Gods’ Waiting Room ( But We Have a Pool )

Lately I’ve come to realise there's a particular look some people give you when they find out you're ‘retired’ and living in Bali. It falls somewhere between envy and suspicion, as if you've committed a heinous crime so victimless that no one was quite able to bring themselves to prosecute you.

The offending phrase, "You must be retired," is never a question; rather, it's a verdict. I usually answer this loaded question with lame responses such as "Sort of," "Not exactly," or "It's complicated."

OK. Here’s the truth, and I’ll try to deliver it with all the dignity and poise I can muster while wearing a sarong and not much else at eleven in the morning:

I certainly don't feel retired; rather, I see myself as a man on an extremely long lunch break who has simply chosen, or forgotten, to return to the office. Mind you, as time goes by, I am increasingly unsure whether there was ever an office, a job, or even a version of myself who, these days, spends an extraordinary amount of time thinking about ceiling fans.

And yet, during ‘retirement’ I’ve managed to write six books and a short-story anthology nobody asked for, but several people, astonishingly, bought it, presumably some of them by accident, which I choose not to think about. In addition, a few hundred travel articles were filed from airports, hotel bars, truck stops, and, once, memorably, from the back of a moving becak in Yogyakarta.

This is, arguably, a body of work, or at least a body that has allegedly done some work at some point during ‘retirement’.

So, when people call me 'retired', I assume they mean I no longer have a boss, a commute, or a reason to own a tie. Some may say I've stopped ‘doing’ things, and I take that rather personally, the way a man takes it when someone suggests his short stories are ‘a little bland and only slightly amusing’. 

I do, do things. Not every day, mind you; let's be honest with each other: Some days the most ambitious project on my desk is deciding whether to take a nap before or after lunch, and I make that decision with the gravitas it so richly deserves. But there is ‘doing’ in there somewhere. I promise you. I have witnesses.

Well, one witness.

He happens to water the plants.

Take the garden, for instance, which is where most of my executive decisions now take place, in the sense that I make them and my loyal gardener ignores them.

Wayan, who has worked this patch of ground longer than some countries have had constitutions, arrives with the quiet confidence of a man who knows exactly how the morning briefing will run.

I will suggest something, perhaps moving the frangipani or, once again, starting a vegetable patch (my first attempt was a dismal failure). This is because I recently read an article about vegetable patches. As most people know, men my age are extremely susceptible to articles about vegetable patches, just as young men are to articles about protein and muscle-building supplements. 

Wayan will nod, say nothing, and then replant the frangipani exactly where it was. Three weeks later, I will compliment him on the excellent idea to move the frangipani. He will accept the compliment graciously, as a man accepts credit for the sunrise. This is the closest I have to a management structure. It is more honest than most and considerably cheaper.

The pool deserves a mention too, largely because it is the reason the title of this piece contains a parenthetical defence. God's Waiting Room, yes, because Bali has a certain unhurried, ambient inevitability, in the sense that everyone here is simply waiting for something pleasant to happen next, which usually involves a coconut.

I do feel obliged to note, on behalf of retirees everywhere who are tired of being pitied or tolerated, that my particular waiting room has a pool, a gardener who indulges my delusions, and a view that makes other men's retirement plans look like layovers at an overcrowded resort.

If this is purgatory, someone somewhere seriously misjudged the decor.

So no, I am not retired, not really, not in the sense of a man who has stopped. I have simply stopped doing the things I didn't want to do and kept doing the things I do, at a pace that would alarm my former colleagues and delight any cardiologist who has stumbled into my orbit.

In conclusion, I get up, I shuffle, I write on some days and garden badly on others, thanks to Wayan's forbearance. In addition, I nap expertly every day, thanks to no one's forbearance but my own.

Somewhere in the mid-shuffle, work still gets done, but it no longer announces itself with a commute, a suit, or a fanfare of trumpets, for that matter.

Paul v Walters is the author of several novels and an anthology of short stories. My latest offering, RITUAL, was launched at the Ubud International Readers and Writers Festival.