thePlace

First day of 2006, my first new year in Bali. Dayu cried on the phone, a sign portended a darker and stormier new year day to an already wet gloomy start. Gusman, her brother in law also a close friend of her went swimming at dawn to celebrate the beginning of 2006 in Kuta beach area and disappeared. The police are searching.

I stare & hope; quietly feeling the pain of the family.

I passed the last day of 2005 working in the garden at the Place and had a symbolic cleansing fire ceremony at day’s end. Asked the fire energy to clean the Place, clean my body for the 2006. Offered a burning branch to the big tree that lives the lion spirit and prayed for its enlightenment. Had dinner by the sea with a friend and took the scooter home. The night was sprinkled by the monsoon rain, streets were crammed with carousing motorbikers while pop and rock music are blustering at every street corners teeming by squatting gawking youngsters. The reverberations of the baritone golden-wrapped new year trumpets fill the air way before midnight.

No decorative expensive storefronts, no Champaign and gourmet food, no limousines and elegant dresses…but the air is festive in the grimy town of Singaraja.

I waited for 2006 to roll around and sms greetings to friends around the world.

Tried to remember the first day of 2005. Memory fails to give continuity in my life. Was I in SF, Nepal, NZ, KL, or in Bali? I only knew I was in these places in 2005, but the when and where have gone fuzzy. A series of illusions, of fleeting images….

New Year day. Still at the Space and not the Place. Alone in the entire compound for the first time - no one is in sight. The farmers have taken a day off & the whole family has gone on vacation in Denpasar for a few days. I listen with no choice, to the thundering sound of the paddy flooding channel waterfall few feet below. The Space/my room is next to the twin aged mangoes trees that harbor all kinds of spirits and not far away from the 2.5 meters plunge. The daily rainstorm has created an uninterrupted rushing and crashing of excess water from the villages to the sea; bringing along all the garbage and muck northward to the long-suffering Bali Sea.

It’s deafening but a source of refreshment more magnanimous than a roaring air conditioner. I see all kinds of lifeless things and creatures take the plunge and float by - dead dogs, chicken, garbage of unnamable kinds…. Some inescapably stuck by broken branches and piled up wastes.

Life while waiting to move into the Place threatens to drift off into oneiric never-never land. No seasons, no days, just endless downpours and stories of spirits, gods and magic. I often marvel at the way Balinese relate to the ineffable, see the invisible and understand the incomprehensible. Just a few nights ago, the roof repair guy that spent a night in the bale (Balinese open-air pavilion) saw a dancing Dewi and a snakeman. The poor guy rushed into the house screaming and refused to come out till daylight.

I walk pass these revered grounds whenever I go up to or come down from my wide-open room. Talks of seeing spirits by the twin old mangoes trees never end. I listen with immense interest and watch villages filing past my room making offerings every morning and evening. It’s hard not to speculate when I might see one every time I make an excursion to the bathroom through the uneven flight of high steps in the dark of the night.

It’s the high point of the high monsoon. The air is dense & humid. Made promises that the house will be finalized in 3 weeks. I bet not, no longer in a hurry. The mood has changed from impatience to irritation to nonchalant. A situation I accept because I have no alternative - no point rushing around swallowing up all the anxieties singly and uselessly. I’ll wait while the Place is being built and shaped to my liking – with constant bewilderment of course.

I have started the building of two cottages and the office – a very bold decision, the only way to seriously commit myself. The swimming pool is almost done. The garden is 80% green now, more plants need to be planted and more colors need to be added, walls need to be erected, paths and drive way up the property need to be paved…and a lot more need to be done. Started another compost pile for the planting season, I must start geminating the seeds I brought from SF during the wet season….

Another endless list...and it’s impossible to have them all done under my current state of financial standing.

It’s the first day of the year; the first day of a very long-drawn-out start.