Coming Back to Bali

 

I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday about Kasi, this site, and her initial comment was something like, “You know your posts are heavy with information but light on feelings and personal experience…”
 

My first response was simply, “Well I have never been to Bali… but simply been fascinated by its culture and music, and that area of the world… I don’t have the sort of personal experience you would like to hear…”
 

She actually made a further comment, before I was able to reply to her opening, along the lines of, “…I’d love to hear stories about when you were at such and such a beach, and the water was crystal clear and shallow for what seemed to be miles, so you waded out a ways and discovered the most amazing transparent little 'shrimpies', and spent a blissful half hour watching their little see-through hearts pump colorless blood through their little see-through selves, then later when you were walking the beach in the moonlight after a glorious dinner of steak and lobster, you saw little specks of purple light in the waves, and on further investigation discovered your little transparent 'shrimpies' were glowing purple in the moonlight.”
 

I finally said, after talking a little more about my fascination with the area, “… really it’s like a long distance relationship.” That comment to her, off the cuff so to speak, arrested my attention, making me think about my relationship with Bali, perhaps more than I wanted to think about it.

 

My relationship with my wife Michelle began like that, a long distance relationship over the internet and by email. Such relationships are fraught with uncertainty, not to mention fantasy as the above comment by my friend demonstrates, and often seem doomed almost from the beginning. They typically don’t last, require constant sustenance, and often seem too easy to let go. 
 

Sometimes they move beyond that stage, into a different place. My love for Michelle, and her feelings for me, carried us past the usual boundaries. When and where we crossed that line would be harder to put into words. 
 

My long distance relationship with Bali has waxed and waned but never disappeared. Some of the original fascination with the area, the people, the culture, and the music have survived. I think my feelings about Bali relate to my comment on the Home page that its “… something harder to associate with words or concepts, something that partakes in part of a nostalgic glimpse of our true state of being, this is what has captured my heart. So much so that the dream of living there one day has never quite let go of my soul.”
 

My answer to my friends comment would be that it is a simple thing like love; I cant quite let go of my feeling for Bali! Still I have a longer answer, a little bit more to the point.
 

There is a scene in Harvey, the movie starring Jimmy Stewart as Edwin P. Dowd about a pooka that has taken the guise of an invisible 6’8” rabbit and befriended him, a conversation, between Dr. Chumley and Edwin, about stopping clocks:
 

Edwin: Well, Harvey can look at your clock…and stop it. And you can go anywhere you like with anyone you like…and stay as long as you like. And when you get back, not one minute will have ticked by…
 

The Doctor: I’ve been spending my life among flyspecks…while miracles have been leaning on lampposts at Fifth and Fairfax… Tell me, Mr. Dowd,will he do this for you?
 

Edwin: Oh, he’d be willing at any time. But so far I haven’t been able to think of anyplace I’d rather be. I always have a wonderful time wherever I am, whomever I’m with. I’m having a fine time right here with you, Doctor.
 

The Doctor: Oh. Oh, l…I know where I’d go.
 

Edwin: Where?
 

The Doctor: I’d go to Akron. Akron! Oh, yes. 
 

Edwin is an unusual character. The movie is really about his wisdom in the midst of the chaos of the ordinary world, of what we take as our society. Bali is that to me, a refuge yes, but more than that, its a link to my deepest soul.