Travel Newsletters
The Second Newsletter from Bali
September 2, 2001
Bali: a Journey Through Hearts
Newsletter 2
There are three things that one is not to miss if one wishes to visit the heart of Bali with all its rich color and tradition. A tooth filling ceremony. A cremation. And a wedding.
The first day. The raising of the wedding pavilion.
Memories of a Balinese wedding are more like the fluid images of a dream than an actual event in history. I remember at the end of that first day, I lay in bed at 1:00AM looking out of my open window at a million and 20 stars as the warm breeze carried into my room the sound of a dozen steel and bamboo xylophones: a gamelan orchestra, mixed with the mumbling voices of 200 men laughing, talking, and me smiling at my awareness that the memory of the day's events were not just in my imagination.
I remember opening my eyes at daybreak to what sounded like, incredibly, the muffled pounding of small hammers wrapped in cloth. The smell of coffee and chicken sate. And a gold red light coming through the top half of my window creating blue against gold silhouettes of waving palm leaves against my wall. Just outside my window in the courtyard the voices of my family, Michael, Jacki and their son, Nick as they were sitting over the breakfast table. I aroused myself from my sheets to wander to the pool where dipping my fingers into the cool water I washed my eyes so that my senses could wake to what was coming to life around me. Jacki told me that an invitation had been extended to our family by our gracious neighbor, Bapak Ketut Kadrah, the uncle of the groom, to share in a breakfast of chicken sate and coffee with his family and the building volunteers.
In that first week of my arrival, the Balinese spoke with the indistinguishable flow of words that were to me like many types of colorful fish swimming around in my head. Not wanting to spend my morning trying to translate those words, I opted instead to work on my new painting. After a coffee I walked over to the bale (a small room without walls) by the pool and, sitting down, I picked up my black bound sketch book, releasing a white page from its bindings, selected a B-2 pencil and whittled it to "ouch" point sharpness against my finger, and began to sketch the beginnings of what would soon be my first Balinese painting: The Invitation.
Once my sketchbook is open, I am transported into a world of what many would consider imaginary, but for me this world is more real than the concrete others walk on. I call this state of mind, Prayer.
A word of explanation is probably needed here. Many, many years ago I lost my ability to speak or think about what others have called, The Great Mystery, All That Is, I Am That I Am, Allah, Jehovah, or simply put, God. And with that loss, I also lost the ability to find a language for my spirit. Several years ago, I fell in love with a woman. When she asked me to tell her about my life, I gladly put into writing my life story, starting from my childhood till that moment. When she read through all I cared to express, an obvious gap existed in my vocabulary around the subject of spirit. And, since love is a spiritual phenomenon, I scrambled to find a vocabulary that could express all that my spirit felt for her. Words all failed. But when I began to paint my statement of love, filled with all the pain and ecstasy that comes to a spirit waking to its own consciousness, I found that my language took a leap from black and white to full spectrum color. Every animal I painted was a symbol of the type of passion or loyalty I felt. Every doorway, an invitation to another world of miracles. Every temple or Buddha, a summons for my heart to find peace. Every image of a woman wading in a river of water, was the heart of my desire learning to go places that were both wonderful and frightening. I had discovered that my paintings were my alphabet to describe difficult subjects, like love and love lost, death, birth, desire and, of course, peace. And once I learned this language, I discovered that I could extend it to every part of my life. If my heart was troubled with a near impossible to answer question, like why did my brother Andy die, where is he now, is he happy, and what is he thinking?…well, when I voiced those concerns, I found the answers in my newly completed painting, A Gift From My Brother. As I was painting a beautiful tree that represented a picture that Andy once gave me of a similar pink tree…I found that Andy had chosen to go, that he is always with me and all those he loves and that yes, he loves me very much. For over a year, my heart had been silently asking these questions and, when I finished the painting, a sense of great peace came over me. There was once a time that I painted for one reason. To make a living. And in that I was successful. I still make a living from my art but now when I finish a painting, I am transformed into a creature of much happiness. My paintings now reveal themselves to me in the same way that a lover might, step by step, reveal herself.
And, so it was, on this day that I was designing a prayer or meditation, asking why it was that I was pulled to Bali. I sketched a stone wall that opened through a central ancient Balinese temple gate. Through the doorway I could see the mountain steps of green terraced rice fields. In front of the wall two temple priestesses were laying down prayer offerings and, closer still, two Indonesian dancers held up a long piece of white cloth preventing me from walking closer…It was as if the picture was saying, Steve, you are invited to visit our country, but please go slow, act reverently, ask for permission to enter and learn our customs. We will see if we like one another.
From this world of prayer, not much can pull my attention away. Except, perhaps the bronze face of a Balinese man with a brown scarf hat (udeng) and brown matching sarong, peeking around the corner of the door of the family carport twenty feet away. I lifted my pencil from the page and waved saying "hello." A universal greeting, I thought. He said nothing and disappeared. I returned to my sketch again when another similar dressed man appeared around the doorway and with the same greeting from me he too disappeared. Hmmm? Not having much luck with this, I chose to ignore the third face, which did not disappear but was accompanied by a few friends who walked into our carport and sat down, lit up some cigarettes, made themselves at home. Within 10 minutes several clusters of, perhaps 50 men were sitting on every inch of the floor and with the blue white smoke of clove cigarettes, black Bali coffee in hand, mumbling amongst themselves with rupiah notes waving, I realized that with all it's grit and glory a dice game had commenced. There I rested looking up occasionally from my growing creation, while they waved dice cups through- out the morning. Not a word was spoken to me by our distinguished quests. What they were thinking about me I could only guess…so I chose to guess that they were, in their own way, with no fanfare, welcoming the Americans by accepting the gift of an open door to a room that would allow them the luxury of a game. As I continued the drawing, I thanked the spirits of Bali for their acceptance. Shortly after the count of noon two small, slim elegantly dressed Balinese woman with long black hair walked into the center of the game. They looked in my direction and greeted me with shining eyes smiling, then erasing those smiles they turned their attention toward the men with chastising words while they swept up around them all the cigarette butts they had discarded. Also, I heard the words spoken for lunch, at which point the men got up and disappeared. The two women continued to sweep until all traces of their brothers, cousins and perhaps husbands had been erased. They came, they went, and there I sat as the sun played diamonds on the surface of the pool. I realized that I was in the beginning dizziness of heat exhaustion. Drained, I made the effort to lean over the pool and, lying down, I dipped my head over the edge and under the surface. When I lifted it, I saw my nephew, Nick, looking curiously at me. This time I smiled, held my breath and dipped my head a second time for the count of 60 seconds as the world of Nick watched his uncle's headless body lying along the side of the pool cooling off.
I dried my head and resumed sketching. Hours later, when I looked up again, I saw that the sun had fallen behind the compound wall. A pang let me know I was hungry. . My family and I decided that dinner was in order. An hour later, we began the trek to one of the numerous hotel restaurants along the coast. A small hike from our house. On the way there I found a sarong shop in the hope of purchasing the proper attire for the next day's wedding ceremonies. I found my brown sarong in a shop filled with rafters of many colored fabrics hanging like long trails of sea kelp around my face. A white shirt, a sarong, bargaining with a large round Balinese goddess, and our trek to dinner continued. We found a restaurant on the beach near a black still ocean that denied us the cool comforts of a trade wind. A near full moon suspended over the horizon created a silver reflection on the surface of the water. Fish and rice…and my happiness returned.
In the black grays of small dirt alleyways and larger dirt streets, with the walls of compound homes flanking both sides, we made our way home. When we came to edge of our street, we found our way blocked by the same pavilion over our road that we walked under earlier…but now was filled with maybe 200 young men, as the blue green glow of the light laid out the perimeter of the pavilion at our feet. We stood somewhat entertained watching one man with a microphone addressing the sitting crowd, obviously saying something funny as the men all laughed. Our only path home was through the very narrow line of empty space between him and them.
Jacki, a beautiful and athletic California woman, with a black belt in Karate, looked at me and said" I would rather not lead this parade. Steve, you first." So I took the lead and as we came between the speaker and his still laughing audience…silence and, did I detect, shock in some of the men's faces, who I had heard all carry kris knives to weddings. Then our friend and host, Babak Kadrah, came into our presence and, in English, then Balinese, apologized to his esteemed American guests for the temporary use of our road.
A few more words and the crowd was laughing…we smiled and laughed with them and continued to weave our way to our front gate.
Later that night, I sat in the dark of my bedroom, on the edge of my bed, looking at the silhouette of a soft green white glow behind our dark compound wall, with the black leaves of palms waving, as the sound of the gamelan orchestra and men's laughter was carried to me on the breeze. I wished that I understood what they were laughing about and with that an intense desire to learn their words was born in me. With that wish I went to sleep.
The first significant word I learned was Bididari: Angel. It is spoken most often by the men when they are explaining the beauty of the Balinese women. It is a word that is accompanied by a gentle smile and a tone of reverence. The following morning when I walked into my neighbor's wedding ceremony, I found myself sitting among perhaps 200 men and women…and all the women looked as though they could glide on carpets, with the graceful movements that only practiced dancers acquire….