Garuda Birds and Flowing Fire (2)

((Back to Bali and 1986.))

May 18

Night. Rick and I have just returned from a long, hot, and harrowing day spent driving much of the island with three young women, our neighbors from across the garden. (Pleasant enough, I suppose, but truly spoiled daughters of the upper middle-class: too much money, leisure, and "social" drugs.) We repeated whole chunks of the Besakih tour, but this time the mountain was enveloped in clouds: peak hidden, views conscribed, the experience less magical.

But I did get to watch old women and tiny girls piling heavy rocks atop their heads and then balancing these up the slopes for repairs to a part of the temple. And I spent a good half hour talking with some gamelan players and temple guards; though the complex stays empty, the area around it serves as a kind of community-hall gathering place for area villagers.

Later we prowled among ornery bearded monkeys worshipped in a nutmeg forest: tumbledown ruins, creeper vines, nutmeg seeds scattered. Rick and one of the women got nipped trying to cuddle up with the little beggars; I used a stick and kept them honest. Had more trouble, in fact, with a persistent guy at the parking area who wanted my shirt in exchange for a keris knife with a carved-wood handle.

Then we drove back down to the southern coast, to a much-favored temple beside the sea, to watch the Bali sunset come on; scores of curious schoolchildren and older believers were in attendance too, but the clouds never parted.

(Earlier on, we had passed a village where a Hindu cremation ceremony was about to begin. We saw the flower-bedecked procession route, the waiting platform, and the happy family and friends, but didn't stay for the burning--which I think we'd have been welcome to attend. Worth observing someday, I guess, but a bit ghoulish just to sit there as curiosity seekers. At any rate, Bali is still buzzing with talk of the festive cremation day a few weeks back: some regional prince, a venerated, almost holy ruler, died at last, and 500 of his followers, people already dead and buried, that is, were dug up and burned along with the prince. There were flowers and funeral pyres, parades and pyromaniacs, all over the island!)

The "harrowing" part of the trip came after dark, driving back to Kuta. It was my shift in the four-wheel-drive rental, and I quickly discovered that the headlamps didn't work at all! So there we were with no car lights, no streetlights along the way, the moon obscured by clouds, and 45 kilometers of pitted road to navigate. With five pairs of eyes staring and five different voices shouting warnings, I sped along, weaving in and out among the nearly invisible pedestrians and bicyclists, pounding on the horn--which beeped only intermittently--perspiring frantically, riding the brakes but also trying to keep our speed at about 35 m.p.h. so we could get the car back before the agency's closing time and thus avoid paying a whole second-day's rental fee.

I hit branches, spun the tires in rocks off the side of the road, and drove down a one-way street the wrong way at the end, but we made it. Drenched, gibbering like one of those damned monkeys, I got the car part-way into a cramped slot and then the engine killed. "Fuck it," I said, and walked away.

I haven't spoken to any of the others since. Whatever else happened, I've just been finishing my South of Bali poem, riding on the adrenalin, burning out...


Sunset at Kuta Beach

The sky breathes red and gold, a Balinese dragon
consuming the dregs of the sun.
To the west, Java seethes with volcanic change;
each night, chaos remains.
But at Kuta, the last Australian surfer drags
his board past the beach flags,
the multitudinous native masseuses and stubborn
sun-worshippers who yearn
for a few more hours of fragrant oil. Baked
bodies are rewrapped, naked
caramel breasts tucked reluctantly in sarongs.
The South of Bali belongs
these days to tourists and jet-setters, a president
whose posh, rent-out residence
goes for more per night than one Indonesian
can make in four seasons
of farming, and locals who've become most adept
at chivvying rupiahs kept
loose in these travellers' well-padded pockets.
Kuta's sky late at sunset
cools into shapes of garuda birds and flowing fire,
as sun-drugged desire
reawakens to evenings of more fleshly pleasures,
and lager-Fostering tours
of the flash, Aussie-catering watering holes.
The sky's glowing coals
are scattered thin, dyeing through twilight's batik
into indigo and black.
The evening kecak dance, staged for paying
customers only, rings
out in percussive rhythm and chanted monkey cries.
That trance may be a lie,
but part-way up Mt. Agung, where lava still rumbles,
above the Mother Temple--
the island's beating heart--a scimitar of moon
has hung by a thread since noon.
And now it falls. But no one bothers to notice,
neither hedonist nor Balinese.

((It occurs to me now that my chastising and moralizing tone, and the imagery chosen, isn't all that far removed from the words of our terrorist enemies today... But it's only a poem, folks, really.))

Back to Bali (1)

((Lately at times I've been transcribing sections from my 1986 around-the-world travel journal. Today some impressions and experiences from Bali, Indonesia's beautiful Hindu island, sadly the site of terrorist bombings, the last few years, in places I visited safely and happily back then.))

May 15

Clusters of swaying palmtrees, bush-covered volcanic hills, step-terrace rice paddies rising up and up, as many as 30 levels. Hindu temples by the thousands, in every village and field, one of them standing beside a power pole in a shimmering paddy. Surfers at Kuta Beach vainly flailing at low waves. Beach bungalows ranged around lush tropical gardens. Balinese vendors swarming like sandflies, clinging tenaciously to the near-naked sun-worshippers; thus my first Balinese words: Tarima kasih--approximately, "Buzz off, I don't need anything!"

Woke to the cheering sound of roosters and dawn birds, tea and toast on the porch of the small bungalow Rick ((Swiss traveler I had met on the long busride from Jakarta)) and I are sharing for about $3.50 each per night. His German guide to Indonesia recommended this place among the hundreds along this southern wedge of the island; and the room is adequate, with ceiling fan and flush toilet, on a nice garden near the white-sand beach.

Which is where I am now, fighting off the vendors, watching the surfers, trying not to stare at the bare-breasted non-natives. At least I feel clean and relaxed again. Nothing like the ocean to rinse away your cares and woes...

May 16

Sunshine flickering among the hibiscus flowers, booming surf and rhythmic gamelan music pulsing in the distance. It was beach bum-around time, though I did wander the Kuta-Legian commercial strip, miles long, boutiques and bars, cafes and cassette shops, where I suppressed my gadget-dislike long enough to spend $35 on a paperback-sized deck and a stack of tapes, pirated duplicates of Springsteen, Dire Straits, Tina Turner, and others selling for about a dollar.

More impressions: tiny shrines can be found outside each home or store; these are filled each day with floral bouquets and little leaf-boxes of food bits--gifts to the gods. And the little boxes show up on sidewalks and tidelands too, wherever the Balinese congregate. Also, a silly example of hedonism at the beach: most women, and some men as well, pay to lie on their towels or mats and be massaged, fed food or drink, even have their hair braided and beaded. This looks like a scene from some Roman Empire decadence flick like Caligula or Fellini's Satyricon. Harmless diversion, or insult to Balinese pride? Anything to make a few rupiahs, i guess.

Tomorrow I take a grand tour up to Bali's most holy temple, Besakih...

May 18

The journey proved too tiring to transcribe any notes last night, but here's the jist of the day:

Heading out on the small bus-van, we could immediately see the contrast between Kuta's crap-consumer congestion (it's Australia's equivalent of Hawaii, after all) and the palm-drenched plush spaciousness of expensive hotels and their park-like surroundings, in the area called Samur. There we picked up so many wealthier tourists that the van skipped a promised barong dance exhibition in order to fritter away two hours in craft-specialty villages, where we could learn about, and buy samples of: silver-smithing in Celuk, waist-sash weaving (for temple wear) in Batuan, and cloth weaving in Gianyar. The pressure to buy irritated me, but the Gianyar factory with its hundred-some women spinning wheels and old wooden looms was quite a sight.

Next came Klungkung where a no-longer-used royal enclosure and hall of justice offered fantastical ceiling paintings depicting both marital bliss and evildoers scourged by demons! (The souvenir sellers tugging at us so tenaciously seemed the demons secular cousins.) And the horror motif continued at the next stop, a reeking, truly disgusting, sacred cave of bats, with a filth-encrusted temple in the foreyard. Mondo Cane stuff.

After a tourist-ripoff lunch that cost me a whole day's meal money, we drove on into hills and then up a winding mountain road to reach Besakih, Bali's "Mother Temple," used only once a year, in April, for a full day of processions and ceremonies. Although only Hindus were allowed inside into the separate areas for Siva, Vishnu, and Brahma worship, we pagans could circle the walls, climbing higher and higher, viewing gold decorations, stone stupas (sort of free-standing steeples), wooden platforms awaiting cremations, and Besakih's extraordinary setting. Halfway up the island's most imposing volcano, Mt. Agung--which last erupted in 1963 on the actual ceremony day, killing thousands but doing no damage to the temple!--Besakih looks straight up to to the top of the mountain, to the full moon lingering above it today. One turns back to discover a vista of most of south Bali--hills, paddies, and fields stretching all the way to the beaches and the sea.

I was haunted by the experience all the way back to Kuta and during the night. It's clearly what triggered the poem I'm working on today...

((More from exotic Bali, and the completed poem, next chapter.))