Quarter Year

Today I rode the scooter to Castelmola and into the hills behind. Several times I stopped and just looked at the magnificently sculpted landscape – the terraces and farms, the roads like worm tracks in mud. The light was dramatic – it was socked in in Castelmola, so much so I was startled to turn a corner and find the day had gone dark. But as I rode high in the hills behind that tourist town I got so high I reached places where blue sky poked through the drifting clouds and the sun even shone. One dramatic moment had the sun illuminating from behind some ancient-looking trees that grew out of abandoned, feral terraces. It was striking. I didn’t even bring my camera, which was a mistake, though I suppose there will be other pictures.

Another cool moment was cresting a hill and seeing a city in the distance, then realizing it was Gardini Naxos, and that was the sea behind it. What a joy, being surprised by the sea. I coasted down toward it on a broken road, engine off, until the road suddenly went to dirt. As far as I could see down the valley the road was dirt, and cars were driving carefully, so I started the engine and went back where I came from.

On this drive – and this was worth the 30 Euro rental fee – I learned that I simply need to continue ascending, not get stuck in the fog. Pretty clear allegory, thanks.

In one ear I was listening to Thich Nhat Hanh quietly lecture about touching the earth. He said that I am my physical ancestors – in the transmission of their genes I became them. It helped me see again that these places are not separate from the past. The past is not elsewhere, it is here, we are it, the genes of Moses and Jesus and peasants and bakers are not in some distant past, but they’re as close as the next person, and that makes them (and me) holy.

So I went back to the guy in the hood with a new message written on a piece of paper and rolled up.

I walked up to him confidently from the front and dropped a coin in the basket. He reached in his bag and handed me a rolled up piece of paper, and then he smiled wide as I handed him mine. His read, simply, “Perché,” which translates to both “why” and “because.” In mind I wrote, “Keep ascending.”

An author out of Flagstaff, Az wrote a book called, “A Way to Live” and published it himself. “A Way to Live” made its way to bookstores on the West Coast, particularly because the world was searching for a new Vonnegut. “Kurt’s getting old,” liberals thought, “and we desperately need someone to replace him.”

A young man in Seattle picked up the book out of the self-help section. He had just gotten paid and figured $4.99 was a fair price for direction.

The book was about another young man named Chris, who was directed to grab a piece of lined, white notebook paper.
He did so.
Theodore, the young man in Seattle, did this as well.
He was also directed to grab a writing implement.
Chris chose a pencil in the story, and Theodore chose a red pen in his dining room.
Next Chris was directed to write any message on the paper – something he’d say to god if there were a god and if he were to meet him and if he were a he or spoke a language or cared about his creations.

“Ahem,” thought Chris. “Dear god. Hope you got the letter. No, that’s a song.”

Theo: “Ok, god… why is there so much suffering in this world?”

Chris tried again, “I’m sure you’ve got other prayers to answer and all, but I need some direction in my life right now.”

Theo disagreed with the book, “Why would we ask for direction, will god even respond?”

Chris agreed. “I need to write something that will be more of a command.”
“Or maybe less a command and more a suggestion.”

“to make the world better, to help people change their lives.”

“Ok.” they agreed.

Chris wrote, “Life, please be more rational.”

Theodore wrote, “People should share themselves.”

The book ended with a bunch of tax tables and geological surveys, but Theodore didn’t. He folded the paper into thirds and slid it into an envelope, slapped on a stamp and addressed it to:

“God
North Pole, Canada”

Do they have zip codes in Canada? Probably not important in this case.

To his surprise, the postman accepted the envelope and took it to the processing station.

This was in December, so a postwoman understood the letter to be for Santa and threw it into a pile with the other envelopes that had pictures of reindeers and divorce papers. “On Christmas I’ll be at my dad’s house, since it’s a weekend, so you can deliver my presents there, Santa.” The postwoman’s name, however, was Gloria Orenthal Demeules. “god,” she said. “It’s addressed to G.O.D.”

She wondered if it was someone trying to get in touch with her – one of her neighbor’s cute kids who would send her a personal message out of all those faceless envelopes?… or perhaps the strapping bag boy at QFC was sending her a message… she’d told him about her job going through Santa letters from divorced kids. He knew she was G.O.D. Maybe he was telling her about sex, and how he wanted to do terrible things to her. She hoped.

(needless to say, Theodore was that strapping bag boy, but Gloria never found out she had been right.)

She opened the mail.

“‘People should share themselves’…. Why, that has nothing to do with presents.”

Against post office policy, she took the note home with her and put it on her mantle as the only Christmas card in a lonely season. She wondered about it often. She decided to live by the card that had been sent to her by forces unknown. (Despite her staunch opposition to religion, she came to the conclusion that only Santa could have sent this to her, as a reward for raking through the misguided wishes of divorcees’ children and filtering them out). “More than anything else,” Gloria told her sister, Wendy Althea Demeules, “I’ve been sharing my writing with other people. I mean, I don’t know if I was supposed go out and give charity or whore myself-”
“Oh Dear!” from the other end of the line.
“-but neither of those would have the effect Santa would want. ‘Share yourself’… it’s so… vague.”

Gloria went to poetry slams and read her material to an overly enthusiastic and privately judgemental crowd of white adults and black teens. She felt better. She didnt mind the lonliness anymore – or – perhaps – by sharing her poetry she began to be less lonely. Something like that.

Either way the next month Gloria realized other people could experience the same thing. She could help them change themselves.

She grabbed a red pen and sat down.

She wrote, “Lose some weight.”

She slid it in an envelope, slapped on a stamp and took it to work.

“Dave. I need you to do a favor – deliver this to anyone in the 98112 zip code, just randomly, ok?”

“You got it.”

Needless to say, Dave opened the envelope thinking it was a private message.

“‘Lose some weight’? What the fuck?”

Gloria left work that night in a car whose doors had been discreetly keyed. When she got home she prepared a number of other messages to be sent out – 25 in all. Here’s a few of the ones she wrote:
“People should share themselves.”
“Listen to new music.”
“Light candles tonight.”
“Feast on the rich.”
“Forgive your parents.”
and so on.

At work the next day, she handed a couple out to each postman, asking them to deliver to random mailboxes. Each of the envelopes was addressed to ‘god’.
Privately, all over the city, people read these messages, pondered for a few minutes whether they were asses of a joke or part of a chosen few, then quizzed their mail carriers. The postmen didn’t care to talk, and some even spat at the homeowners.
And so it began: dozens of Seattlites reacted the same way Gloria did – they thought of the letter, then followed the advice. Some thought it was a message from aliens, others thought it was from the postmaster general. Some thought the Chinese had given up on cookies while others were sure that astrologers had given up on newspapers (though cookies and newspapers continued to run fortunes, as far as the Seattlites could tell).
One woman, Elizabeth Liason Frye, got the message, “Drink 8 glasses of water a day”
Hugo Ulysses Goldberg received, “Don’t stand for injustice.”
And about half the people decided to send messages back, addressed to ‘god.’

and so on.

After a few months the media caught on and there was an explosion of letters to ‘god’ with everybody receiving at least one a week, then one every couple days.

By the time June rolled around it had become a morning ritual:

Hugo woke up at 7, ate breakfast while writing his daily suggestion, and tossed it in the mailbox on the way to work. Every day. And every day he received a new message in the mail, “Don’t shop at Fred Meyers,” or “Give yourself a breast exam.”
Hugo’s interactions at work became a reflection of these daily pieces of advice – people felt a lot more comfortable speaking their minds, leaving little slips of paper on their coworkers desks.
“I like the world more now,” Hugo would say. “We can be so much more open with each other.”

Theodore, bagging groceries for Gloria at the QFC, wasn’t liking the world so much.
“I don’t like the world as much anymore,” he would say. “Nobody says anything of value anymore.”
Gloria was a perfect example of this. “Theo,”
“Yes ma’am?”
“Did you know that I started this letter-writing trend?”
Lying bitch, I started it. “No, I didnt’ know that! What was your first message?”
“I said, ‘Lose some weight’, just some good healthy advice.”
Theo was quiet for a couple seconds.
“Ma’am? What if the person it reached was already thin?”
Gloria blinked. “Well, I guess I never thought of that.”

Gloria was 25 pounds overweight and Theo never shared himself with loved ones.

For whatever reason the route is off the left side of the map.

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There are bugs in the room, and this evening I came home to the nastiest spider I’ve ever seen, relaxing next to our lightswitch with an air of entitlement. It’s definitely not the paradise Lonely Planet promised, but I reminded Azure, half-encouraging myself, that if we could overcome our dependence on nice rooms we would save a lot of money (and therefore travel longer). She reminded me that nobody at home would consider any of our rooms “nice,” and we do save a lot of money because of it. Oh yeah. Azure wrote a hilarious post about the hotel here: http://www.quarteryear.com/us-vs-bugs

Right now, at 8pm, prayers are echoing in our room from two separate mosques, one voice from the east, one from the west. It’s beautiful, if haunting, and it’s a little bizarre that one muezzin is a child. This area does feel different than other parts of Bali. The young men leer more. Hindu locals have told us that this is what Muslim areas are like. I’m sure Muslim locals would say the opposite. I don’t know the religion of the young men, but, compared to the rest of Bali, Medewi is much less welcoming.

Two miles past Medewi beach we rode toward the water. Groups of young men perched on their motorcycles hanging out next to the ocean beaches, tons of men. There were some women here and there, but mostly just young men staring at us, calling out, “HEY! HEY MAN!” I don’t like when people yell at us. When we first encountered this in Kuta I wanted to ask the touts, “How would you feel if someone yelled, ‘HEY!’ at you?” Maybe not that bad, it turns out. At a homestay in Ubud the owners did exactly that to get a family member’s attention, yelling down to the courtyard, “HEY! HEY! HEY!” It really rubs me the wrong way, but that’s how they do it. A nasty old woman there was responsible for both the yelling and the loogie-haucking outside our window, several times a day.

Back in Medewi, to the west along the shore, a series of pens at the edge of the beach hold cows who graze the trees and grasses. Across the road rice paddies sprawl under the most plastic bag scarecrows I’ve seen anywhere in Bali. The bags are tied to strings that run across the mature rice, and when a farmer notices birds eying his field he yanks the strings and the bags jump. If that fails, a lady standing in the field yells and swings a large flag toward the flocks. From here a number of Hindu shrines dot a village road that lead us inland. We stopped to watch two cocks start a pickup fight.

We crossed the main road and drove toward the mountains, an hour before sunset, surprised that the small towns here aren’t as poor as we expected. The brick houses are well-constructed and the neighborhoods are cute and clean, even deep into the hills that roll down from the national park. The road pierces the jungle for miles and just when we were convinced it would cross to the opposite coast, it petered out to gravel. We turned around.

High in the hills we ran into a mobile vendor who sold us some tasty fried tofu snacks wrapped around beansprouts. The people were nice, most smiled at us, as is usual outside the cities. We were so deep I’m sure no other white people had been up that road any time recently, and the people who didn’t smile at us gawked in surprise. One side of the road teased glimpses across a valley that’s raw and thick with coconut palms and primary growth, jungle toppling onto itself. I wanted to take a picture of the natural beauty, but it would have been a picture that demands a pre-delete button, Azure and I joke. You know your next picture will be a throwaway, so you press “pre-delete,” then take it anyway.

We coasted down the hill and stopped at a grocery store for some carb snacks – chocolate bread, jackfruit chips and peanuts. At a gas station Azure offered a chip to the driver behind us, and he happily took her up on it. Everyone lol’ed.

We stopped at some food stalls and ordered bakso (soup with balls of “meat”), though after watching a lady make an egg-filled, veggie-rich soto ayam (chicken soup) we second-guessed our decision. The bakso held its own anyway. While deciding where to sit we did the usual smile-at-people routine, and one little boy called, “Tourist! Tourist!” but his mom shut him up quick. It reminded me of something that happened regularly when I said something stupid as a kid. Specifically I remember the Canadian Exchange – a yearly event when players from a Canadian soccer team stayed with families from our American team, then a couple weeks later the roles reversed. I welcomed the Canadian kid to our home, saying, “Welcome to the lifestyles of people on Somerset!” imitating Robin Leech. My mom shut me up quick, even though it was just silly in my mind, because of course we weren’t rich & famous. It was just another house, to me. Maybe we were rich compared to that kid, though, I don’t remember.

One of the years I stayed with a Vancouver family who lived in an apartment. They ate french fries with gravy and had a toddler daughter named Sidney – I felt sorry that she’d grow up in an apartment. I called my parents collect (they were proud that I could pull that off), but I was homesick and scared because the family was unexpectedly different. I don’t know if I felt sorry for them or uncomfortable about being outside my bubble – probably a combination – but I remember crying.

Today, in Bali, as we drove through some of the poorer neighborhoods and watched the pickup cock fight, I thought about how last year we passed similar Colombian poverty and felt sick from a distance. This year we’re in it, on a bike of course, but we face the differences and keep pushing ourselves to understand it. As we went deeper and deeper into the mountains I started feeling nervous. I glanced at the gas, we had plenty, so I had to ask myself, “You’re not nervous about the scooter; do you trust the people?”

On this trip I’ve come to the conclusion that fear is not a good reason to not do something. Fear is an emotional response to perceived risk, and our perceptions are so often wrong.

Back at the food stalls Azure ordered a delicious pancake thing heavy with chocolate, peanuts and condensed milk, and the cook battled flying ants as dusk dropped to night. We drove home through a storm of flying ants, they were all over the road, maybe attracted by the headlights. They floated thick like Seattle’s cottonwood blooms in truck headlights, then rolled like dry leaves as the trucks passed. As we crossed the bridge into Medewi two swarms of larger bugs pelted my neck and chest, at first I thought it was gravel. It was disgusting. As soon as we got home, and I snuck past the enormous spider, I washed my face and hands. Not much you can do about that.

But, as was the plan, we decided to get out of Kuta the next morning and head north via minibus to Ubud, another rather touristy hill town perhaps made even more popular by the 2006 novel, “Eat Pray Love” and subsequently Anthony Bourdain. Having arrived, again, in the heat of the day, we decided our best option as non-acclimated, sweaty white people was to wake up at dawn and do our sightseeing.

For some reason (jetlag), we’ll call it ambition, it was quite easy to get on the scooter by 6. We rode out to a whole different Ubud. There were people out in the streets, going to market, getting the kids off to school, but no one was asking if we wanted a taxi or a tour or some handicrafts, people were going about with their morning routine. Another great part was that it was cool — so much so that I considered putting on a jacket!

Armed with only our cameras, water and a map of the island with about the same detail as if I were to sit down and draw western Washington freehand, we began our climb north into the hills. We never had a real plan, but we picked a town and began our trek, stopping every half hour to make sure we were still on the right path. It was a beautiful morning for a ride. The sun was low enough that it filtered through the hills and the trees and made everything so surreal. Mike insisted that I pull out the new camera and take some photos from the back of the scooter, which I am now so thankful for.

When we finally got to our arbitrary destination, a town called Kintamani, it turned out to be a city on the ridge of a small mountain which overlooked the valley and another, strikingly large mountain.

After stopping to snap a few more photos, we decided to continue north and attempt to make it to the ocean since it was only 8am at that time. We set our sights on what we thought would be an equally easy place to find, as it was due north of where we were. In fact, it was not easy and seeing as the roads are not marked at all, we got lost. We were continually prodded forward by smiling locals until we found ourselves on what seemed to be a small, ill-maintained driveway for several miles. That, along with it being extremely steeply graded, we considered turning back. But, having nothing to really get back to, we decided to keep going. At some points we could look out to other hills in the distance and see no signs of human existence. At one such remote location, we came across a woman tending to some crops on a steep hillside and as we drove past we found that she was alone in all directions for at least 2 miles.