The surety of ducks

It's harvest time. The ducks are in the rice fields and drying stalks alternate with paddies of fresh turned clods. It smells like a pig farm for some reason, the earth is dark and dense and strewn with rotting matter and stagnating water. The ducks love it. Hundreds of them, herded by their master with bits of plastic bags tied to the end of a bamboo pole. He flicks and waves and they quack and waddle searching for I have yet to find out what, in the shallow waters. I love them. I love the whole scene. Straw hats, bare chests, stalks and clods and ducks. The afternoon storm adds a purple to the day and throws banana fronds and coconut palms in sharp relief to a sky, moody, moist and full of portent. I had not thought to find such peace at the end of the rutted path that leads away from the manic motorbikes and hustle at the other end of my lane. On a day like today, when everything feels precarious, there's a kind of surety in ducks

For Catherine

Today it is 3 months since my mother died and there are several things for which I am incredibly grateful. Bintang, altho It does nothing to help my rounding menopausal midriff, clove flavored cigarettes, except for the obvious deleterious health effects, and my friend Catherine. She, like me is on the ecstatic though sometimes arduous route to writing.
As often as we can, we meet online. She in Burringbar, Northern NSW and me in Ubud, Bali. Our journeys are surprisingly fraught with the same demons of insignificance, flashes of brilliance and needs for support, and across the reaches of cyberspace we have a bond; a pact, to read and write and bully and support each other on our ways. For the last 3 months we have bounced infidelities, moral dilemmas, disgust and celebration from terminal to heart space and back again, and in the undercurrents of my grief, she is my lifeline.

Poor Neglected Blog

How is it that after packing up a life, burying a mother and leaving the country to write, that I can look here to see that mylast entry was over 2 weeks ago. Who or what are the interminable interruptions to that which should be my primary focus?????
I am soooooooo tempted to beat myself up right now for, well....... human frailty, I guess!If I was more focussed or more determined or more evolved or more disciplined or not such a pathetic excuse for a.........writer, or perhaps even more fundamentally, a person, then absolutely nothing would stop me from pumping out the measley 1,000 words a day that I have completely neglected for the last two weeks.WHAT am I doing all day??????????? And where is the line between grace and reprisal? A little help please Mr. Owl.

Paradise Lost

I was going to start today's blog by complaining about the people who have recently moved into the abandoned hut across the river. My beautiful quiet has been disturbed by their squawking child, rowdy boys and recently acquired rooster! All this I have managed to let go of in a live and let live kind of way, until today they started chopping down the bamboo that has at least allowed me to maintain my visual anonymity. And of course when I saw one of them going down to the creek,sludgy litter ridden affair that it is, for a shit, I was less than impressed.So,as I said, I was going to complain but something still stops me from having an all out whinge. Who cares what my neighbours are doing anyway and why bother complaining here? This is supposed to be something that puts my writing out for people to see and gathers interest in my book. But sometimes it seems that even paradise has its limitations. I did manage to put out 4 short stories today despite my visual invasion I suppose,and regardless of my intentions to the contrary it seems I have just complained about the neighbours

The Politics of Evil

Do you think it's Ok to have a favorite demon? There were 30 of them gathered at the football field in the middle of Ubud on Monday night and I have seen as many again in the streets of various Bajung around the area, but when this one was lifted into the night sky with it's eyes flashing and hair flowing out behind it somehow spoke to me.
Don't get me wrong there were magnificent creations all around. The community spirit and creativity of the young men who have been working for weeks on these masterpieces has been a joy to behold. But, this is the monster that spoke to me. The one that captured my sense of all that is bad, if I was going to be a demon, I would be this one. If for one brief night I could rant and roam the streets of Ubud before being taken to the cemetery and burned I would do it as him. And if there is a demon in my psyche that needs exorcising, or integrating then I bet it is this one. Next time I am writhing in the torment of my mind I will remember how I watched him burn!

Nyepi

It's Balinese New Year and given the way my year started on the Australian calendar I am pretty happy to have another crack at it.
For the last few weeks public spaces in all the villages have been crawling with the boys and young men who construct the Ogoh-Ogoh monsters. The nightmare manifestations of imaginations fuelled by centuries of Hindu mysticism, have produced a ghoulish array the two story high, big breasted, long penised, bulging arses of mohawk wearing, claw fingered and hairy demons soon to be set ablaze in cemeteries and sacred places across Bali.I have watched as small boys clamber up dodgy scaffolding to rub the tits and slap the arses of their creations and had carloads of tourists almost cause accidents as they come to an oblivious halt in the middle of the road in order to take a photograph. As the monsters reach completion everyone prepares for a day of silence inside their homes. No lights are to be used and movement in the streets is limited to those who have emergencies only. As all the demon images are destroyed tonight, the inhabitants of Bali lay low tomorrow to stop them returning to an apparently empty island. Lets hope I can put a few of my own demons out as well.

On Feet

I’ve never really been one for feet. In fact, most of my life, the size of mine have caused me considerable embarrassment. In my younger days, before they started making a few shoes in larger sizes, I was regularly subjected to the downward stare of disapproving shoe sellers. Centuries of foot binders past echoed in their derisive,
“ I’m terribly sorry Madame but we don’t cater for those sizes.”
Or later, once the manufacturers twigged and started issuing one pair of sizes nine, ten and occasionally eleven to a few stores.
“Oh I’m terribly sorry madam but we sell out of those sizes at the beginning of the season.” Like the only way for hefty feet to be shod is if they line up on opening day and trample all the other ample footers for the limited edition concessions to their deformity.

Not that I am foot phobic like some people I know. Baby’s feet are cute; especially the way they do that little rabbit pawing thing at your belly when they are on the breast. And I do like rubbing feet with my lover when we are wrapped up close in each other, to connect from lip to toe. But mostly, feet and I have never really had much to say to each other.

Until moving to Bali that is. Until the only way for me to get around is on the back of a motorbike in this madness they call traffic. Lately my feet have a whole lot to say! Apart from insisting that I wear my heaviest sandals before I walk out the door, they have developed a knack of sucking all the blood away from my ankles for the duration of any ride. To be fair, I guess they have been indoctrinated by the boots and leather safety set back home, but I left all those trappings behind, knowing how ridiculously hot it would be over here. And I suppose there are rabid dogs, pot holes and maniac drivers around every bend, so I can’t discount their convulsions as completely irrational. But no amount of pointing out sarong wearing, side saddled, thong flapping pillions would convince my feet to either release the blood back into my ankles ( a particularly uncomfortable sensation I have to say ) or to uncurl their toes from the foetal positions they had taken up at the end of my sandals. What to do?

As with many things, time has managed to minimise the trauma to an occasional, "only when under direct threat" affair, and to be honest, the rest of my body is similarly contorted at those times. So we have come to a bit of a truce on the whole motor biking thing. And, the other day, now that they have been lulled out their hyper vigilant, red alert rigidity, I actually managed to sneak out the door in my thongs, and get on the bike before they noticed.