Monday, May 07, 2007

Bali Today

Bali Monday May 7th....it is breezy, hot and very humid....drying out is a bit of a chore.

Yesterday I hired a car and an affable driver to drive way up north...past the gorgeous (yet very isolated) Amankilla on the coast...into deep mountains on one- lane roads with dizzying drop offs. The green of this island simply mesmerizes. The flowers are rambunctious.....and, I remember reading something in an anthropology class of yore that the two peoples on earth (according to the writer) who have incorporated forms of art into their daily lives are the Tiroleans and the Balinese. Certainly the religion here, a form of hinduism in the largest muslim nation in the world, exudes art....much of it is ugly but when it is not it is a joy.

We were far away from tour buses and commerce......far away from rapacious children asking for bon bons and school pens....on back roads where a foreigner is a real rarity I felt. My driver got the spirit just right that I needed to go where few others went. His English was superficial but extant, remarkable for a guy who probably did not go past the 4th grade.

There are small signs of progress: all roads are paved, new schools (elementary for the most part) have cropped up in the backest of back country...people smile, are physically slight but very well built and a lovely light caramel color with regular features....rivers rush by, people are bathing and washing clothing in them...it is a Gaugin-ish scene. I have a hard time resolving the hideous violence which took place here in the early 60s...that period in local history as shown in that epic film The Year of Living Dangerously when a collective madness seems to have struck Bali----the Balinese going on a heinous rampage in which most of their Chinese population (at least 100,000 were murdered in mini-genocide.

I kept remembering the adage that "one death is a tragedy while many deaths are a statistic".....I suppose people with evil and effective leaders can be led to do grievous things. Bali seems a place where history should not be studied very closely. There are tiny elements in the past: a deserted Dutch church here, a Chinese cemetery there.....Still Bali absolutely enchants with p
oinsettias and bouganvillas, hibiscus, huge yellow flowered bushes, magnolias and the lotus dominating the landscape....where art IS a part of life from the way the watermelon slice is presented at breakfast to the way the bed in turned down at night. There are far worse places.

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