(Photo opposite: Men dressed in black and white sarongs wait to perform a ritual dance that will protect the temple.) Living in Indonesia for several years between “The Year of Living Dangerously” and before the “Year of Indonesia” and the invasion of mass tourism, I saw my Bali slipping away. But for those tourists who stay a little longer and dig a little deeper, the mysteries of this mythical island can still be discovered.

Sitting on Kuta Beach in Bali I see my eight year old friend Kutut lugging her bucket of soft drinks toward me. After several visits to Bali I notice that Kutut’s English has kept pace with my Indonesian. From “Want to buy a drink, Mister?” she has progressed to “Why do you come to Bali, Mrs?” A blank look rewards my explanations: beautiful people; dazzling scenery; exotic food; fascinating ceremonies. The more involved my explanation, the blanker the expression.

Since Charlie Chaplin and the movie world “discovered” Bali in the early thirties, Balinese have been perplexed by the invasion of tourists. Why would anyone leave the security of home and hearth and the sphere of known Gods to go where one lacks even a family? Now that Bali threatens to sink into the sea under the influx of shore-to-shore tourist buses, they are still perplexed. In this magical land where good and evil spirits are in constant and visible battle in dance, paintings and puppet shows, my laborious explanations cause Ktut’s blank look to become glazed and just before her eyes roll back in her head I give up and say, “We come because we like the sun.” “Aduh!” She understands. In a spontaneous expression of sympathy she touches my shoulder. “But Mrs., is there no sun in America?”

Why do I keep coming to Bali? Maybe if I keep notes for a day I can distill the magic essence.

Waking up in Bali in a simple losmen, usually a monastic room with a bed, a small table and maybe an attached bath, is to wake up in what has been called the “morning of the world”. The true losmen, often an extension of the family home, nestles under palm trees surrounding a small garden. The sleepy village of Kuta slumbered beside the Indian Ocean before the invasion of Australian surfers caused losmen to sprout under the coconut trees of families who had to have gardens anyway to supply flowers for the daily offerings to the Gods.

(Photo opposite:A royal cremation tower can require as many as 75 men to transport it.) During the day elderly men squat in back lanes plumping their fighting cocks, but at first light choruses of these cocks herald the dawn as young girl in colorful sarongs flit like a delicate flame from hibiscus to bougainvillea to jasmine. They place the blossoms in the miniature shrines for the Gods set in each corner of the veranda. Next comes the pastry seller, sweets piled high in the basket on her head, cooing “kue, kue, kue.”

The guests begin to stir. Some sit on the veranda drinking tea and eating black rice pudding topped with bananas and shredded coconut. The morning calm is shattered as a hip student lugging a yard-long radio blares by, closely followed by a barely-bikini-clad French girl, beach bound with towel, camera and mat, trailing a heavy scent of coconut oil.

The teacher from Australia on the “fly-drive” tour revs up his motorcycle and roars happily off on the crowded narrow road to Singaraja, a death defying Evil Knevil stunt on this small island where “to be” is “to enjoy,” and even death is a time for celebration.

Standing on the veranda intently observing the whirlwind activity is a gentleman from Java. Our paths were to cross several times during the day and I imagined that he was an official from the tourist bureau whose objective was to discover the source of the Bali mystic.

I decide to join the exodus to the beach, but first I must get past the temptations of Made’s Juice Bar where whirring blenders whip sweetened condensed milk, ice and mango, papaya, durian or avocados into heavenly concoctions. When I first came to Bali, Made’s was a thatched hut with a dirt floor. Now I walk up six steps to a cement platform where Made holds court in sunglasses and a T-shirt that reads “Made’s Juice Bar-New York”. Near Made’s I look into the roadside shrine where a styrofoam cup from Puri Ayam (aka KFC) has been pressed into the service of holy water.

(Photo opposite: The entire village participates in a cremation ceremony.) At the beach the surf pounds Kuta’s shore, the lifeguards move the poles closer to Legian Beach and the pile of corn disappears from beside the grandmother who spends her days fanning slivers of coal under roasting ears of corn.

The afternoon whines of the children, “Want to buy a drink, Mister - maybe later.” have become weaker when the insistent beat of a gong heralds a cremation ceremony. A serpentine line of tightly saronged women balance silver platters of offerings on their heads as they step deftly over topless sunbathers. The priest takes no notice as bare bodies jostle family members while clicking cameras record the transfer of the corpse to the cremation bull.

A squawk and a flurry of feathers lures me to a wall where I peek at a surreptitious cock fight, discouraged by the government but demanded by the Gods on occasions where blood must be spilled to sanctify the ground and satisfy the spirits. The careful tying of the five inch steel blade takes longer than the actual fight.

The violence of the fight is tempered by the melting sounds of the brass gamelon orchestra drawing me to a temple theater. There, men in black and white checkered sarongs, (black for evil forces balanced by white for good), with long spears and measured steps, perform the ritual dance that protect the temple.

Finally the royal corpses have been transferred with much ritual from the towers to the bulls while the boxes of the tag-a-long lesser ranking castes rest on piles of sticks. Suddenly the crowd jumps back as the beach becomes a blazing inferno. A sudden rush of heat mirrors the same intense rush of loss I always feel at a cremation. The transient nature of life is made visible as the results of weeks of preparation and the amassing of the wealth of a lifetime disappear in a flaming inferno.

I walk slowly toward the losmen. By chance my Javanese neighbor is ahead of me. In tandem we jump aside when what looks like a near-nude Hells Angels’ convention thunders by in a jumble of brown and white limbs trailed by blond and black manes. We pass the shaggy roofed pavilion of The Tree House Bar and Restaurant where Madonna screeches “Papa Don’t Preach to Me.” while a U.N. potpourri invoke a happy hour with Kuta Sunsets spiked with rum.

My neighbor and I seem to have the same itinerary. I notice him right away at the dance performance that night in the open-air temple on Kuta Beach. A scene of pure enchantment unfolds. The stage is the earth; the backdrop, waves breaking and flowing into endless darkness; the roof, a void saved by benevolent stars. A frangipani tree, gnarled and as old as time, shields the diminutive dancers and occasionally, as if in sympathetic vibration to the melting music of the gamelon, bestows a flower at their feet. Supple dancers, tightly bound from breast to hips in a fetching “S” shape, flashing streaks of red, green and gold, skim, bare feet over bare earth, under crowns of shimmering golden flowers. Dark eyes dart, disembodied heads move from side to side, rigid fingers mimic the trembling frangipani blossoms, all controlled by the music, or is it the other way around? The last mallet strikes a bronze key as the audience moves slowly, trance-like, to a remembered rhythm.

(Photo opposite: A cremation tower representing several weeks of preparation and a great deal of wealth disappears in a flaming inferno.) As I shuffle slowly homeward under palm trees that wave at winking stars, I wonder if the gentleman from Java, in the quest that I have imagined for him, has discovered Bali’s magic and can now sprinkle it over all 17,000 islands.

I have to admit defeat. I will never be able to explain my love affair with Bali to Ktut for whom my magic is the ordinary stuff of her everyday life. I can only tell her, “Yes, Ktut, we do have a sun in America. But there are other suns.”

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