flashbacks. Oddly, I don't mind this. I don't mind anything these days. I can't imagine or
remember discontent.
The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there's a cricket
orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how
misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how
freaking cool it is to be roosters.("We are ROOSTERS!" they holler. "We are the only
ones who get to be ROOSTERS!") Every morning around sunrise there is a tropical
birdsong competition, and it's always a ten-way tie for the championship. When the sun
comes out the place quiets down and the butterflies get to work. The whole house is
covered with vines; I feel like any day it will disappear into the foliage completely and I
will disappear with it and become a jungle flower myself. The rent is less than what I
used to pay in New York City for taxi fare every month.The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally "a
walled garden."
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That said, I must be honest here and relay that it takes me only three afternoons of
research in the local library to realize that all my original ideas about Balinese paradise
were a bit misguided. I'd been telling people since I first visited Bali two years ago that
this small island was the world's only true utopia, a place that has known only peace and
harmony and balance for all time. A perfect Eden with no history of violence or
bloodshed ever. I'm not sure where I got this grand idea, but I endorsed it with full
confidence.
"Even the policemen wear flowers in their hair," I would say, as if that proved it.
In reality, though, it turns out Bali has had exactly as bloody and violent and oppressive a
history as anywhere else on earth where human beings have ever lived. When the
Javanese kings first immigrated here in the sixteenth century, they essentially established
a feudal colony, with a strict caste system which--like all self-respecting caste
systems--tended not to trouble itself with consideration for those at the bottom. The
economy of early Bali was fueled by a lucrative slave trade (which not only preceded
European participation in the international slave traffic by several centuries, but also
outlived Europe's trafficking of human lives for a good long while). Internally, the island
was constantly at war as rival kings staged attacks (complete with mass rape and murder)
on their neighbors. Until the late nineteenth century, the Balinese had a reputation
amongst traders and sailors for being vicious fighters. (The word amok, as in "running
amok," is a Balinese word, describing a battle technique of suddenly going insanely wild
against one's enemies in suicidal and bloody hand-to-hand combat; the Europeans were
frankly terrified by this practice.) With a well-disciplined army of 30,000, the Balinese
defeated their Dutch invaders in 1848, again in 1849 and once more, for good measure, in
1850. They collapsed under Dutch rule only when the rival kings of Bali broke ranks and
betrayed each other in bids for power, aligning with the enemy for the promise of good
business deals later. So to gauze this island's history today in a dream of paradise is a bit
insulting to reality; it's not like these people have spent the last millennium just sitting
around smiling and singing happy songs.
But in the 1920s and 1930s, when an elite class of Western travelers discovered Bali, all
this bloodiness was ignored as the newcomers agreed that this was truly "The Island of
the Gods," where "everyone is an artist" and where humanity lives in an unspoiled state
of bliss. It's been a lingering idea, this dream; most visitors to Bali (myself on my first
trip included) still endorse it. "I was furious at God that I was not born Balinese," said theGerman photographer George Krauser after visiting Bali in the 1930s. Lured by reports
of otherworldly beauty and serenity, some really A-list tourists started visiting the
island--artists like Walter Spies, writers like Noel Coward, dancers like Claire Holt,
actors like Charlie Chaplin, scholars like Margaret Mead (who, despite all the naked
breasts, wisely called Balinese civilization on what it truly was, a society as prim as
Victorian England: "Not an ounce of free libido in the whole culture.")
The party ended in the 1940s when the world went to war. The Japanese invaded
Indonesia, and the blissful expatriates in their Balinese gardens with their pretty
houseboys were forced to flee. In the struggle for Indonesian independence which
followed the war, Bali became just as divided and violent as the rest of the archipelago,
and by the 1950s (reports a study called Bali: Paradise Invented) if a Westerner dared
visit Bali at all, he might have been wise to sleep with a gun under his pillow. In the
1960s, the struggle for power turned all of Indonesia into a battlefield between
Nationalists and Communists. After a coup attempt in Jakarta in 1965, Nationalist
soldiers were sent to Bali with the names of every suspected Communist on the island.
Over the course of about a week, aided by the local police and village authorities at every
step, the Nationalist forces steadily murdered their way through every township.
Something like 100,000 corpses choked the beautiful rivers of Bali when the killing spree
was over.
The revival of the dream of a fabled Eden came in the late 1960s, when the Indonesian
government decided to reinvent Bali for the international tourist market as "The Island of
the Gods," launching a massively successful marketing campaign. The tourists who were
lured back to Bali were a fairly high-minded crowd (this was not Fort Lauderdale, after
all), and their attention was guided toward the artistic and religious beauty inherent in the
Balinese culture. Darker elements of history were overlooked. And have remained
overlooked since.
Reading about all this during my afternoons in the local library leaves me somewhat
confused. Wait--why did I come to Bali again? To search for the balance between
worldly pleasure and spiritual devotion, right? Is this, indeed, the right setting for such a
search? Do the Balinese truly inhabit that peaceful balance, more than anyone else in the
world? I mean, they look balanced, what with all the dancing and praying and feasting
and beauty and smiling, but I don't know what's actually going on under there. The
policemen really do wear flowers tucked behind their ears, but there's corruption all over
the place in Bali, just like in the rest of Indonesia (as I found out firsthand the other day
when I passed a uniformed man a few hundred bucks of under-the-table cash to illegally
extend my visa so I could stay in Bali for four months, after all). The Balinese quite
literally live off their image of being the world's most peaceful and devotional and
artistically expressive people, but how much of that is intrinsic and how much of that is
economically calculated? And how much can an outsider like me ever learn of the hidden
stresses that might loiter behind those "shining faces"? It's the same here as anywhere
else--you look at the picture too closely and all the firm lines start to melt away into an
indistinct mass of blurry brushstrokes and blended pixels.
For now, all I can say for certain is that I love the house I have rented and that the people
in Bali have been gracious to me without exception. I find their art and ceremonies to be
beautiful and restorative; they seem to think so, as well. That's my empirical experience
of a place that is probably far more complex than I will ever understand. But whateverthe Balinese need to do in order to hold their own balance (and make a living) is entirely
up to them. What I'm here to do is work on my own equilibrium, and this still feels, at
least for now, like a nourishing climate in which to do that.
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I don't know how old my medicine man is. I've asked him, but he's not certain. I seem to
remember, when I was here two years ago, the translator saying that he was eighty. But
Mario asked him the other day how old he was and Ketut said, "Maybe sixty-five, not
sure." When I asked him what year he was born, he said he didn't remember being born. I
know he was an adult when the Japanese were occupying Bali during World War II,
which could make him about eighty now. But when he told me the story about burning
his arm as a young man, and I asked him what year that had happened, he said, "I don't
know. Maybe 1920?" So if he was around twenty years old in 1920, then that makes him
what now? Maybe a hundred and five? So we can estimate that he's somewhere between
sixty and a hundred and five years old.
I've also noticed that his estimation of his age changes by the day, based on how he feels.
When he's really tired, he'll sigh and say, "Maybe eighty-five today," but when he's
feeling more upbeat he'll say, "I think I'm sixty today." Perhaps this is as good a way of
estimating age as any--how old do you feel? What else matters, really? Still, I'm always
trying to figure it out. One afternoon I got really simple, and just said, "Ketut--when is
your birthday?"
"Thursday," he said.
"This Thursday?"
"No. Not this Thursday. A Thursday."
This is a good start . . . but is there no more information than that? A Thursday in what
month? In what year? No telling. Anyway, the day of the week that you were born is
more important in Bali than the year, which is why, even though Ketut doesn't know how
old he is, he was able to tell me that the patron god of children born on Thursdays is
Shiva the Destroyer, and that the day has two guiding animal spirits--the lion and the
tiger. The official tree of children born on Thursday is the banyan. The official bird is the
peacock. A person born on Thursday is always talking first, interrupting everyone else,
can be a little aggressive, tends to be handsome ("a playboy or playgirl," in Ketut's words)
but has a decent overall character, with an excellent memory and a desire to help other
people.
When his Balinese patients come to Ketut with serious health or economic or relationship
problems, he always asks on which day of the week they were born, in order to concoct
the correct prayers and medicines to help them. Because sometimes, Ketut says, "peopleare sick in the birthday," and they need a little astrological adjustment in order to set them
in balance again. A local family brought their youngest son to see Ketut the other day.
The child was maybe four years old. I asked what the problem was and Ketut translated
that the family was concerned about "problems with very aggressive this boy. This boy
not take orders. Bad behave. Not pay attention. Everyone in house tired from the boy.
Also, sometimes this boy too dizzy."
Ketut asked the parents if he could hold the child for a moment. They put their son in
Ketut's lap and the boy leaned back against the old medicine man's chest, relaxed and
unafraid. Ketut held him tenderly, placed a palm on the child's forehead, shut his eyes. He
then placed a palm on the boy's belly, shut his eyes again. He was smiling and speaking
gently to the child the whole time. The examination was quickly over. Ketut handed the
boy back to his parents, and the people left soon after with a prescription and some holy
water. Ketut told me he'd asked the parents about the circumstances of the boy's birth and
had discovered the child had been born under a bad star and on a Saturday--a day of birth
which contains elements of potentially bad spirits, like crow spirit, owl spirit, rooster
spirit (this is what makes the child a fighter) and puppet spirit (this is what's causing his
dizziness). But it was not all bad news. Being born on Saturday, the boy's body also
contained rainbow spirit and butterfly spirit, and these could be strengthened. A series of
offerings would have to be made and the child would be brought into balance once more.
"Why did you hold your hand on the boy's forehead and stomach?" I asked. "Were you
checking for fever?"
"I was check his brain," Ketut said. "To see if he had evil spirits in his mind."
"What kind of evil spirits?"
"Liss," he said. "I am Balinese. I believe from black magic. I believe evil spirits come out
rivers and hurt people."
"Did the boy have evil spirits?"
"No. He is only sick in his birthday. His family will make sacrifice. This will be OK. And
you, Liss? You are practice Balinese meditation every night? Keep mind and heart
clean?"
"Every night," I promised.
"You learn to smile even in your liver?"
"Even in my liver, Ketut. Big smile in my liver."
"Good. This smile will make you beautiful woman. This will give you power of to be
very pretty. You can use this power--pretty power!--to get what you want in life."
"Pretty power!" I repeat the phrase, loving it. Like a meditating Barbie. "I want pretty
power!"
"You are still practice Indian meditation, too?"
"Every morning."
"Good. Don't forget your Yoga. Beneficial to you. Good for you to keep practice both
ways of meditation--Indian and Balinese. Both different, but good in equal way.
Same-same. I think about religion, most of it is same-same."
"Not everybody thinks so, Ketut. Some people like to argue about God."
"Not necessary," he said. "I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different
religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything
this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree
with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to havepeace about religion."
Ketut keeps his chin lifted all the time, I've noticed, his head held a little bit back, sort of
