Balinese physics 101

Eka was busy preparing for her 9^th grade physics exam. I asked her what it was on. "Effort and energy". Hmm…I never studied physics in school back in the 60's, for some reason, and I thought that was pretty interesting learning about effort and energy. I asked her what she meant by it. She stood opposite the wall and pressed it with her outstretched arms, as if she was trying to move it. "We need to calculate how much effort and energy is needed to get the desired result. The distance, the height etc. it is all kinds of calculations. I don't like it"

I laughed. "I think you Balinese have your own natural internal physics that has nothing to do with all of those calculations from the western mind! ". She asked me what I meant. I explained to her that I had just come from the sea where I watched an old woman, carrying a heavy basket of goods on her head, cross the river to get to the other side. I myself was too cautious to cross it since I couldn't tell how deep it was. But the woman stood erect, parallel to the river and lowered her right foot slowly into the river until it touched ground. Only then did she move the rest of her weight on her other foot into the water to cross. I had seen the women go down the temple steps this was too and wondered why. Possibly because they were wearing a sarong and there wasn't a lot of width to put a leg forward, so they go down the steps sideways. But now I understood. It was all about balance. At the temple they were walking with large offering boxes balanced on their heads, without any hands holding it. This allowed them to stand erect and lower themselves onto the next step without jeopardizing losing their balance. The old woman kept the basket on her head, all of her weight still on the leg that was on dry ground, and only lowered her other leg. This was physics! What effort and energy is necessary to safely enter the river. As a westerner I would have put my right foot forward and possibly, losing my balance as I grappled to touch ground,  and falling head first, along with the basket, into the water!

From the first time I saw the Balinese doing things, there seemed to be something different about the way they used their body. They seemed to walk very erect, and that everything was always in balance. Their never seemed to be any visible strenuous effort being made when they lifted or chopped or moved things. Firstly, they usually did things together with others, so the weight was divided among them. Secondly, they would use a minimum of movements to get maximum results, just by learning the inner sense of what they were going to cut, carry, chop or move.

If it is a coconut, they know the structure of it and with one fell swoop of their knife, held just so in their hand and hit at just the right angle, the coconut beautifully splits in half, or whatever. Even the other day when I heard the chain saw going to cut down a coconut tree next door, it was only for a few minutes. Then I watched as the very tall tree fell to the ground exactly between two banana plants, without touching any of multitude of trees in the forest. How?! When I asked my friend, he said that the worker knows the exact angle to cut so it will fall exactly where he planned. But it is even in the way they light the incense sticks! Of course when you have been doing the same activity daily for years, you can develop a good system, but I had to laugh as I can use up a half a box of matches just trying to light the 18 incense sticks I need each day, as they break or extinguish or whatever. But when I asked Eka how to light them, she just took 3 matches all at once, struck them once on the box and quickly lit the sticks without a problem, holding them downwards so the flame grew stronger instead of snuffing out. An American friend of mine observed," they don’t seem to be too big on time and numbers!" With an inherent inner sense of physics, possibly as a result of being an agricultural people and knowing the laws of Nature from their real life experiences, calculating physics is more of a challenge then just using their natural instincts.

Watching my Balinese friend in the garden is always a pleasure. With full attention on what he is doing and the desired result, he makes one swift movement of his knife to remove branches and shape trees. It looks so easy and simple, until I observe a westerner doing the same thing but with much more effort and much more energy. This could also give the erroneous impression that the Balinese are lazy, yet in fact they simply know how to conserve their energy and make minimal effort.    Balinese physics  101.

Kapok

I was walking down to the sea on a new path one day, and found tens of big seed pods with a kind of cotton inside them. They had fallen off the tall old tree from the stormy winds the night before and were now strewn on the road. Something about them grabbed my curiosity. What is this and what do you do with it? I suddenly remembered that a year ago I had walked down a different path and was surprised to see big cotton swabs hanging from a tree. I had picked one of them and tried spinning it with my fingers into thread but it tore easily. Now I realized that what I was looking at were those same cotton pods but that they had not burst open up into cotton swabs. I could not just walk by and leave them all there, like orphans. God created this for some reason and I was out to discover it. It just seemed sacrilegious to leave them all lying there with no more potential. So I collected them all and brought them back home.

I asked the locals what it is and what you do with it. They said it is called Kapok and that the Balinese used to make pillows and mattresses from it. I tried searching on the internet about its' qualities and how it is milled, but couldn't find any answers. What interested me was touching the soft cotton inside. Some of the pods were cracked and the cotton began to peek out. I assumed that each of them would eventually open up and become the big soft cotton swabs I had seen previously. But as the days passed they just stayed a pod.

I decided to force them open. As I began to crack them, it was like letting the genie out of the lantern! The cotton was so happy it began to burst forth, and looked like kernels of corn on a cob. I began the slow work of removing all of the tens of round black seeds that resembled sweet pea seeds, from the kernels. I then tugged at each kernel to allow the cotton to open up. It was laborious, but I just couldn't let them not become what they had been created to be. The kids began to help me slowly slowly pulling the cotton hairs to their extreme.

A few days later, once the rain had stopped and the road was sunny and dry, I again passed by the tree, and all the smashed pods that the motorbikes had driven over, were now puffy cotton swabs, and no one was sitting there opening up each kernel either! That was a great discovery.The sun itself would open up the cotton kernels. So now we entered phase two; on sunny days, opening up the pods and allowing the cotton to burst forth. But we still had all those seeds to take out, which the kids and I continued to do. Excitement was in the air, and each day they wanted to go and collect more and more pods. So what started off as tens now reached the hundred mark and there were bucketfuls and bagfuls in all different stages of openness that needed to be put out in the sun each day and brought in again when the monsoon rains suddenly would come pouring down.

Everyone wanted to know what I was going to do with all of this. I had no idea. All I knew was that I couldn't let it go to waste and that I loved touching the soft fiber and marveling at the miracle of nature that created such a thing for us to use. We tried making paper from it, beating the fibers with stones and mixing it with water and putting it on a piece of guaze on  badminton rackets as our makeshift screen., But once it dried it was just cotton and not beautiful Japanese paper, as I had hoped it would be. Someone else suggested that the seeds could be used to make a dye, so we began collecting them too. Some of them rolled off into the rain and to my delight had sprouted the following morning from the rain. I joyfully showed the kids how sprouts are grown. What I didn't realize was that each of those sprouts would soon turn into a plant and then a tree! Only when my friend commented on all of the kapok tree plants that are in the garden where we were sitting the week before did I realize what was happening. I apologized for scattering the seeds all over the garden unintentionally as we worked, but he just laughed and said he will weed it all one day soon, no problem.

The inventions and discoveries continued from week to week. Each time there were a few rainy  days we would take out the big bags of cotton in different stages and begin to mill it on the porch as a rainy day activity. Our faces and clothes and hair and house were filled with wisps of it, but we were having fun. Each time someone would invent a new way of improving the process. One of the inventions was to put the cotton swabs on a badminton racket and shake it so the seeds would fall through the net instead of having to pull each one out. That soon turned into an actual milling process of rubbing the net with a broken piece of pottery while it pressed down on a pile of cotton with seeds, and amazingly enough, huge billows of cotton began to burst forth from the net, allowing the full blossoming of each kernel in an instant, while the seeds were left behind.

I kept trying to figure out how we could use the natural process of nature to do the work instead of us. I was sure that was how it was meant to be. So I started putting the cotton swabs in the midday sun and sure enough, after an hour or so the top layers of cotton were so soft and billowing, without any extra work on our part. Now we had big billows, but still with bits and pieces of seeds and debris in it. After inventing a new way of not being totally covered with the wisps of cotton while removing the seeds, I found peace and pleasure in the slow process of taking each seed out. Just the contrast of the soft wisps of cotton where a black seed was secretly hiding gave me great pleasure. Mushing my hands in a bag of cotton that seemed clean of debris and seeds, only to discover there were many still inside, I tried to figure out the meaning of it all. Why did God put these black seeds in each kernel of cotton? And only by going through again and again, very thoroughly could I discover the "needles in the haystack" and remove each one. As I did so, I observed that the actual act of pulling the seed out of the kernel of cotton was what pulled the cotton to open up! If that seed was not there and connected to the wisps of fiber, then there would be no incentive to pull at each and every kernel.

It made me realize how in everything that happens to me in life, that might seem a little "black" and "hard" (like the seeds) the full potential of that "life lesson" is in removing the "seed" which in turn allows the full blossoming of the lesson. I just thought I was removing the seeds from the cotton, I didn't realize at first that by doing so I was actually opening up the cotton to its' greatest potential.

The next stage is to fill a big pillow with the cotton, that will have all the vibrations and good energy of our hard work and will hopefully be a comfort to whoever rests on it…and a nice memory of our discoveries.   

Ketut Bayu

He was my friend. We had met on the beach one day while I was hooping last year. He watched me and within ten minutes he had learned everything that took me 2 years to learn, and with ease. Ever since then we would say hi in passing. One day when some of the kids and I were trying to catch a crab in the little stream by the house, he suddenly appeared, jumped right in and quickly gave them one. He was definitely my hero. Without many words but with a confidence and ease he could do everything. I started to notice him more and more around our road and it turned out that he had moved from the crowded village over to our forest area and was now our neighbor. He always had a smile and said hello in passing each time.

The kids I was living with were not used to making friends here, and pretty much played with themselves or their cousins. For some reason they even began a "war" with the neighbors kids, including him, and were busy throwing stones and calling names. Even our dog got a kick out of barking at him and trying to snap at him every day as he passed. But it didn't bother Ketut Bayu, he just continued to smile and calmly walk by. For some reason he stood out from all the other children, not only because the children called him by his two names instead of the usual one, but also because he seemed at one with the world and above any trivialities. And for some reason whenever he did go by the kids all called out his name in excitement.

I think it began with him stopping by one day as we were sitting out on the porch drawing. Without a word, he joined us. It turned out he was a great artist in addition to all of his other talents. That immediately won the kids over. But he just smiled, and continued to draw complicated architectural designs with great perspective. He enjoyed the attention just as much as he enjoyed blending in with everyone else. Then he began to come over every day and either draw with us, or play with the 5 year old boy.  But after a week or two he and the 7 year old girl sat and worked on a drawing together. It was a treat to see them talking quietly together and creating one picture.

It was a perfect match. She always behaved like a priestess or princess, connected to higher spiritual worlds and could be mature beyond her age. She was my best friend. The fact that she was 7 years old usually didn't make much difference. He looked and acted like a prince. He seemed so worldly. No matter what was needed, he could perform it, without much ado; making perfect offering baskets, preparing a meal with me, making spicy sambal, climbing a wall to reach the flowers on the tip of the tree branch, fix the broken bicycle, dance, draw anything we wanted, mimic everyone and everything, sing songs in English, snorkel out in the deep water, spontaneously find some branches on shore and make a clothes line to dry his bathing suit after swimming while we ate our picnic… the list goes on.

I enjoyed watching them giggling and being silly together. But the main focus of ketut bayu was that any wish taniya had, he immediately actualized it. Suddenly her princess nature and his princely nature had a reason to be. He seemed to have no needs or desires of his own. Just whatever would make her happy. One day, when she was being rebellious with her 15 year old sister and refusing to come inside in spite of the pouring rain, he quietly walked over to her and within minutes she joined him and calmed down. He seemed to know what made her tick, and she could be herself in all of her glory knowing that someone was there for her at every moment. He could casually place his arm around her, without any of the hesitancy of a typical 12 year old with his first girlfriend, as if it was the most natural act.

He would come home from school every day and come over, as if he had never been away. Her endless creative ideas and his ability to join in with every whim, whether it was karaoke and dancing to a cd or her setting up a low table outside for them to have a meal on since he had just folded an origami flower for her, which she placed in a vase to decorate their table, it was always done with laughter and fun. When they played badminton together it was one big carnival of giggles, imitations, improvisations and pleasure. The game was just the backdrop for their togetherness.

One day she went to visit her cousin instead of coming home from school. Ketut bayu simply waited by the house for a few hours until she returned, silently busying himself with whatever. But then came the day when he didn't come over. Taniya kept asking "Where is ketut bayu?" It was nice to see she remained calm but desired his company. She rode over to his house a few times to see if he was home yet, but each time the reply was no. When he finally did come home he told her that he can't come over today. I was devastated. I didn't sleep all night, worrying that possibly his parents had decided that their 12 year old son should not be spending all of his free time with a little 7 year old girl, and that he needs to be with boys his age, or perhaps even worse, that they disapprove of the family or whatever and forbid him to come over anymore. But the following day, there he was like always, straight from school, and I realized my worries were my own imagination and that everything was fine.

As me and the 15 year old watched day by day these two kids having such a wonderful time together, we began to be jealous. Why don't we have someone like him too?! Whenever we went for a walk, he always waited for her if she was slower on the bicycle, or in the rear. What would have been crisis situations demanding everyone to revolve around her needs, suddenly turned into a joyful caring and pleasure to be in her company, no matter what. When she was too tired to walk back from the sea, he happily offered that she sit on the bicycle seat and he will ride standing up the whole way with her. Today he suggested that he take her on the bicycle again, so she won't have to peddle back later when she is tired.

 We all want a Ketut Bayu in our life. But for the time being it's nice to know that fairy tales can really happen.