Hey hey hey! Latest post is up on Pink Pangea.
Yes, I know that most of my published work about Indo so far has consisted of not-so-subtle shade-throwing at Bali and the tourism-industrial complex there, but what do you know? Sometimes, my particular blinders get challenged, and it’s all for the better, I think.
Check out the excerpt below:
The music seeped under the doorway and through the window.
I muted the TV, as I strained to hear it. It was gamelan, I realized, a particular instrumental Indonesian traditional music. It sounded close, so I got out of bed and went out the front door of the Balinese guesthouse I was staying in. Nothing. I was greeted only by nighttime quiet, a peaceful garden staffed only with faintly buzzing insects, the cluck of the family chickens. All the members of the family running this guesthouse in their beautiful traditional family compound in Ubudwere neatly tucked away in their rooms for the evening.
I went back inside and lay in bed, still hearing the music, which was neither loud nor disruptive, but was present enough to make me wonder. It played in the background as I watched a terrible English-language action movie, the only thing I could understand on the TV, before it finally faded away in the wee hours of the night.