CLOTHES DEVIL

Top photo:
Charlie, Denny (nicknamed Obama) & Peter in their Balinese uniform
Bottom: Peter and Charlie in their new duds

After moving into Villa Kubu Merta in February 2009, I bought three sets of Balinese-style uniforms for our staff to wear. Each set consisted of an udeng (headdress), sarong, saput (decorative cloth over the sarong, and dress shirt with their names embroidered on it. After wearing them every day for eight months, it's time to get them a new threads. On a shopping trip to Denpasar I happen to find good quality Polo shirts on sale and buy them figuring they'll be more practical than dress shirts. I would wait for my next trip to town to find the boys sarongs to match.

Peter who works in the garden thanks me for his new, more relaxed shirts. But Charlie, flamboyant Charlie, clothes horse Charlie, goes nuts. Really? For some ordinary T-shirts?
He's bursting with an idea.
"Ibu," he grins, "I see staff in Kuta with shirt like dis. And cowboy hat."
"That's nice," I say, "Did they wear boots too?"
"No, Ibu, sock. And jean with big belt." He looks at me with mischievous eyes.
Oh-oh, I know where this is going.
"No, Charlie, we're in Ubud, not Kuta, and this is a villa, not a night club. Our guests want to see staff in Balinese clothes."
Charlie is undeterred. "They staff in villa." he says.

Two days later he shows up, smiling broadly, with two packages. He went shopping and bought two pairs of dress-up jeans, white socks and two "cowboy hats," every piece beautifully color-coordinated with his new Polo shirts.
"If Ibu like, Ibu pay. If Ibu no like, I pay." he says.
I can see how much he loves these clothes. I don't have the heart to refuse him.
"Okay," I tell him, "I will pay. Get a set for Peter too and you can wear these on Fridays."
That was two weeks ago and now I can't get them to wear their Balinese uniform any more.

FIRE JOURNEY TO HEAVEN

We attended a big (15 corpses) cremation ceremony recently. The ceremony is a purification rite to release the deceased souls from their earthly remains and send them on their way to heaven. It's a most colorful and dramatic celebration. So much going on, so much to see. Parasols. Streamers. Lots of spectators. Vendors selling cold drinks, toys, colorful cloths, and snacks like boiled bird eggs. Long processions of families of the deceased bearing mysterious offerings. Men carry what looks like small cribs and throw them in the fire. (I later learn that the cribs are the containers in which they carry the dug up bones from the cemetery to the waiting sarcophagi) The sarcophagi are like giant divas making their spectacular entrances. They're carried on a platform of tied-together bamboo poles, shouldered by shouting and sweaty men, and accompanied by a raucous gamelan of young men going all out, banging away on their gongs and drums. It's hot. It's deafening. The sarcophagi are mostly in the form of beautiful black bulls (of different sizes, according to the families' status and financial ability), but I did see one white bull and even a rearing red horse. Each bull has a rider on top who has to hold on for dear life as the men carrying the platform rock it up and down and sideways, turning it this way and that, noisy maneuvers intended to confuse the dead person's spirit so it will lose its earthly way back and not haunt the family. It's all done with much shouting and laughing and horse play.

At one point the fire department came in with a truck. Oh good, I thought, That's good planning. But they left before they even started the burning part of the ceremony. Guess, they're so accustomed to cremations in the city, they figure everybody knows what they're doing and it's all okay. Which it was.

I intended to stay for the whole ceremony but when the first bull sarcophagus was set on fire, the air filled with so much smoke (and that was just a small bull!) that I just wanted to get the hell out of there, leaving our friends Kendall, Jeremy and Fernando to record the rest of the festivities for me. Thanks, guys! They came back with their clothes and hair saturated with smoke and ash.

A couple of days later, I meet Pak Wayan, our electrician. He looks haggard. He has been preparing a cremation for two straight days without sleeping, he says. His 22 year-old niece had fallen ill and died. What takes a family months and months of preparation, he had to accomplish in two days. He did not even have time to notify some family members. But it was well worth it, he says. It will help his brother and sister-in-law with their grief, knowing that their daughter did not have to be buried and wait for the next cremation cycle, but could go straight to heaven instead. I send my best wishes for happy reunions with ancestors and divine teachers to the girl and the 15 souls that left for heaven that day. Om santi santi santi om.

XMAS IN SEPTEMBER

Ria, one of my BAM (Bad Art Monday)friends and AWOL (Artist Way Of Life) sisters is here for 2 weeks! As if Phil and I are a couple of refugees stranded in the wilderness, we prepare a list of items for her to bring. None of the items are particularly critical, they're just nice to have, things like good quality cotton underwear, my favorite shampoo, floss and toothpaste, Bragg (liquid aminos), and - oh please, please, please... some GOOD trash. Things get pretty much used up here, so much so that whatever trash you find in the street (and there's plenty) is either so decomposed or much too filthy to pick up.

Phil, of course, wants medicines. He misses Tom, his pharmacist at Long's Mililani Marketplace. You should hear him order his medicines here from Kimia Farma.
"Hello... English, please... Can you speak English?... Is there anyone there who can speak English?..." Usually this is where he hears a click, because rather than saying No (very difficult for Indonesians), they just hang up. If Phil is lucky Dwi is available when he calls. She is the only one with enough English for him to get his business done. But then there's still the problem of spelling out the names of the medications. Indonesian is a phonetic language: A is pronounced Ah, B is Beh, etc. And Y is pronounced Yeh. P-H-I-L would be Peh Hah Ee El.

But back to Ria. My AWOL sisters went into high gear and filled up Ria's extra suitcase with gift upon gift... books, music, trash art supplies, comfort food, beautiful scarves... you name it, it went into the suitcase. Ria came laden as Santa Claus. The suitcase was so big and heavy, I couldn't just fling it open and delve into the gifts. It was overwhelming. When I finally did get to it, it was a feast. The thought and energy that went into the gifts my friends made, found or bought for me, just filled my heart and made me sing. If my AWOL sisters ruled the world there would be no war. There would be art and parades and tons of chocolate. Oh and massages for everyone. Ria is getting one every other day. I thought she might want to try different spas, you know, like a research project. But she's sticking to the first one she visited, the Zen Spa by the Yoga Barn. Why change if it's fantastic already, she says. I should get commission for all the customers I've sent there. Okay, who else is planning to come visit us?

EARTHQUAKE

We were jolted awake by a 5.8 earthquake this morning. According to Indonesia Meteorological andGeophysics Agency, the quake measured 6.4 on the Richter Scale. It was pretty exciting. I watched our bed posts sway back and forth over a width of at least one foot, maybe more, but before we could get out of bed, the shaking ended. Three hours later another one happened, but this one was considerably lighter.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8264335.stm
has some interesting reports of people's reactions.

Apparently some buildings in Denpasar were damaged and seven people suffered injuries. I'm not aware of anything serious here in Ubud. Charlie told how a row of parked motorcycles fell over on their sides like dominoes. He also described how everybody ran out of their homes, banging on pans and buckets, yelling "Hidup! Hidup!" (Live! Live!). Balinese believe that doing that calms the earth down.

Here's an interesting post by Sidarta Wijaya:

Earthquake for Balinese is not merely a disaster; there is a hidden meaning or a prophecy, in every occurrence of earthquake. Armed with the sacred Palelindon (treatise on earthquake) manuscript, for hundreds of years, Balinese decipher every sign or prophecy behind every earthquake that occurred.

In Palelindon (treatise on earthquake), the earthquakes are categorized based on the time of occurrence. An earthquake that occurs in the first month of Balinese Caka calendar (July) has different meaning from the earthquake that occurs in the fifth month (November) and the meaning an earthquake that occurs on Saturday (Saniscara) is different from the one that occurs on Wednesday (Buda).

From: http://blog.baliwww.com/arts-culture/5924

FOOL'S JOURNEY

After 20 years in Hawaii, Phil & I sold everything we owned and moved to Bali, Indonesia. The reasons we gave ourselves were: 1) To scale down our cost of living, 2) Get back to basics, and 3) Reinvent ourselves. Little did we know how extreme Bali would be for us. Every day brings something new to learn, observe, digest, or be thoroughly confounded by. I’ve had brilliant Aha moments and I’ve dangled at the end of my rope, sure I was going to die. Clueless as I am most of the time, I now figure I may as well surrender to whatever is.

My original intent was to keep a journal of our experiences and put it together in a monthly e-newsletter, forgetting that even writing a yearly newsletter often fell by the wayside. I did manage to put out one Bali Update, I think back in March ’09, and I do regularly post short notes and photos on Facebook. This blog is an attempt to share more than is possible on Facebook and yet keep myself from overwhelm.

Some background info: I was born in Jakarta, Java three months before the Japanese invaded and occupied Indonesia in WWII and while it was still a colony of the Dutch. My mother comes from Manado, North Sulawesi, a predominantly Christian area with loyalties to the Dutch. It’s because of my mother that we spoke Dutch at home and attended Dutch schools, which explains why, even though I grew up in Indonesia and look Indonesian, I’m not particularly fluent in the language. A definite drawback. As an excuse I tell people I’m from Hawaii.

In 1949 Indonesia gained its independence and in 1957 those with the Dutch nationality were forced to leave and “repatriate” to The Netherlands. I was 16, attending the Dutch Lyceum in Jakarta. My family was in East Kalimantan, Borneo and could not get transport out. I left on the SS. Wilhelm Ruys for the 3-week journey to Rotterdam and arrived the day after a snowstorm. I had never seen snow before and never been so cold in my life. I was the only brown-skinned student at the Lyceum in Vlaardingen. By age 20 I was married, had a baby, and talked my husband into immigrating to America. I spent the 60’s and 70’s in Bible Belt Oklahoma City, OK, straining and chomping at the bit. A life-threatening incident helped me break free and I left to go south, to Houston, TX where I did not know anyone but had once spied a live palm tree. I met Phil and within 10 years talked him into moving to Hawaii. So I know something about moving from place to place, country to country, about discarding your roots, and stepping into the unknown. I thought coming to Bali would be a piece of cake.

Phil and I had visited Bali for a week in 1981, much too long ago and too short a time to claim any reasonable knowledge of it. To drop everything, leave the beauty of Hawaii, our family and friends, our comforts… to do what? Start over again? At our age? In a third world country with mediocre healthcare? Are you insane? This blog may prove that the Fools’ Journey can be undertaken at any age to any place, even if it’s only to the bathroom. But what do I know?