Let it flow

So now I have your attention. World, Emily, William and those innocent little souls yet to arrive and choose me as Nanny, I acknowledge a great responsibility before me. Random thoughts and learnings now need to be carefully collected, filed in some kind of order and documented with an open heart and truth. My truth.

My learnings will not be in chronological order. They will be posted as my stream of conscious thought flows and travels down to the page.

Today I am surrounded by peace, serenity and a view of a rice paddy beside a Balinese compound complete with thatch topped carved structures to hold daily offerings to their Hindu gods.

I have left the constant buzzing and daily grind of Sydney, my home, and travelled to a place where I am learning to write. Having worked for too many years with nothing but numbers and dollar signs, I am learning to channel an untapped well of language into something that has meaning, I hope.

My life as a writer is now officially 1 day old, and already I can feel the difference in my heart and mind. My darlings, I hope and pray that you are able to feel my love through these writings. I still feel a little like a child at school who has come back to the classroom after being out in the playground. A little unsettled, with nervous energy fluttering around me. I have tried to prepare my mind to be fluid by floating effortlessly around the swimming pool in my villa. I have emptied the buzz of trivial clutter of the morning so that I am in a semi meditative state of being.

Let it flow – is my mantra.

What’s that? The squeal of a child in a neighbouring house. Oh yes, Balinese children are now home from school as the morning becomes afternoon. School children are the same loveable, playful, smiling little bodies the world over. They share that hunger for learning new and exciting things. Words rhyming, numbers adding together to become a new bigger number, and that happy feeling in your heart when you connect with a new friend.

My granddaughter is now 5 and her new chapter of life at school fills me with excitement also. Everyday a new friend is found and some new words have been wrangled from the wilderness and are now firmly sitting in her mental spelling list. The added skill of then recording these words onto a page through specific hand movements is just the icing on the cupcake!

I am watching a man lifting and stacking bricks in another field of overgrown grass nearby, under the hot afternoon sun. Just as my grandson William, 2, learns to stack his toy bricks carefully, precisely to make ever growing “buildings”. Tiny fingers turning toy nuts and bolts. I am thinking of you right now as you proudly show me your construction and announce “Ta – dah Nanny”.

Today I learnt about a little gem (so to speak, for we writers)! It is called a 6 Word Story. Telling a story in 6 words feels so powerful. Who knew?
Imagination runs in many different tangents when presented with 6 words.
“For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.” is a famous one, written by Ernest Hemingway.

To speculate with my words and flesh out some bones of ideas to create an actual story, are in my future lessons. One baby step at a time.

My Bali time is important to me. This is my 6th trip here here, and my best. My personal goal now that I have decided to start my life over again is to try something new that is physically adventurous and to nurture my soul.
In my 2012 visit to Bali, I felt that awesome tingle of nerves mixed with a feeling of oneness, when I rode an elephant. Pa had gone to Heaven a month earlier, yet I knew his spirit was beside me on that ride.
In 2013 I climbed Mt Batur, an active volcano, to watch the sunrise. The climb was exhausting, slippery with loose gravel, and steep. My heart was pounding out of my chest. Then ahhh! God’s glory was certainly there for all of us to see as we stood above the clouds and watched pink clouds become gold and the fiery ball peek out and then rise magnificently.
This year my adventure took the form of a 35 km bicycle ride down a mountain on a narrow, gravelly, broken up and sometimes scarily steep road and through rice paddies to our destination. Precision of guiding the bike on the safest part of the surface and staying steady on paddy walls with sunken drains and fields on either side was the name of the game.

What will I do next time? I wonder.

Nurturing my spirit is a very special responsibility. In Bali one can find many ways to do this. I need to choose what is right for me.

The last 3 visits I have taken part in a very sacred and beautiful cleansing ceremony at a waterfall temple. The Balinese travel here for their 6 monthly holy cleansing and gratitude prayers.

The large throng of locals brought a huge tide of gratitude and fervent prayer, that was almost palpable. I felt this to my very core when immersing myself inside a raging torrent of water against the rocks. The feeling to me was like a multitude of powerful yet loving angel wings beating my body and soul. Yes, angels do exist, in many forms.

As my spirit has been nurtured, so has my heart and mind. I leave today’s post knowing my learning journey has well and truly begun. There is a knock on my door….must be my masseuse.