Bali
8 January 2010
Travelling with Richard has been an endless thrill. It has not been at all easy for him. It has not been particularly easy for me either, but I at least have had much more experience in these lands of torrid exotica and have learned over the years the bare art or necessity of just surrendering and letting it all take me where it will. On this occasion, it is much more complete to be able to share with someone rather than to go it alone.
We arrived last night in Denpasar and were met at the airport by a hotel van. It was already dark (although we left the hotel in Sydney at 05:30) and lightly raining. Gede Parma had warned us to stay clear of Kuta, but we ended up, thanks to Marlowe’s suggestion of a place to stay, right in the middle of it. However, we are ensconced in a secluded garden with thatched cottages and exquisite tropical landscaping and a removal from the din and crassness all the same. This is complete enchantment. The memorial shrine to the victims of the Bali bombing is close by and is as moving in its own way as was the Sydney Jewish Museum that we had visited on our last day there.
It poured with rain during the night – with the result that half the laundry I had sink washed but then left on the rack under the open screened-in roof in the bathroom was anything but close to being dry by the morning. It was still lightly raining after the night as we sat on our veranda to eat the bananas and drink the tea that the hotel leaves before each cottage. Our agenda for today was to secure our transit visas for India which we were unable to do in Sydney and which we were assured by the Consulate there we could get in Bali but definitely not at the Mumbai airport upon arrival. This Bali availability of course has not proven to be true. The Bali ‘Consulate’ is only a Cultural Centre. It has as a result been a long meander through Denpasar eventually to an agent who now has our passports and should hopefully secure our visas within ten days. The service in all came to $291.75 and the taxi for all the hours of excursion to something just under $30, and all this just for a mere transit visa for three nights in Mumbai.
But apart from having virtually all our funds wiped out on our first outing, we got to see much of Denpasar and both its main streets and back alleys. Other than the lush vegetation in place of the ubiquitous dust, what I have seen so far has been completely reminiscent of Kathmandu or Varanasi and many other parts of Nepal or India. In addition, there is a lovely gentleness to the people, a warm ready friendliness and even with the hawking a welcomed and easy restraint. I have not yet been in a shrine or temple, although I have already seen hoards of them as well as offering baskets of flowers and foods before almost every entrance to anything – be it hotel, restaurant, shop, bank or locus sacrum.
I am assuming and hoping that it will be even more marvelous throughout the rest of Bali after Kuta.
For the rest, I have received some interesting feedback on the Parliament from both Graham and Angie. While Angie is questioning and doubting the possibility of maturity for the pagan ‘community’, Graham argues that “among the immediate, long lasting and continuing effects of the Doctrine of Discovery is genocide. A one sided murderous project. there is no balance between any resistance and the perpetrators.
And no indigenous person that I've heard or read wants to "turn back to the past" - that attempt died with the Ghost Dancers, especially but not finally at Wounded Knee. What's being called for is exactly a recognition of where the contemporary legitimations and court rulings began and that they are rooted in the dogmas of a past era. Then readjustments can be made that develop justice.”
I do not disagree with Graham and what he says about the Doctrine of Discovery, but there have been countless imbalanced genocides throughout history that have had nothing to do with the Doctrine, and yet they have occurred. We cannot undo them; it is the human story, but we might – and only at this stage just might – be able to prevent additional ones from occurring that are now patently incommensurate with the currently, however fragile, prevailing ethos of our post-Doctrine times. One particularly egregious thing that came out of the forced conversions was the virtual kidnapping of indigenous children and placement into ‘boarding’ schools where they were prevented (along with countless other tortures) from using their native languages. Forced assimilation. It was wrong and is wrong, and yet it was done. The resentments and angers are real, but the Parliament I believe is not the venue to make demands on that basis. One might think that the Ghost Dances of the 1870s and 1890s concluded the wishful thinking for the past, but this was precisely the sentiment expressed during the 1993 Parliament in Chicago by much of the Native American community. And it was obvious that this was the same story for the Melbourne Parliament as well – with the unsavoury addition that, while deploring racism, the indigenes themselves conveyed racist sentiment and acts that belittled their better efforts for justice-based readjustments.
13 January 2010
Today is the Ides and the last day of the Aztec nemotemi; tomorrow is the Aztec New Year and the Maha Shiva Ratri; and Friday will be the Second Carmentalia. I learned just now after surreptitiously downloading my email near a nearby internet café that Fritz Lohman died on the 31st of December. His dates are 1922-2009. He and Charles Leslie were together for 48 ‘wonderful’ years and together founded the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation. He will be missed.
We are in Ubud, and true to all hopes and expectations, once we moved beyond Kuta, the legendary magic of Bali has proven to be what I have always heard. Ubud is still a tourist centre but infinitely less intense than the night club hot spot on the coast. We have been to temples and temple ceremonies after having purchased the requisite wastra, saput and udeng (probably well over-priced and not in the colours I would have preferred), but they have allowed us entry to the ceremony we have been to the last two days as well as to the many temples we visited today on an excursion to Goa Gajah (Elephant Cave Temple – my favourite), Gunung Kawi (Rock Temple), Tampaksiring (Holy Spring Temple), Ulun Danu, and the Kehen Temple in Bangli. All have been lovely and exude a gentle, indigenous form of Hinduism that is colourful, organic and expressive of the remarkable Balinese people themselves. One of the most thrilling moments today, however, was the restaurant we were taken to to have lunch while viewing the Mount Batur volcano and the adjacent Lake Batur. Our table was on the edge of a long covered veranda overlooking the incredible panorama, and while we feasted on a superb buffet while sipping fresh tamarillo juice, the heavens opened with the greatest of downpours, and all disappeared in mist while we continued to eat – and stay dry. It was exciting and thoroughly enjoyable, and in time the rains ceased and the view returned allowing us to see luxuriantly green rice fields, tiny villages and plumes of mist transfiguring the landscape into pure enchantment.
We see (finally) our beloved Saskia shortly and tomorrow go to Gede’s uncle and aunt on the north coast. And while we continue to worry whether our passports will be returned in time from the Indian Embassy in Jakarta, we are deeply touched by this beautiful country and her lovely people.
20 January 2010
To have an evening with Saskia was a pure delight. She appears completely at home here in Bali, has completed her ‘training’ and is now hard at work completing her percussion commission – so much so that we are unable to see her further and visit with her the fascinating holy places with which she is familiar.
The next day (Thursday the 14th) we taxied to Lovina – stopping on the way to encounter the Besakih Temple, the largest temple in Bali. It was impressive, and our driver had warned us about ‘guides’ and ‘donation demanders’. This last was more reminiscent of India than the more usual relaxation and gentleness of Balinese Hinduism, but we resisted firmly and even managed to gain entry to the inner sanctum – this last not without some difficulty. The temple itself is huge with courtyard after courtyard all filled with ornate shrines and tiered-pagodas or merus.
For lunch, we ended up in a Kintamani restaurant right next to the one we had been to the day before. We passed on the buffet and opted for a lighter meal. The wind was fierce, and we were not only having trouble keeping our sandwiches from blowing off the veranda, but my sunglasses did go over and disappeared. I thought that that was the end of them, but miraculously they were retrieved in time from the lush jungle deeply below.
In Lovina on the north coast, we stayed at the hotel of Gede’s uncle and aunt. The time alternated between steamingly hot and torrential rains, but we took long walks along the beach and swam in the pool. The highlight for me was finding and then luxuriating in the sacred hot springs of Banjur – and fittingly on the second Carmentalia to the spring-goddess Carmenta. Fortuitously, it was cooler at the time, so the waters were comfortable and their warmth not redundant.
We are now back in Ubud where the weather is a bit more tolerable. On our night back, we attended the Kecak Fire and Trance Dance at the Pura Batu Karu temple – the one we had been to earlier for the ceremony. The performance was intriguing and hauntingly beautiful. The Sita herself was absolutely stunning, and Richard now has ideas and plans from the event for his next musical.
Our passports remain in limbo. For the rest, we are enjoying the foods in Ubud and taking advantage of the hotel’s shuttle to its sister hotel, a super deluxe establishment with an Olympic-sized crescent shaped pool in spacious, meticulously maintained gardens and internet access. We have also discovered the happy hour at Café Luna where delicious margaritas well beyond the standard size elsewhere are available.
22 January 2010
We taxied back to Kuta today after completing a relaxing time in Ubud - seeing there a splendid Legon and Barong Dance performance at the Ubud Palace as well, even with Deva Indra as one of the characters. Dripping wet by the time we got back to Poppies Cottages, and after one more (six or seven really) phone(s) call to our visa agent, we went for a swim. The next thing we knew was that I was being called to the reception desk, and our passports had arrived! We are relieved at last, infinitely more relaxed and can proceed now on schedule.
With the rain this early evening we stayed in and watched on HBO first Samson and Delila (the 1949 version with Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature) and then Brian De Palma’s cult-classic Body Double. After some beers afterward, we walked Legian Road and again passed the monument. Viewing this once again, I am filled with disgust and even rage that anyone would inflict their own cause on others in such a way – especially on such a gentle and lovely peoples as the Balinese. Whether I will ever get back here, it is a splendid place, and we have enjoyed it immeasurably. And yet our whole sojourn here has coincided with the Haitian horror and, thanks to the BBC World Service, CNN, Aljazzera and EuroNews, the pathos that that entails. I have been impressed over the efficiency and effectiveness of the Israeli emergency medical facilities and bewildered over the correspondingly poor American response. While there have been innumerable valiant efforts by US doctors, rescuers and aid relief, the lack of the necessary medical supplies have increased the death toll when this could have been otherwise. But as Ray Nagin has recently proclaimed, the United States is still not prepared for dealing with catastrophe and emergency recovery. And this last against one more ineptitude of the Democratic Party and the Massachusetts fiasco and the implications of this last for health care reform. Here we are, and even with our huge national deficit, the wealthiest nation in the world, and we cannot provide adequate and accessible medical services on a universal basis as virtually every other Western country has been able to achieve. What is wrong with us? Add this to the DOMA and the Supreme Court’s favourable lobbyist ruling, I am left wondering whether America will ever grow up?
24 January 2010
And tomorrow we leave this paradisiacal island and can roll up our sarongs, sashes and headdresses. And if the temples for which these allowed us to enter are exquisite, here it is definitely the women who are the outstanding beauties. Most if not all are lovely and charming, and it is no wonder that people like Don Antonio Blanco (‘the Dali of Bali’) or Richard Hood (our hotel host in Lovina) have married into the island and settled here.
Yesterday we taxied to the Tanah Lot temple in time for the sunset. This is a splendid site with the temple on a small island to which one can wade through the sea to reach. Underneath the shrine is a sacred spring that was awesome and obviously the real focus of devotional attention. The surrounds were the usual circus associated with pilgrimage centres, and there were hundreds of people to watch the sun disappear into the sea, but none of this detracted from the magic of the area and its ultimate inspirational powers.
Tomorrow we embark on the most brief of visits to Singapore first, then Bombay/Mumbai and finally Istanbul, before we settle for a few weeks in Beirut. Singapore will be a first for both of us; Bombay a first for Richard. But we both have great memories of Istanbul and are looking forward to renewing some of them. For today, however, we relax in Kuta which, despite all its commercial overspin and tawdry glamour, I have come not to mind. We have seen such beauty in other parts of this country that Kuta is just an event and scene that no longer particularly disturbs. Even here the pervasive Balinese gentleness is still apparent beyond and beneath the disco intrusions and the virtually pre-recorded hawking from vendors, cab drivers and restaurant receptionists. We will spend a quiet day with little planned apart from some laps in the Poppies Cottages’ pool (the most attractive of all that we have seen here) and watching the final Balinese sunset over the sea just a few blocks down our lane.
Addendum:
And our dear Rosy forwarded the following message from Jill Cunningham of the New York ATD office: “We here at Fourth World Movement/USA can take your monetary donations for Haiti. Make any checks out to "Fourth World Movement," and put "Haiti" in the memo. Send them here to 7600 Willow Hill Drive, Landover, MD 20785. We will make sure the money gets to our team and members in Port-au-Prince.
As you know, we are not a large or emergency relief organization. Be assured, however, any money you and your friends send will go directly to people there on the ground in Haiti. The diversity of our members in Port-au-Prince are working to connect to wider emergency relief efforts; re-establish and maintain vital communication networks; and restart some activities with infants and children who are so vulnerable, and yet such a hope, at a time like this.
Please share our international message and appeal widely with your friends”