Behind Bali's Postcard

I smelled the island before I saw it. Dust. Exhaust fumes. Burning plastic. Then green. Light. Heat. Your eyes are not enough. Here, the skin decides.

You can love the postcard. Rice terraces. Temples. Sunset. You can carry the photo home and believe you understood it.

But when you go behind the facade, you find no secret. Only what was always there. Dirt. Noise. Tenderness. Exhaustion. Contradictions that don’t ask permission.

The core of Bali is spiritual. Honesty, openheartedness. The ceremonies are facade to me and only real for the Balinese. They happen without your gaze. Daily. Stubborn. Non-negotiable. That is the weight of the island.

But spirituality is a magnet that attracts its opposite. The island invites you to accept its facade as truth. It opens you into a culture that is not yours and leaves you again when you board your flight. It gives you nothing to take home. The gods and spirits stay there. You visit them, they talk to you and laugh at you because you don’t understand them.

The people who come here are not looking for themselves. They want more self than there is. They are looking for something that doesn’t exist. If you want to find yourself, you can do that at home. None of the climate activists need to get on a plane for that.

The Balinese laugh. They sell. They pray. They move on. Some look at you briefly as if you were wind. They withstand what washes up on their shore and are still slowly eaten by it.

Bali took from me the illusion of correctness. That there is a place that heals you. That a culture older than yours owes you something. That beauty means it’s true.

Bali doesn’t talk pretty. Bali shows. Open. Ugly. Beautiful at the same time.

How much longer will the scenery of prayer hold. How much longer will the forced smile hold, the one that is not meant for you but is an expression of pointless subservience that will hopefully be seen through.