I hadn’t expected to feel anything. I thought I would write about how the water felt as it splashed over my head or the rounding of stones under my heels but I hadn’t expected to actually feel – in my soul. Made (pronounced Ma-Day) drove us to Tirta Empul, the water temple outside of Ubud, upon our request and as a suggestion from our friends who had been living in Bali for the past year. He walked us through the spiritual site, explaining the different traditions, where we could and couldn’t walk, why we had to dress the way we did with sarongs wrapped around our waists and covering our knees, my boyfriend with an extra sarong tied around his hips like a belt. He stopped and directed us into bowing positions, our hands clasped in prayer in front of arches, fountains and shrines, and then we told him – we want to do the water ceremony.

He said, “Okay, you sure?”

We were.

You can’t walk wet back through the temple so we had to rent extra sarongs to change into. Made walked us through the steps in the ceremony as well. First you give a blessing, some sort of offering to the gods and then you pray. He told us it was okay if we didn’t make an offering but we still had to go through the act of praying. James with his legs crossed and me perched on top of mine, our eyes closed, our hands clasped again. Local pilgrims surrounded us, taking their offerings – flowers, incense and sometimes money – and placing them on the altar before taking their seats on the stone. I acted like I was praying, killing time until it was appropriate for us to rise and get in the water.

Made lead us to the entrance. There were ten fountain heads and we had to perform the ceremony at each one, lining up behind the other attendants. We were not to pray in the last three as they were only reserved for mourning. Once we reached the spring, we were to pray, splash our foreheads three times, fill our mouths with water three times then duck our heads under the spray three times. We were to perform this same ritual at all ten fountains, get out, go over the stairs to the next pool and perform it one last time in one last fountain before getting out of the water.

Okay, seems a bit long and tedious but it was a hot day and I imagined the water would feel nice as we waited for our turn.

 

At the first fountain, I thought about what to pray for. Was I going to take this seriously? Was I going to do as I did in front of the stone altar and just let time slip by pretending to pray? I wasn’t sure, so I performed the ritual debating this in my head.

I moved into the line for the next fountain. I was here. I might as well do what was being asked of me. Praying was just talking to myself in my head, after all, right? What harm would it do?

I stepped up to the water.

I prayed for my mother – that she would be well, that the Gods, or god, or the water, or whatever would look over her – and as the words slipped through my mind like the water over my hands, the tears gushed from my eyes as powerfully as the spring moved through the stone.

I was bawling. It rushed from me out of seemingly nowhere.

What was going on? I thought to myself. Was this a fluke?

I moved away and into the next line, wiping the tears from my face as if washing away fresh water. I calmed myself. I was thinking of my mother, why wouldn’t I be emotional?

I stepped up to the next fountain. This time I would pray for my lack of control. As soon as the water flowed over my hands I began to cry again. I couldn’t control it. The least I could do was hold it back a little so that I wasn’t weeping in front of strangers. Some tourists were unaware of the lining up and had cut me off from my boyfriend who was now about five people behind me in the rotation of the order. I felt alone in whatever I was going through – this emotional flood of – for the lack of anything better to call them – feelings.

This happened time and time again. For each of the ten fountains, as I approached the water and began to pray, for whatever I had decided to pray for at that moment, I began to cry. I started to marvel at the experience. People had told me that Bali was magical, that there was a special spiritual power that affected everyone in different ways. I didn’t really understand or believe it until now. This was my magical moment.

It didn’t escape my notice that I am a Pisces, that I am controlled by the element of water and here I was at a water temple, submerged in the clearest, purest spring water, praying and dipping my head in its life giving flow and it was causing my own water works to spew forth, so much so that I couldn’t contain it, couldn’t keep it inside me, couldn’t turn off the spout.

It was as if I needed to cry, that I had to cry, that the water forced it out of me, and each time, it magically happened as I approached the fountain, not while I was in line waiting, not while I stood on the steps or sat on the stone, only as I faced the water and let if flow towards me would I start to cry.

When I finally sat in the pool after the final altar, I felt renewed, mystified, my eyes felt raw, my insides empty, turned over. I watched the light glimmer on top of the water. I followed the fish that swam between my legs, their white and gray bodies flitting over the stones, gobbling the green algae along the rocks. I thought of the two fish tied together by a rope and circling each other – the symbol of the Pisces. I felt unbound – free to swim in any direction that I pleased, free to follow the stream, to spring forth.

And then we got out. And life started again. We returned the rented robes. We trekked back to the car in dribbling swimsuits, soaking our sarongs. We avoided street vendors and squeezed the last of the water from our hair and our clothes, letting it glide across our fingers and drip to the floor.

Life went on. I was tied back to the metaphorical rope, spinning in circles, control wrapped around me once again. But I had the memory of the water, of the emotions that flowed through me. I had that moment, and that was enough. That would stay with me forever.