A Million Miles From Here - Tales from the Cultural Frontier.
Part II - The Plane...
I’m on the way to London, to ‘sort my life’
out, sell my flat, and complete everything in the UK, so I
can hopefully return to Bali free and clear. Sitting on the
plane, reflecting…
Waiting in the departure lounge, en-route to London, the
little Balinese dancing girl doll in traditional stance, held
by the child in the seat next to me reminds me of ‘jet
gedé’ - a comment made about my niece’s
rather prominent bottom by a Balinese waitress in a café
we were visiting in Ubud.
‘ Jet gedé!’ the waitress exclaimed loudly
(meaning ‘big bottom!) I was sniffily rather offended
on behalf of my beautiful niece, until it was explained that
having a ‘jet gedé ‘ is no bad thing, not
a criticism at all – in fact, something rather to be
coveted, a prominent derrière being such a feature
of the Balinese dance (legs deeply bent, rump shoved out to
one side) as to be positively a desirable and attractive feature.
‘In any case,’ my husband Putu explained (slowly,
as if to a half-witted child) ‘…even if a big
bum were a bad thing, they’d still only be commenting
on it, kind of just noting that it existed, rather than necessarily
actually criticising it!’
Oh! I do so love the (usually) non-judgemental nature of
the gentle and refined Balinese!
I have just made it through Duty Free – a pre-packaged
temple to consumerism, smoke and mirrors, and ‘stuff
out of nothing’. Lotions and scented potions, perfumes
– I know they cost pennies to make - fabbed up with
glass, coloured water dye, cellophane, pretty boxes, celeb
write-ups and endorsements – hey, there’s even
‘CD I LOVE DIOR!’ which seems to be a double pack
of Eau De T. (at US$ 68). Then Ralph Lauren’s got VALUE
SETS at (US$37 – 59) ‘Value for whom?’ I
wonder. Him, I suppose.
I can’t help liking the silvery, butterfly shaped ‘Anna
Sui’ stand – coral orange pink dumpy cellophaned
boxes, butterfly bottles, silver stoppers. Silly, but nice
(only US$50 a cube).
On my Bali dressing table these pretty perfumes would quickly
go pale and uninteresting in the sun – in Bali, nothing
lasts – life here is the antithesis of ‘storing
things away for the Winter’ – no pickling, no
potted meats, no dried sausages, fruits, jams or preserves!
Well, there’s no Winter! It has a profound effect on
the mindset of the people. Hoarding is out! ‘Now’
is in! Hooray! – forget about tomorrow – there’ll
be another rich harvest of rice along on this incredibly fertile
volcanic silt enlivened land in a minute! (There are three
crops a year of the ‘modern’ rice’ –
though it’s not nearly as tasty or nutritious as the
slower growing original taller single cropping ‘red’
rice of Bali, which you can still find, if you look hard enough).
Sitting waiting, reflecting on the culture I have immersed
myself in and am about to leave behind for a bit as I go to
London to ‘sort my life out’, sell my flat, get
everything clear and settled.
Smiling handsome young Balinese guy, shoulder length hair,
arrives happily with Japanese wife and young child in tow
and I miss my husband Putu and daughter Cahya.
Another major difference in Bali is that no industrial revolution
ever happened here, so, whereas in England, we always naturally
look for ‘ways of making lots of the same thing at the
same time’ – for example, cutting paper, we might
make a stack and then attempt a multiple cut (usually wonky
of course!) on the guillotine. In Bali, Putu’s Mum would
never pull a stunt like that. She’ll just sit quietly
and patiently, and cut a hundred individual squares out of,
say, the left over pages from our wedding programmes, slowly,
perfectly, singly, one at a time.
This way of slowly and methodically doing things, yet, doing
them thoroughly and well, is typical of the Balinese. They
don’t go for short cuts. And usually, they manage to
enjoy what they are doing, sitting chatting with friends,
drinking coffee, at the same time. There’s no rush.
Another ‘small yet strange’ difference that I’ve
noticed concerns cutting a lemon or lime. In Europe, we always
cut straight through the centre of a lemon, don’t we?
Crossways or longways, it doesn’t matter, we always
cut them through the centre. Here though, they kind of cut
a slice off the side of the lemon. I can’t tell you
how weird this seemed the first time I saw it! Paralime shift!
Actually, it makes a very good flattish hemisphere for squeezing
juice easily without getting annoying stingy juice in fingers
or eyes. What I’m alluding to here though is –
how strange, that we always do something a certain way –
it’s normal – yet we’re not even conscious
of it.
We are working to a ‘rule of lemon’ that we don’t
even know about! How many of these ‘we do it this way
here’ habits are there, that we’re not even aware
of, I wonder? How about cutting a diagonal slice through the
lemon, then? Are we culturally boxed, acting out of a square
mode of ‘normal’, limited thinking, without even
realising it?
‘ Cubing’ is out in Bali, too, along with ‘holding
the curved point of the knife and quietly rocking the heel
as you cut’ à la French chefs. No, here chopping
(something of a national sport with the ground and spiced
meats and vegetables that comprise traditional Balinese food)
is a ‘free for all’ – on your thick slab
of tree trunk – just hunker down and go for it, willy
nilly ‘– Tak, tak tak tak TAK!’ randomly
hacking with the largest, heaviest Chinese style chopper,
or big hunting style knife that you can find!
The sound is enough to raise you early in the morning (it’s
enough to raise the dead!) and everything gets chopped –
chicken meat, bones, gristle, even the feet! (I watched Putu
gaily chucking in a bit of extra gristle the other day, to
‘add flavour’, he said). A far cry from the European
style genteel, uniformly diced ‘macedonia of vegetables’
or whatever. Though, the community that occurs as the men
sit around good-naturedly chopping and chatting, is very nice.
(My friend Lucy is thinking about sound-proofing her bedroom
against the morning chopping sounds from the Balinese kitchen
next door, it’s so loud!)
Finally made it onto the plane, and now we’re flying
high over the South China Sea, en route to Kuala Lumpur and
London. The young guy I saw earlier with his family turns
out to be Javanese, from Yogjakarta, not Balinese. Sitting
next to me, he is trying to control vomiting two year old
child with Japanese wife. They skulk to alternate seating,
leaving redolent cheesy vomit patch behind for me to enjoy
on my journey. Reminding me again of Cahyas various stunts,
and my own oft-slunked guilt at them, and I can only laugh
(and peg my nose…)
Reminds me of a poem I wrote once, which goes (or, went,
of which more in a minute) “and lo, the first vomitary
skid mark doth herald the beginning of the festive season
in Covent Garden”. It doesn’t have a title. It
does, however, sum up Christmas around the now slightly chi-chi
former vegetable market cum boutique shopping gallery in London
– hordes of drunk sicked-up laddish louts hoiking their
spewed offerings of Christmas dinner and too much beer onto
every street corner round December. Eugh! Something I don’t
like about London and the West is the normalcy of drinking
to excess. So uncomfortable, yet not realising it, we stun
ourselves with alcohol, like demented self-stinging cuttlefish.
I did it to myself for years – must have been mad.
The lights of Bali snake beneath me and I really really don’t
want to leave.
know! This was how I found the last thing I lost there –
a friend just spotted it in the ‘we don’t know
what to do with this one’ pile – it wouldn’t
fit into the PO box!)
Anyway, they’re all lost. All I’ve got is the
‘vomitary’ one that I happened to just remember
(mustn’t grumble!) and a few other more recent ones
on my computer.
Strangely, my computer did a similar ‘wipe out’
on me when I was on the plane coming back from England last
time. Turning on my computer to show a new friend the two
hundred or so paintings I’d just painstakingly captured
onto digital camera and catalogued, I got…nothing! Didn’t
come on at all. Zippo. Never happened before or since. Oh
well – I thought – wasn’t meant to be then
after all, eh? Didn’t panic - didn’t seem much
point.
Anyway. Turned it on once I got home and it was fine, no
problem at all, art library intacto. Stronge (as they say
at the French bank I used to work at, in their French accents).
Stronge indeed. I feel I’m caught in a ‘warp in
the space time continuum’ in between London and Bali.
I sell my (silvery, expensive, yet unneeded) car in London
and we buy a wazzy red yet low-cost vintage sportster in Bali.
It seemed like a good idea – at least, to solve the
‘money down the drain from rent car’ scenario
in Bali. Alas, it’s been in the garage ever since, head-scratching
mechanic poring over its endlessly mysterious workings. (Leaving
me poring endlessly over mine – knowing that the external
world is but a reflection of the inner world – what
the hell is going on??) ‘Get it back and put a new engine
in’ throws my Balinese landlord. Will do, will do, when
I can finish the umpteen other things I’m trying to
sort out between ‘here’ and ‘there’…
I had a dream not long ago, narrated by that enviably impressive
Australian lady in Ubud who has about four successful businesses,
the same number of beautiful children, enviable marriage,
wonderful home… She popped up in my dream and was narrating
my life. ‘Bali is a story told the wrong way round’
she intoned. ‘The happy ending is at the beginning and
then it just keeps getting worse’. Oh goody. Just what
I needed to hear. I’ve either got to stop dreaming and
‘get real’ or I’m out of here. Maybe I can’t
do it. Maybe my Bali Dream is really a Bali Nightmare. Maybe
I can’t sell my house…
I CAN I CAN I CAN I CAN!!! Look, Jeli. You CAN DO IT. All
you need to do is really focus. Stop scribbling this story
and focus on selling your house!
Ok ok ok ok. Here’s the plan:
1. Visit estate agent
0.1. Get trousers (have brought only one dirty sarong for
reasons unknown even to my self).
2. Call Putu
3. Visit more estate agents
4. Get local papers about selling property
5. Find cheaper place to stay
Sounds a lot. Maybe I can sneak ‘cake and cappucino’
in there somewhere. Inner Voices) No!! Get ON with it! Oh,
ok, ok. Inner Voices) you’ll be happy when it’s
done, you know! Oh yes. Ecstatic!! Then I could add: 8. Call
bank to find out interest rate for wodge of money.
Seven hundred kilometres per hour, speeding away from Putu,
Cahya and Bali now, I feel very empty.
Having just whinged about drinking, what looks like an interesting
bottle of red and one of Chardonnay chinker past on a squeaking
trolley. Oh yes! Wouldn’t mind some of that! (Oblivion
is attractive at times, isn’t it?)
The glossy Air Malaysia magazine has a picture of a lime
green leaf hopper with serrated legs, captioned ‘the
leaf insect blends in well with its surroundings’ reminding
me of my friend Jil from Bali (who like me, is presently grappling
with ‘UK vs. Bali’ stuff). Do we ‘blend
in well with our surroundings’?
When I first came to Bali and met Jil, we had a surreal conversation
about a leaf-like insect we spotted on her ceiling. Was it
an insect pretending to be a leaf, or a leaf pretending to
be an insect? It is so silly that we still laugh and play
with this idea each time we see each other.
Climbing up her rain-washed valley, directed by Symon the
artist (hammock slung, rotund, beady eyed behind round glasses,
schoolboy-esque). ‘Oooooh, you’re at the wrong
paaa-rrrty!’ he announced gleefully. ‘You need
to go over theeeee-rrreee!’ Quite rightly directing
me to Jil’s lunch gathering of artists, poets, theatricians,
whatever. So I climbed up the valley from Symon’s vast
glass emporium and studio, following his careful directions
to Jil’s fairytale house (Gaudiesque tower, thatched
roof, glistening pool…) They made me very welcome as
I clambered over their child-proofed pool perimeter, and that’s
how my Bali story kind of got started.
One of the things I love about Bali is the other Ex-pats
here. They tend to be eccentric geniuses – incredibly
talented yet simultaneously fatally flawed (I include myself
in this of course!) Reminds me though of my friend John’s
words ‘the most vulnerable part of myself seems to be
connected with the very strongest part of myself.’ Don’t
we need the contrasts somehow, if we’re going to be
strong in any particular area? Can’t be all light, can
we? Got to have the dark, to show the light.
And so it is that one friend has a remarkable ‘show
girl’ glamourous belly dancing side, to such a degree
that she’ll even consider dancing at ‘Pat Phong’
clubs in Bangkok of all places (I think I talked her out of
it), coupled with the remarkable contrast of ‘The Hills
Are Alive With The Sound of Music’, or ‘The Nun’
– presently she’s on a thousand hour yoga training
retreat. Bringing us back to… (not ‘doh’
but…) is she a leaf pretending to be an insect, or an
insect pretending to be a leaf?
I suppose the answer is both – Nun and Whore. Each
have their advantages and disadvantages, and perhaps the game
is to explore each of them and find a way of integrating them
safely into a cohesive whole (tap-dancing nun, mantra reciting
showgirl?)
I feel like the ‘Man Who Fell To Earth’ (David
Bowie movie, c1980?) Spaceman suffering distant memory of
spindly family struggling on distant, too dry, planet, unable
to do anything about it. I miss Cahya, I miss Putu, and I’m
only three hours into my flight.
NEXT ISSUE: A Million Miles From Here. Tales from the Cultural
Frontier. – Part III - Kylie
Jeli Lala created the ‘Ashram of Spiritual Jewellery
and Art’ at no. 1, Sukma St., Tebesaya, Ubud, with her
husband, Putu S. She has studied yoga and many other spiritual
practices for more than ten years. She writes “As a
life-long artist, I’ve been exploring my inner world
since I was a child. In this column, I will share some of
my personal experiences and spiritual methods – hopefully,
you’ll find this interesting, and maybe it will give
some ideas for your own journey”.
Jeli welcomes comments and may be contacted on:
Email: jelila@jelila.com
Website: www.jelila.com or www.imagine-retreats.com
