I wrote this a long time ago but just decided that I wanted to post it. I know no one’s still keeping up with this, but I wanted to do that final entry I mentioned before because this blog feels unfinished. I miss blogging! I’m considering just writing on this about random things from time to time…
Well, here I am. Home and cold. It feels a little like a dream. I don’t know if “it” is Bali or Nashville, but something in there is making me feel detached.
I think the horrors of LAX—the sterile, closed in, coldness, not only of the buildings but of some of the people as well, made me a little more eager to arrive at home. But on my first day here, as on my first day in Bali, I felt only capable of observing, unable to be an active participant in the things going on around. Big spaces, fast paces, passed through the cold of the car window, and though I recognized it all, I felt like I was living in my own little world.
I noticed immediately the swiftness of things. My mom walked towards our lunch table with such determination, the act of sitting down becoming but another goal in a list of things to do. When my dad had to go to work and my mom and brother wanted to go workout on my first morning, I was overcome with the strangeness of the notion that others might actually leave me alone to go do something simply for themselves. “Wait! You can’t just leave me here!” I complained. Where are the people who just want to sit around me, to watch our day together unfold? This busyness of self-focus especially shouldn’t be starting so early in the morning, when I’ve only half-finished my cup of coffee. This semester, individual plans came to seem secondary, unnecessary; it was the needs of the community around which the days fell.
I’ve been so cold, too. So. miserably. cold. I thought I’d missed my favorite restaurant’s fresh turkey sandwiches, but I just can’t enjoy them because of the temperature. The only foods that seem appropriate are soup and oatmeal. Fruit? Far too cold for that sort of freshness. The grocery store? Not only sterile and over-sized, but SO, so cold. My stomach has hurt a little more than I though it would too. Sometimes I think I would enjoy my food more if I could just sit down on the floor and eat it with my hands.
The soundscape seems always one of two things here: crowded with echoes of machines and chatter, or eerily quiet and numb. The cold air is creating cold noise, I think. Inside is cluttered but vacuous; outside is uninviting, dead. I miss when the outdoors were livable—not only livable, in fact, but the very thing that perpetuated life. Ibu disappearing momentarily to the garden to grab a big leaf out of which to cut and fold banten, Rama climbing up the tree in the yard for flowers, yellow and white. One’s surroundings were continually hand-picked and altered for craft and ritual. Here life seems contained in unnecessary spaces, spaces whose oversized walls make too definite a distinction between inside and out. And all these walls seem to hold in all these voices, too—voices going on and on about things that might be better left to the will of the wind.
Wow, I think that’s sounded a little depressing so far. I guess I should say, too, that nothing really seems that weird. I wasn’t gone for that long. I’ve accepted with reluctance what I questioned while away: life here is like riding a bike. Our ways aren’t forgettable; to make them changeable, even, requires great will. What can shift subconsciously, however, is whether or not life at home is a bike one wants to be on. You’re gonna have to sit on it no matter what though, so you might as well start pedaling; otherwise, you’ll fall over in the path.
The pedaling comes just as naturally as before, save this mental block that meets some of it with a creeping sense of dread. There are times when I pedal well, though, quickly falling into sync. Then all that’s happened seems distant and forgettable, a feeling I don’t like to acknowledge and don’t yet know how to resolve.
One thing I can’t get enough of since getting home is cooking. Maybe it’s that notion that time is simply going towards crafting things (delicious things!) out of what’s around. Some of the logistics of it seem unnecessary though—the number of utensils we have, all the possible shortcuts! My mom suggested putting my Balinese coffee into a French press. Really mom?! I’m trying to make this like my Ibu makes it, and I can’t imagine she would ever consider needing something like that..
Another stark contrast between here and Bali, more apparent since my return, is the island’s incredible cohesion. Behind beliefs, tradition, and laws, the Balinese people are so tightly bound. Whereas things here often serve to differentiate one person from another, things there only blend those people together. Union, always, over individuality. I encountered very few, if any, Balinese who seemed to be weighed down by their own self-concern. It was that life in terms of doing for others, a life so different from what I feel myself surrounded by now. Ritually speaking, sacrifices are continually made for both gods and ancestors, but the idea manifests in daily actions not related to ritual as well. It’s not “What can I do to make myself happy?” but “What will enable the happiness of my family? my banjar? my town?”
In terms of the how and why of tradition, there’s little questioning. I never thought it possible to feel such an integral part of the community in a place where the ideas that define that community are ideas so different from my own. But the Balinese’s pride in their practices makes them so eagerly open to share with anyone who shows curiosity. And what they practice isn’t secretive, or excluding; ritual simply extends to outsiders as a humble acknowledgement that there are other forces, define them as you will, of which we should remain aware.
What fills that hole here? This is something that’s presented a little hurdle in my return. Like many things American, the search for spirituality seems to be a more individual matter. The reminder that there are things unfolding for which we can’t offer full explanation is not inherent in most of our day-to-day. It’s a frame our mindset, for better or for worse, tends not to emphasize. The Balinese, however, remain aware of the fact that unknowing is only human, and that we might live more contently if we acknowledge and fill the void that causes, day after day after day. This makes a comforting point of welcome for outsiders, who may arrive with hesitation. The tie that binds beyond the could-be barrier of pervasive ritual is emphasized through catering more generally to those “need for something more” thoughts that aren’t necessarily religiously or culturally bound.
It’s hard to transition from a semester where most every interaction, every hour, urges fascination, to a home that looks and operates just the same as before. I feel like I’ve gone from growth to stagnancy, though I know it doesn’t have to be like that. I only need to figure out how to go about continuing things...what to do with myself now…
I would like to keep feeling fascinated. That’s my favorite feeling, I think: the ability to sit and ponder, wonder at, all the goings-on around.
Again and again, though, I’m reminded of an inevitable truth: I’m just an individual surrounded by individuals, and we’re all programmed with our own priorities. It would be possible for me to pass an entire day amidst people who don’t know, and maybe don’t even care, where I’ve been. So if I want this experience to stick with me in the long run, I’m going to have to move past simple talk of my time there and start actively manifesting any effects it has had. I want to be more aware of learning about others too…because who knows when I’ll encounter someone who’s dealing with the same frustrations, a similarly telling but past experience, as the one I feel I’ve had?
March 8th already? Fascination has come in little spurts, but I’m still looking for some way to keep it sustained.
