The psychics are angry.
I’m noticing a weird pattern. And I’ve deduced that either
a) I’m evil
b) I’m dying very soon
c) They can read my mind (as in they are all telepaths)
Because every time I pass a psychic on the street in Bali, which I have to tell you, is quite frequently, say every tenth person or so, I am being given death stares. The kind of avert eyes very quickly, drop gaze, shudder shoulders type of look that you normally associate with how people greet Sarah Palin.
At ecstatic dance, where several self-labelled psychic type people congretate, I’m being avoided like the plague. This could be my dancing. Or it could be any of the three options above.
I take my problem to my friend and ask her whether she thinks that the psychics in town have it in for me, that they can see something in my aura or my future or my irises or if they’re just reading my mind (in which case they’re probably hearing, oh my goodness if she speaks to me shall I call her by her Native American name or by her name which makes her sound like a floor tile? I don’t think I can keep a straight face, just keep looking her straight in the eye, smile, smile nicely not like you’re paranoid that she can read your mind because la la la la la la crazy la la la stupid name la la la la can she hear this oh dear).
My friend takes a deep breath and tells me that I’m just being paranoid, that if anything they’re just picking up my very grounded vibes. She tries to tell me that people who are spiritual (and I’m thinking, but not saying hey I’m spiritual, kind of, I mean I know I eat cows and stuff and I struggle to meditate but um, I’m spiritual… ) can feel intimidated by people like me who are so grounded in reality. I bite my tongue from saying, ‘basically you’re calling me a cynical, eyeball rolling bitch with no connection to anything remotely spiritual or deep.’
And then I think about it some more and I realize that maybe all these psychics aren’t seeing me dying. And they’re not reading my mind.
No. They’re reading my blog.
canwelivehere.com 
yes I think you are very brave! is your blog known well locally? We have our fair share of trippy hippies here. Especially at the lake. I avoid them like the plague because I would not be able to control the eyeball rolling nor the acerbic sarcastic comments.
I also have to deal with all the NGO volunteer mob or peace corp who are all so full of blow my own trumpet parsimonious fake altruism ………. oh los niños break my heart kind of comments. The genuine ones never talk about their work unless under pressure I find.
I am still intrigued by the ecstatic dance though. I spent most of my twenties doing some form of ecstatic dance! what kind of music is it? don´t you have to be completely off your head on something? at least a nice bottle of red maybe? is it done undercover of the night of in broad daylight?
Did you ever make it to laughing yoga? I tend to get an awful urge to snigger at all the serious middle class types being so earnest whenever I have tried and failed to get into yoga. (not too unlike the times I was dragged to church by my cousins) Maybe this would be a good yoga for me to do as nobody would notice me laughing up my leotard sleeve.
ahhhh no still not made it to laughing yoga. will try soon. I think my blog is fairly well known though I’m not sure. It comes up on some weird google searches so tagging words like Ubud and colonic aren’t helping.
ecstatic dance. I guess it’s a bit like a darkened club though at night, under the stars, and it’s open air, music ranges from classical through house, pop, electro, funk, jazz, techno. that’s what makes it fun. and no one is off their head on anything – there’s some amazing dancers that go so the energy is intense, you’ve never seen anything like it. Having said that last time I did take some frozen margarita and leave it in one of the yoga cubby holes.
x
I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. At first I thought this blog was a joke, a pretense, but I think you are serious. I think you mean what you write here, about the important reasons for coming to Ubud being cheap margaritas and even cheaper “servants” and the most significant thing about big Hindu ceremonies being how inconvenient they are for your ready progress between a wanky piss-up and showing off your navel ring at a pool party. Please go home.
Hi Jen
What a lovely comment. Thanks. No it’s not a joke. I thought I would spam your comment but then I realised it needed responding to. My regular readers will appreciate my response I think.
To be clear, I don’t have a navel ring (ewwww pain) and I barely drink, let alone spend time at ‘wanky piss ups’ as you so beautifully put it. If you’re referring to the event we dressed up for – we were raising serious amounts of money for Pelangi school to enable local children to attend on scholarship. Success! And if you’re referring to the margaritas, we were collecting them for a friend. Though we did have one each too. I didn’t realise there was something wrong with that.
Yes an important part of moving here was so that we could have help and the majority (the vast majority) of ex-pats who live here have help. I also had a cleaner when I lived in London. Does that make me a bad person? It’s expected of Bule to employ local people. My husband and I both work hard, we support several Balinese people who would otherwise not have an income and are treated by them as family. We even pay for their children to attend school.
If you had bothered to read earlier posts before responding so negatively you would have seen how much my husband and I love the Balinese culture and people. It was one of the main reasons we moved here. The thing we don’t like about Ubud is that it’s full of people from the West with holier than thou attitudes who claim enlightenment whilst spouting nonsense. And yes, I will continue to take the piss out of them as well as out of myself. It’s called having a sense of humour and refusing to take life that seriously!
I wish you happiness and positivity,
Sarah