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Creativity: Bali Style
This is August and this is Bali. Everywhere people are pounding, hammering, building and creating.
The sound of children's voices in their anguish and their surprise as they play, laugh and discover mingles with the noise of women carrying gravel down a narrow road—a back-breaking, never-ending job.
The women scoop rocks up in a pile, then balance them in pans on their heads. They carry the rocks from the pile to the road, dump their weight, and walk back to the pile. Again.
The average age of the female rock carriers is 17. They have no education. They make $1.50 a day working from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Rice is cheap.
Trucks hurtle past, loaded with bags of cement, lumber, sand, gravel, rocks, bricks and people. A rooster standing on an old dirt wall scratches his head. He flaps his wings and moves along the top of the wall.
The women shovel stones and sift out fine soil through wire screens, developing part of Ubud, Bali. Development has taken hold like a very hungry animal and people quickly elevate diverse economic opportunities to extreme simplicity.
Balinese painters create on canvas. Wood carvers chip at unexplored rough textures which once grew in the forest.
A Balinese wife weaves a simple-yet-intricate balance of reeds into an offering which will be filled with flowers and rice in the center. She will light incense and place her daily rituals in the corners of her family compound yard to prevent demons and to appease the gods.
These are the daily acts of creativity in Bali. Everyday is a celebration.
Tim Leonard, a Vietnam veteran, is a graduate of the University of Oregon. A poet, writer and digital photographer, his work has been published by CREATIVENUE.COM, POETRY SUPERHIGHWAY, STIRRING (V2EI), EBOOKSONTHE.NET, and JOURNAL E. An article and image on El Morro, N.M., will be published by KIDS HIGHWAY.COM in December. Mr. Leonard has extensive international hotel management experience.
Another of Tim's I.D. Theory articles: "Going North from Santa Fe"
Be sure to visit Tim's website.
E-mail Tim: tmleonard@earthlink.net