Saturday, March 19, 2005

In Jungleland

Looking into the jungle. The light from the joglo's covered walkway spreads through seven types of tree, extends past a shorter statue to a three meter figure decked in offerings on the far side of the garden. The light stops short of the steps leading down to the 2nd garden tier, and because I have switched the other lights off, it leaves my seat in darkness, too. A bat flaps through the trees and the light, and I recall a moment earlier today, exploring the royal family’s temple grounds, when I brushed a critter from my arm and discovered it was a scorpion on quite a stroll from its natural habitat. A faint breeze and quiet ceiling fan keep me comfortable in shorts without a shirt. I sit in darkness, and look across the light into the black jungle, silhouetted against a sky so full of stars I know there must be something going on out there somewhere. An old familiar feeling, turned strange by the awareness that even though I barely knew the stars of my life thus far, my instincts inform me more than my knowledge that these are not they. Look up at this spectacular night sky and you will not find the Big Dipper. A wall encircles the 2-joglo compound and the 2 tiers of gardens. Its gate opens below the lower garden to several tall stone stairs descending to an irrigation canal lining this side of a wide terraced rice paddy extending to the jungle on the left and in front, and the sky on the right. Leaving sandals by the hip-deep canal, crossing it and making my way across the rice fields, I could reach the bamboo bridge thrown across the river on the other side of the rice fields to walk through the jungle into the village of Mas. Today I walked the rice paths 400 metres alongside the canal to the infinity pool set above them and extending by some optical trick to the edge of the jungle. A large lizard scurried across my path on its way kersplash to the canal. Or I could take the road. But tonight I do neither. Instead I sit in this rattan armchair, pillow and notebook on my lap, legs up on a matching ottoman. A dim light on my keyboard. An iced guava juice cocktail by my side. A moat filled with aquatic life encircling my home for the week. Eons past, a local nobleman on Java built this structure with its columned expansive bale (BAH-LAY) in the center, its twin mahogany heat-trapping pyramided domes in the roof, teak floors, sliding walls. In my imagination, servants replace the ceiling fans, and the nobleman wears a thin sarong rather than my shorts. Some visionary (and moneyed) soul in need of more tranquility brought the joglo across the water and set it here. I am a white-skinned sweaty novice in an oasis carved out of jungle, and I watch the jungle slowly trying to take it back… it’s the dialogue in progress all across this isle, and sitting here I remain inarguably IN the jungle.

My home for the week from the outside, with moat and bridge... sigh...

The large central bale in the living area of my joglo. Daybeds on either side allow very comfortable reclining on the bale as well, and the sliding doors overlooking the garden are just visible on the right.

the stairs to the 2nd tier, a bale at the edge of the garden, the gate just visible leading to the rice paddies in the background...

Looking from the pool back along the irrigation canal to our joglos...

The bamboo footbridge from the paddies into the jungle and on to Mas. When I actually tried it the bamboo split under my feet, and as the gulley appeared bottomless, we retreated.

This is why these are called infinity pools over here...

Visiting the still inhabited royal compund in Ubud, I brushed this assassin from my arm before I knew what it was. It pays to be hairy sometimes.

And the band played on...

So I recline and listen to all these shades of green... until tonight, four distinct frog types worked in concert with both a gamelan orchestra in the jungle town across the river, and the gentle jazz I often have going quietly behind me, while the rapid rhythmic drone of small winged beings did the rest of the soothing work. I am sure the conversations of the frogs are influenced by the quality and volume of the music. There is often an odd harmony, as if all are working from the same score, and perhaps they are, a cosmic one. Human music or not, the jungle sounds grow deafening over time, the way any sound does to human ears in the absence of conversation. And the louder they become, the more tranquil this world. These sounds, even the human ones, are at least two thousand years old. Gamelan is basically gentle orchestrated percussive music produced by anything that makes music when struck, whether or not music was it’s original purpose: coconuts, cauldrons, could be whatever. No gamelan orchestra sounds like another, but the effect is invariably like a family of independent wind chimes expressing their love for each other. In everything there is a comic element, and I find it here in the presence each night, even occasionally tonight, of the “sorry” frog, performing his occasional “sorry”-sounding repetitions, perhaps because he or she isn’t very musical. It’s all quite glorious, but reading a volume of short stories about Dutch colonists losing their sanity in this cacophonous verdure over months and years sends an eerie serpent slithering down my spine. How much enforced serenity can a foreigner (“bule” -- BOO-LAY) endure?

One example of part of a Gamelan orchestra.

Here a Legong Dancer performs with the Gamelan Orchestra on the grounds of the still inhabited Ubud Royal Palace.

Celebrate good times! Come on!

Tonight however, I hear fireworks from all directions, dogs barking, only one persistently verbal frog, and one voice amplified from Mas in a mesmerizing performance that does not sound religious. I have an urge to cross the river in the dark to find out which story is being told, but I will wait. My senses have swallowed enough over the past few days that tonight I process quietly. But I do believe that the absence of gamelan and my jazz, and the presence of the fireworks and dogs, is keeping most of the frogs as quiet as the gekkos of many different sizes that crawl everywhere there might be light, mostly helping the dogs that guard against evil spirits (at least in their dreams and in the spiritual beliefs of the majority) at gateways everywhere we go. The explosions continue because this is Balinese New Year's Eve done deeply and with specific purpose. The nosiest night of the year because tomorrow (hopefully tonight at midnight), is Nyepi, or "Silent Day", a strictly enforced day of abstinence from noise. I’ve now done four New Year’s celebrations in five months: Moslem in November, Western in December, Chinese in February, and Hindi/Balinese tonight. I like this one best. Tomorrow, no one on the island leaves their compound (family members live together in a walled collection of villas, huts, and a temple -- like a small fort), no electricity or amplification used, no contact outside family. Silence is enforced so that the evil spirits won’t detect the humans here, and will give Bali a miss for a day, and the dogs a rest. The slightest noise, and it's game over. This evening on the way back from town we pulled off the narrow road by an expanse of temple built into a jungle town, to observe the culmination of the last two days of vivid decorations and offerings to every temple, shrine, and entryway (not limited to massive stone arches, but including driveways and any other large opening) we had seen going up over the past three days. Towering (the taller the holier) bamboo poles decorated in ornate colors and tied with bowed strips of leaves line the streets. A ceremonial tiger and lion, constructed over three days in temples dedicated to the Hindi triumvirate, surrounded by happy people in traditional indescribably beautiful dress (priest dressed just the same) were spoken and chanted to, respected among several fistfuls of incense sticks (cigarettes often in the other hand). Umbrellas whose colors (mostly yellow, red, and white, but also blue and black) represent the spirits and gods protecting the various regions of the human realm, are later used to escort the animals back to their primary temples in the village. The obvious thing to these still somewhat Western eyes is that the whole town is happy to be here, has participated in preparations for the previous weeks and months, and has no problem or issue with any of it. The "priest" looks just like the rest of them, they all stand together within a temple compound under the emerging stars, and perform their peaceful religious rites enthusiastically and happily. No youngster look pulled away from video games or tv to meaningless church or temple... a fully-integrated, community-wide shared faith. It takes a village indeed.

Two guardians at work, protecting a Gamelan practice in the village temple of ubud: one furball on the stage, the other near the street.

Driving through a town the afternoon before Galungan, decorations adorning the street.

Walking into Ubud on the morning of Galungan, everywhere people were preparing offerings for their entryways, homes, temples, and shops.

The decorations in one of inumerable family compounds, focused on the family temple before Galungan.

The Ogoh-ogoh, focus of Galangan (as far as I can tell), two days before Nyepi.

Friday, March 18, 2005

Hush, children, what's that sound?

Sunrise on Niepi. The jungle nocturne transforms. Many roosters join the orchestra a couple of hours before the light, and now there are hundreds singing together in an endless round. The dogs join in, but there is no human sound. I have yet to hear a motorcycle. Fish’re jumpin’ in the joglo moat… Suddenly an amplified voice, probably a priest or village leader, gives what must be a “start your engines…now shut up!” speech – disturbing but perhaps a necessary reminder at sunrise… One or two farmers work the rice fields: perhaps they are not Hindi? Or perhaps they are hungry. I’ve read a volume of Balinese short stories full of tales of the conflict between tourism and traditional life. Full of stories of rice farmers hanging themselves in their rice fields the night before Niepi after the local governor has requisitioned the family paddies for a tourist development like the resort with infinity pool in which I’ve been swimming. Oh well. So much for the dream of Paradise. Today I watch the flowers grow and insects fly around the garden. Yellows and reds punctuate the green… The butterflies are huge… and the gekkos love them as breakfast. There’s a three-inch long red green and yellow polka-dotted winged being involved in some kind of erotically charged ritual with a long green plant in my open-air bathroom. The bug has black legs that unfold, rotate, and invert like Alien. On a jungle trek a day later I see the same species with different colors –- perhaps they have closets full of interchangeable outfits.

It's New Year's Day again, Niepi, the silent day, and from what I understand, these two shouldn't be toiling in their fields because it attracts the evil spirits, and Silent Day is supposed to guarantee Bali's people a day free of those spirits... but what do I know?

And now one of them rests silently...

Do you see the rice paddies cut out of the jungle?

Would you like some more red?

The aforementioned bathroom bug...

Called the Bird of Paradise

Run through the jungle

Tuesday, three days before, we drive along winding backroads through several jungle towns coming back from visits to a volcanic lake and the northern coast via breathtaking mountain lakes and views. These towns differ from those I saw on Java last month in that most of the homes of these people, artisans and farmers with precious little income, look lovely. Most importantly, they seem to have been built in dialogue with the environs… most of these places appear to emerge from and bleed back into the jungle all around. Javanese homes of similar means showed much less taste and awareness of where they stood. Of course we observe these towns in the midst of communal holiday decorating, but the drive is a deeply moving experience for all of us. At sunset we pass one temple filled with villagers in brightly-colored tops and sarongs awaiting a little space at the large square altar area to deposit their offerings, often a 2-foot-tall sliced fruit arrangement in a woven basket atop their heads. Families take most of the offering back home again after the ceremony. The rest is left for the spirits… and the guardians.

The clouds and rain and smoke put on a heckuva show here -- that's Mt. Batur, still steaming (you can just see the smoke at the left of the crater), its town below it, and the lake filling the old extinct crater. Question: the black is lava flow of the past thirty years. Why would anyone live that close to an active volcano?

This and the next one are the prize photos, I think. The peaks of three volcanoes in the back there.

One of two adjoining lakes at Munduk Nature Reserve, which offers a four hour hike through the only undeveloped part of this island. Means no trash.

These villagers near the north coast beach hub Lovina are heading to the sea with offerings and effigies of spirts to be blessed and washed clean.

It's possible, I suppose, but I don't think these farmers ever take for granted the beauty that surrounds them. I know I can't.

This helmetless family of three is heading off to the village temple early in the morning...

Got rice?

They said you was high class...

It’s a dog’s life here. Most of the rest of the country is filled with cats, but Bali is dogtown. At least they look like dogs, and bark like dogs, and almost get hit by cars all the time like dogs, and sleep all day unless noise or hunger awakens them, like dogs. But these aren’t like any dogs I’ve ever known. For one thing, they are as social as cats. Not once all week does a dog approach me or wag a tail in my presence. No begging, no wet nose, no slobber, no hair, no need for companionship – no best friends here. Instead, they are adored as a species by the population, and thanked for guarding the populace against evil spirits. A dog barks, and there’s bad ghosts around. The guardians, many of whom have no fixed address, don’t go hungry. Aforementioned offerings are made every day, many of them in small coconut or bamboo-leaf trays at ground level, incense lit to attract the spirits. When the incense burns itself out, the guardians collect what the spirits have left behind.

A grateful guardian accepts an offering

This guardian has to wait while the spirits have first go at the offerings. When the incense is finished, the rest is his.

The artisan's city of Ubud features a piece of jungle forest developed only with paths. There are three large temples in the midst of it, and hundreds and hundreds of monkeys in search of bananas, human clothing, and mother's milk.

Do you want my job?

In the van I told Carla and Peter that only once before had I been this moved by the presence of human beauty in the world: Italy – Tuscany, Verona and the hot Southern towns near Ostuni and Taranto. That’s not to say there weren’t difficulties in this week of wonders. The jungle’s advance infantry, air-force, and artillery love the sweltering heat of the rainy season, and the rain loves the rainy season, too. By the end of the week, despite the breathtaking cuisine and caring help at the joglos, the ants were living in the fridge and freezer (don’t ask me how they did it, but I often would have enjoyed living in the freezer, too), several more in the open-air bathroom thanked me for the free accommodation in my toothbrush (that’ll teach me to rinse it out better), my left ankle had 19 bites on it, and a couple of roaches were giving lessons to lesser bugs on the kitchen floor. Days without rain nonetheless featured rotating wetness schemes: shower-bug lotion-water-sunblock-bug lotion-steam-sweat-beer-water-swim-beer-bug lotion-steam-sweat-beer-shower-beer and so on. Today began just like that, but substituting “pack” for “swim”, and “tea” for “beer” so it was far less fun. After dropping Carla, Peter, and Kate at the airport, wonder-driver Dewa and I filled the hours between our two flights with a trip through the nearby tourism capital of Bali, called Kota (hideous hideous seedy tourism) and its surroundings along the white sand beaches of the south, culminating in a near sunset visit to the 1700 year-old coastal temple of Tanoh Lot. While the temple, built 1700 years ago by local villagers to sanctify the spot where a visiting shaman meditated for months in order to cure the villages of a plague infestation, is remarkably tastefully marketed and sold to tourists, the rest of the area I never need to see again. Not since college had I gone a whole week anywhere in the world without seeing a McDonald’s or Starbucks… and the streak was resoundingly broken today, near a beach awash in little plastic kethup containers.

Tanoh Lot Temple

I believe right now if I could

I would swallow you whole (Vega). The bottom of the sea is cruel (Hart Crane). How to survive the Indian Ocean riptide at Semanyak: catch a two meter wave – when it drops you, plant feet immediately and brace for the pull. Be a friend to the undertow. Mind over matter. Show the sea no fear or it will eat you. Catch next wave, plant feet again. Repeat until dumped on the beach. The wetness pattern over these four hours was sweat-sit-sweat-swim in surf (nearly die)- sit-sweat- RAIN soak- sit – sweat in restaurant- soak fresh shirt in the surf of one Tanoh Lot wave while snapping a picture - sit wet in airport bar in shirt that has lived a week in a day, where I conclude this ramble through my initial exposure to Bali.

They don't look it from here, but these waves are about 2.5 meters high, and the outgoing tide is a hamstring developer.

Why do the locals like to grab us white guys for their vacation memory pictures? In the US I look like Huey Lewis, but over here they tell me I resemble Ah-nold... please don't tell the guv'nor.

The poets down here don't write nothin' at all

they just sit back and let it all be. Aside from a weekend vacation update soon after I returned to Jakarta from the US in the new year, this blog has been derelict. I wonder if part of the reason is that I’ve simply been BEING HERE, to adapt a Kozinski/Peter Sellers phrase.

Some really scary monsters crawl out of these seas...

Anyone from UMD recognize the shirt I'm modelling?

Baby Learns to Crawl

Soon after I returned, waiting for my 6:30 class in the 6:00 twilight, I think back to the speech contest I was asked to judge at the University the weekend after my return from the US. I remember the University girls dance group entertaining the contestants and audience to Britney Spears, Islam-style. I ponder for the hundredth time the speeches, most learned by rote with no critical thought whatsoever, several tonelessly urging teenagers to reject “destructive western influences”… unable to specify any examples of these influences. And I think again about the power of education, learning, schools… the Darth Mauls and Luke Skywalkers, using the same set of tools, with the power to create or destroy. And I’m again thrilled to be here, to be able to do my little bit as Luke for whomever comes through our doors.

A wild dance to Britney, only fully clothed. The woman on the left lost her headscarf... I wonder what she's thinking.

A couple of fine efforts, but the majority of speeches taught Tom more about the state of high school education in much of the city (and country?) than learning the speeches taught their speakers...

25,000 Stars Under the Sky

In this twilight, looking out from the 4th floor verandah of my university, across the plaza below. A rare rainy season sunset performance, first purples, then reds. Left and right of the plaza two playgrounds. Left maybe 25 teenagers playing soccer on the tarmac/concrete. Right it’s older or college kids playing basketball, watched by a throng of younger kids. In a little piece of adjoining parking lot 5 itty bitty leaping kids play soccer with sandals for goalposts and a ball that’s about half as big as them. Between the plaza and the basketball is a mosque, and behind the mosque another makeshift grassy soccer pitch full of kids in uniforms. Below me by the plaza boys and girls pluck branches from trees for some other game. In the plaza, 3 little kids chase each other around the fountain with a well-used ball. I could dwell on (and would have before Christmas) details such as the complete absence of shoes on the kids playing soccer in the playground to the left, of women save for the pair plucking twigs, of even scraps of strings on the basketball hoops. There’s never been any soap or hot water in the University bathrooms. But what’s the point? The clock in my classroom runs counter-clockwise, and the numbers on its face are reversed. I’ve almost got it figured out; in other words, I can almost tell time in two directions. A little like looking up at the stars over Bali, feeling that warmth and connectedness I’ve always felt looking up at a sky full of stars, yet not quite the same warmth, because they aren’t the same stars. They are new stars. Like watching the weather forecast, and the map of the world isn’t the map of the North Atlantic or the Northern Hemisphere anymore. It’s still the same weather, and the same world, but it’s the New World…It’s far more constructive to absorb the happy sounds coming from 5 directions. Laughter and excited shouts, an eager air. No players acting tough or macho, no do-rags and bulging biceps and hard stares and $200 sports shoes. Its summer everyday and nothing feels old. I remember playing touch football in the front yard of our house in Tulsa when I was six or seven, trying to learn the game in twilights like this from the kid across the street, and getting brought down every time I tried.

Though not often in jakarta during the rainy season, we do occasionally get celestial performances like these two...red...

purple...

Havin' a Party

But trying was such a thrill. Indonesian food does indeed taste even better when eaten with the fingers. It is more fun to give all of myself in a song and move a crowd to dance than to fear coming in on a bad note, to strive to give all of my ability to just 12 students than to not teach at all. I’ve learned that by chasing down business deals and contracts one can defeat the fear of failure, by playing pool and losing, one of course still slowly learns to win, by reading in taxis one defeats the wasted time in traffic, by taking many pictures I enable a small amount of huge wonder to emerge later, bring my walls to life, and breathe magic from the rest of the country into this place I seek shelter in when I’m stuck in the city. The sea and the jungle can reclaim me here, too. I’m having the time of my life.

Asked to work up a few songs for a big 80ieth birthday bash in a swank hotel, this a duet between of Over the Rainbow, sung by Tom Waits Jones and Judy Garland. Then we rocked the house with a 50ies Elvis medley. The set opened with the Bee Gees' Words by popular demand. Yes I enjoyed myself in the service of another ;-)

Sign Language

One problem. During the volcano roadtrip, taking a hike in the jungle, heading back to the van from a waterfall, down a ways from the most inventive TV-reception scheme I’ve ever seen, on a single-file path I realized earlier qualified as a jungle street, there to provide access via motorbike to jungle homes, near the spot where the re-taped electricity line can take your head off at night as it heads down the mountainside, I talked with a man high in a fruit tree. A very happy man, chucking oodles of delicious fresh fruit called mangostin down at us. Peel it, and get eight small sections of sticky white fruit that only grows on Bali. But I wasn’t really talking, and I should have been. We were laughing and smiling and gesturing and playing with my ten-word vocabulary… six months – it’s time to eat the language.

Emerging from the jungle, this woman carts produce along the road to town. Motorcycles were common on our hike, and the homes have dirt driveways for them.

Sign language with the mangostin man in the tree...

Bamboo allows jungle villages to keep up with Indonesian Idol...

In the middle of mountainous jungle, half an hour from the coast...