exit 105

Olympics (San Francisco, 1992)

2009-09-17T00:22:00.000-07:00

In San Francisco, I earned eleven dollars per hour and was supporting both of us on that, so we ate a lot of cabbage, eggs, and red adzuki beans. But oh! He’d grind the spices in a black volcanic stone mortar from the Singaraja market, in that tiny Victorian kitchen in the Western Addition, standing there wrapped in only a maroon ikat sarong tied around his small waist, light reflecting off the

Enchanted Island (Gili Trawangan, 1990)

2008-07-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

The travel guidebook claimed it was a fine swim from one Gili island to the other, and I knew I was a strong swimmer. Every day in Bali I plunged into the Java Sea, and swam far out from the black sand beach to where I could float, and from the gently swaying water gaze at the green hills of Kayuputih rise above Lovina and the solid purple peaks of Java pierce the sky to the west. I swam to

Cremation (Panji, 2008)

2008-06-12T02:05:00.000-07:00

The village of Panji, which is Pasek's father's home village, will hold a group cremation on July 7th. When I was first there in 1990, the rice farmers of Panji still carried corpses to the cemetery gently in their bare calloused hands. The next year, they carefully wrapped their dead in batiks, placed them in the backs of Jeeps and drove them to be buried.Three years ago Pasek's father died.

Gambling (San Bruno, 1998)

2008-05-28T22:34:00.000-07:00

We sit at the Lucky Coin Casino on the 101 with plastic buckets of red and black chips clutched between our legs. I'm not a gambler like you. I usually lose at backgammon, I pick up abandoned pennies on the street, I don't like to waste. I won't do anything for a hundred bucks. I'm not plotting every relationship ten moves in advance. I miss the microtwitches and reddenings of a face that a good

Slave Fort (Cape Coast, Ghana, 2001)

2008-03-31T23:40:00.000-07:00

From the top of the whitewashed fort, I can see the glittering blue waves of the Atlantic, softly swelling, pierced by painted fishing boats lined up on the beach. I stand on flat taken ground, cement.Up here was where they prayed, the masters who hadn't yet succumbed to malaria or typhoid. Reverent, they looked up to the wide sky, to their maker, and then they looked down, through a square hole

Food (Bhuana Sari, 1993)

2008-01-19T02:11:00.000-08:00

Memek tilts her head in the red brick door frame. She keeps her full lips closed over her orange teeth out of shyness, but when she sees me and the nurse approaching the wooden gate of the kubu, her mouth bursts wide open."Maee," she urges, motioning us to come with her fingers.She sees that my sarong ends at my knees, and comes over to pull it down to my ankles, as is proper for a young woman,

Dance (Bhuana Sari, 1993)

2007-12-07T23:18:00.000-08:00

We walk on the black pavement, blurry with heat. The nurse and I turn right at a mud path bisecting flooded rice fields. I have been this way before. Pasek's cousin looks up from planting green shoots and raises his eyebrows. We turn left, and the jungle grows silently around us. We walk, and an entire family scoots up the trunk of a coconut palm, and we could drink young coconut juice if we want

The Eye of the Day (Bhina Ria, 1993)

2007-11-03T08:28:00.000-07:00

The per diem nurse’s name is not Lisa or Diane or Stella. She tells me her name and I make no special effort to make it stick in my brain, instead focus on chewing the rice. The love letter from Suki is folded in her shirt pocket.She will be gone in a day.A group of shirtless boys from Bhuana Sari walk by on the way to the beach, shouting their hellos. They hold folded banana leaf triangles, nasi

Food (Bhina Ria, 1993)

2007-10-29T20:42:00.000-07:00

I am sitting with an American, a nurse who works per diem, from Miami. Travelling around the world. She has long wavy blonde hair and we are eating nasi goreng at Suki's restaurant. It is okay but kind of bland, made for the tourists. Garlic but not enough chili. Not the original Balinese rice, which is expensive to buy in the market these days.I haven't wanted to talk to fellow Americans in

Food (Bhuana Sari, 1991)

2007-07-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

The rest of Bali is tangled green but where we are, on top of a high ridge, is flat and brown, and we can see from a distance the rice fields stepping down to the Java Sea.To get here, we walked through the jungle, by a river, up and down mud paths that seem to twist and turn into a labyrinth's center. The path led us by the gently roaring water, past coffee bushes, under shady leaf canopies. We

Walk (Kayuputih, 1996)

2007-07-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

Luh's doctor told her she needed daging (meat) removed from her uterus, she is telling me as she bends and empties a bowl of yesterday's rice onto the ground to feed the black pigs.Sakit, she says, grimacing, holding her belly and bending forward, then backward again.A sow and two of her piglets rush towards the rice and snuffle through it with their snouts.Luh has bad cramps every month when her

Prayer (Jerusalem, 1978)

2007-07-05T21:05:00.000-07:00

My Aunt Ruthy and Uncle Paul took me abroad for the first time.Before I left, my hair stylist tried to cut a Dorothy Hamill wedge cut, but it didn't work with my hair.It made me look like a boy.I had flown before but not that many times. My mother was afraid to fly, but I wasn't. I sat on the plane and looked out the window just over Italy. It surprised me how much Italy looked like it did on the

Red (New Jersey, 1978)

2007-07-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

I missed the last three weeks of fifth grade.That was when we learned percentages. My teacher Miss Fornin let me sneak out of Ocean Township Intermediate School without any trouble because she liked me, and we both had read Coma. She had black hair and red cheeks and a pointy nose. Every week in her class I read a new segment of my SuperChicken series to all the kids. I would be a little scared

Birth (New Jersey, 1967)

2007-06-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

My mother's labor pains come six weeks early. Grandpop and Daddy carry her out of the house on a chaise lounge that has been sitting out by the pool. It is a warm June day and the Jersey shore air tastes of salt.The floor of the hospital room gleams. My mother's torso contracts. The sheets get bloody.I am tiny.I fit into my father's big square hand. He has crooked eyebrows and his nose slopes

Lost (Reno, 1993)

2007-06-26T13:17:00.001-07:00

We sit at a blackjack table in Reno. I am not a gambler but here I am anyway, and now I await each hand from the dealer. Pasek is looking at his nine and seven as intently as if he were looking at his prize rooster flashing his sharpened spur around his neighbor's chicken at a cockfight in Banyualit. A cacophony of electronic noise buzzes and pops around us from the slot machines.Across from us a

Stars (Bhuana Sari, 1990)

2007-06-25T19:56:00.000-07:00

The sun was going down and his little sister named Putu and I were walking in the gorge and she kept lighting one match at a time, pop, that would illuminate a foot or two of muddy ground at a time. All the green faded into grey and black. I would feel like I was losing my balance, and then remember how Pasek walked looking not down at the ground immediately in front of him, but look to a point

Bridge (Kalibukbuk, 1990)

2007-06-24T21:09:00.000-07:00

I wake with his hand in my hair.A mosquito coil has burnt to ashes.I still can see gold in his skin, but also yellow and brown and red.His mouth is a perfect bow, and his hand says, you knew but you did it anyway.I knew.His eyes bear traces of this archipelago’s trade routes and conquests, waves of peoples in his eyes. A Majapahit conqueror sweeping a Bali aga off her feet, an Arab bringing a

Absence (Los Angeles, 2007)

2007-06-23T17:28:00.001-07:00

This was thefirstbirthdayhedidn'tcallme. He has called every birthday for ten years since we split up. Sometimes I didn't answer, but usually I did. He called me from the airport to say goodbye the first time he left. I was home alone just curled into a ball on the floor. For nights I dreamed of glass walls separating us, saw red crab claws tearing at flesh, woke to screams.When he called me on

Protection (Oakland, 2007)

2007-06-21T22:52:00.001-07:00

It's my fortieth birthday and I wake up on the floor of a loft above a hundred giant stone Buddhas with hands folded in their laps. There are little scratching noises from behind the wall. Mice don't bother me. The toilet only flushes with a bucket of water poured down it, and the bucket sits in the shower. There is no hot water, so I am quick to wash my face, armpits, and crotch. I am glad I am

Learning to Count (Taipei, 1989)

2007-06-02T03:51:00.001-07:00

The Taoyuan International Airport was packed with people and smelled of garlic. For the first time in my life, I felt tall. It was Double Tenth Day, the national day of the Republic of China. On the eighteen-hour flight from New York, Dave and I had moved beyond xie xie, and could now also say "you're welcome" and "excuse me" in Mandarin.We took a bus into downtown Taipei. I looked at the street

Integrity (Boston, 1989)

2007-06-01T02:14:00.000-07:00

Yossi was number two in karate in Israel, and he was saving money to go to Japan and study Zen meditation. I didn’t let myself really get to know him, so instead he was my spy, my security guard whom I seduced to stop guarding the youth hostel for a few dark moments under the moon, my Jew who looked like an Arab, an Indian with something Eastern European about his eyes, more religious than I was.

Fire (Bhuana Sari, Bali, 1991)

2007-05-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

The coconut husk fire glowed not far from the mound where corncobs were tossed for the pigs and people went to squat. The smoke curled around the tin roof before trailing upwards toward the purple sky. A cow tossed her head near the front gate, clanging the metal bell around her neck.Waiting for the rice to be done, we all sat in a circle on a rattan mat. Agus rested on his haunches like a Hindi

Jealousy (Banyualit, Bali, 1990)

2007-05-15T00:46:00.000-07:00

I was messy and he was beautiful. It wasn't junior high but it felt like it, in that despite my ugliness, the ugly both inside and out, I was beautiful too. But the shine on my face felt like sweat in the coconut humidity, and I looked down and followed and followed on the mud path between the watered paddies shimmering with the reflected blur of a thousand single green shoots.Then we were in a

West Deal, New Jersey, 1972

2006-12-13T20:50:00.000-08:00

When I was five, my grandmother and grandfather moved five blocks away. My grandfather hid pennies in his hands and recited a spell, eichl meichl peichl he would say, and the penny would magically jump from hand to hand -- where would it be? How would it get there? One of his arms couldn't unbend all the way, and the reason, he told us, was that he had been struck by a bullet in some war, which I

Bhuana Sari, Bali, 1981

2006-12-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

Pasek was seventeen when his father walked him down from the mountains to the beach.In their bamboo kubu on an arid ridge, the beds were turned so the pillows faced toward the holy peaks, and the bottom of the mattress toward the sea, full of black magic, where people could hit their heads on the coral and never come up again. It was dry up in the mountains, but the green bean and corn grew well,

Lovina, Bali, 1990

2006-11-16T03:17:00.000-08:00

There was only one bar then. The bar was called Bali Bintang. Bintang means star. The bar was on the mosquito-buzzing river that trickled down from the mountains, wound through the rice paddies, crossed Bhina Ria beach, and then emptied into the Java Sea. Lucy and Eka had brought the stereo and speakers from London.I wasn't sure I was going to go out that night. I had spent the day snorkelling

Kayuputih Melaka, Bali, late 1990's

2006-10-14T00:24:00.000-07:00

I wake in a humid sweat at the clamor of roosters, and my t-shirt clings to me. It already has holes from the tropical rot, but I barely know what clothes I wear. I go sit on the porch of this mountain house. The women are curving by with buckets and baskets floating on their heads, turning softly down the steps to the river. I notice the local mud-colored sarongs with intricate leaf and creature

Santa Monica, California, 2006

2006-08-11T22:20:00.000-07:00

With my old Trek mountain bike propped between my legs, I stand with my feet planted flat on the bike path that divides the neon crush of LA from the calm roughness of sand and sea. It is dark except for the ferris wheel spinning at the end of the Santa Monica Pier. I face the sea and can still hear Salif Keita's singing on the pier to the stringed sound of the kora, and the low beat of African

Bangkok, Thailand, 1991

2006-07-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

In Bangkok, my cousin Daniel and I sit at a red plastic table in the little restaurant of our hostel on Khao San Road. It is dusk. A grizzled guy from Los Angeles in his fifties, who looks like he needs to wash his hair, rolls a joint and then licks the rolling paper to seal it. He's going to Patpong Road again tonight."She really loves me," he tells us, beaming.A young woman from Ohio with long

Chiang Mai, Thailand, 1991

2006-07-16T19:06:00.000-07:00

In Thailand, my cousin Daniel always has the Lonely Planet book open, reading the history of the Sukothai and Ayutthaya kingdoms, and figuring out which busses we need to take to get there. I mean to read, but I don't. I sit and watch saffron-robed monks flitter across bridges with bowls in their hands, and watch their shadows create depth on the stone paths. I visit hill tribes and watch an

Paradise (Santa Fe)

2006-07-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

I fly to New Mexico for a July 4th family party in Santa Fe.When I arrive at the Albuquerque Airport, the shuttle bus driver tells us to be careful of crime, because Albuquerque is the crystal meth capitol of the country, and be careful too on the drive from the airport to 25, because cops will be hiding among the tumbleweed, waiting to get you."I tell drivers this

Returning to Bali

2006-06-17T00:36:00.000-07:00

Every time I go back I slaughter a black pig.To not do so seems rude.First of all, Luh always seems to have one fattened on cassava and crusts of day-old nasi goreng that she is looking to sell by the time I get there. There is a school bill to pay for Yudi, or Sutra got his girlfriend pregnant and they need to marry right away. Second, inviting the village to a suckling pig ceremony is an excuse

Oasis

2006-06-15T00:10:00.000-07:00

At night in Ein Gedi on the shore of the Dead Sea, I sleep in the crevice of golden old moonlit stones, a view of the salty sea lapping so low, the slow bottom of the earth. Coyotes howl under the desert moon, and in the day ibexes scuttle up the rocky hills. There is a hidden stream in the wadi that we hike to after squeegeeing the Judean dust off the tile floors of the youth hostel at the break

The Commute

2006-05-16T02:11:00.000-07:00

I moved to LA to escape a commute. Traffic in the Bay Area has gotten very congested over the past ten years. For the past year, I drove each day from Berkeley to San Mateo and back again, an hour each way.I would get onto 80 at the Ashby exit and there the Bay would be, San Francisco glorious and Emerald City-like in the distance, and I'd get on 880 South past the warehouses of West Oakland, the

Flowers

2006-05-16T01:39:00.000-07:00

I lost two loves in San Francisco, one of them a great love.Whenever I drive by where the Armadillo used to be, on Fillmore and Waller, I remember him with the pool stick over his shoulder, us walking hand-in-hand by the projects, he so new and then so old here. The pit bulls tied to signposts never snapped at us. He beat Tony at pool and then started gardening with him for clients in Pacific

Looking for Missy

2006-05-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

I never thought I would do it, but I moved from Berkeley to LA.Why did I do it?I was at home in the Bay Area. I could go to the Mission or Bernal Heights or Noe Valley or the Richmond or El Cerrito and know I could knock on doors and there my friends would be. They would be kayak guides or playwrights or costume designers or mountain climbers, and a lot of them were computer geeks. I knew exactly

Proof

2006-01-10T14:19:00.000-08:00

It seems as if we will never stop driving. Suddenly we see a small collection of tents, and a Tuareg family exit one of them when they see our Jeep. Amadou gets out and is saying something to a thin, statuesque man in his early twenties.For his elephant guiding abilities, we paid Amadou the equivalent of about fifty dollars in CFA. With some of that money, he bought a tin of marijuana, which is

The Road to Timbuktu II

2006-01-10T13:54:00.000-08:00

We drive and drive out into the bush, holding onto the seats to keep from lurching forward. Our guide Amadou and our driver smoke and talk, ignoring me and Kate. We don't talk, because we're each glued to a window. An antelope runs by in a blur. The vegetation is sparse. From time to time, we pass boys herding goats, but mostly, there's emptiness.I am not sure how our driver knows where he is

Right Turn from Gao

2005-12-31T08:06:00.000-08:00

As we turn right from the main road of Gao onto a track of dried mud, our Jeep sends a group of Fulani herdsmen and their goats scattering. Our driver isn't going very fast though, due to the potholes, and the herdsmen regroup around our vehicle, staring at the two very pink-skinned women in the back. Greetings fly back and forth through the hot air.I don't understand the language, but I suspect

On the Path to the Pachyderms -- Gao, Mali 2001

2005-12-31T05:54:00.000-08:00

Our elephant guide Amadou is tall, dark, elegant, and speaks only French. He smokes in great kinetic waves of his arm, and chats animatedly to our driver. Large aviator sunglasses with a pink-and-black gradient cover Amadou's lined eyes. He has been leading people to the desert elephants in Mali for as long as he can remember, and seems as excited today (January 2001) as if it were his first

Jacques

2005-12-11T02:37:00.000-08:00

Jacques was portly, from Paris, and in his early fifties. He had lived in Mali for years. We sat outside in his mud-walled compound in Gao. His nineteen-year-old Malian wife brought tea and barely spoke to us. The air was hot and dry.Jacques was questioning whether 9/11 was really a U.S. government conspiracy."We don't know what the truth is," he was saying.His wife was dark, gorgeous, and tiny.

Prayer

2005-12-05T21:21:00.000-08:00

Salif Keita and Oumou Sangare blared alternately from the tinny loudspeaker of the bush taxi. The blurry view out the windows was brown and dry and sandy with an occasional straw hut surrounded by goats, and suddenly a tall purple-turbaned Tuareg galloped by on a camel. You don't imagine camels as being so fast and graceful, but they can be. This time when the creaky old bus stopped for a break,

Bush Taxi to Gao

2005-11-30T16:52:00.000-08:00

Kate and I walked the dusty streets of Sevare, past little girls playing in mud doorways, past the Peace Corps building, past the Peace Corps Baba shop with its bead museum, past the Mobil station, and towards the bush taxi stop. There was a little restaurant across the street that served mafe and rice that we ate with our hands. We sat outside at a wooden table and watched boys with plastic

East Coast Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T00:50:00.000-08:00

I rode a New Jersey Transit train today from Long Branch, New Jersey to Penn Station, New York City. The train was vibrating and I had a seat to myself and my eyelids got heavy and half-closed. We passed Hazlet and Little Silver and Red Bank and then the gently swaying maples and backyard bicycles of the Jersey shore became the gritty red brick buildings of the North Jersey cities. I was nearly

Dogon Door

2005-11-19T14:18:00.000-08:00

Kate and I pushed out the gate of Mac's Refuge, scattering the tall, elegantly-turbaned sword and blanket sellers in a cloud of Saharan dust. We stooped slightly under the weight of our backpacks, our CFA (Communaut Financiaire Africaine) notes hidden in pouches strapped around our waists. I had a Dogon carved door tied onto my orange backpack, which made maneuvering even more awkward.My Dogon

The Road (or River, or Camel Track) to Timbuktu

2005-11-17T01:27:00.000-08:00

We had wanted to go to Timbuktu, but we were going to Gao instead.As a child in West Deal, New Jersey, I spent long days at the library, engrossed in all kinds of books, and just reading the word "Timbuktu" was evocative of the furthest place one could travel. It sounded good too, when I spoke it aloud, even though the library was a place where one was supposed to be quiet. I had no idea of

The Elephant Search

2005-11-07T16:47:00.000-08:00

It was a huge relief to finally drop Alisa off at the SNIT Hospital in Accra, and leave her in the care of doctors and nurses and an IV drip. We pulled up to Geekhalla, the Geekcorps residence, next to the American Embassy in Osu. As we unloaded our backpacks, baskets, and the guinea fowl, I was so tired I slipped and my leg went straight into the open sewer by the side of the dusty road.After a

Sick

2005-11-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

Kate and I always made sure we got enough sleep and ate as well as we could in Mali, since doctors and hospitals are so far and few between in rural West Africa. We remembered our fellow Geekcorps volunteer Alisa falling very ill in Nandom, up in the northwest of Ghana near Burkina Faso, where we were attending a xylophone festival. In her sweaty, flushed delirium, Alisa demanded that our country

Sevare, Mali 2002

2005-11-05T09:59:00.000-08:00

Kate and I had just gotten back from trekking in Dogon country and were sitting at Mac's Refuge around the breakfast table. Mac, whose parents were American missionaries, had grown up in Dogon country and after some time in California had returned to Mali and built his hotel, an oasis in the harmattan haze of Sevare. Behind thick mud walls lay a round blue swimming pool and cozy rooms, beds with

Mopti, Mali 2002

2005-10-24T01:53:00.000-07:00

Several months after 9/11/2001, Kate and I were sitting in a cafe by the Niger River in Mopti, Mali. Workers on the shore were unloading blocks of salt from boats that had sailed down the Niger from Timbuktu. Fine particles of sand from the Sahara were suspended in the air by the harmattan breeze. Kate asked our Dogon country guide, Ali, who sat with us, if he thought it dangerous for two

Portola Valley, 2005

2005-10-23T23:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we went to Snowy Bee's third birthday party. Snowy has a wide, doll-like face, straight bangs, and huge wideset eyes. Her favorite animal is elephant and she is good at throwing up her trunk and trumpeting.For the party, her dad Joe created a big-top from big strips of red and green and blue tablecloths hoisted with a rope to the top of an old oak tree. A red sign with a grey elephant

Lovina, 1981

2005-10-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

Pasek was seventeen when his father walked him down from the mountains to the beach. In their bamboo hut on an arid ridge, the beds were turned so the pillows faced towards the holy peaks, and the bottom of the mattress toward the sea, full of black magic, where people could hit their heads on the coral and never come up again. It was dry up in the mountains but the green bean and corn grew well

Work in Accra Vs. San Francisco

2005-10-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

Here is a post I wrote on October 29, 2001, about working in IT in Accra compared to San Francisco (this appeared on the www.geekhalla.org site):There are similarities and differences between working in IT here in Accra as compared to San Francisco. Sometimes when I'm sitting at my computer in the air-conditioned Africa Online office, with employees IM'ing each other, opening Photoshop, and

Today's Mix

2005-10-17T16:47:00.000-07:00

I am reading:Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy by Robert Farris Thompson. This book shows how the aesthetic sense of the African diaspora is derived from five African civilizations -- Yoruba, Kongo, Ejagham, Mande and Cross River.Managing Turbulent Hearts: by Unni Wikan. An anthropologist explores what's behind the bright face that Balinese people present in public.

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

2005-10-14T23:48:00.000-07:00

The Internet boom ended. Laura and Kevin, here for 15 years, finally moved to Denver. Brian and Marci, Brookline. Mike and Diana, Boston. Melissa and Ian, Durango. Elise and Don, Portland. Cyndi and Greg and Mark and Julie, Boulder. Laura and I moved here together after Tufts, after teaching English in Taipei. We first met when we were nineteen. In the Mission we lived on Fair Oaks Street with

Internet Boom

2005-10-14T23:27:00.000-07:00

In November, 1999, I wrote a letter in response to "How the Internet Ruined San Francisco", an article published in Salon. I read it with nostalgia, since the time it discusses has since passed, like everything does. But here it is:"I was forced into the Internet industry because I needed to do something creative that would actually support me and my loved ones. I was sick of crack addicts

Release

2005-10-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

When I was eighteen, I found out I was infertile. I had a period that went on for weeks, so I went to the gynecologist to get my blood drawn. He told me my hormone levels were slightly abnormal. My diagnosis was polycystic ovaries, an endocrine disorder that affects 6-10% percent of women. In a polycystic ovary, follicles that mature form cysts on the ovary wall instead of releasing ova into the

Adventure Divas

2005-10-11T12:09:00.000-07:00

My first cousin Michael married an amazing woman named Holly Morris. Last night they were in San Francisco for her book tour to promote Adventure Divas, which describes Holly's travels around the world to discover other amazing women."After years as a desk-jockey, Holly Morris quit her job and set out to prove that adventure is not just a vacation style but a philosophy of living — and to find

The Last Tribe of Desert Elephants in Gao

2005-10-10T17:24:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, I introduce my experience in Africa by situating myself at an Internet cafe in Bamako. But then I use the words "edge", "far off", "bush", and "elephants", more typical terms associated with Africa in Western media. In Ghana, where I worked as a Geekcorps volunteer in 2001, my co-worker Kwasi at Africa Online (an ISP) asked me if I had thought before coming that they all lived

Storied Passage

2005-10-08T09:58:00.000-07:00

I live on a row of little houses in the southwestern corner of Berkeley, California. Our teal bungalow with purple trim is tucked somewhere near the corner of Ashby and San Pablo Avenues. San Pablo is a main artery which runs from Crockett through the malls of El Cerrito and past Berkeley into the heart of Oakland. The strip on the edge of Oakland has changed rapidly in the past several

Hunger

2005-10-07T00:31:00.000-07:00

I grew fat the last time I was in Bali.In my early twenties, I'd go there for six weeks and lose twenty pounds. I'd first puff from the heat, but then after a day or two of jukut, vegetables in broth tasting of coconut oil smoke, sambal of hot chili and garlic and shrimp paste, mounds of rice, I'd not feel hungry again.Once I spent all night at an odalan up in the hills in Kayuputih to celebrate

Bali Bombing

2005-10-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

One of the places I have spent a lot of time in is Bali. The last time I was there I drove up to Jimbaran Beach, where there were several different restaurants grilling fresh-caught fish near the road, and tables down on the sand where families and friends sat and ate. Many guests were tourists eating one more meal before heading to the airport in Kuta.The tuna at Jimbaran were tender and

Asbury Park

2000-12-29T22:34:00.000-08:00

I rode out on my father's shoulders as he carried me into the ocean at Loch Arbour beach. I felt safe grabbing on to his hair as we jumped the waves. We were just north of the town he grew up in, Asbury Park, with its brick elementary schools and the grinning clown face on the Palace Amusements arcade at the end of the boardwalk. My father was born in Asbury Park, but his father and mother were