Monday, September 21, 2009

Pura and Gamelon (temples and gamelon)

During the long drive over, Oka tells me about the castes, I repeat their Balinese names and forms of address, but intentionally forget them (I decided I don’t want to reinforce the practice--and learn instead the national Indonesian language which lacks caste distinction--but I am curious...). He tells me stories of palaces, families--people who are good on the outside but not the same on the inside--and of the Kings of Ubud and how he is descended from the high royal caste, just below the highest priest caste. I’m being escorted by the descendant of a king: kind bapak Oka.

Giant pale statues point to the way. My heart pounds with distant music. We walk slowly into a massive gilded temple, along with crowds of men and women in traditional sarongs, gracefully carrying children or balancing piles of food or bamboo and flower offerings on their heads. In the dripping rain, the smell of incense still overwhelms everything. There are thousands of people. Some walking, some kneeling, some praying, some talking, some reaching open hands to the white-clothed priest to receive holy water. They are all beautifully clothed, smiling, welcoming, quiet. I am the only tourist.

The music of the gamelon starts slowly. Xylophone notes, seem unevenly spaced. The notes are sparse, then gather strength, and then gather speed until they bleed into others, they crash and fall. The strength vibrates through my body. It’s melodic, heavenly, and hollow. Metallic and intense. So intense. Like a new language, I have trouble picking out the melody. I have trouble picking out anything I recognize, I’m not sure what to make of it. If I like or don't like it. I just let it hit my eardrums.

Then I recognize in the sounds of the gamelon: the feeling of rain first beginning to fall from a heavy sky, clouds moving, waves crashing, landscapes changing, lifetimes passing, machines pounding, time never-ending. When I stop trying to understand it, and search for the melody, I can let myself be carried along this strange, new path--with no note, no one, nothing familiar – and revel in the moment of feeling more lost in the world than I have ever felt in my entire life, and yet at peace with this realization, and with what is taking place in this moment, in the music, and maybe—I think -- in my life.

This music. It feels so big, so grand, so extraordinary. As it unfolds and crashes and rises, with the perfumed smoke, before massive stone temples, carved with both friendly and garish things: it is ethereal, it is sublime. Row after row of people, in their best dress and dark hair, bend to their knees and earnestly pray to carved gods wrapped in black and white material, sheltered by red and yellow silk umbrellas, flanked with gilded tables laden with rice, bread, coffee cake, fruit, flowers, bamboo. At Oka's command I sneak shots without a flash, crossing my fingers that some of the grainy images will turn out; convey the brilliance of this other life against the dark night.

Rain continues to drip from the black sky, the ceremony will go on for another week, day and night, as men sitting at their instruments mechanically pound out another unreal rhythm, and incense smoke rises to rafters of tall temples. I imagine the unfamiliar gods I am meeting here are looking down, in subdued amusement, as Oka tugs at my tourist arm and motions for me to take picture after picture of the most extraordinary moment I never, in my lifetime so far, imagined I would see. To the gods, this is merely business as usual.

Back home, just before midnight, fireflies flit before me, like friendly little hallucinations, and an old rice padi smolders with slow flames. After the fire, it begins anew the continuous cycle of growth. In the days to come, the field will be tilled, watered and planted with small green shoots. But for tonight, even as the smoke chokes my throat, its dim orange light guides my feet through the dark. Oka grips my arm and we count aloud our steps in Indonesian, up to ten, then start again at one. [It comes to me then, years ago we'd slowly, painfully, biked up a steep gravel road, in the hot sun, discovering we liked the same mantra for pain: count the levels from one to ten; when you reach ten, make that the new one.] Every time we reach satu (one), I think of one thing. By ten, I imagine I'm letting it go. Leaving it here, in the midnight rice padi in Bali for the leyek (nightime evil spirits) to devour and destroy, so I may always push myself to reach ten on any scale, yet find a way to start over again, at one, fresh and new.

My body aches with sleep. After good night and good sleep (salamet jalan, salamet tidur!) is said, I climb the stairs to my room. I stare in the mirror at the face of a girl--with brown eyes, brown hair, dua metres tall, 30 years, and dreams still unfolding--as I unwrap myself from the wet sarong and hang it carefully. Hanya dua hare, it's only been two days.

I fall asleep breathing in the earthy, smoky incense of the rice padi burning through the night, trying to imagine what a lifetime of days, like this, can bring...

2 comments:

  1. heh. exactly. i keep looking at the date of each post. only two days. a lot to soak in and it already seems like you know the language. :)

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  2. Oh man, yes!!!! It's been an insane amount of activity, learning, doing, seeing, experiencing....in such a short time. It's not until today and yesterday where I just hit the "pause" button to catch up on life/work/things and realized that traveling alone, there's been just about zero English/non-Indonesian interactions as I've been too busy doing the Indonesian thing. Totally get how "immersion" works - it's been a little like drowning at times, but amazing still! Salamat pagi!!!

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