Independence Day in Kuta

Independence Day in Kuta --

corn on the cob and passion fruit --

no fireworks

On the way to Kuta for an Independence Day party, we pass a cavalcade of motorcycles carrying a three-meter kite. It takes 6-12 men to carry one. A lot of kites aloft, carried by the trade winds. A little further on a cop is escorting a gang of rich men on Harley-Davidson motorcycles (duty is 100 percent of the price).
          Steve brought the girls and me, while Robin stayed with Gina, who is due any time now. I ask him how he feels about the young Balinese couple's double suicide. 
          "It was a cop out," he says, "a weakness of character. The boy's family told them to work it out, not flat rejection. She could have made a life for herself in Denpesar, not like the old days." 
          "So you don't think it was the work of the black witch?"
          "That woman is not smart enough for black magic. Clever and strong, but not smart."
          The party is at the Ramada Inn, paid for by our tax dollars. Quite a fancy hotel, right on the black sand beach with colorful fishing boats, washed-up coral, expats in skimpy swim suits, and a sign: "Please refrain from topless sunbathing." Massages in little open air bales. A swimming pool with two waterfalls and a Balinese temple gate in the middle. At a table by the pool, a handsome Kuta Cowboy is entertaining a middle-aged American woman with dyed black hair. 
          There's free beer, Coke (flat Pepsi) and Miranda (some red stuff made by Pepsi). Red, white and blue balloons, a painting of Liberty, blue and white striped beach towels, red chairs, white tablecloths. The buffet is mostly an attempt to imitate American food, with various degrees of success. Nice salads, but the corn on the cob, coffee and desserts miss the mark. Some of the fruit is delicious but definitely exotic: passion fruit, like cracking a yellow egg and eating green snot, and salak, snakeskin with insides like a giant garlic, slightly sweet. 
          The band is good, lots of songs from the 50s and 60s. Hot tub, swimming in the ocean at sunset, but no fireworks.      

brought back from the black beach

brought back from the black beach,

laid out on the bale bed,

blue scarf around his neck

Two days after the double suicide of the young couple, Robin and I attend the boy's funeral. Robin stops at a little store to buy coffee and sugar in bags and a small plastic plate to carry the offerings, including R 100,000. We arrive late, after they've bathed the body and placed it on the bed of the main bale in the family compound. I sit and wait while Robin goes inside to talk to the boy's mother. A woman who speaks English finally comes over to find out who I am and offers me tea with sugar. She says to come sit in the shade on the funeral bale, and then, come eat, but I want to wait for Robin. She finally comes out with the mother, a short, round-faced woman, and I give her a hug. I can't imagine anything worse than losing a child, especially one so young.
          We go to pay our respects to the father, who is sitting on the dirt floor in the dark kitchen, his face blank. Then we sit on the kitchen bale to eat. The wood stove is an empty oil can with a hole cut near the bottom, just big enough for one stick of wood. They also use bamboo and coconut husks for fuel. The mother offers us water to wash our hands and then serves our food on plasticized brown paper, a modern substitute for banana leaves -- rice, crispy fried onions, duck and some kind of meat that Robin doesn't recognize. When Robin tells her that I don't eat meat, she fries two eggs for me, so I have to eat the eggs. Ducks, chickens and dogs prowl around the compound scavenging leftovers and offerings.
          After we finish eating, the mother takes us to view the body, pulling back the curtain and the white sheet over his face. A scarf covers his throat, but otherwise he looks normal. Robin tells me that his throat exploded from drinking bleach and moth ball poison. Robin starts crying and hugging the mother, and another woman puts my arms around both of them. They will wash his body again before burying him around 5. Some men leave to make offerings at the beach where they died.
          As we're walking back to Ponkok Frog, Robin tells me more details. In the suicide note, the boy said he loved his family, but he loved his wife more. Still, they will not be buried together. Both families took the bodies back for burial, but no cremation. 
          "How could this happen to young people from a good family?" Robin wants to know. "It must be the witch's black magic." 
          "I don't know why it happened," I say, "but stop focusing on black magic. Just ignore her. Don't giver her more power by buying into her trip."

on a black sand beach

on a black sand beach

two lovers lie together

in their last embrace

Robin woke up in the middle of the night, calling out. Turned on the light and tried to answer her cell phone. She thought someone was trying to reach her.
          This afternoon, as we are returning from Ubud to Nyuh Kuning, Kadek stops on his motorcycle. He says something to Robin and I catch the word "suicide." Robin is teary as he takes off. She says a young couple committed suicide on the beach. The young man, 26, shy, sensitive, is from the family compound we stopped at after the wedding. The girl was 18 and they were engaged. In the Balinese tradition, she had been living with his family for three years, waiting to finish high school before the wedding ceremony.
          Two days ago there had been a big rainstorm, untimely in this season. The girl is waiting for her fiance to pick her up after school, but he hasn't shown up and she's getting soaked. Another boy offers her a ride on his motorcycle, but instead of taking her home, he takes her to his house to watch TV. A friend tells the fiance that his girl is with another guy. He goes to the house, sees them sitting on the couch together and jumps to the conclusion that they're having an affair. He tells his parents and her parents and both sets of parents kick her out. She has nowhere to go. When he realizes he's destroyed her with his false accusations, they go to the beach, lie down in a final embrace and drink insecticide together, a horrible death.
          Some relatives from Nyuh Kuning were among the crowd who found them. They left a note asking to be buried together. Not possible, since they weren't married, though they did have legal papers to get married. No one wants the bodies. They probably won't be cremated, ever, a terrible fate for the Balinese soul.
          The whole village is now "dirty" for 42 days. The odalan for the founding of the village temple, scheduled to take place in four days, has been called off. We will not see anymore ceremonies -- no weddings allowed. Robin says it's the witch's black magic.

White Track

White Track

Snow paved paths white as deer tails

curve between Queen Anne skeletons

blooming with frost in February.

Cloven prints like pointed hearts cut

from sugar dough mince along the cryptic aisle,

immaculate impression until the melt.

I stay on paths beaten by deer

to protect my skin from thorns --

black locust, wild blackberry, multiflora rose.

Rime transforms every weed into etched

crystal candelabra, intricate lace on the altar 

of limbs, yet thorns beneath lace still pierce.

A doe, delicate legs tucked under,

a heart's beat off the path

lifts her head but does not bolt.

Through veils of breath we regard each other --

her lambent eyes, mine

awed by grace.

New Moon behind a veil

New Moon behind a veil

of pale blue edged in pink

flirts with Jupiter

After bidding adieu to Venus, the New Moon is flirting with Jupiter tonight, peeking coyly through a pale blue veil edged in pink. The beautiful corona is caused by moonlight diffracting as it passes around the small particles of a thin layer of cirrocumulus clouds. The three celestial companions are still engaged in English Country dancing, but now the Moon is turning contra corners, first with Venus on her right, then with Jupiter on her left.

the mottled blue Moon

the mottled blue Moon

in a silver cup dances

round Jupiter and Venus

Just after sunset the mottled blue Moon sitting in a silver cup swings between Jupiter and Venus, like English Country dancers doing a hey for three. On the other side of the canopy of stars, red Mars hurries to catch up with the trio. The eyes perceive three bright orbs in close proximity and the imagination endows this image with meaning.
          An Earthling, holding up a small appendage, measures the apparent distance between the Moon and her two companions: a hand span separates Moon from Jupiter, while Moon and Venus are a mere thumb's width apart. To the eyes, the Moon looks like a huge celestial ball and socket joint, while Venus seems as big as a six carat diamond and Jupiter just a diamond chip. Yet the mind knows that this difference in apparent size is only an appearance: Jupiter is actually a giant planet and Venus is far larger than the Earth's satellite.
         Appearance means "to bring forth," and this ability to bring forth relationships between disparate things is one of the greatest procreative acts of being human.

in dawn's snow blue light

in dawn's snow blue light

bare branches flocked with last night's

crystal offering

How quickly the weather changes in the Midwest. Day before yesterday, short sleeve shirts, yesterday, raincoat, today, snow. In the dawn's early light, the star magnolia is bundled in soft blue blankets, the trunk of a shagbark hickory is plastered on the north side with a whitewash of fresh snow, and a white dome hydrangea looks like a cupcake on a lace doily. By midday, the sun melts the snow on the south sides of trees and bushes, and the wind sends clumps of snow hurtling down to pit the white ground. At Bonneville Lake, ice free, but frosted around the edges, a girl wearing black and white plaid pants and a furry gray hat with ears smiles as we cross paths.