On Silence and Ogoh-Ogohs

It is a precious gem, in this lifetime, to be in the presence of one who is truly insane. We get plenty of exposure to the halflings--those with Sedaris's 'plague of tics' compelling them to flick each light switch twenty times before entering a room, or only eat green foods on Sundays, or walk backwards over gravel to ensure that it made equal contact with each foot. Truth: I wade into this category more often than not. We all do. However, to be around the genuinely unhinged--those whose actions and words act in utter dis-accordance with one another--is rare. And barring the more dangerous forks in that road, it is awesome. The other night, I watched as a new friend surrounded herself with a plethora of drinks; beer, "because it's my healing"; spiced tea, "because it's my healing"; and an espresso martini, "because I deserve some fucking DESSERT." I listened as she extrapolated upon her spiritual quest, never quite making eye contact with anything other than my cheek, and proceeded to enlighten me about the process for extending an Indonesian visa. In a week, I would be making a "visa run" to Malaysia in order to be legally granted my final 30 days in Bali. "I don't make visa runs," she told me, in a tone that suggested we were discussing Oprah's tips for anti-aging, or some other top military secret. "I have a friend who handles it for me. But you know what?" She reached for a cigarette. "That's your path. But if you should choose to take a different path, I can help you out. But that's your path, it's your path." I looked at the litter of cups in front of her, and wondered if she was planning to stab me with one of her healing crystals. "Do you have any makeup? Or here, let me give you my info," she said, crossing her legs into lotus and reaching for my friend's phone. "Actually, nevermind. I have a strange effect on electronics when I'm emotional." Pause. "Do you have an ipad charger?"

It's my path, it's my path. How did I end up on this road, anyhow? Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the road less traveled by... also known as: the long road. While it is possible to skirt the visa issue, and many do, I made the decision to exit the country and re-enter on a tourist visa for the final leg of my travels. This meant one night in Kuala Lumpur, sandwiched into a bunk bed while 5 sleeping Europeans snored  above and beside me, my belly full of instant noodles and my heart full of memories and musings about the previous few days. For two whole weeks leading up to my Malaysian blip, something very special happened: my mom was here. In Bali. The other side of the freakin' planet, and there she was: walking out of the arrival gate at Ngurah Rai with my Nana's red suitcase trailing behind her, fire in her hair, and a look on her face that could only have belonged to me. Standing there, realizing that I was at the airport for the sixth time in six months, I felt my skin grow prickly with anticipation...but really, more than anything, with emotion. I remembered that it had been a very long time since I had allowed myself to cry. But there she was, the whole of her, and I felt the past six months enter my throat and up into my eyes and my hands which carried two delicate frangipani blossoms, one for my hair and one for hers. Enveloped into that hug, I was simultaneously the smallest and the biggest I have ever been.

If I asked my friends, many would say that having their mothers travel with them is their idea of hell. Alas, my mother is not most mothers, and I am not most friends. Still, it is tricky terrain: the rush of emotion I felt upon seeing my mom could easily have slid into the realm of moodiness, and it often did. After being alone for six months and presenting a certain face of myself to the world--a resilient, clay mask--the freedom of being around one who knows me, has known all the ages of me, cracked that face straight down the middle. Quite literally, my skin broke out into the worst batch of acne that I've had since sophomore picture day. (Damn you, hormones.) On her third day here, I lay in her arms and cried... for all the things I hadn't cried for, and for a few that I already had. Something about being around the person who knows me best, while still trying to maintain and exude all the ways that I've changed, while NOT falling into the trap of strutting around in a "lookathowmuchI'vegroooownandchaaannggeed" extravaganza, while showing her Bali, while still keeping the parts of Bali that I want for myself... holy mother of rice, it makes me exhausted just thinking about it. Before she arrived, I worried about this. I worried that having my mom here would be a reenactment of our time in Ireland, the last time she entered my travel sphere, when I couldn't seem to find balance between loving her presence and maintaining the independence I had found before she came. Anyhow, when I broke down last week, I was afraid that was the end of it--I had gone from a headstrong traveler to a puddle of mush at my mother's feet, and there was no way for me to negotiate back and forth.

Then suddenly, it was March 13. Her last night in Bali. We sat playing Scrabble in the dining room at Bambu Indah, giggling our faces off, looking around nervously to see if anyone suspected that we were staying there for free. (Thank you, Orin.) It occurred to me then that her entire visit had gone by, and I'd forgotten to worry about how I seemed in front of her: I'd forgotten to worry about being overly emotional, and forgotten to worry about bickering. I forgot to worry about whether I was different enough from the last time she saw me, if I'd grown a branch or two. I'd forgotten, and she'd forgotten; it would seem that, in the crucial moments, we were both different without trying to be.

And that, Charlie Brown... well, you know. That's what Christmas is all about.

Because guess what? It was the holiday season all over again! Where on ACTUAL Christmas eve I got a massage and fell asleep in front of Inception, and spent Christmas day eating cupcakes and watching Orin's family play badminton, I got to relive the joy all over again when my mom opened her suitcase and revealed a ziploc bag full of Girl Scout cookies and ibuprofen. She brought a bunch of other Western goodies as well, including magazines, tea tree oil, mosquito repellent, Clif Bars, and about half the contents of my closet; but really, I was all about the cookies and anti-inflammatories. After we arrived at Slukat and she spilled the contents over my bed, we waded through the trash on the side of the road to meet Tomi, who plopped us on the back of his motorbike--both of us--and took us zipping up the road toward Keramas. "Welcome to my iiiiisssllaaaaaand!" he sang, as my mother undoubtedly questioned her sanity for coming here. When the road wound around, we realized the power was off...meaning that Slukat would have no running water. Hooray. In retrospect, you couldn't ask for a better introduction to Bali: SO MANY PEOPLE come here and head straight for Kuta or Ubud, eating Pizza Hut and raw flaxseed crackers (respectively), spending all their time with drunken Australians or pretzeled Californian yogis (respectively), never seeing a ceremony or the inside of a family compound. On the other hand, my mom got to eat 40 cent nasi goreng from a cart on the side of the blacked-out road, heated by a small propane tank, with her hands. We took the food back to Tomi's house, where 20 members of his family came out of their rooms and ogled us for closer inspection. Meme was beside herself trying to make us feel welcome, loading Mom with cups of water and rambutan from the Gianyar market, while Pak Man pieced together his smattering of English to tell her she was family. I swear, my heart swelled to three times its size. It was pure love. Then Mom bit into a chili, almost passed out from the pain, and I realized I was going to have to buy a lot of flaxseed crackers when we got to Ubud.

After Slukat, we wound up the coast to Amed and Jemeluk, passing through some of the most spectacular scenery that East Bali has to offer. The rain began to pound almost instantly after we arrived at Blue Star Bungalows, bringing coolness and an eerieness to the coast. I loved it. After it was determined that we'd be doing more lounging on the daybed than swimming in the torrential downpour, I booked us massages: this is Bali after all, and getting massaged costs less than a smoothie from Blender's in the Grass. Literally. So Mom went up into the loft to meet Wayan, and I read Game of Thrones on the porch. An hour later, she emerged--groggy and oily--with a big smile on her face... I knew she was hooked. Then her expression turned funny. "Do they always have you take off all your clothes?" she asked--and suddenly I remembered the delicate sheet-lift-shuffle-shuffle that masseurs do at home. To someone who hasn't been here for 6 months, I guess it would seem a little weird to have a tiny Balinese woman just go to town on your naked boobs. But it never occurred to me. "Yeah," I told her. Let the record show: I told her! And yet when Wayan showed up at 9 a.m. the following morning and asked if Mom would like to have her session on the beach, she said yes. Ha. At first, it was just Wayan and--you know, six or seven of her closest friends, all squawking away in Balinese--but pretty soon, they were joined by a family of 4 with snorkel gear. They all stood around talking, planning their itinerary, while my topless mother got massaged on the beach. I sat in the cafe drinking tea, trying desperately not to let it shoot out my nose. It was hilarious. An hour later, clutching her shirt, Mama dearest ran past me on her way back to the room. "I feel like Shirley Valentine!" she squealed, which only the best of you will understand to mean that she felt like a million bucks. A little silly, maybe. But like a million bucks.

Which is exactly how much money we SHOULD have had in our bank accounts for our next stop, the glorious Bloo Lagoon Resort and Spa in Padang Bai. Owned by a fellow Santa Barbarian, and speckled with quotations from his mentor--Buckminster Fuller--Bloo Lagoon is a little bit of heaven on earth. A little bit of heaven, a little bit of luxury, and sheer overwhelm for someone who has spent the past 2 months without a toilet seat. The sea was divine. Our ya-ya sisterhood with Julie and Lara was divine. And the coffee, oh, the coffee was divine. I think I'm still caffeinated off that stuff, actually.

After Padangbai, still high on our ocean view, we made our way into Ubud.  I arranged for us to stay with a lovely British expat named Julie who, like many, came to Bali on a whim and…never left. (I used to think people were crazy when they told me stories like that. Now I simply give them a knowing look, bow my head, and resume scrawling BALI+JENNA 2GETHER4EVER all over my diary). Anyhow, Julie built a homestay tucked away from the bustle of Monkey Forest Road without being in the boonies: Rumah Jepun, an oasis nestled in a forest of papaya trees. We arrived on Sunday, unloaded our bags, I acted sufficiently giddy and awed in the presence of a hot shower, and we began what I like to call the FOODIE tour of Ubud. Mom teased me relentlessly, but before we even arrived, I had planned (and dreamed, and drooled) over what we would eat during our stay. Call me crazy, but have enough ‘chicken’ satay that may or may not be made of dog, and you’ll make a restaurant roadmap as well. So. With only 10 days to eat our way up and down Ubud, we did pretty well for ourselves (if I do say so myself): fresh beetroot, carrot, and ginger juice from Warung Semesta, grilled moringa leaves with coconut and steamed pumpkin, kaffir-lime peanut sauce, and shitake mushroom miso soup from Soma, homemade rosella tea kombucha and chipotle babaganoush from Sari Organik, buckwheat pancakes with tart yogurt and berry compote from Kafe, coconut milk curry with soft tempe and lemongrass from Melting Wok, crisp honey-glazed oyster mushrooms and pepper salsa from Siam Sally, dragonfruit mojitos and goat cheese tostadas from Bar Luna; and of course, lawar, satay, bebek guling, gado-gado, pisang goreng, and countless young coconuts. Other highlights from Ubud include an incredible bike ride through the rice fields, coffee sampling in Kintamani, a slam poetry night where judges drew pictures of mythical animals to rate the quality of performance, and a particularly riveting screening of “Crop Circles: Quest for Truth” at Yoga Barn, which both Orin and my mother used as an excuse to take a power nap. The quest for truth, it would seem, began and ended with the fat coconut-peanut sundaes that we ate after the show.

So that was my second Christmas, complete with the traditional eat-til-you can’t-budge and teary gift exchange. And as we all know, Christmas is followed by New Year’s: this time with Nyepi, “silent day,” the marking of a new Balinese calendar year. In a place like Bali, packed as it is with ceremonies—for everything from death to life to blessing the health and safety of the motorbikes—I expected Nyepi to be just another wonderful celebratory ritual. Bali heard me, and laughed. As usual, I was underestimating it… and as usual, I was about to have my socks knocked off. 

In the month leading up to Nyepi, the Balinese craft massive papier mache and Styrofoam monsters called Ogoh-Ogohs. Walking through the villages during the week leading up to Nyepi is NOT safe for bedwetters; one second you’re buying nasi campur from a street stall, and the next you’re standing beneath a twelve-foot demonized Ganesha, pus and blood pouring out of his every orifice, with gleaming red eyes and an axe the size of a tire. It’s terrifying. The purpose of the Ogoh-Ogoh is to frighten away all the evil spirits from the island; on Nyepi eve, every village explodes in a parade of trancelike Gamelan and chanting while the monsters are whipped through the streets, changing direction on a dime in order to confuse the evil spirits that watch on. In Tegallalang, I huddled underneath an overhang as a pair of dueling Ogoh-Ogohs—easily the size of an office building—spat fireworks and disco lights at the surrounding electrical wires, raining a shower of ash onto everyone below. I watched, transfixed, as the Balinese musicians took on a state of hyperactivity that can only be described as freakish. The energy was mesmerizing. It was frightening, but it was also intoxicating—a guttural instinct sucked me in, a simultaneous fear and attraction toward all that the island wished to purge itself of. 

Tegallalang Ogoh-Ogoh. Photo cred: Yande

On  Nyepi eve, Ubud hummed with anticipation. After lunch, Mom and I joined Evan for a rousing trip to Coco’s Supermarket, where I think it’s safe to say the entire tourist population stood in line. In actuality, we were only shopping for one day: on Nyepi, you’re not allowed to leave the house. After the Ogoh-Ogohs have chased away all the evil spirits, the Balinese hunker down on the homestead—no electricity, no leaving the compound, no fire, no work, no travel, and no pleasure—in order to remain invisible to the spirits’ eyes. It is meant to be a day of silent contemplation, fasting, and meditation. Then again, Thanksgiving is meant to be about appreciating family and dodging questions about what you’re going to do after college, but anyone who has ever experienced Black Friday knows just how far we can stray from a holiday’s integrity. In other words, though the majority of the Balinese population adheres to Nyepi (even the airport shuts down), there are plenty who choose a ‘loose’ interpretation. Which brings me back to Coco’s. There we were, shopping for one restaurant-free day—one—but by the look of the carts around us, you would have thought the apocalypse was coming. That, or God was visiting Earth and had promised special powers to anyone who bought industrial-sized bags of peanuts. I felt weird, standing there amongst a bunch of other tourists, knowing that most of them would sooner starve than go a day without Wi-Fi. And if the barren cereal aisle was any indication, none of them planned to starve.

So we paid for our watermelon, and I walked out onto Hanoman as the sun crept down the horizon...passing Ogoh-Ogohs large and small, on my way to my very first energy healing. 

Mhm.

Allow me to explain. When I first arrived in Bali and observed the 'healer-hopping' that takes place amongst tourists, I made a pact. I would not seek out any sort of healer, but instead would wait for the experience to arise organically; and if it didn't, no big deal. Naturally, this left me healer-less and slightly embittered. I didn't want someone to read my tarot cards and tell me I was going to die alone in a pile of cats--but yeah, I at least wanted the opportunity to tell them that I didn't want to know. The closest I came was ducking out of an impromptu numerology session when the woman told me I'm "science-minded" and "probably very good at math." (Mind you, this was AFTER she watched me use my fingers to count out exact change). Anyhow, just when I had decided that Bali itself had been my healer, I met Reza. He came over to talk to Julie while we were sitting at Bar Luna, introduced himself, and somehow mentioned that he is a Reiki master. After watching him draw a picture of a bird flying over a great tree, I asked for his phone number; and four days later, hopped on a motorbike and made my way past the oozing Ogoh-Ogohs to enter his home in Bedulu.

The first thing he did was offer me a sip of cempaka water. I took it, removing all the metal from my fingers and ears--anything that might interfere with the energy--and waited. He stared at me intently for a minute or two, and then lowered his hands to hover over mine. "What do you know about energy healing?" he asked me. How many ways are there to say... absolutely nothing? "I'm interested in it," I told him."I don't know what it is, but I want to." We talked for a long time about chakras and the flow of energy, and he explained the way negative emotions--fear, jealousy, anxiety--get trapped in the solar plexus before they can make their way out the heart. He looked at me dead in the eye. "Do people like you, Jenna?" Shit. I don't know. I stared back at him, blinking more than perhaps was necessary. "When you look in the mirror, do you see someone who is beautiful?" I could feel the soft spot in my stomach, that solar plexus he seemed to know so much about, clench. "Um...sometimes," I told him, which was true. "Sometimes! HA." He laughed, and we were silent for a long time. "Most important thing: you have to love yourself. You have to know that you are love." I squirmed, but he held my gaze. "The bottom chakras--they are the body. They are our humanness, sex, food, digestion. And the top part?" He touched my forehead. "This belongs to God. All we have is what's left in the middle. All we have is the heart. Open it, and experience what it is to be powerful."

He lay me down, then, and began the hour long energy treatment. To describe what I saw and felt during that experience would undermine the mystery of it, so I won't even try--but what I can say is that it was one of the most profound meditations I've ever had. I approached that moment where the brain becomes aware that Shit, I'm going really far down. What if I never come back to the surface?...and instead of shying away from it, went down further. The last thing I remember thinking was, Hey. I could live down here. Anything is possible. Consciousness became a swirl of colors and people and gentle awareness of a metallic sensation beneath my head, and before I knew it, Reza was brushing a family of ants off my eyelids and instructing me to slowly, slowly come back. When I finally opened them, my eyes felt like saucepans.

We talked about what I'd seen, and then he did something totally surprising--he asked me to heal him. He told me that my purpose in life, my business at this stage in my little existence, is with the divine. He told me that he sees Buddha's eyes in my thumb, that my energy channels are open, and that my mission--should I choose to accept it (ha. ha.)--is to heal others. Obviously, I laughed. Suuuuure. I'll bet you say that to all the clients. But still, something in me rushed toward the things he was saying...like water let loose from a dam. I held my hands over his, and was shocked at the heat they created. "It's not easy," he told me. "Sometimes you will want time to yourself, and someone will come up to you crying. Other times, you will want to help someone, and they will say no... and you have to respect that. They have to accept you. And then you have to love yourself." After that, he hugged me; and I don't know what exactly, but something in me felt healed.

He did my palmistry and tarot reading, too, which was a trip. If you ever want to know what he told me, ask me. I don't want to write about it here. Good news: there was nothing about being a cat lady. Even better news: he looked at my forefinger and told me I'm a writer. And uh-HUH, I couldn't resist, I wanted to ask him about relationships and romance and all that jazz... my head swirling with all the things I did and didn't want to know. But before I even could, he took one look at my open palm, and back up at me. "Oh no, no no," he said. "Not him.You need someone stronger."

And with that, I put back on my lucky rings and we catapulted into the night.

Walking around the football field at dusk, the Ogoh-Ogohs screaming overhead in a blur of color and fire, I felt tingly all over. I ran up to my mom, and found that even my voice sounded different. It felt different in my throat. I sat with Orin, Rosa, and Summer, listened to them talk about everything and nothing, and fought the urge to take each of their faces between my hands and give them everything and nothing, all at the same time. I felt free, powerful, open. Ready. Running through the pouring rain at the end of the night, my dress soggy but my spirits high, I forget what I felt. But it was good, it was oh so good.

For Nyepi, mom and I did our best to respect the rules. I tore through an entire book, did lots of yoga, and was actually enjoying the process of slicing cheese in the darkness when Gede came in the kitchen and snapped on the light. "NO!" I told him. "NYEPI!" He looked at me like I was crazy, which he usually did, and I scuttled off to the room so Mom and I could spend the rest of the night making shadow puppets on the wall.

I loved the silence. I loved the space to contemplate, to ruffle through the contents of my own mind, and to realize that I can be happy--or miserable--just about anywhere. Whether flanking the crystal pool at Bloo Lagoon or sleeping on a lawn chair, which I currently am, in the middle of the jungle, I own this feeling. It is mine. The bottom half belongs to the Ogoh-Ogohs, and the top part to God--to silence, to Nyepi, and a delicate purple light at the tip of it all--but the middle part is mine. It talks when I don't want to. It opens and shuts like nobody's business. And oh, it is oh so good.