience of all however was not the beauty of what appeared forgein. It was doing the very wholesome and human thing of spending the night under the stars, talking and eating and drinking whiskey. On one weekend away from the learning centre, I had gotten speaking to a man who worked in a cafe that was situated on a hidden beach on the West of the island. We connected because we were the same age. His name, he told me, was Tarzan and after exchanging small talk, he invited me to visit his family home. We have so many animals, he told me, “Dogs, pigs, two cows, a bird, a cat, a snake, cockerels… we live in the forest.” I was intrigued and agreed to zoom back on my moped after he had finished his work duties.

Considering the number of animals that he had mentioned, I expected at least a small road to this house but Tarzan’s family really did live in the forest. It was an address recognised only by the familiarity of two particular trees. We each rolled our mopeds along a small footpath and I greeted his mother, younger sister and the many bouncing animals on arrival. Tarzan had not exaggerated; they did own so many animals. Most of them were kept as pets, like the birds and snakes and dogs, and the others exchanged the family with their eggs, milk and meat. They lived deeply sustainably, from their land. His family also grew their own vegetables, made their own Tuak, planted their own magic mushrooms and cannabis. It was a surprise to me when these medicinal plants were pointed out and bragged about by Tarzan’s father. ‘Only for us’, he said and I quietly nodded once and smiled.

The sun sank and more of Tarzan’s family members arrived. I spent most of the time exchanging small English words and dancing to music with Tarzan’s younger sister, Avril - Avril Lavigne, we joked. We then ate rice and the fish which Tarzan and I had brought on the way back from the beach. After that, we drank Tuak and exchanged stories, squatting the pesky night-flies in between our words. I felt welcome and more so, not because I was another tourist. I felt welcome because of the very natural curiosity that all humans have to understand another. The elders and I discovered our similarities through the smallest of actions and chuckled and gazed at our differences. I was a friend, they said, by the time the night drew to a close and so I stayed the night and another and then returned again to say goodbye before my flight home.

***

I mop the water from our bathroom floor. I meditate. I clothe myself in a crumpled dress and eat watered down muesli with handful of extra sunflower seeds. I sit at my wooden desk. I pull out my engraved writing pen, bought for me by my lover. I read €60 written in chalk on the inside of the draw. As always, I think of it as a steep price for a desk that does not give me much comfort. I pick up my pen. It feels like I have been summoned this time. Anna is sleeping. It is Saturday morning and I could be doing the same. And, what do you write about when you think about nothing? I realise that I have been too much in my own head for so long and this is possibly a cause of the personal and national events that have happened over the past year: living by myself, the national lockdowns. I stare out of my window onto the block of council flats opposite. It is still early, most of the curtains are drawn closed. Only a few, belonging to the elderly I assume, are open. All of these perspectives, all of these points of view, reside so closely to mine; quite literally a hundred metres away and up a couple of flights of stairs. Though each are terribly complex, unique, enormous, personal and gifting. I think now and begin to write.

I recall what I did the night before. I write that I drank a glass of red alone, made and ate a salad and listened to the ten o’clock world news. I write that the reporter spoke about a newly approved, oral medicine that can be given to those who are most at risk from the effects of COVID-19. I write that an American Nurse talked about the recent, ridiculous abortion law that has been passed in the state of Texas. I write that they interviewed a man from Thailand who explained what has happened to his country since the travel ban, since, due to the global pandemic, tourists have not been allowed to enter the country. He said, “We cannot survive without forgein visitors, people cannot support their families… It is shameful that our government and governments across the world have not thought about this or supported Thailand in anyway...” I stop writing. I remember that last night I had turned the radio off before this man had finished what he was saying. “Too depressing,” I had said to myself aloud. I had then repeated what a friend of mine always states when faced with the news: "I did not choose to enter this world.” I recall that afterwards, I took a bath and whilst in the bath, I looked at the Monstera plant and for some reason had thought about my trip to Bali. I had thought about the people who had welcomed me as a tourist and as a friend and I had wondered how they are now; how Tarzan’s cafe is doing without an island full of backpacked strangers. I had wondered where they are now, those people who are always so distant from me yet oddly neighbouring and connected through footpaths of flight and trade and politics and health. I had imagined the crisscrossing footpaths. the footpaths with which, weblike, marry us all. The footpaths that are so unignorable, so alive and homely, they summon acts of art and love. Footpaths that are so real, so deeply trodden into the soil of our earth that by surprise, when I am not looking, I fall into them. I fall down into their light.

1. Tuak time. Bali, 2016

2. Balloon man. Bali, 2016.

3. In sence. Bali, 2016.