writing for self-discovery

When I say kite, what comes to mind? Something diamond shaped with a ribboned tail? I can count on one finger the number of times I saw a kite in the sky where I grew up.  The marshy bog of northern Minnesota wasn’t a kite culture. Maybe that’s why they hold such a fascination for me.

Then I came to Bali and watched graceful shapes dip and swoop in the sky, sometimes fifteen or twenty at a time during the windy months of winter. It was magical! And when I heard that the oceanside town of Sanur had an annual kite festival, I vowed to go.

But I could never quite pinpoint the when of that event. It’s like most things here. Somebody tells somebody else and when word finally gets to me it’s happening in ten minutes, or it just happened ten minutes ago.

So when a friend sent a message to my phone yesterday that the kite festival would be at Mertasari Beach in Sanur today, I was thrilled to have that much advance notice.

This morning we set out. I put my visiting friend on the back of Ketut’s motorbike because I wanted her to remain alive, and I rode with Wayan since I can handle a little more speed and a lot more near death trauma. As we approached Sanur, traffic came to a dead stop for no apparent reason.  There was speculation in the crowd, maybe Obama is passing through, maybe the British soccer team…logical assumptions like that. After a pause of about seven minutes, a whistle blew from somewhere and off we went.

There were the usual interesting t-shirts. I snapped this one and didn’t notice the uniformed Polisi behind him until I downloaded the photo at home. Lucky accident.

Today, as always, our motorbike excursion was a visual feast. The entrance to an elegant, upscale jewelry showroom dazzled with the intricately sculpted figures at the entrance.

And the assortment of statues that grace the major intersections, continue to amaze me. This grand scale example was finished earlier this year.

Never to be excluded are the edibles being transported from point A to point B by motorbike.

After about forty minutes on the road, we reached our destination, parked, and stepped through the looking glass, or the wardrobe, or fell down the rabbit hole…into a different world.

We arrived in the middle of a kite competition. Kites so large they required whole teams of men to carry them were advancing toward an open area. Judging officials were housed in covered canopies announcing the events over booming loudspeakers. And when the long-tails leapt into the sky it was just about the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen.

The glorious, undulating ribbons hung in the air, operated by teams of five, six, seven, or more men, all straining to hold their prize in place against the strong ocean breezes. When the judges called the winner, the teams efficiently pulled the great birds out of the air to make room for the next category.

Overhead was empty blue, then, as though someone opened Pandora’s Box, it was full!

The skill to keep all those kites airborne, aloft in one place without tangling with the strings of the others surrounding them, is an expertise practiced from the time these guys are toddlers. They look like specks in the sky but don’t be fooled. They’re massive.Some had heads, ornate, crowned beasts with flowing scarves and fangs worthy of a child’s worst nightmare.

When our senses had been stimulated to overload and sunstroke was an impending threat, we left the extravaganza behind and started home. We’d made it about half a block and once again traffic came to a standstill. Nancy stood up on the motorbike to get a better view. What is Ketut thinking?! I wondered as I captured the moment digitally.After a generous length of time, someone thought of a shortcut. Engines roared into action and a teeming throng of motorbikes turned as one entity into a parking area that wound around the obstruction and spit us out on the other side of it.

Then it was clear sailing…past the blue Visnu….

down the frightfully narrow path…

and home again, home again, to Ubud, jiggety-jig. How nice to get a timely tip. It was a spectacular day!