So read the entry that someone posted on the Bali Community Facebook page; where else but in Bali, epicenter of Ecstatic Dance and any number of combos of Crystal Tibetan Bowl Sound Yogic Aqua Healing, would a natural disaster elicit such a new-agey comment?!
I was in the midst of doing yoga stretches on my bed when I was struck by the thought: why are so many gargantuan cement trucks rolling through my neighborhood, rambling along, shaking the floor and walls so uncontrollably… and then I heard yelling, leaped off the bed and dashed down the stairs to the courtyard below.
Nyoman was in a panic, trying to reach her kids by phone. Yanti held little Ayu in her arms. Iluh and Kadek were laughing – as the Balinese are wont to do when they are nervous or unsure what to say or do. What were you yelling, I asked. “Idup, idup,” they answered. What does that mean? It’s a warning to people of an emergency, but it means life, that we want to stay alive.
Websites reported 6.0 on the Richter scale, while Indonesian TV claimed that the quake had reached 6.8. Whatever the number, surely it was stronger than the one I’d awakened to a few weeks ago. And Nyoman assured me that it was the most serious one she had experienced in her life.
It’s the kind of event that prompted people to ask each other throughout the day: Where Were You When…? In a concrete building on the main road… clutching my daughter in my arms… in the middle of a rice field… crawled under my bed… on my roof… in the middle of the street with my neighbors…
I was where I was supposed to be; at home – and then, with the Family. Because, despite our differences over the past 6 months, where else should I have shaken it up, Baby?
Healing Pilgrim 