Bali 4 - Fairyland (Deconstructed)

I like to breath in the countryside of a new land when I travel. It is as though I don't quite understand what I'm seeing until I've had a sense of both the natural world of this new place and its cultivated agricultural sister. I walked with my mother in Spain in the mountain villages of Andulucia - sweet air filled with almonds groves and honey scented yellow broome flowers. In Ireland there is all that open space of turf bogs, fields of grazing sheep, interspersed with stone walls, farms with white cottages and villages with pubs called Finnegan's.

While we've stayed in various flavours of urban settings here in Bali, we've also been exposed a little bit to the countryside. Yesterday there was a long visit to the jungly wilds of a botanical garden, which felt like walking through a Rousseau painting - big leafed plants flopping about, orchids, palms, bamboo, bird of paradise flowers and many plants I only know in their potted versions. The most extensive exposure has been a marvelous day spent bicycling with a guide through 32 kms of rice fields and villages.


I was not at all prepared for the Balinese rural countryside. As we bicycled through the main road of villages, I was amazed to see high walls on either side of the road. Not waist high walls to keep livestock in, but two metre high walls that you can't see over! A number of generations of family live together in these compounds, and then the compounds are strung together with no gaps between the walls. Sometimes there is a shop selling noodles and pop bottles full of petrol which opens onto the road and there are dogs and chickens and children wandering around, but the walls still dominate. Inside the compounds are a number of buildings, some with a roof but no walls and a temple with walls but no roof. The temples have many tall square towers. These are the compound shrines. Sometimes they have statues of gods or demons in front of them, though often there is nothing (to my eye) inside. They always have fresh offerings with flowers and incense. The outside of the shrines are usually wrapped in gold or black and white checked cloths. Over top are ornate, brightly coloured parasols. So what you see cycling down the road are high walls with towers wrapped in pretty cloth and umbrellas sticking up. Then, because it is the holiday Galungan, the street is decorated with (as mentioned in Bali 2), miles of bent bamboo poles decorated with punk haircuts of coloured rattan. And, because of that same holiday, this is an auspicious time to get married. There were many compound entranceways done up to the nines with loops and frills and archways made of rattan and woven palm leaves.








In between the villages are the rice fields - mostly bright bright green and stepped into different levels. I always thought rice terraces were to do with maximising the land on hillsides. These fields at different heights are to do with an elaborate irrigation system where the water flows from field to field. Every field has a shrine. Scattered about between the rice paddies and in front of the walls are beautiful flowers. I saw a giant poinsettia plant (with no Christmas decorations near it)!


What did all this Rousseau jungle, ornate whimsical decorations, wrapped towers, stone dragons and stepped rice fields look like to me? Fairyland. It seemed like a magical other world. Exotic. Mysterious. Eastern. Oriental. Other.

So let's just deconstruct that a bit. (Some of you will know that I'm starting graduate school in the fall - just getting the post modern, critical theory engine revved up here.) All right, I know that real people with complex lives that include television and motorcycles live in those villages; that working in rice fields is a back breaking way to scrap out a meagre existence; that tourism with all its ills offers an economically better lifestyle. So where do my images of fairyland come from? I was read many fairytales as a child - Hans Andersen and the Brothers Grimm as well as tales from around the world - Chinese, Russian, Indian and other stories. Many of the illustrations in these books were by an Irishman named Harry Clarke. Lush, patterned images with swirls and curls and saturated colours. He was very influenced by Art Nouveau, Art Deco and the French Symbolist movement. (Thank you Wikipedia!) All those Europeans making the East exotic. "Orientalism" as Edward Said called it (though he was referring to Western eyes looking at the Middle East, not south east Asia, nonetheless, the term still stands here.)

Middle age is an odd time. I see my exotic fairyland and at the same time I see my deconstructed Orientalism. Do I see truth? I'm guessing it is all just layers of seeing.


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Location:Ubud, Bali