The Necessity of Contrast

Over the past few weeks, a theme has emerged from my adventures here in Bali. The necessity and inescapability of contrast. As some of you know, my internship here has been challenging at times but it is in those moments of outside frustration and chaos that I have felt an inner sense of calm and confirmation. A reassurance regarding what kind of design I'd like to do or be a part of in the future. I will leave it vague to you, my dear reader, for now. Perhaps I can share the specifics with you over a future half-sweet, extra hot, soy mocha and gingersnap cookie at JJBean.

But back to Bali. Another, more obvious contrast is the being here in Bali itself. Although I do love it here - the scooter rides through rice paddies, the cleansing heat and sweat, the friends I've made - I miss home. I guess it's a common experience for a traveller to compare home and away and realize how special home is.

Last weekend, a group of us, Meli, Kristen, Yulianto, Foucoult (sp?), Noemie, and myself, did a sunrise hike up Gunung Batur (Mt. Batur). Definetly an adventure, starting at 3 am and trying to sneak through private fields in order to avoid the gang-like Trekking Guides. In the end, they hunted us down and would not let us go a step further unless we hired one of them. The hike up was a workout, imagine doing a very rough Grind for two hours at 4 am in the pitch black with only a flashlight. At the top, the sunrise was short, I blinked and missed half of it but the view in its entirety was amazing. My camera died after the first photo but I've been promised photos from the others. After stopping to witness the dawn, we hiked along a spine-thin ridge with deadly drops on both sides to view two craters. Scary enough as it is, but more scary when Yulianto in front of me kept saying how dangerous it was, how a misstep meant death. Ak! Stop it! Just let me focus and block that part out!

Doing the hike made me appreciate the landscape beauty of Bali in even more. There is the lush greeness of flat and terraced rice paddies, the dense jungleness of coconut trees, ridges and rivers. There is white sand beaches and warm, blue ocean. There are towering volcanoes in an otherwordly landscape of green brush, deep lava sand and tumbling black rock. We even walked through a sparse forest of evergreen trees at the end of our hike. Bali pinecones. Who knew. See? Contrast.

Yesterday was Nyepi. A holiday in which one is to be silent for 24 hours, not use any kind of light during the day and the night, and stay at home. The streets are empty. The shops are closed. The point of this seclusion is to trick the bad spirits who were released the night before during the burning of the ogo-ogo into thinking that there are no people in the town or village and thus, move on. This is a Balinese holiday and being a foreigner I don't have to participate if I am in a hotel but I decided I'd give it a go and stay at home. I sat on my porch all day and read, napped, ate. Watched the resident duck family quack, sit, waddle around. I think the white one with the mohawk is the leader. I listened to several rainstorms approach and watched them soak the world around me. And when it grew dark, I watched the last light in the sky fade away behind the clouds.

In darkness, I prayed. I tried to sit still and listen. I breathed. And when I was tired, I went inside, groped my way to the bathroom and then to my bed. I closed my eyes to imaginings of the dark, empty streets of Ubud, with only a few "patrolmen" wandering silently about.

This morning I awoke to a brilliantly sunny day. It felt like a fresh start. Maybe the bad spirits that had been dogging me followed the pack out of here. Light. Darkness. Sunshine. Rain. Night into day.