Less than two weeks left in Bali and all the eating, the praying and the loving will be done . . . at least this record of it will be. I'm going to avoid getting too reflective right now. I'll reserve that for the final entry, which is coming soon.
Wayan finally bought a house, in what was an old twist of benign manipulation: a woman crawling out of abject poverty, wisdom from the patient, observant and tolerant Felipe, and "bull-shitting", she finally bought a house. It was a good lesson on living life on life's terms.
"What happens with westerners who live here for a long time" (says Felipe) "is that they usually end up falling into one of two camps. Half of them keep playing the tourist, saying, 'oh these lovely Balinese, so sweet, so gracious . . . and getting ripped-off like crazy. The other half get so frustrated with being ripped-off all the time they start to hate the Balinese. And, that's a shame, because you've lost all these wonderful friends." p 321
"I don't want to play games, Felipe," Liz says. He kisses her head and says, "Then you can't live in Bali, darling."
WE have to accept the way the world works, play by life's rules, I guess, if we want to survive, live life on life's terms. Sometimes, I get confused between my principals and self-righteousness. But, like Darwin said, "It's not the strongest who survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most adaptable to change." God's world is ever changing and, most of the time, I have no idea what's going on.
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