thePlace

Monroe has left. She journeyed 25 hours for a relaxing 2 weeks up on the hill of KP.  Besides spending 4 days in Ubud where we went to exquisite restaurants and she shopped, she rested at the Place. She basked in the warm sun and the soothing breeze and slept much, recuperated from the strain of setting up the perfect funeral commemoration for the passing of her 91 years old mom more than a month ago.  
 

It was good to have her for a while – a distraction much needed and a time to keep in touch with the outside world; a chance to take care of someone besides Blackie.  More importantly, these 2 weeks have given me the chance to see the Place anew.
 

 

Since the last entry on the blog, I have received some concerned emails worrying about my isolation in Bali, my decisions and the ‘problems’ in Kayu Putih. It’s my fault – it’s not as bad as it sounded in writing. Don’t get me wrong, there are still the unfinished buildings and tons of work to be done in the garden. Ah but listen, listen to the silence. The Place is now so quiet and peaceful, I guard it possessively.  I am tempted to keep it like this, no longer have the urge and urgency to finish the work or have more than myself living here. The splendor of the changeable sea, the variegated green below the horizon, and the vastness of the fathomless sky beyond seem exaggerated and more pronounced in the concentrated energy of silence.
 

I have talked to Made a couple of times and no bad feelings existed between us. He has no luck in getting the needed money to pay the workers – they still come around now and then to catch wind of the possibility of being paid.  Made spends most of his time in Denpasar, hiding from his creditors.
 

The weather is cooler now, a persistent breeze blows from the ocean. I swim almost daily in the evening amidst the scarlet sky while watching the sun fades behind the distant volcanic mountain of Java. My time here is never dull for I am never tired of gazing at the ever changing scene below the hill. There are good people around me – helping me when I needed it, bringing me gossips of the villagers of KP and the provincial city of Singaraja below. I have the best papayas and bananas from the garden – 100% organic.  I have wonderfully fresh salad from the garden.  I do go out once in a while  -  it’s always delightful when I have discovered yet another little delicious local eatery after tearing through the unpredictable streets of Buleleng behind Ferry’s small speedy motorbike at 95km/hr. When Awie and Agong come around they usually bring some new friends that like to have a tour of the Place.   And more often than not, their presence are accompanied with freshly caught ocean fish grilling on the custom made BBQ stove in the garden and yummy vegetarian dishes with all kinds of delectable sources and dips – tomatoes, sampal, onion and lemon, tempeh source, etc, all with the ubiquitous ingredient - chilly. 

Through my skin problem, I’m discovering and planting all sorts of tropical medicinal plants around the Place.  I enjoy the betel leaves and turmeric bath so much that I’m doing it as a daily ritual - I love the smell and cleansing of my skin without soap! I learn about harvesting those aromatic sweet smelling cloves around the garden.  I still have about 160 clove trees at the Place that might bring me a few hundred dollars.  I enjoy watching the villagers clamber up those straight slim bamboo sticks with tiny steps, precariously balancing themselves among the small branches plucking away.   

 

Besides doing my daily qi exercises and meditation, an hour of yoga whenever I feel like it, now I have a bunch of new books from SF, I have also encountered a new dimension of spirituality and am eager to read and learn as much on my own. I have also decided to learn to create a website – just because.   Since I have moved here I watch the handful of fishes that I purchased proliferated into hundreds of them, the lotuses, cattails and papyrus thrive happily in the ponds, the Place is almost entirely covered with green grass…. Most amazingly,  I notice insects and the awesome things that they do. Some visit the Place occasionally and some are permanent residence, sharing the Place – the spiders, the ants, the newly moved-in toads and frogs, the omnipresent swiftlets that sweep through the morning sky to visit me daily, the pigeons that whirl around the sky and whistle sharply with their individualized designed bamboo pendants that are recognizable by their owners, the dragonflies and butterflies that get stuck with the glass doors….
 

Indeed, I do have a lot to be grateful for. 

 

And for some reasons, money and income are the last things in my mind.

 

 

To rant, to rave, to make situation would not have helped (unless miraculously a large amount of Rupiahs appears). So I stop – mindless and immobile, hovering in mid space, not knowing where to land and not caring. For 2 weeks I simply watch - I watch myself battle with a terrible skin outbreaks, watch my emotions ebb and flow, watch my thoughts hang in space. Quite alone and indifferent, the world below the green hill of Kayu Putih is lapsing into a grey wish-wash of nothingness. I have no contact, no connexion anywhere.

Daily, I watch the sun sets upon the Bali Sea painting the sky violet and pink. I watch the night sky covering the Space and uncovering, the clouds dancing, birdsong and sweet smell of cloves ripening. I want to be part of things, letting all that is happening pour through, and surrender….

In the dark of the night, I stood in the garden, alone with the night sky and the trees. Rivers of stars above, I sense pure aloneness, with no taint of people – I am at peace. I am one with the surrounding. A bright state of seemingly pure spontaneity, a blithe obliviousness - my heart is indeed filled with gratitude, with love that overflows, fearless and full of yearning – I wanted to reach out and touch, to grow like the trees, the unfold

There were no workers – there is no material and Made hasn’t paid them for the last month. The buildings are not quite done; sit in limbo, deadly still with unfinished pillars, half-way paints…. I have reached the maximum amount that I could lend Made; he is still out of money and disappears from the project.

With the quietness and aloneness, I find strength again. There is still the unknown, the unsettled problems. Couple of real estate brokers came by and wanted to list the Place for sale, I listened but make no decision.

I’m letting things happen, watching….

I took a break from Bali.  It was good, albeit only for a week – a visa-run and to meet Ivan, my brother from NY.  It was good to get away from the never- ending project.  It’s been a year now since I bought the Place.  After having been bombarded by pounding noises continuously for the last 5 months, I’m a little low in tolerance and quite tired of everything - the snail-paced workers, the eternal banging & the raucous Balinese workers; some have been staying at the Place for almost for half a year now.  They camp out, cook, smoke, occupy and litter in the garden continuously, bathe and do their business within the compound – al fresco.   

 

All these have almost reached an unbearable high-toned touchiness and I long for a little quietness, aloneness. 

 

Again Made came up with a higher deficit – I will have to come up with more money to keep the project going.   I talked and I agreed to loan him the money.  I don’t really have a choice if I want to see the project complete.  Starting with a new contractor seems implausibly high cost.

 

By now, I have heard too many repulsive stories about innocuous outsiders that got burned. Bali, after all, is a paradise only when one is passing through.  When you try to make here your home, when you try to get things done, and when you are no longer bewitched with the lushness of the tropic and when your fervor cools, the island tends to be a lusterless harbinger of chaos and duplicity.  The friendly faces of Balinese are stained by money grasping stance.   Everyone blames the economy, so in Bali poverty is an open invitation to dishonesty; an act one perpetrates upon another – and targeted especially to the ‘wealthy’ outsiders.   Amidst the religious and ritualistic milieu, everyone feels a calling for lucre; there lies a culture that perpetuates a corrupted system and shady dealings. It’s always a matter of money, not principle. 

 

Loathe as I am, of being a whiner, I rant at the slowness, the inefficiency, the irresponsibility of the islanders.  The outcome - I haven’t been writing – for fear of venting superciliously.  So I try to be cool headed in this trying situation

 

The unpleasant experiences from the project have wounded my dreams and I have asked, more than once, if this familiar and testing island couldn’t possibly be the one I’m destined to be in. I doubt the calling…. Ah, perhaps I am to be blamed – I have picked the wrong contractor? I shouldn’t have trusted people so foolhardily? Or perhaps, it’s all a blessing in disguise???? 

 

One thing for sure, the problem with the money has made my aspiration sunk, torpid in the heat, into this hard wooden chair on my hanging veranda. 

 

I thought of selling….

“Like a surfer, I watch and study the wave, and I try very hard to jump on. I go, and I go and I still can’t coast it. Yes, I have to learn to study all of these signs that try to come and show me that this is the direction that my life is taking at this particular moment.  Yes, it’s important that I don’t identify in a negative way, but to see everything as working to either help me be a little more conservative and save my energy, or opening and taking in an enormous amount of new force that can help me grow.  There are only these two conditions. The conditions that allow me to preserve what I have, and those which allow me to add to what I already know.

             It goes like this: Wish-Commitment-Surrender.  

              The foundation of all that is  Discipline.        Rudi & Nathaji

In the mean time, I sit at my breakfast nook – looking at the unfinished buildings with the span of ocean below,  waiting for creditors to collect money; a new experience….