Category Archives: Shoreline Poetics

Other Side of the Ridge

Up beyond the lakes of Bali—especially Beratan—there is a ridge line where you can look back down upon the lakes, or keep going down from there on the other side to the ocean on the north side beyond. It’s like the lip at the top of a crater. And here, on the north side of the ridge, there is water that still flows; from where exactly, I don’t know—on first glance it seems higher than the lake below. But it flows down none the less, through the narrow valleys in little rivulets and waterfalls. People use it to irrigate hydrangeas—they’re also growing bananas, coffee, pineapples, bamboo. And further down—on the slightly wider, flatter lands—they’re growing rice: the Subak system here, or so I’m told, too. 

One island organism.

Grafted Frangipani

There’s a frangipani tree that hangs over the pool of our villa, which overlooks the beaches of northern Sanur. The frangipani is flowering white and yellow, except for one branch near the centre which flowers pink. We notice this, puzzle over it a while, and investigate no further at the time. Then a couple of days later, while swimming, I come right under the branch in question, and find there something wrapping around where it connects to a larger branch—the pink-flowering section grafted onto the otherwise-yellow-white-flowering tree.

Black Sand White Sand Sanur

Inside the Sanur reef the sand is all white—tiny pieces of broken down coral. ThIs can make it hard to walk on—hard on the feet, and with so much space between the grain there’s often alot of ‘sink’. In the more northern part of Sanur—on the other side of the marina—where there is no more reef, and the boats go out to Lembongan and the Gili Islands—the sand is black again, like the many rocks of this volcanic isle.

The Way Water Drains in Bali

Sanur and the water is draining slowly from the beach of small limestone coral pieces. It runs out on the outgoing tide in a kind of cross-ways patchwork almost parallell to the shoreline—and it gathers in the ridges left behind. Or almost—there is still a slight downward movement to the next intersecting line—to the next valley amongst the ridges, which takes the water gradually lower and further out to see, following the main line of the tide: criss-crossing, slowly moving, gathering, slipping, watering all. 

And I can’t help being reminded, now, of the way the water moves down the whole island of Bali from the lakes and mountains in the north, slowly across all the rice paddies, gradually flowing lower, all of it managed, as it makes its way, slowly, out to sea…before it rises again, and gathers into clouds, which form and sometimes fall as rain over the mountains again.

Shoes and Dolphins

Walking far today on a new pair of shoes, feeling them on every step—their differences from usualness, including an arch too high…I think I’ll take them back, Then, out of the corner of the eye, as if to remind me, four to five dolphins go passing by, with two younger ones jumping clear out of the water, sometimes landing on their backs.