Dear fearful voters,
You would not believe the size of the spider I just swept out of my room. I'd say that from leg to furry gray leg, it was about the diameter of a small apple. When I told my family about it their first question was, "was it poisonous?" I told them that I'm pretty sure all spiders are poisonous, it just depends on how much. In any case, I don't want to find out and I am now going to be a lot more careful about feeling around in the dark.
Speaking of poisonous spiders, I am more or less in the loop with regards to the upcoming election. Surprisingly, the expats here are very much involved in the election. When asked, they almost universally say that being abroad makes them even more concerned about the impact the next leader of our country will have on the world. One nice lady told me about a voting party for Obama and pointed me towards the Obama website for more information. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't find any of the information there. I am learning that despite everyone's best intentions, a lot of the stuff that people say will happen here, never materializes. Things like this, or that time I was told to come to a ceremony on the beach on the wrong day. Anyway, voting party or not, I sent my absentee registration in. Who knows how long it will take to reach the U.S. The mail system here is notoriously inefficient.
The other day, while I was playing soccer in the tiny village of one of the dish washers, his friend came up to me and asked me about the financial crisis in America. "Is it very bad?" he said. I didn't really know how to answer him besides 'yes' but I felt somewhat odd talking to a Balinese farmer about all the money issues Americans are suffering through right now. It somehow lacked the right perspective. This brings me to an episode the other morning.
As usually happens I arrived to work a little before everyone else. They are on Bali time after all and silly me, I think I should be there when I was told to show up. Still, there is one man who is always there before me. His name is Ketut and he has been a great friend since my arrival. He took me to find an affordable place to stay, he helped outfit me to go to temple ceremonies, he understands English and is a great teacher so anytime there is something I need explained, I go to him. He is also, despite his great intelligence, the low man on the pole and though I would never dare to ask him what his salary is, I am fairly sure it is impressively unimpressive.
We were sitting in the back room that morning. I was eating breakfast and he was looking at a magazine called 'Yacht and Villa' that the night watchmen had left behind. He flipped through the pages and every one was plastered with the most elaborate and massive sailboats, models in bikinis lounging in hammocks on the edge of swimming pools at villas set high on dramatic cliffs above the ocean. That type of thing.
He told me that he had always wanted to travel and see the Dalai Lama in Tibet. I reminded him that he was a refugee in India, which in turn reminded him about the Taj Mahal. So I told him about the Taj and about it doesn’t look real even when you are standing right in front of it and that there are flowers formed from inlaid semi-precious stones on the inside of the tomb. I told him how a guard had shown us that if you take a flashlight and shine it at the stem of one of these flowers, the light refracts up the stem and the blossom glows multicolored in the near darkness.
He seemed to like my stories and when he turned to a page that had a private Gulfstream jet on it, he asked me how much to fly in one of those. I told him I ride coach like most people but if he could manage to dig up an extra 800 trillion Rupiah, he could buy his own. When he heard my little joke, he kind of deflated. “Who can have that much?” he asked. I told him that there are people that own their own companies that have jets. “I need 100,000Rp($10) for my whole family for one day and that is so hard.” he said, shaking his head a little.
I just felt ill. Here we were in our dark and somewhat dingy kitchen. There are yellowing grease stains on the walls behind the stove and grill. Soot is caked around the tiny exhaust fans. A stray kitten had just wandered across the prep table. And here he was, holding in his hands an artificial glimpse of a world that I’ve considered visiting for weddings and the like, but that he could understand only with the most extreme difficulty.
Something like this can make a person philosophical about financial realities and electoral politics, both topics intimately connected. When you are sitting on a soccer field in a small village in Bali, it is a little difficult to really consider the concept of a private jet or a mortgage crisis. When you are dealing with politicians and poisonous spiders, is it perhaps a little naïve to assume that the one that looks less scary is any less of a predator? My mind, though addled by the sun, conjured up the final words of the David Lerner poem, ‘Mein Kampf’
They’re selling radioactive charm bracelets
and breakfast cereals that
lower your IQ by 50 points per mouthful
we got politicians who think
starting World War III
would be a good career move
we got beautiful women
with eyes like wet stones
peering out at us from the pages of
glossy magazines
promising that they’ll
fuck us till we shoot blood
if we’ll just buy one of these beautiful switchblade knives
I’ve got mine.
Love and Knishes,
Alex
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