Saya tidak "turis" (I am not a tourist)

Once again, I'm awake before sunrise. Annie and I drink hot copi, eat sweet wild mangoes, then I tuck a couple plastic wrapped chocolate-rice millet sweet cracker into my purse for later. (Annie laughs that when I say I want to try alllll Indonesian food, I mean the mass-produced, made in Jakarta or Java, cartoon labeled sweets that I throw in our shopping cart. It’s one of the things I like about traveling: reveling in the authentic real food and pop-culture trashy food with equal exuberance!) These ones are called “Better” (and they’re pretty good in a trashy kind of way!.
Two hours late (on Balinese time) our ride appears. We barely all fit into the car. Oka’s newly-wed daughter in a sparkling lace kabayah, son in law, Annie, Oka’s three other sons (out of the 8 total, very blessed is his family, Annie tells me.)

When we arrive, the procession starts as a cavalcade of cars, trucks full of people, and a host of white-shirted men driving colorfully laced women (often balancing offerings, baskets, young children) on motor bikes. On the way to our ceremony, we pass three others. “this is how it is!” they laugh. We hop from the car and run as carefully as my sarong will allow to the plaza under the giant holy banyan tree.

I hear the bamboo and drum gamelon first. Large bamboo poles, wave red and yellow flags. Men in matching red and black sarongs shoulder bamboo litters of flowers, ducks and chickens. Incense burns. The crowd follows: children in tow, offerings piled high, irredescent lace kaballahs sparking. The dragon-beasts come nest. Brown, stringy hair touches to the floor, bits of mirror scattered on its gilded body reflect the sun at all angles. A garish, masked face with bulging eyes. More clanging and drumming and pounding of metallic notes. The priest dons a black crown, wraps himself in orange cloth, and whispers incantations as incense burns. We sit, in the sun, on the ground. Then I hear the golden bell. It rings, now like an old friend, with incessant predictability. A procession of women, with offerings around the plaza. I see Oka’s wife among them. Devout and angelic.

I feel like I recognize it for what it is, or at least means to me right now: chaos. Utter and absolute chaos. And it’s not a bad thing, it’s just chaotic because I don’t know it from before, I am not yet familiar with part of my life yet, but I'm getting there. Like my first Indonesian syllables, the green kaballah and mismatched sarong, the rise and fall of the unpredictable gamelon, the wedding: I learning to trust my own step forward, and let this all swirl around me, loving it for what it simultaneously is and is not. I am becoming part of this. It’s been interesting to witness my own process of exploring, learning, sometimes falling, always growing. It makes me dream more and more about bold new things.

Kids race around the plaza. They smile shyly at me. A group of boys take turns shouting “hello lady”. Squealing when I say “hello” back. They say “teri mi kasi” and I bow my head “sama sama”. They squeal louder and whisper to their friends. The little girls on my side join in. Pretty soon we’re all counting to ten, and they’re cheering me on in the early morning sunshine, in a temple of stone carvings. There’s a collective rustle of fabric in the plaza as hundreds of bodies re-arrange to face the rising sun. Panic. What now? Annie whispers to follow what she does. She is Muslim but says she knows how to pray Hindu.

I look at her. Pray Hindu? What?
She shooshes me and motions to follow her lead. As she places a small palm basket of flowers before us and a white-dressed holy man douses us in flicks of cold holy water.

I remember the wedding prayer. I think of Oka’s wife and daughter. Graceful, reflective, beautifully quiet.

We each take a single flower from the basket, place it between our hands, then the bell rings. Slow, steady, reassuring. It rings a meditation. My eyes close. I take slow deep breaths. Feel the sun on my face and the warmth in my heart. I give thanks for all that I have, all that I have beheld, all that I hope to become. The ringing bell speeds faster. Then. Silence.

Open eyes. I am kneeling in a temple in Bali, praying. It is as it should be, I hear over and over in my head. Slowly place the flower my hair. Then reach for a new one. Deep breath, a smile, a single blossom between the fingertips. The bell starts slowly and my eyes close.

I pray in the sunshine. For long, slow, golden minutes. At high noon, sweat trickles down my face and arms. I open my eyes on the bells command. With each prayer it gets easier and easier. I am less nervous. I relax more and more into this new place I have found.

At the bell’s command I open my eyes, smiling. Like seeing the world for the first time, over and over and over. Then I open my eyes, and see the tourists. Sarongs loosely tied, powershots in tow, they stand on the outside, looking and pointing. Then they see me. More pointing and I nod my head and smile. Looking at them, I realize just how lucky I am to be included in this. At the bell’s command I close my eyes and shut them out. I find my prayer for happiness and understanding, kindness and peace, and unstoppable kick-ass wildness. I smile. When the bell insists, I open my eyes and he’s leaning against the pillar, 50 feet away, watching me. Smiling. I wonder if this could be as beautiful to him as the wedding prayer of graceful mother and daughter was to me. I feel beautiful and warm. I feel that it is. I feel sweetly at peace with the world, myself, chaos, fear. All of it. It's just another blossom to bless and put in your hair. The bell rings and I pick a flower, lift it to my head and close my eyes. When I open them again, he’s backed off. Then reappears. Camera in hand this time. Like a western shoot out, I reach for mine and take a picture of him taking a picture of me.

Annie and the others see this and shriek with laughter, patting me on the back.

The holy men come around again, this time, we are doused in holy water. It’s refreshing and cold after a long sit in the hot noon sun. We take bits of rice in our hands and press them to our forehead and temples. There they dry and remain for the rest of the afternoon.