This very long experimental sentence began as a train-of-thought impulse attempting to capture some creative sense around our leasing the Bali Beach House for the full month of February...
We are just returning home after five weeks dissolving into the rather coarse, darkly colored volcanic sands still being pulverized finer on a beach with constant surf sheltering exotic tropical fish displaying against a bed of coral enticing divers mostly using scuba gear, but some hauling air tanks... often brought in on one of the multitude of fishing boats, all white deep hulls for hauling the catch, but which thus are too vertical to hold steady without the two bamboo outriggers which allow good speed & fleet maneuverability while mimicking graceful water spiders... becoming the part of the visual romance of this scene with constant surf in front of the house's orientation to the Bali Sea, its tile-roofed entrance is closed with a purple gate, which color is repeated on the two large bi-fold doors opening the interior spaces of the house, designed and built 27 years ago, with a sweetly dated charm by details of patterned grid incorporating hints of the ancient swastika abused by a more recent aberration, but unique to the area now being inbuilt with guest houses, restaurants & shops along the busy road in Amed with a precipitous sidewalk being often also parking space for the motorcycles which are the most useful mode of transportation, add the fewer automobiles & trucks, makes for the chaotic necessities of living along this economic strip, essential to life & play here... it is what makes Bali so irritatingly exotic!
Punctuate that to your pleasure however you want while knowing I am playing with AI to design those words into an artful piece of calligraphy... while most of all I want to better share, with complete sentences, more bits & details of our recent adventure. Which proved to often become profound in its simplicity... while not precluding the myriad complexities preceding our traveling there & returning home. Ultimately becoming a truly full & fulsome retreat...
I should logically begin with explaining that we first met this intriguing house, 15 months ago when our friend Joel Singer & his husband Nana Muldana, brought us to this fishing village on the east coast of Bali named Amed.
This after the road trip around Si Lanka five of us shared with them & another friend (who flew directly home from Colombo to his home in California to be with his ailing canine) driving around Sri Lanka (where Joel had lived with his husband James Broughton in 1976) in 2024...which I blogged about here.
The house rather quickly & strongly caught our imaginations, so we reserved then, over a year in advance, for this year's time... not yet knowing how really needy & ready to create this retreat we would find ourselves now. It was a great gift to ourselves! A rare very quiet & totally unstructured month.
Retreat it became, as Stephen... in his more organizational manner... championed a memory from his early years of working with the Minnesota Experimental City Project... which used the acronym DOR for Disorient-Orient-Reorient, as three sections of intention. Even I, who generally approaches stuff in a more relaxed manner, found myself using that notion & acronym in our conversations and rhythms of the month.
We had made the intentional choice to spend this holiday not moving around geographically, but staying put, without a car... at lazy foot speed. All very different from our two other big trips last year (British Isles & Africa, which we'd judged to be too frantic & busy.
This house suited our purpose admirably, being generous in size, open & full of air & light. Two floors, with three bedrooms each with baths, each with different furnishings & moods... The third bedroom had a pair of single beds & was less well oriented to the sea, so we only used it to store our empty luggage. That room also faced the busy road, with more loud cycles than autos. A wall with a reserved parking space & purple gate marked arrival from the main Amed road to Bali Beach House. Inside the gate & down a flight of steps, we passed the owner's abode along several lush passages leading toward the pool, then dog-legging into an over-hung entry courtyard with a waterfall into a pond with fish & frog song.
The front door was elaborately carved...
... & opened to the stairway hall, kitchen & the living room, with a formal dining table not much used. The open veranda toward the ocean held a large very functional table where we ate & worked our various projects ...
The lofty living room rose into the traditional tall pitched roof gifting much air above a naturally patterned lively sandstone floor. The stairway up was hidden behind a wall with top scallops sculpting the space around the open walkway to the second floor bedrooms. Similar smaller open niches continued the open space of the back hall to the kitchen... all designed as a simple ingenuous screen defining open flow in four directions..
Stephen make good use of the watercolors I'd given him, at his request, as his birthday present last year...
He did read it well-- some chapters while we sunned by the pool, or others while we'd retreated from too sunny or rainy times to lounge under the shelter of that tile roof of the balle, with its view of the surf & changing weather. I became daily more entranced with the stories in the novel & was ever eager to hear more... through to its complicated, difficult ending. Altogether, a story with a joyful, crazy soul.
We made good use of our sweet swimming pool with its fanciful fish sculptures spouting water, where we soaked up sun & watched the dramatic rain clouds form storms sometimes developing into thundering electrical shows over the ocean.
Indeed, the house lease included a staff of five; two women & three young men, who cooked breakfast & who tended the pool & swept up the debris of constant storm-fall of rain & wind... then would join to clean, make up our bed, clean toilets & sweep the floors of this house on a sandy beach we used daily, easily tracked-in during the rainy season...
All these young folk were reliably smiling & obviously happy. This cultural characteristic of joy is pervasive in Balinese culture & has much to do with an integration of life work with soul work. A demonstration of a functional underlayer of family style with respectful presence... honoring humor & fun... Remarkable, even as I realize I'm only seeing glimpses of any whole story.
Bali is part of Indonesia, with the world's largest Muslim population, but has obviously retained a naturally deep... quite palpably felt... innately animistic Hindu cultural base.
The house came with Breakfast included, offering a nicely varied menu to choose from: Black Rice Pudding... which I enjoyed several mornings; Banana Pancakes with Palm Sugar syrup... Stephen's favorite... or eggs made to order... plus Jaffle... my ultimate favorite.
A Jaffle is a grilled sandwich of softly cooked eggs, topped with a cheese slice and tomato, assembled on slices of crustless white sandwich bread, pressed between the hot plates of an electric waffle iron type device, creating two toasty triangular pouches, holding goodies inside, easily cut like tea sandwiches. When all's done right one can... as I did... pick it up with fingers to nibble out of hand. I ordered a Jaffle Iron since coming home! I love to to explore & play with food... Often a slice of homemade cake was offered... the jack-fruit cake was fantastic!; the banana bread more banana than bread.
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| Black Rice Pudding |
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| Jaffle... |
The 3 guys were each named Wayan... the word for the Balinese first-born... the custom being to name children with four names in sequence; our Wayans were each the first born, or as the "Middle Wayan" said, #1- Number-One. Then variations & nicknames become common, each with his or her own more specific identity. It becomes a new form of lattices forming community.
We each had a favorite. We both enjoyed our "Dancing Wayan," playing with his obvious love of dancing to our music... we sometimes joined in as well, while he went about his work.
They left us to our privacy, so we could shuck our clothes to tan in the frequently clear midday, but of course the weather has its own mind...
We used subtle contemplation after our own marriage... imagining how married life can be different... while also celebrating our relationship of thirty years intentionally resisting that institution.
We've returned to our eighth floor home in our own "village" at Point Ruston, Tacoma, Washington... in a USA which continues to devolve politically into a questionable version of the nation I love. I also sometimes feel tempted to remain in the more "civilized" parts of the world we travel... if that malaise were not seemingly contagiously pervasive in so many other parts of the shrinking globe. I must continue to ultimately accept being human in an inhumane world. I am a minuscule piece of the hope of history.
What we needed was time of a quality to mimic & practice more of what retirement is, since the goal of having Momo capably taking over & running the bell business, while a worthy goal, I understand the probability that it will take longer to transition it as well as we all want. This is an ingrown part of my mental & creative life's work to responsibly transfer... not just the counts of an inventory of goods & pages of bookkeeping.
We all (Monica, Stephen & I) want to make this wonderful improbability actually work... & continue to stay creative, to stay working & growing in different, & more successful ways. It's never actually been a business & certainly not one to support me or anyone else.
It is not even a useful "gift," having always required substantial subsidizing, both artistic & financial. What I have been most successful at is finding loving help to continue living as an artist pretending to be a businessman. I have managed to love my art & also my comfortable life... with a lot of luck & even more of help & patronage.
Retirement for me requires a lot more of work than is usual for its notion! I needed a retreat in order to constructively continue celebrating a delightful married retirement!
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