Month: June 2019

Because I have lived in many parts of the world I am sometimes asked what was my favorite location.  My basic answer is every place is amazing IF you pay attention to the small things that are going on around you.  I have written of some of these places in my other blog, BLAB,

Still, there are some locales that stand out in memory, combining physical beauty, culture, and tradition in unique and startling ways.  I have been fortunate to visit one such place, the island of Bali in the Indonesian archipelago.   The culture of Bali is based around a Balinese offshoot of the Hindu religion, making it quite unique amongst the largely Muslim population of the other islands that make up Indonesia proper.  And by “proper” I mean the over 17,500 ISLANDS of the archipelago.

The people of Bali are artisans by nature and make the most beautiful works in wood and stone and cloth.

 

 

I remember once traveling about the island and stopping off at a batik shop pretty far off the beaten track.  We had our son with us and I guess he was around 2-3 years old, an age when they race around like water bugs.  While we shopped he somehow darted away from us and we had a moment of panic when he was nowhere to be found.  Then WE were racing around like water bugs.

The owner of the shop kindly took us to the small kampung (village) behind the shop and showed us our son, playing with the other Balinese children without a care in  the world.  He was an outdoor kid and brown as a nut, tanned to nearly the same color as the other kids.

The Balinese thought nothing of “borrowing” this slightly unusual looking little kid for a moment of play.  Watching them there under the equatorial sun I was struck yet again by how similar we are, while we try so hard to be different.

 

 

I can remember being in a bowling *league* back when I was growing up and bowling was one of the preeminent social activities of the day.  I would spend every spare (no pun intended) moment in the bowling alleys of Laurel Maryland, Princeton West Virginia and Pemberton New Jersey.  The alley in Laurel was where I learned ten-pin bowling and the far more obscure *duckpins*, the little squat pins which were hard as heck to knock down, when you did the sound lacked the rattling finality of ten-pins.  Duckpins reluctantly go down with a whimper.

My high school actually had a gym class devoted to bowling where we were taught the proper way to grip the ball, release the ball, how to throw a ‘hook’ into the ‘pocket’, etc.  I love the arcane language of bowling, a sport whose rules are only slightly less obscure than *cricket*, a game which consists of men running around a field and doing random things described as “full toss”, “googly” and “leg before wicket”, all of which sound vaguely sexual.  Don’t get me started on cricket.

Bowling has been around in one form or another for millennia but the type I am describing took off with the advent of the automatic pin setting machines invented by Brunswick.  Prior to that the pins were cleared and set by nimble young men called “pinsetters”.  Even then automation was changing the landscape, asking armies of pinspotters to seek gainful employment elsewhere, perhaps chasing down errant shots at a golf driving range.  Speaking of mysterious language, golf, who knew?

I remember being on a bowling team somewhere,  and since I was a novice bowler with a high handicap I would occasionally be asked to score poorly.  This team request was done quietly as if we all understood the secret mathematics of victory.  Once, it all came down to me NOT making a spare in the 10th frame (ed note: more arcane bowling lingo).  Faced with the need to miss the pins I hit them quite by accident, in any normal time a mark of success.  However judging from the sea of scowls my team was not happy with me that day.  I found it all very strange and disturbing, this need to manipulate the handicap system in order to “win”.

I should have just spun up a googly.

 

I find the notion of anything flying to be very cool, since I myself do not fly.  But the notion of flying colors is especially groovy because well, colors duh.

Being triumphant or successful means that we came through “with flying colors”, a homage to ships returning from a great sea battle.  Flags raised and unfurled meant a successful campaign or mission; flags lowered (“struck”) implying a loss or failure, accompanied by much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Of course we can also show our “true colors” and feel free to sing along with Cyndi Lauper.

…So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful
Like a rainbow…

I remember once walking out the main gate of the Army base I worked at in Hawaii.  It was the end of a long day (“pau hana time”), and I think they play the bugle call “retreat” around 5pm.  It is tradition to ‘face the colors’ – the flag –  to show respect.  Anyway there I am walking along, lost in thought, oblivious to the goings on around me, when I become aware of an angry voice yelling at me.

“You’re supposed to salute the flag!”, he yells, “not keep on walking”.

I slowly come to a halt and turn toward him with what I hope was a face devoid of expression as if he had not spoken at all.  I am not a person who seeks confrontation.  I had apparently violated a code of conduct and he was there to provide a lesson in the optics of patriotism to this poor schlub (me).  I say optics because I have always believed that a patriot is characterized by so much more than respect to a flag, in the same way that attending church does not necessarily make one a Christian/believer, although such symbols might coincide with acts.

Instead, by your deeds you shall be known, with flying colors I hope.

 

We admire
The rough-hewn look
Forever shaped
By wind and rain
And sea and sand;
Every piece unique
Like a signature from Earth;
Nature’s lesson of renewal
Teaching us how one thing
Might become another,
Given time and circumstance;
The name itself
Requires nothing further;
It simply says what it is
And translates the world
To art.