At a Temple in Bali
On Friday, our seventh day in Bali, we were invited to an Odalan - a Balinese temple festival - by Pak Nyoman, Niky's old teacher. As customary, we dressed in the traditional Balinese style: the guys had an udeng worn on the head, a sarong with a saput over it held together by a sash, and a white shirt. Meanwhile, the girls wore a white kebaya over their sarong: this was the costume for our performance in April. We were supposed to go in the morning, but Pak Nyoman wasn't free and, as Niky said, it could get awkward. Arriving there I could see why: at the entrance, people were polite but looked slightly puzzled, as if we had wandered in while searching for a beach, restaurant or guesthouse.
Eventually, Pak Nyoman met us and brought us around the temple compound. The atmosphere seemed to me like an unexpectedly harmonious mix of incongruities: different gamelans - two Gong Kebyar and one Semar Pegulingan - played within earshot of each other; people knelt at a religious rite just a doorway apart from a crowd of children surrounding a makeshift gambling corner; past stores selling packet drinks and packaged snacks, huge pagodas decorated of foodstuffs were being carried up to the topmost shrine dedicated to Durga, their colours contrasting with the dark stone structures.
We followed their path, leaving our slippers at the base of the steep, wet stairs. In the small enclosure dominated by its high covered altar, we had a closer look at the offerings undergoing final preperation: they had umbrellas made of flour, ornaments of skewered fruits, tiles of grilled satay, and walls of pressed rice. The significance to their intricacy and complexity, Pak Nyoman explained, was a symbolic returning to heaven of everything that could be found on earth, a notion which I felt echoed in the variegated atmosphere of the odalan. Privately though, I couldn't help thinking that there was everything here except tudungs, remembering one of our friends who was requested to take off her tudung before entering the compound. She had politely declined and was waiting for us at a warong across the road which, she told us later, had very nice Indomee.
So each peaceably bore the weight of their devotion, as how the parents carried their children around the compound; their costumes differed only in size so that each seemed to reflect the other's future, a single frame in the reel of eternity. Above us a cinematic moon shone undeniably through the clouds, emphasising temples and trees against the sky, but from our position under them the shadows were so palpable I could hardly see myself, let alone the others; only when I felt myself crush underfoot one of the small hard berries littered on the rough stone floor could I reasonably assume I remained tethered to this world. Such is my experience when watching Bali through Colin McPhee's silent films: technical limitations and decay have granted it the grainy flickering of reality, a reality I steal into upon footfalls of light on a celluloid frame.
(21 August)
Eventually, Pak Nyoman met us and brought us around the temple compound. The atmosphere seemed to me like an unexpectedly harmonious mix of incongruities: different gamelans - two Gong Kebyar and one Semar Pegulingan - played within earshot of each other; people knelt at a religious rite just a doorway apart from a crowd of children surrounding a makeshift gambling corner; past stores selling packet drinks and packaged snacks, huge pagodas decorated of foodstuffs were being carried up to the topmost shrine dedicated to Durga, their colours contrasting with the dark stone structures.
We followed their path, leaving our slippers at the base of the steep, wet stairs. In the small enclosure dominated by its high covered altar, we had a closer look at the offerings undergoing final preperation: they had umbrellas made of flour, ornaments of skewered fruits, tiles of grilled satay, and walls of pressed rice. The significance to their intricacy and complexity, Pak Nyoman explained, was a symbolic returning to heaven of everything that could be found on earth, a notion which I felt echoed in the variegated atmosphere of the odalan. Privately though, I couldn't help thinking that there was everything here except tudungs, remembering one of our friends who was requested to take off her tudung before entering the compound. She had politely declined and was waiting for us at a warong across the road which, she told us later, had very nice Indomee.
So each peaceably bore the weight of their devotion, as how the parents carried their children around the compound; their costumes differed only in size so that each seemed to reflect the other's future, a single frame in the reel of eternity. Above us a cinematic moon shone undeniably through the clouds, emphasising temples and trees against the sky, but from our position under them the shadows were so palpable I could hardly see myself, let alone the others; only when I felt myself crush underfoot one of the small hard berries littered on the rough stone floor could I reasonably assume I remained tethered to this world. Such is my experience when watching Bali through Colin McPhee's silent films: technical limitations and decay have granted it the grainy flickering of reality, a reality I steal into upon footfalls of light on a celluloid frame.
(21 August)