| This month, Emmet's Dad Blair came for a visit. Here he is with Emmet and Myles outside the guest house. Under the picture is a guest post from him.  |
| From October in Bali |
Peter invited me to write an entry for his blog, to record some of my impressions, being the first visitor to Janet and Peter's Balinese idyll.
Let me begin at the beginning, with Emmet.
I travelled a long way just to be able to ask my son "how was your day at school"?, and I was really pleased (and relieved) to hear the answer. He loves it- he's totally engaged with his classwork, and his teachers adore him. From appearances Emmet's school is easy to love: magnificent open-air bamboo structures overlooking a steep river valley, a bird sanctuary, renewable hydro-powered energy, forests, fields and vegetable gardens. Still, a new school with new schoolmates in a new country, that's a lot for a kid to take on, but he's thriving. In fact, the adults I spoke to about Emmet - teachers, parents, his Balinese acquaintances - all find him charming and disarming. Clearly the boy can work a room, with or without walls.
It turns out Emmet is also a natural traveller. Nothing had prepared me for the spectacle of my son, two months in, chatting effortlessly in Indonesian with friends and total strangers. It's not just his facility with the language, I'm impressed by the way he launches into these exchanges so fearlessly.
With Emmet in school I was on my own much of the time, which was not a problem. Bali is a small place, and it was pretty easy and incredibly fun to buzz around the island on a scooter (I recommend listening to Phillip Glass's Satyagraha on the ipod). I saw a lot of amazing things on the way to the places I thought I was going to: Sublimely beautiful rice paddies. Comically ugly street dogs. Temples without number. A riot of carved stone.
And offerings, everywhere. Flowers, fruit, incense and cake, offered three times a day to gods and ancestors in a spirit of gratitude and devotion, as I understand it. They pile up, topple over, get trampled. You can't swing a cat in this country without hitting an offering. I think it might be the religio-economic engine of the whole society. And it's bio-degradable, which is another word for.. transient.
Of course it was also very nice just to sit still in the heat of the day and let the world go by. Maybe it's the effect of Bali's reputed spirituality, but this latter activity seemed to have a meditative rather than a hedonistic quality. Now that I'm back in the coldhearted disenchanted city, it's clear to me that I did feel really good there, and at peace most of the time.
I trust I can relate on this blog that I approached my stay with Janet and Peter & co. with a certain trepidation. Will this be.. awkward, I wondered? Well, my anxiety was misplaced- as it usually is. My hosts were warm and welcoming and very generous, and I had a great time hanging out with everyone at their extraordinary thatched villa in Nyuh Kuning. It was especially great to spend time with the sacred monkeys of the house, Myles and Austin. I highly recommend to any readers of this post that if you're invited to come and stay in their bamboo guesthouse, go there. Skype just doesn't do the place justice.
Selamat Tinggal,*
Blair
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| From October in Bali |
