he can maintain himself—mentally and spiritually—at the intersection between a vertical line
and horizontal one, in a state of perfect balance. For this, he needs to know exactly where he
is located at every moment, both in his relationship to the divine and to his family here on
earth. If he loses that balance, he loses his power.
It’s not a ludicrous hypothesis, therefore, to say that the Balinese are the global masters of
balance, the people for whom the maintenance of perfect equilibrium is an art, a science and
a religion. For me, on a personal search for balance, I had hoped to learn much from the
Balinese about holding steady in this chaotic world. But the more I read and see about this
culture, the more I realize how far off the grid of balance I’ve fallen, at least from the Balinese
perspective. My habit of wandering through this world oblivious to my physical orientation, in
addition to my decision to have stepped outside the containing network of marriage and fam-
ily, makes me—for Balinese purposes—something like a ghost. I enjoy living this way, but it’s
a nightmare of a life by the standards of any self-respecting Balinese. If you don’t know where
you are or whose clan you belong to, then how can you possibly find balance?
Given all this, I’m not so sure how much of the Balinese worldview I’m going to be able to
incorporate into my own worldview, since at the moment I seem to be taking a more modern
and Western definition of the word equilibrium. (I’m currently translating it as meaning “equal
freedom,” or the equal possibility of falling in any direction at any given time, depending on..
. you know... how things go.) The Balinese don’t wait and see “how things go.” That would
be terrifying. They organize how things go, in order to keep things from falling apart.
When you are walking down the road in Bali and you pass a stranger, the very first ques-
tion he or she will ask you is, “Where are you going?” The second question is, “Where are you
coming from?” To a Westerner, this can seem like a rather invasive inquiry from a perfect
stranger, but they’re just trying to get an orientation on you, trying to insert you into the grid for
the purposes of security and comfort. If you tell them that you don’t know where you’re going,
or that you’re just wandering about randomly, you might instigate a bit of distress in the heart
of your new Balinese friend. It’s far better to pick some kind of specific direc-
tion—anywhere—just so everybody feels better.
The third question a Balinese will almost certainly ask you is, “Are you married?” Again,
it’s a positioning and orienting inquiry. It’s necessary for them to know this, to make sure that
you are completely in order in your life. They really want you to say yes. It’s such a relief to
them when you say yes. If you’re single, it’s better not to say so directly. And I really recom-
mend that you not mention your divorce at all, if you happen to have had one. It just makes
the Balinese so worried. The only thing your solitude proves to them is your perilous disloca-
tion from the grid. If you are a single woman traveling through Bali and somebody asks you,
“Are you married?” the best possible answer is: “Not yet.” This is a polite way of saying, “No,”