Apparently every village has a palace. And this palace has a parking lot behind the gated wall. There are a few cars parked around, and at least one that seems like it hasn’t been moved for a long time.
Morning offerings of flowers, incense and food turn up anywhere- other than the family shrine, no one place seems to be any more or less special than any other for making offerings. The middle of the sidewalk, the dashboard of the car, the corner of the garden or the edge of the koi pond seem each arbitrarily and intuitively worthy.
Rain on new year’s day bodes well, for some reason or another.
misty morning on top of Mount Batur
rice fields and offerings above Gunung Kawi
View from the porch of the weaving factory off of Sideman Road yesterday in central Bali.
Just a quick lunch on the front patio in the bright noon sun leaves me seeing in cutouts of glare and shadow. My takeout looks like its been photoshopped.
Tomorrow it’s supposed to snow a foot or more, but today the sun bleached air is hot and fierce, and the cloudless, autumn colors burn my retina.
The framing project has spread itself out over the surfaces of the house and the length of the weekend. The stack of picture glass on the dining room table is an elegant Mies Van Der Rohe building amongst the hovels of cardboard and the cheap McMansions of veneer frames.
Crossing the street to go for an early evening walk on the first ridge of the mountains, I stop to stare down at the freshly dead snake on the pavement. A cyclist pedals by, not noticing. The snake’s complete squashedness, makes me think it wasn’t a purely accident car tire that did it. But even as I want to feel more sad about malicious death, I step over him and head up hill for what ends up being a cheerful stroll.
We’re making a green chili, plus, there’s supposed to be frost this week, so although they’re so small, like lanterns for Lilliputians, late this afternoon, we pluck almost all the tomatillos- a little last goodbye to summer harvest.
The guys canned jam all day. Peach and elderberry. The perfectly lined up gem-colored jars of preserves are gorgeous, and they are appropriately super pleased with themselves.
Dill and zinnias in a vase on the new dining room table, lively against the gray day, make me sentimental for all the all the other little houses and apartments where I’ve lived and been sentimental on gray September days.
Dubious that I’m going to see anything I haven’t noticed before on the same streets I take everyday in this town, I go for a walk anyway, looking. A spotlight of sun frames a dull stretch of the alley behind the old newspaper building, and the flat, warm color teases me out of being such a blasé bore.
