On my way back from Sidemen to Canggu, the traffic barely moved. Otherwise empty rural roadsides were packed, bike to bike, bumper to bumper. I regretted taking a taxi as I watched the motorbikes needle through the small openings in traffic. The driver, Gede, and I sat in the traffic just outside of Sidemen’s main street for twenty minutes, which quickly turned into forty. From my seat, I could see Gede’s coffee-brown skin and Balinese features in the front mirror.
“What is happening?” I asked him, seeing his black almond-shaped eyes meet mine in the reflection.
The traffic was frustrating because I knew in Bali a traffic jam could mean hours of stagnation. I felt my entire body beginning to resist the present moment, feeling stuck and unable to keep to my New York City pace of hurrying for no reason.
Little did I know, that there are always things happening in the background, wheels turning, and tiny parts of the machine of life revolving behind the scenes so the hand of the hour clock can continue to tick forward–even if it does so painstakingly slow as it’s being watched. Even if it all feels completely stuck in the moment, the only lesson is patience. Still a reluctant student of this teacher, I wanted to move, I wanted to move now.
“It is big ceremony,” Gede replied.
We continued to inch forward on the thin jungle-lined street. As the minutes passed, I watched women in white sarongs and kebayas, with a single splash of orange in their selendangs pass me by. They held colourful offerings in their hands, and in piles atop their heads. Men walked behind the vehicles dressed in all white too, with ikat-printed folded hats atop their heads. With their partners’ hands occupied, the men held children’s hands, or babies in their arms. My frustration continued to grow as the minutes turned into an hour, until I caught sight of smoke seeping in through the jungle trees.
“Big big ceremony,” Gede repeated as more villagers passed us. “Kre-ma-si,” he said with careful reverence.
I knew kremasi meant cremation from the rough Indonesian I had picked up over the last weeks, most words ending in -asi often correlated to the english ending of -tion. I felt my body pause, taking in what Gede shared, and then my neck arched around the seat. For the first time, I looked outside without frustration.
A few days earlier at a small temple ceremony, I learned there would be a much bigger ceremony at the larger temple in the area in honour of parents and grandparents. I did not know that meant there would be a cremation of those recently deceased. I looked in the direction the driver pointed, and saw large embers of dancing orange flames packed through the large dark green leaves. The frustration in my body burnt away, and wonder took over as the flashes from the fiery red pyres glowed.
I opened the door of the car, which I knew would not go anywhere for the time being. I knew I was not dressed properly for a Balinese ceremony, but in the mind of honouring the traditions of the island I knew I could still look on from afar. So I wandered towards the pyres, the locals paying no mind to me—once again the solo foreigner in a rural holy ceremony. My skin had darkened over the last few months, and my new pecan-toned skin aided in my accidental camouflage. I walked to the outside of the ring of jungle vegetation, inside was a circle surrounded by leafy trees where people gathered in mass. I saw people of all ages crowded in the otherwise large open space, this natural jungle plaza flooded as if the whole region had appeared from a variety of neighbouring villages.
In the centre, the pyres piled high, and massive bonfires burned in the open space of land hidden in the midst of the jungle. I saw no bodies, only branches of carefully laid out wood side by side. I knew grandparents’ and parents’ bodies were returning into the Earth, and the cycle of life expedited before my eyes. Smoke rising upwards into the air, and blackened ash gathering as sediment as it fell to the soil.
The smell of sandalwood incense briefly masked the scent of the departure from this life’s barriers—the skin that holds it and the body which temporarily nourishes our formless souls. Entranced by the embers, I simply stared for a few moments. Instead of finding the unfamiliar situation before me as frightening or unrefined, I deeply felt the edges of my own body. I pondered how one day it would gradually become one with the soil, eaten by maggots and worms. In that moment, I understood the purpose of cremation, an honourable and instant departure. A dignified and quickened goodbye, allowing the elements of earth, fire, wind, water and air to alchemize so the body may return to formlessness as instantly as the spirit does in that moment of death.
Remembering the car, Gede waiting, and my own soul’s journey in time and space, I silently and respectfully bowed my head towards the pyres. With deep reverence, but also with a request of forgiveness as I had sent frustration and anger into the surrounding air because of the traffic jam, unintentionally urging the bodies to burn faster, and to burn before their time.
Humbled and with hopes of being forgiven by these wise and departed souls, I made my way back through the ring of greenery—back to the road—back to my life exactly where it should be in that moment, not knowing where its final resting place would be or the journey in between.
Gede was parked right in front of the opening in the vegetation. He waved at me smiling through the window and called, “big kremasi, big celebrasi.”
I nodded, still silenced by the iridescent glow making its way through the branches and leaves behind me, reminding me that sometimes there is a reason we must slow down—a moment to see and feel our bodies in this finite life in which we often choose to hurry instead of live. Every moment of life happens in divine timing, we must just release the frustration and let go of the resistance, with it the stagnation will slow and burn away if we let it.
We moved forward in moments, the traffic cleared and there was no more waiting, only living for the time which was allotted and left.
