Garnish

I live in a house with a single father and his three children. We have been friends for years. The oldest daughter is 15 and speaks good English and also likes to cook. As she was making the daily flower offerings with me the other afternoon, she was surprised to see I had picked some small orange "spikes" from some flowers in the garden as "filler" since there weren't a lot of flowers blooming that day. She commented that the Balinese never use this flower for the offerings since it is actually a garnish. "a garnish!?" "yes, to garnish the garden, not to pick"

I laughed. First because as an American I had heard but never used the word garnish in my life. And here I am in bali and a 15 year old is speaking English with me and knows the word garnish! And secondly, I never thought about the fact that you can garnish the garden! I  asked her how she knows that word and she said from her mother, also Balinese. I was impressed. Still, I don't think I would be one to use that word in a conversation, since it is so far from my lifestyle.

Then last night her father and she and I were sitting on the newly built foundation for the new porch, "bale", that was to arrive the following day by the carpenter. We were "feeling out" the new home of the bale, which had been a dream of a few years for him and I, each in our own life visions. I mentioned that when I had first spoken to him about the idea of the bale, I had imagined something very simple; 4 wooden posts, a raised platform and a tiled roof.  I asked him if that had also been his vision, even though we now found ourselves on a very elegant and even bombastic tiled raised foundation on which the wooden bale would sit.

"The bale is like cooking; it can just be steamed pumpkin, or it can be steamed pumpkin with some honey or spicy sauce on it as a garnish. This is the garnished version of a bale. It gives one a feeling of being raised a little higher than just daily existence." And I realized how my life until now has been very simple and down to earth. And part of the beauty of bali is that amongst that natural basic lifestyle, they "garnish" things in honor of a Higher Power. This bale is situated next to the family altar which is kind of like a "parent" on the compound, guarding over all and everything. The original idea of the bale for him was that it would be a place where I could sit and prepare the flower offerings in the afternoon, instead of sitting on the floor of the porch. That I could play the gamelon chime there. That I could meditate there. These are all activities that are considered "higher" than the day to day and deserve a suitable environment, even if it is just rolling out a piece of material on the porch before putting the chime there to play on, or taking a bamboo tray to place the banana leaves on while preparing the flower offerings so they do not touch the floor.

Today the carpenter brought the bale. I keep sitting here on the porch opposite it and looking at it trying to decide what I think about it. It is nothing like I imagined. But it is what is. And as I look at it I can sense the sensation of something "raised"….something higher than the 4 wooden posts I had imagined. It is Balinese. It has that excessive beauty to it sitting in the middle of the forest here. It is "garnish".