Bali Goodbyes

Bali Goodbyes

I just said goodbye to blonde Kate.

I dubbed her that, as brunette Kate is brown Kate during practice. Kate flies back to London tonight.

I’m almost finished with my three month residency here in Bali. At first I found myself counting the goodbyes, a shocking although obvious bi-product of living in a tourist destination.

I realize that I suck at non-attachment. Aparigraha- a yoga tenant that I think I have a grip on when it comes to loosing iphones (four so far)– but when it comes to people , I sticky.

As of February I had said goodbye to no less than ten really precious people. Maurice ,from Sydney, Allison, Didier, and Rodulf from France, Susie from Australia, Isabelle from France, Luciana, from Brazil/Kuaui, Claire, from Australia, Zena from Oz/England the list gets longer and now as I now prepare for my departure, I will be the one leaving, saying goodbye.

When I first arrived I thought the local ex-pat community was being distant, now I realize they were just being selective. My heart broke each week as someone I had just grown to know and love and appreciate would come to class and announce, “I’m leaving tomorrow”. I taught classes about always saying goodbye. I relived my own childhood abandonment issues. I dreamt about my best friend Renee, in fifth grade, whose family moved away, to Texas. I remember crying for hours.

At some point I decided to act like an adult and see the good in all of these momentary intersections. Rather than looking at everyone always leaving, I chose to look at all the people I was gifted to interface with. I clung to the idea that had I not come to this “node” in the body of Earth, Bali, that I would not know the four quadrants according to Maurice, the dangers of basejumping according to Rudy, The cockney slang and wicked humor I discovered with Zena, or the ecstatic Brazilian joie de vive of Luciana, the cool French calm of Allison, or the tender heart of a poker player that was Didier. This is not even including the rush of nationalities that I met in the high season, Natasha from Russia, Adya from Portugal (the neurobiologist I spent hours with talking about teremeres- the future of ant –aging), Jim from Switzerland, Caroline and Claudia from Holland fearlessly trying yoga daily, for the first time for two weeks straight.

One by one they came, connected, and departed a revolving door of cultural travelers.

It’s not the average traveler that comes to Bali, and Desa Seni being outrageously beautiful centered around yoga and wellness as well as a little pricey also magnetizes a certain milieu.

The local expats come here for yoga, the visitors are here for a weeks in and out. People start to sort themselves into silt layers of staying power. After a month, I moved to a different silt layer, after three still another. These layers coalesce into certin groups. Those that have come in the last five years, the over five, the over 10, the over 15, the over 20 are like Bali royalty.

I understand, finally, how the urge to connect with travelers so thoroughly starts to wain.

Balinese too, have seen travelers come, fall in love with Bali, open a business, close a business. One Italian restaurant owner told me “They play with you, to see if you are going to be around, they’ve seen so many westerners come and go”.

I know as a teacher I see students come and go all the time. I learned long ago, they are not “my students” but students on the path. I may see them for a day, a week, a year, three years. But one day, one of us will move on.

The bittersweetness of life, the fact that everything is temporary is a daily reminding as the next plane out of Denpasar takes a whole other crew of people back to their respective homes.

“Let what comes come, let what goes go, and find out what remains, “Ramana Maharshi said.

I don’t think he was talking about Bali travelers, but experiences, thoughts, health, the body. And yet, this quote is what I also try not to cling to, as I prepare to say goodbye to the friends who will stay here for the moment, on this magical island.

The Crazy Cliff

B.A.S.E. jumping, also sometimes written as BASE jumping, is an activity that employs an initially packed parachute to jump from fixed objects (also see paragliding). "B.A.S.E." is an acronym that stands for four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: buildings, antennas, spans (bridge), and earth (cliff).

On Thursdays for the month of February, I had an astonishing two classes. Every other day, I draw the line in Bali at teaching one class. But for the taxing month of February, I had to cover for Shirley and Steve Oconnor, my yoga teacher friends at Desa Seni, while they travelled back to the States.

The 8:30 am crowd in Bali is already a select bunch. Seminyak is a place where, it seems,there is a high preference for going out into the wee morning hours and sleeping late in the air-con rooms with shades drawn while pembantus arrive early and begin the household chores.

So I’m always impressed when someone wakes up for 8:30 am class.

Equally impressive are those that venture to my 12:30-2:30pm practice style class. A popular, advanced class in the states- a total experiment in the heat of the day at an outdoor studio in Bali.

And someone who comes to both classes in one day is unprecedented.

Meet my friend Rudolph, base jumper, windsuit flyer, climber…general fearless dude from France.

His third and fourth yoga classes were these two Thursday classes. By the end of his fourth yoga class he was jumping into handstand. It took two days to find out he was a base jumper. It took two more days for me to understand what that was, it took approximately 15 seconds after I understood what that was to realize he was crazy. It took one dinner party to know that this was the funnest fact info I could possibly drop into a collective conversation.

There is nothing more fun than watching people size another up, “Oh he’s French, he looks conservative, he’s from the south, he’s travelling for four months…” The brain tries hard to get a fix on what is never fixed.

Especially when there were big guys around.

Me: “Rudy’s a base jumper…” beat, beat, beat

Eyes grow wide. You watch the interior brain disorient. In some I watched a slight bit of drool leak out the side of their mouths.

“No.”

“Yeah. He’s travelling around the world jumping off things.”

Rudy shoots me a look of admonishment. It’s not that he’s not obsessed with base jumping and wind suit flying (Yeah, the flying squirrel thing) it’s just that he’s had this conversation in already at least 5 countries over the last four months since he was lucky enough to be fired from his finance job and take two years at 70% of his normal pay. This is why it’s good to be French.

Rudy has a fancy camera where he’s recorded his base jumps, which almost always now include the wind suit flying component. He can’t find a good place to jump in Bali. Nothing is high enough. So instead he shows me videos of jumping, flying off the Blue Mountains in Australia with some characters Aussie twins referred to as the Mario Brothers. Apparently Mario brothers talk like this,

“Fuck, we gotta fuckin jump off the fuckin rock before the other fucking fuckers beat us to it…” and they mumble. Rudy couldn’t understand half of what they said. But he jumped with them in the Blue mountains for four days.

He shows me flights in Norway, and South of France. Usually it goes like this. Some French exchange, him and another guy, standing on the edge of the cliff, and then without much ado, they are falling, or flying.

When you see a video of wind suit flying it looks like the closest thing to ultimate freedom one could ever know. Rudy’s longest flight was almost two minutes. He says comparatively skydiving is boring.

Skydiving is boring.

While base jumping is categorized as an extreme fringe sport, its not easy to get into. A minimum 100 plane jumps are recommended, and according to the dialogue I heard at least ten or more times to the inevitable, “I want to base jump” from the drooling guys at dinner parties, there is a long vetting process. You have to offer to drive jumpers up the mountains. You have to earn the respect into this elite crowd by carrying gear, learning where the jumps are, learning the equipment, knowing how to rock climb. All of this for the two minute high.

And, someone you know will die. Rudy has at least four friends that have died.

As I’m riding on the back of the motorcycle while Rudy drives, I think about how not smart it is. I’m wearing a helmet with a broken strap that I have to hold on my small head so the wind doesn’t blow it off. I start to refer to it as my hat. The number of times I close my eyes and say a silent prayer to not die exceeds my ability to count them. Rudy tells me among his friends, he drives slow. “Your friends are base jumpers, I say.”

But he’s still inevitably a much better driver than me. My biggest injury to date is from hitting a rock on my scooter driving home from a two hour massage. Rudy was driving behind me on his motorcycle.

“What did you do?” he says, scooping me up. “I saw you, see the rock, go toward the rock and hit the rock, boom, “ he makes the motion of me falling on me side. I knew this is what I did. It was like time/space slowed down and I had a five minute dialogue about the rock, the construction that was not there yesterday, how I shouldn’t hit that rock, and then I hit the rock. Even in my slow cautious attempts at control, I’m a hazard to my own self.

I joke that the one thing Rudy has taught me, is that I’m not as fearless around death as I once thought. I thought with all my non-dual philosophy and liberated embodiment teaching and playing with handstands that I actually had a tiny little grasp on fear.

But I realize, I’m a total pussy.

100% afraid of my own death.

I think about the end of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, jumping off the cliff into the clouds, as a symbol of love, freedom, the impermanence of life and the transition/non-transition of death. I think about getting a better helmet. I think I will never base jump.

I find myself making arguments to myself about all the ways in life I am fearless and resolving to grow ever more so, fearless but not stupid.

I think about how Rudy almost died from an allergic reaction to Brazil nuts after eating a mixed nut bar I gave him.

I think about JD Salinger and “the crazy cliff”.

Bali is a place where you are constantly shown alternative ways people chose to live. Either as they are passing through here on vacation, or as they tell you their relocation stories from their varied and fascinating backgrounds and cultures. It’s this constant contemplation.

Knowing the inevitability of my own death, how live.

Yayasan Kasih Peduli Anak

Yayasan

Bali is known as a paradise where there is no violence, no crime, a perfect tropical paradise somehow where the grace of the people is beyond the normal stresses of the regular world.

The mistruth of this impression was expressed to me by my fourth driver named Wayan, Wayan Ubud., “well, if they told anything else to the tourists, they wouldn’t come.”

Everything in my existence here has changed since I started volunteering at Yayasan Kasih Peduli Anak –lit. Loving Care for Kids shelter.

Ibu Putu, a lovely, heavy-set woman who used to own a laundry in Denpasar, had the message in her heart to help street kids in Bali.

Yes, there are street kids here in Bali. Putu somehow became friends with the prostitutes in the slums of Kuta, and saw the overwhelming amount of kids working the streets. Much like the kids in Slumdog Millionaire, they are forced to make money for their families or their street bosses. The majority come from Karangasam- a village north of Mt. Agung, the most holy Volcano in Bali. Here the sex trade has thrived for the last 20 years.

You don’t think about Bali as having a sex trade. Thailand, yes, Vietnam, yes, Bali, no. But there is. And for some reason, which no one I have yet talked to can figure out, Karangasem village is the place where the proverty is thick, and the abuse is thicker.

Putu, has 17 kids in her Yayasan (which means non profit organization). It took me four visits to find out anything about the orphanage. I was nvited by a beautiful Italian ex-pat, Kikka who teaches the kids English, and offers a lot of time and money to the Yayasanan. Because she feels her Italian is not that great, she’s had Steve, the yoga manager/teacher at Desa Seni helping her teach. Steve went out of town and I begged to step in. This was the extent of what I knew.

Both previous times I arrived, somewhat hurried, having been driven here sweaty from teaching yoga class and running out quickly at the end of a two hour session to return to teach another class. The first time we were learning parts of the body, “Head fingers knees and toes, knees and toes, head and fingers knees and toes eyes ears, tip of the nose”, and family members. “Mother, sister, father, brother…”. Immediately I thought this was an odd topic.

Of the 17 kids, Kikka asked me to sit with the older ones and have them write sentences about their family. Great. Aren’t they orphans? Do they have a family. I knew nothing, absolutely nothing about the background of the kids. Did they come from the trains, like the kids in India, wait there’s no trains in Bali…where do the Balinese “The lovliest people on earth” deposit their orphans. I decided to push forward, there was no space for questions.

“My mother is Surya….” Ayu writes. Conversation didn’t work so well. My four: Ayu, 15, pretty, shy, speaks better English than she tries. Merta, 12- obviously smart, spends most of his time drawing, Pisak, and Tista. We go down the list sisters, cousins, are, etc. I start embellishing the conversation by drawing pictures and explaining relationships.

Somehow I never got a chance to talk to Kikka between week one and two. She, too is a busy clothing designer with a family We had the intention to. But then the Jiva Mukti workshop came with Sharon Life and David Gannon, and then I went to Ubud, and she runs a clothing company, and and and….

I’m here again. Back in the Yayasan. Equally uninformed about these kids status, holding more questions. Kikka tells me to go teach the four older kids about the verb “to be” which is not used in Indonesidan.

I am on my own. I have no translator. The lesson goes like this:

“I am…” I point to myself “a girl”

The girl and the three boys each point to themselves, “I am a girl”

“No,” I say, I point to Merta “You are a boy”

He points to me, “You are a boy…”

“I am tall..” Again I point to myself.

They all point to themselves, “I am tall.”

This was useless.

The next week, I go on a different day, without Kikka, because whoever was teaching them English on Tuesdays has apparently quit. I bring along my friend Martina, who is fluent in Bahasa Indonesia.

I share with her my frustration about not knowing anything. I have 400 questions, and no program. Finally, we arrive early, Martina and I and find Putu there. We have a long sit down. I ask everything. This is what I find out.

Most of the kids come from Karangasam. Putu, who has always been friends with the prostitutes and street kids (backstory unknown), from her heart decided to open a shelter. Her partner, an American Registered Nurse, Michael, from San Diego and she have opened their house, to these kids. At first there was 35, but now there are 17. They are not really orphans, they have families, but some have been abused, most have some boss, pimp, sex trade person they have to beg for and report to, some have just been abused by their families. Sometimes they leave and go back to the streets.

Jana and Lana are eleven year old twin boys. Jana is normal size. Lana is about two and a half feet tall.

Pika has deformed feet. A man, posing as her father, used to carry her to beg with. Because she was forced to walk on her feet, she has an ulcer that went to the bone- literally a hole in her foot the size of an orange. Alit is deaf. Wirya is blind. The rest seem to have various stages of physical or emotional abuse. They are all bright.

I think Putu must be a saint.

The Yayasan ,open for 2 years, has received non-profit status, but now the needs are piling up. Alit needs a sign language teacher. Pika needs a wheelchair and at least three operations. Two boys Jana and Sandi might have Tuberculoses. Putu looks exhausted. Michael starts to breathe heavy sighs as of relief as I tell him how we care going to help them. Martina and I tell her how we will help and help raise money.

The landlord of the house has decided that instead of being 30 million rupias a year, it will be 10 million. That’s $3000, to $10,000. It costs about $1700 per month to operate. Who in their right mind would take this on. Even as I look at these numbers and think how small they are , truth is to a Balinese person they are astronomical.

Martina and I decide I will teach yoga, and she will translate. She is brilliant. The kids love yoga. Especially the boys. They do crow, and Surya namaskar, and handstand, screaming and laughing in delight. It flows very well. Martina is so tender with the girls. When Ayu is beside herself that her shirt will come up if she does a handstand, Martina tells her in Indonesian, “Don’t worry, don’t worry, Tara gets it, she will help you.”

I leave, now obsessed with the desire to help. I decide to bring in the big guns.

I know from teaching yoga at Desa Seni that there are expats here who want to give. They want their yoga to have a karma aspect, and they just need to know where to put their energy. Tom, the owner/visionary of Desa Seni comes with me on Thursday. Kikka, Tom, Myself and an Australian yogi, Susie sit down and begin to hash this thing out.

The Yayasan needs money. It needs teachers. It needs soap. It needs computers. It needs eggs.

“I noticed that Merta likes to draw, and Yanti loves to sing, Pasik plays guitar and loves to dance, we could pair expat/mentors with these kids to help them develop there talents, “ I say, overwhelmed with ideas.

“We need a place to live, “ Michael says. “We need rice.”

“We need a list, “ I say. Even this does not exist. Well it does, written in magic marker, in this order:

Eggs

Rice

Shampoo

Komputer

Sauce tomat

Soap

Englis teacher for Tegil Beach

I tell Putu I need two lists, one with small items, and one with the bigger lists.

Tom sees that the kids are working on cutting out cards. They draw pictures and the Yayasan sells the cards for $2.

We grab one hundred that sell at desa seni in almost four days.

TO BE CONTINUED...