26 September, 2008—Petulu, Bali—
Like everything else here at Puri Asri, this restaurant kitchen is in ruins—. The huge broken-down wall refrigerator is stuffed with stacks of old newspapers, the cabinet doors are propped with tilted chairs to keep them from swinging wide open, and the one functioning burner on an otherwise cold stove can only be lit by matches whose tips are perpetually soft and damp after yet another dusk to dawn rainstorm. I got up once just after midnight to check the things I'd left out overnight on my porch—but there was no wind, none at all, the rain was falling straight down, a plummeting deluge, and so nothing under the eaves was flooded. Now, this morning before first light, there are still sporadic sixty-second squalls passing through—but for the most part it's just that incessant dripping in the garden, just wet leaf talk. On my way to the kitchen to boil my tea water, I almost stumble over the gardener, Ketut, who is just sitting in the dark in the restaurant, all alone and silent, plopped down wide awake next to a heap of sleeping cats. The restaurant itself is half flooded—for the roof has sprung dozens of leaks. There are leaks, Ketut confirms dejectedly, in every roof except for my own—whose tiles are far more practical than that romantic thatch which tourists prefer but which needs the periodic repair which it is no longer getting now that the business of marketing tropical romance in 10-day packages has dropped off so precipitously. “Even your room?” I ask. Ketut nods and yawns—puzzled no doubt at my willingness to leave my enviably dry bed so long before sunrise. Whatever will become of this poor place? And where will each of us end up when it finally falls apart completely? Each year I stay here I feel may be my last before all vanishes back into jungle or, more likely, before it’s all squeezed into some ill-conceived next century of cinderblock and crude advertising. Neither of us, however, seems particularly frightened of the future this morning—merely mesmerized by the steady drip drip drip of the disintegrating present. Ketut remains in the darkness where I leave him; as I retrace my steps down a slippery garden path littered with wet leaves which he will dutifully attempt to sweep up, later, in between violent cloudbursts.
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