29–31 July

29 July.

I’m staying in a village called Bulian, Northern Bali. The village is tiny, and seems to have one of every shop needed for a village to thrive. The day I arrived I went for a walk down the small road to the main street. I met some ladies who were sitting a food stall on the side of the road. One of them, Monika, spoke English so we chatted. She told me she lived behind the birdshop, pointing to a store whose front was adorned with swinging wicker bird cages. In Bali many people keep a bird of two in wicker cages, outside their shop or on their balcony. The birds are usually small and brightly coloured. Another bird kept by the Balinese is the chicken. Some wander willy nilly about the property, and some (a lone rooster, or mother with her chicks) are kept underneath round basket in the yard.

Later the next day I drove a motorbike to the bird shop to visit Monika. The smell and sounds of birds in the small shop was suffocating. The small birds perched and squawked above me, in one cage two fluffy green chicks sat abreast on a perch. Upon the floor of the bird shop sat a large box lined with mesh. Inside the box was a moving, scattered, crawling undulating hum of movement by hundreds of locusts. Monika demonstrated how she feed the locusts to the birds by picking one up between her thumb and forefinger, systematically ripping off it’s wings and legs, opening the door of a cage, and feeding it to a bird’s hungrily gasping open mouth. The hot smell of the birds combined with the witnessing of the locusts legs being flicked off onto the shop floor made me feel queasy, my stomach turned and I felt my mouth fill with saliva.

I had an interesting conversation with a man outside the bird shop who spoke to me about religion in Bali. he reasoned religion could not really be called ‘religion’ as the rituals and offerings were so integrated into daily life, that religion became culture. We talked about how in New Zealand, religion is usually found within churches, and culture is a separate entity. On the street around us, he and I talked about the canang offerings scattered in the street, the small temples covered by umbrellas, and spoke about the morning ritual of offering food to the deities before eating as a way of being and forming community.

—

The guesthouse I am staying at is tucked into the side of a hill, surrounded by luscious trees down the bank. I’m sitting at a wooden table that is a smoothed, gnarled hunk of wood. Out to my left is a glass-less window, looking out on an old terraced field. Grass has taken back the once-farmed terrace, and a few young banana trees grow on the fringes. Down brick steps, through a gate, is a cobbled pathway leading to a bale. This morning I sat there and read, after quelling anxieties of giant spiders (I found a skeleton) and other creepy crawlies climbing over me. The calm quiet of the trees and lack of people had the effect of sending me into calm. Just when I am calm I am plagued by a frantic thought that I need to be doing something. What exactly I should be doing is never revealed to me, so I eat a bright deep purple dragonfruit and pick up my book once again.

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My room has a bathroom with an open roof over the shower. I squatted on the floor, washing my clothes in a bucket, rain spattering in above me in a passing afternoon shower.

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There is a tall thin plant that looks like it could be out of a Dr. Seuss book. It is tall, thin, small leaves out each side, and grows spindly towards the end, with a large droplet of a bud or fruit at the end. The weight of the plume makes the plant hang over, like a giraffe, and often many plants like this would be grouped together, their comical thin necks drooping, their heads bowed together. This plant grew up the side of the hills on the road along Bedugul, conferring on the hillside.

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I’ve noticed massage is a large part of Balinese culture, is it a culture of touch? I learned from my stay in Ubud that some families have a family massage therapist, who comes in to massage achey shoulders. In Canggu I walked past a road side clothing stall close to the beach where a group of people were gathered, eating food, and one man sat with his shoulder being kneaded by a woman.

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31 July.

It’s Sunday night, dinner was a buffet of rice, tempe, chicken, vegetables, cassava in satay, pork and soup. From within the village is the sound of gamelan, in my immediate surroundings are the sounds of crickets, gurgling water, and the housecat miaowing.

Somehow the entire day has drifted. It’s been a quiet day, the feeling of Sunday floated about the village, as I floated about the homestay, idling away time by playing with the cat and drawing.