Today I have experienced the bi-polar duality of life’s emotions, and I have mixed feelings on the results. It started early – well, earlier than it has started since my alarm broke several weeks ago – when my friend knocked on my door around eight. We made plans the night before to go surf together one last time. What he did not know at the time was that this would be my last time on my surfboard as well, as I had plans of giving it to him when he dropped me off back at the hotel later in the day. Already I was excited about the idea of surfing, but anxious about having to catch that one last wave. I had watched with the same mixed emotions as my sister caught her last wave just a week before. The joy in riding the wave and the smile in her face was almost equally the opposite of that when she walked out of the water knowing that was it. I had not helped her at all on her last wave. I told her that she was on her own: from picking the wave to paddling for it, standing up, and riding it. I could not interfere. Surfing is spiritual to me.
My friend and I finally made it to Changgu, a mellow break that we had been talking about going to for weeks, but had never made it. He was not confident in his ability to surf over the rough black rocks that shaped the waves at Changgu. But, to his credit, he knew this was my last chance to surf. We were headed to his village the next morning to spend my last three days there with his family participating in the half-moon ceremony of their village. So we made the forty minute drive north along the coast and found the beach, sandy in itself, but containing large chunks of black rock sticking out at various points.
I could sense his nervousness, even before we began to paddle out, and with a crowd of about twenty five or thirty surfers at each peak, it was not going to be easy catching waves. Still with boldness he paddled, me keeping one eye on approaching waves and the other on him a few feet behind me. At one point he told me that he did not like the idea of going any deeper. We had only surfed the beach breaks of Kuta Beach and Legian, in less than six feet of water and no more than one hundred feet offshore. Now he was in around fifteen or twenty feet of water above the sharp black rocky bottom and nearly a quarter mile offshore. But I convinced him he could do it and, again, to his credit he continued out with me.
When the outside waves continued toppling to the inside, my friend decided he would stay there and play in the breakwater. I asked if it was OK for me to paddle out deeper, and he told me to go. “I will keep an eye on you,” I told him, feeling responsible for any harm that he might face. “Signal to me if you want to go in and we will leave.” As much as I wanted this day to be about me and my last session in Bali, I knew that it was about much more than that. Over the course of the last seven weeks, this man had become my best friend in Bali- a man I refer to as my Balinese brother. We have surfed many times together as I have helped him learn along the way, and this day was not just my last day to catch my waves. It was my last day to surf with my Balinese brother.
But I paddled outside and before the side-shore wind started blowing I had caught a dozen or so waves and had a great time. But I could not see my brother, so I caught a wave all the way to the inside and found him there waiting with a smile on his face. “Nice ride,” he said with a thumbs up. I asked him what he wanted to do, and he said he wanted to stay for another hour or so. Despite the mushy waves on the inside, he had managed to catch a good wave and I could tell that he was excited. To be honest, I was not the greatest surfer in Bali, but these waves were mellow enough and there were enough people learning to surf at Changgu this morning that I was one of the better surfers on the water. I remembered back to when I caught my first wave that did not close out, in Jacksonville nearly a year earlier, and what it felt like to ride the shoulder of the wave as it peeled toward the shore. I was proud and happy for my brother and this time stayed with him to catch waves on the inside.
After a half an hour or so we decided that the time had come to head back to Kuta. He had to work in a few hours, and I had a series of “lasts” to confront when we returned. There was a last massage, a last poolside sunbathing and reading, a last sunset on the beach, a last dinner with the hotel staff, and all of the “Farewells” that would accompany each “last.” So my brother paddled in, riding a wave to shore, and I sat and waited for my last wave in Bali. I caught what I thought would be the last wave, but it mushed out on me and left me feeling unsatisfied. So I paddled out further, knowing that my brother was on the beach watching, and hoping that a set would move through and that I would not lose my balance and fall, as I had a tendency to do when I got overly excited. Within a few minutes a set moved through, though choppy from the side-shore wind, and I hopped on. A left, as to be expected in Bali, that cleaned up as it moved toward the shore. There was nothing spectacular about it, except that it was my wave. Not only was it my last, but also nobody else had gone for it, leaving me to enjoy the ride without competition. So I dropped down the face and cut back up, then repeated, slowly with my 7’8” “fun gun.” It was not made for ripping. Rather, it was made for waves like these.
When I reached the shore I looked back and smiled. The waves of Bali had been good to me, and even better for me. For all of the stress that surfing relieved back home, my sessions on the water here were all the more cleansing, even if they were less than spectacular for most people who travel half the world to surf. I realized in my time here that surfing was simply the thread that held my entire journey together. It was never the garment itself. There was so much more to my time in Bali than surfing. But whenever I needed an escape, or felt like I needed to clear my head, the water was always waiting for me.
We ate lunch at a roadside vendor and made it back to the hotel after sitting in traffic for about an hour in the midday sun. When we pulled up to the hotel parking lot my brother unstrapped the bungee that held our boards in the surf rack on the side of his motorbike and began to pull my board out. “Here, I need to show you something about your board,” I said as I took a fin key from my board shorts and moved toward the fins. He looked at me strangely as I handed him the key and told him that I was giving him my board. “It is yours to do what you need with. Keep it an learn on it, or if times get tough, sell it and take care of your family.” My brother had been learning on a much shorter, much thinner board and was bouncing all over the place as he attempted to ride waves. My board gave him more stability and he had grown tremendously in our time together when he rode it. I contacted Jim, my shaper, and asked him his thoughts on me giving the board to my friend. “It will earn you big time karma,” he said in email. “I think it is a great idea. You will need a new board anyway to reflect on what you have learned this summer.” He was right about everything but the karma. I could care less. I just wanted my brother to have something that would make his life better, even if only on the water. I knew that he was close to having surfing be for him what it was for me: a way to connect to something way beyond myself, to cleanse me of any thoughts or attitudes that needed to be removed, and to find myself in a small place where I belong despite the madness of such a large world. Perhaps this would get him there.
I headed to the pool to read for a few hours before heading out to the beach for one last beach sunset. Though I still had three days in Bali, I would be in the jungle for each of them. I had to say goodbye to the beach, to the ocean, and more importantly to my friends at Jimmy’s. So I made my way down, stopping for a massage at a place I had found when my sister was visiting, saying farewell to those friends and preparing myself for what I knew would be a difficult departure.
The sunset was again no more spectacular than any other since I had been in Bali. The sun was full and bright about ten minutes before setting, but ducked behind thick clouds in the last moments. But this time it was a metaphor for my journey to Bali. My time was quickly approaching, but there was still something to be done before I had to go. I drank a beer and cheered to my friends working at Jimmy’s. I had countless beers in countless days there, and it was only fitting to share one last one with people who had been so kind to me despite the fact I never spent a tremendous amount of money on them. It was the loyalty I had for them, and they for me, that helped us become friends. I was there every evening I was in Kuta, nearly my entire stay in Bali, and they were always just as kind and welcoming to me as they were on my first day.
After the sun set, I paid my tab for the last time and shook hands with friends I hoped to see again one day. Unlike other friends in Bali, I had no contact information for them. I only knew to go to the beer stand in front of the big sea turtle as soon as I got back in to Bali, whenever that might be. And I hoped that my reunion would happen sooner than later. But in saying farewell to these friends, we had to just leave it as “I will see you when I see you.”
Knowing that it is better to walk away without looking back, I shuffled my feet slowly as I kicked the sand from my sandals as I had done every day before in leaving. And as tempted as I was to turn and go back, there was still one more thing I had to do this night. I had paid the hotel restaurant to prepare a meal for the eighteen staff members who worked so hard to keep the hotel looking amazing. Every staff member knew my name, though I had no idea what most of theirs were, and they always greeted me with a smile and a hello. When I had been gone for a week at a time, such as when I was in the jungle or with my sister, they noticed when I returned and greeted me even more warmly. I felt as though this was my home in Bali. And, although they were also getting paid for their hospitality, I knew that they treated me this way because that is who they were. Each of them worked so hard to make the hotel so incredibly charming, I felt that the least that I could do would be to treat them to a nice Balinese dinner and let them feel as special as they had made me feel.
So I arrived at the restaurant at seven and helped set up the tables and bring out the food. I was told time and again to sit down and to serve myself. But that is not who I am. Reluctantly, but with smiles the entire time, the staff let me help setup but did require me to fill my plate first.
Over the next hour or so all of the staff and any family members they had brought shared a traditional Balinese meal that was like none that I had eaten yet. There was so much food that we all ate until we could eat no more, made doggy bags for those staff who had to eat in shifts because they were on the clock, and still had enough to share with a kind Italian couple who wanted to pay for their portions but were kindly denied by me and the staff. There was very little conversation I could have with the staff over the dinner, as my Indonesian was nonexistent and their English was limited to “hello” and “thank you very much.” However, as I have learned in all of my travels, two things that surpass any form of verbal communication are smiles and laughter. And so we communicated without words throughout the meal by sharing smiles and laughter and enjoying my last night with them.
I had the task of packing for home when dinner was over, so I put it off as long as I could. But when conversation with the Italian couple ended and I was tired of reading my book, I had to do the inevitable. Morning checkout would come early, and I wanted to be prepared to leave for Singaraja without dragging my brother behind on time. So I packed my bags, slowly, feeling more and more anxious with every item I packed. Without a board to go in my surfboard bag, I instead stuffed gifts and linens I had bought for friends and family. Everything about packing made me feel sad, and while I knew this was a natural feeling for the moment, it was not right.
So I finished quickly and made my way to my neighborhood restaurant. My brother was working, as were a handful of other people that had become my friends over the last seven weeks. I sat down and talked with them as a local played the same cover songs as he had the previous night, and the night before that, and so forth for the previous seven weeks I had been there. But all of the other faces in the restaurant were new. No one else would know what I knew about the repetition. But no one else would know what I knew of Anggi or Ketut or Mira or any of the other staff there that I had come to know well. No one else would know how hard they have worked for what little pay to make sure that everyone enjoyed their holiday escape from their own personal realities. At least not unless someone decided to do as I had, and to learn of these people and their lives, and to make their lives as much a part of the staff’s lives as anyone else. Some of the best people that the world will never know work in that restaurant. And as I walked out of the front door for the last time, I hoped that the world would take the time to get to know them, for the world’s sake. I had become a better person because of the people there, particularly my brother, and I only imagined what the world could be if more people knew of my friends there.
Now I sit in my hotel, looking down over the garden I had almost come to take for granted in my weeks here, and I am not so sad anymore. I realize the finality of this trip means that I can share with others what I have learned, can make the changes in my life that I know I must make, and can use these changes to help me live up to the promises I have made to my friends to come back one day to see them again. I hope that day is sooner than later and, though I am still on their island at the moment, I am happy to think that I am many things in life, but a liar is not one that I am known to be. And so as the new day officially begins and the sound of the bars in the neighborhood drifts above the talking among the night staff down below me, I take this time to fall asleep and renew myself, knowing that when I wake I again have the chance to live, and now…
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