It was a full moon the night I left Bali. It was Indonesian Independence Day, 2016, and thanks to my pale Irish skin and a trip to Lembongan the previous weekend, I sported a perfect sunburn for the occasion: red above the waist, white below. As I walked along a stretch of Kuta Beach along all the resorts and bars, the scene was like something out of King's Dark Tower novels: perfect in its symbolism, and rife with the universe dropping little cinematic easter eggs into real life. To my left, was a full moon over the city of Denpasar. Behind me was the revelry and a few fireworks celebrating this wild and ancient country's independence from the Dutch. Before me was the airport runway, and I could still watch planes, not even a mile away, take off (none seemed to be landing, they were all departing; how fitting) even at this hour. Somewhere from a nearby bar, I could hear a woman who sounded like she was in her mid twenties, singing in a thick local accent, CCR's Cotton Fields. Talk about random songs, right? There wasn't a cotton bowl within at least 14 thousand miles, none of the foreign tourists at these upscale joints looked like the Southern Rock type, and I doubt anyone on the island could find Louisiana or Texarkana on a map. Where did they get that one? And yet here was that song that mom used to always sing while strumming her guitar on the porch, as a lady from half a world away sat strumming her guitar and playing for foreign guests. And to my right, of course, was the sea. Ah, the sea, that weird and alien vastness that always seems to hold such a mystic sway over me (probably because I never saw it until I was over 30).
I remember the night in fits and starts of clarity and haze, as it has been a year and a half. I spent as much time out at the beach as I could that night, right up until if I stayed any later I would have missed my plane. I knew, in the way any traveler seeing something for the first time knows, that once I left, that was it. The magic would never return. Oh, I could come back, true enough, but coming back to a place is never the same as seeing it for the first time. I learned that with Shanghai. No, before leaving Bali I wanted to soak up as much of that magic as I could. The problem was, I could not put my finger on what it was.
There had been something about that trip, something that eluded my ability to articulate. The Southern Cross, the absolutely surreal prevalence of one of mom's old songs on an island where there was no explanation for its popularity, the exotic, haunting yet awe inspiring Hindu temples (such a change from the imposing and presumptuous pomp of Chinese architecture), the beach, the sea... there it was again. The sea. There is something about it, especially at night, when you can look for miles and not see a thing unless there is a ship, or hear a thing but the waves, and somehow, under the Southern Cross, that seemingly unimportant little group of stars notable at a glance only for their foreignness (more so to one who had never crossed the equator before that trip), there was an otherworldliness to it that escapes my grasp of my mother tongue. My mind simply had as much trouble grasping the fact that I was actually there as it did back in 2012 when a dumbstruck American who had never left his home country in peacetime stood there on the Bund, repeating in shock, "I'm in Shanghai, I'm in Shanghai."
I recorded a ten minute oral journal about it (since I did not have my tablet) thinking I would transcribe it later. Then, like an idiot, I never did and the phone where it was recorded got stolen. I will never fully recall what I was thinking that night. But as any traveler knows, at least any real traveler, places have their own voice. They whisper their secrets to your soul in a language that only you can understand, and Indonesia was whispering to me that night.
What were you trying to tell me, Indonesia? What did I miss? Will I ever be able to do what I hoped and move there? If I did, would those strange, foreign shores still have secrets left to reveal? Would you be as I've remembered you, or would you reveal yourself to be a trickster like China (who lured me in with that sublime glimpse of Shanghai only to hit me with the reality that the rest of the country is a pit)?
I wonder if I will ever know. Even with my time in China drawing short now (it's only a matter of time before one of the Xi-anderthaals down at Tiananmen realizes that an American in Beijing is writing a blisteringly anti-CCP blog and drops the hammer on me) I feel like it will be some time before I can go back to Indonesia. I thought of going there this February on my Chinese New Year Holiday, but I just can't spare the money for a last-minute plane ticket.
And yet... and yet I can't help but wonder. What was it about you, Indonesia?
What did I miss?