Roosterful

   In Amed, I go for a walk. Complete with tennis shoes and DEET, I am tourist epitomizing. Luckily, the road is fairly quiet and I am tolerated with smiles as usual. Also helpful is that I am peeling and eating a snake fruit, which makes me, at least, feel more familiar. The shape of a very large bulb of garlic, this fruit is wrapped in a texture similar to those square headed desert vipers. It comes from an equally intimidating palm whose leaves are lined with finger-length spikes. Upon first taste I was reminded of Sour Patch Kids, second, an apple, and by the third they were a regular part of my diet. Not that eating anything is recommendable for a walk down a rural Bali road, which smells often of dirt, garbage, or something dead.
   On this walk I encounter many faces. Mandri is cutting tall grass in a field between the road and the beach. We talk a little while his kids play in a nearby tree. Wayan tries to sell me a guided tour up the mountain. I try to walk the trail by myself, but find that the way promptly forks at an outcropping of worn lava boulders. I am soon looking down at a pen of three black piglets, and at what I assume to be someone's backyard.
   Saving the tour for later, I follow the road up, out of this village, and around the point to the next. "Amed" refers to a series of rocky points like these, and the bays between them, some lined with beach. The faces of the houses mingle with a few restaurants and bungalows. Most homes are casual, leaning, with tin roofs. From a porch a couple of children smile and wave. A moped passing reveals a foreigner's smile, framed with reddish beard and pink John Lennon sunglasses.
   On the edge of an old stone wall I watch the waves fall on the rocks. A few large crabs perform their baffling formalities. The vegetation hovering above is framed by an old archway, the steps beneath it long ago collapsed.
   This island has required every bit of my observation. Differences are everywhere, and they are either obvious, so harder to see but easier to understand, or subtle and so disarming to realize. The natural environment is a reliable pattern of rice terraces, jungles, jumbled hills, with the occasional sea or volcano. The structure of the cities, the houses and stores and temples, are becoming familiar too, and the variations on statues and woodwork or stone decorations. The faces of people are also rewarding to look at- more often than not they smile back happily, especially at my unexpected stare out the open car window.
   The result of all this observation is that, for this entire trip, I have felt like the lens of a National Geographic camera. What is missing is the narration. No charming British accent saying "Here, you are looking at a roadside cockfight. These events were traditionally an important part of Balinese culture, with men betting on the outcome. While technically outlawed, these fights are an important part of many ceremonies on the island and are thus allowed occasionally. The roosters involved are armed with a knife on one foot, thus they fight to the death. This informal (illegal) fight we are seeing here appears to be practice, and not so gruesome."
   Instead of this informative narration (which you too would glean if subjected to the rampant rooster calls found everywhere on this island) the thoughts in my head, on the return walk home, go more like: "Holy shit, is that a cockfight?"
   Several men have gathered in a place between buildings, a couple smoking and looking serious. I stop and stare as the roosters are pulled apart. Three tourists passing by stop as well, and other men arrive. There is much milling around and talking. About a dozen roosters sit by the road in woven cages. They cheer and lambast each other with that unchanging "Ro-roo, ro-ro-rooo" and when really ready they jump up and down. The men pull out a couple and pet them. More talk, more milling, more stroking of the roosters. The tourists depart.
   Finally, a decision is made and the two competitors are set about ten feet apart, owners holding proud chests and tail feathers. Then, release, and the clear victor (I think) springs toward his foe, colored and flaming like a Chinese dragon, mane of yellow feathers extended, and drops on him in one bound. They call and claw and then the men pull them apart. Thats all there is to it.
    Smiling, I wander on down the road, thinking about patterns and unpredictability, and Bali.