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So this is how it comes to pass that—the very afternoon I have arrived in Bali—I’m sud-
denly on the back of a motorbike, clutching my new friend Mario the Italian-Indonesian, who is
speeding me through the rice terraces toward Ketut Liyer’s home. For all that I’ve thought
about this reunion with the medicine man over the last two years, I actually have no idea what
I’m going to say to him when I arrive. And of course we don’t have an appointment. So we
show up unannounced. I recognize the sign outside his door, same as last time, saying:
“Ketut Liyer—painter.” It’s a typical, traditional Balinese family compound. A high stone wall
surrounds the entire property, there’s a courtyard in the middle and a temple in the back. Sev-
eral generations live out their lives together in the various interconnected small homes within
these walls. We enter without knocking (no door, anyway) to the riotous dismay of a some
typical Balinese watchdogs (skinny, angry) and there in the courtyard is Ketut Liyer the elderly
medicine man, wearing his sarong and his golf shirt, looking precisely the same as he did two
years ago when I first met him. Mario says something to Ketut, and I’m not exactly fluent in
Balinese, but it sounds like a general introduction, something along the lines of, “Here’s a girl
from America—go for it.”
Ketut turns his mostly toothless smile upon me with the force of a compassionate fire
hose, and this is so reassuring: I had remembered correctly, he is extraordinary. His face is a
comprehensive encyclopedia of kindness. He shakes my hand with an excited and powerful
grip.
“I am very happy to meet you,” he says.
He has no idea who I am.
“Come, come,” he says, and I’m ushered to the porch of his little house, where woven
bamboo mats serve as furniture. It looks exactly as it did two years ago. We both sit down.
With no hesitation, he takes my palm in his hand—assuming that, like most of his Western
visitors, a palm-reading is what I’ve come for. He gives me a quick reading, which I am reas-
sured to see is an abridged version of exactly what he said to me last time. (He may not re-
member my face, but my destiny, to his practiced eye, is unchanged.) His English is better
than I remembered, and also better than Mario’s. Ketut speaks like the wise old Chinamen in