Lap-topless in Ubud

This is what happens when I try to use a pen and paper.

The charger to my laptop just emits this high pitched screaming sound now and no blinky light comes on when it is plugged in. I try again every few hours just to see if it has magically fixed itself. It has not. No swan.

I realize now, as I sit in an internet cafe to write this, that I have lost my ability to write with a pen and paper. I think I may still be able to take notes and write a grocery list by hand, but when it comes to prose (a better word than the dreaded poetry) essays, blogs and fiction (yes, I do that too...) I need to type. My brain is now connected eerily to a keyboard. I cannot write without one.

I am in Ubud, Bali - historic land of temples, art and culture.....and not a single electronics supply shop. The sweat that drips from my forehead on a regular basis is a mix of the heat and stress from the fact that I cannot get any of these random, strange and wonderful things out of my head. Some of them robustly stick around and morph and change and self-edit and end up more cohesive and interesting than when they started out as little thought-lets, but I just know that some of them are lost and gone forever.

I am a writer. I get squirrely when I do not write.

What I really need is a new laptop, as S and I have been hauling around his huge, heavy pimped out work one with all of its bells and whistles and VFX programs. He had it in India (when he worked there) and we just kept it from there, treating it like our precious entertaining baby. We watch dvds on it, download TV (alright, mostly It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Gossip Girl.... low culture can be just as important as high, people!) and upload all of our thousands of photos. It is like a third person in our relationship. It allows S to go out snorkeling for 4 hours and know that I will still be plunked down writing something with a furrowed brow. It allows me to go out shopping and yoga-ing all day while S works on his movie magic. I love it. I miss it.

So, for the next few days until we get this sorted and charged (or maybe buy a new cute one for me? Eh? S?) there will only be short entries with no/few/other people's photos. I do have some neat entries on the horizon - shopping in Ubud, surf lesson in Seminyak - hell, even a poem (shudder - I hate that word! The only other word I hate as much is 'cuddle.' Excuse me while I go and throw up in my mouth...) and an interview with travel diarist/filmmaker Brook Silva-Braga (A Map For Saturday.) Until then....well, wish me luck. And a good memory.

My dream laptop. At heart, I am a teenaged Japanese girl....