Moving here this time, I was first struck by the absence of the urgency and importance that I had placed in the current political climate in the US. I follow the news closely, to the point of obsession. Like many Americans, I have been angry and worried by what is going on in our country. It was surprising, disappointing, and also a relief that the horrifying destruction of the bill of rights and the moral position of America as a human rights leader in the world were not felt very much here. My identity as an American is very much wrapped in the idea of America as a country that stands for minority rights, Democratic principal, and Equality. It seems that this isn’t a strong American identity outside our borders, which strikes a different kind of blow to my idea of America, but concurrently means that the rages of the American carnage happening now are not being felt in many parts of the world. Yes, America exerts influence in other ways, and many are destructive, profit-driven, and unsustainable, but I love my country and what I thought it stood for.
The Balinese are an interesting people. Most of them never leave their village their whole lives. They have more religious days off than we have summer vacation from school, and spirits are alive and walk among us, to them. It seems they are either praying, preparing for a ceremony, or blocking traffic with religious processions. And they have no interest in changing. To me, someone living 8000 miles from where I was born, their lack of interest in anything outside their immediate world seems strange at first. Not only do the balinese stay where they were born, the very idea of wanting to move is foreign to them. Yes, some are selling their rice fields at an unbelievable price (the average cost of living for a local balinese is a few dollars a day, and one are (1/100 of a hectare) sells for 40-50k USD), but the vast majority continue to wake up at dawn, tend their fields, work their service jobs, craft their wares, and participate in their Banjar activities (their local village center).
They are who they are, where they are, and do not want to be anything else, because they are not separated from their environment: tribe, land, culture, religion. There is a grace and peace in this, and the Balinese do not suffer from existential crises, like Westerners do. They do not suffer anguish trying to find themselves, who and what they are. This fact makes me ask myself what I am looking for, so far from home. Meanwhile the westerners here have all jumped, sometimes abruptly, many times by accident, into the unknown, and spend their busy lives here practicing the rituals of other tribes, other lands, other cultures, and other religions. All thousands of miles away from where they were born. They are missing their own rites and rituals, culture, land, heritage. What is missing in Western life that we do not have this? How can we recover what we have lost?
If you must know, I am a writer and a photographer, with clients such as Esquire Magazine, Ugg Boots, and Bebe. I travel all over the world writing and photographing inspiring people and places. This is a collection of some of my work, both photographs and writing.
I am always open to meeting interesting people who have a unique perspective on the world. I am a champion of truth, beauty, and love.
Thanks for looking.
Loren Earle-Cruickshanks
What would you do if you didn’t have to make a living?
create. observe. Contemplate worthy things.
I have recently left my job as a tech executive in Silicon Valley, and over a few months time, systematically dismantled my life in San Francisco, where I have lived for 20 years. I rented out my house and my apartment. I moved everything into storage, parked my car far away, and gave up my dog to a foster home. And when that was finished, I left the country. I now live in Bali, literally living the dream life. I have escaped, and am now pursuing a relationship with The Muse that is not complicated by a need for money.
I have been to Bali off and on for the last 8 years. The first thing I rememberer noticing was how messy it seemed. The streets (or gangs) are labyrinthine. I am told this is by design, to make it harder for evil spirits to move. That makes it harder for me too…. Traffic is a many-headed beast, and I experienced frustration as traffic rules that seemed ’self-evident’ were simply ignored. There is garbage everywhere, even in the cow pastures, or being burned by the side of the road. The bottom part of the island is basically the Cancun of Australia, a surfers paradise and party scene. The souther part of the island is a concrete spider web, with green jungle or rice patties showing through the holes, and construction everywhere.
The expats that come here bring their identity with them; their priorities (from getting healthy to getting rich), their attachments (think burgers and fries), their money (like a shot of steroids to the island). Many come to escape, others to ‘find themselves.’ Those that stay do so because it seems easy. Luxury is cheap. You can have a house, garden, and pool, a maid, cook, and baby sitter, for the price of a lower-middle class life in a western city.
Bali is also a nexus, a place where successful, famous, powerful, rich people pass through, small enough that one is more likely to cross paths with them here than in the places they live. I met more interesting people in a month here than I usually fo in a year in San Francisco. But after only a few weeks living here, Bali shows herself. I hear this echoed by many, that Bali is ‘intense’ and brings up conflict or distress. This comes in the form of an accident or injury (I have had several), sickness (dengue, zika and typhoid are something to worry about), or another personal catastrophe such as being robbed at home or while driving your scooter, or the end of a relationship or sickness in the family exacerbated by distance. Crisis is intensified by the lack of familiarity, language barrier, poor public services and health standards, the simple strangeness of life here.
In America, we all ignore our need to belong somewhere, in a time and place. We look to pop culture, celebrities, and the myth of ’self made’ success. We elevate CEOs, worship pop stars, fetishize fame. This is so much a part of our identity that we do not even realize there is any other way to be. It’s incomprehensible when we encounter someone who does not want something they don’t have, and we have pity or disdain for those ‘without ambition.' It is our manifest destiny to strive for more. More than what? A sense of belonging? Of being part of something bigger and older than ourselves? This is the very heritage of being Americans- coming from somewhere, to look for something new. And it is the ugly side of America, missing identity and heritage, that is coming around again right now to strike a bigoted blow against ourselves.
And now, faced with the question of what to do with myself, here, a stranger in a strange land, I find it very hard to answer. I listen for wisdom in podcasts. I build my day out of advice from people I do not know. And it all leads me back to a sense of collective loss. America is not the world, and there is wisdom in those we overlook. We grow up with McDonalds, strip malls, and television, but we are not told of the peace and wholeness of being who we are. Because we have been denied our heritage. This is the very essence of being Americans- leaving ’somewhere’ behind, to look for something new. And this is the existential battle being fought in America right now. The dark side of existential crisis over our forgotten heritage is rearing its serpent head, and out of it’s mouth comes racism, bigotry, xenophobia, fear-driven civil conflict. To any American who dares to have compassion for others, this is either an outrage, a travesty, or both. The most injured by this are acting out, with violence some times, on both sides of the artificial political spectrum, the youth is lost and raging, seeking infamy in school shootings or more and more extreme acts, social media attention, ready for war.
Those that do feel heritage in the US, predominantly white and working class, are angry when it seems the country is obsessed with rights of smaller and smaller minorities, when they feel left behind and overlooked. The cynical are champions of ‘get mine’, another American dream of wealth and freedom, which simply robs more and more people of connection to one another, shared meaning, and a sense of the sacred. America is terrorized, not just from the unknown foreign enemy, but from within. Our leaders fan the flames and continue to enrich themselves while we tear each other apart. Religion trades morality for a political outcome.
Bali is paradise from afar. Money or personal effort van actualize the dream life living here too. But underneath, much like the demons that are cast in stone and worshipped in the temples, there is a dark chaos, and those unaware of it or not in respect of the danger will have to deal with the dark side of paradise. Pollution, traffic, danger. Plastic in the oceans, dirty water and food, disease. All of which his part of living in the world for the Balinese. They are of this and do not want it any other way. Not to say they are happy with the spread of Western influence in their island, there is anger too. But not enough for them to reject the money that comes with it. So we get the ‘Kuta creep’. Ubud has become a wild west, a Mecca surrounded by money changers, where tourists are sold yoga packages and healing workshops, while the town gets sicker. Lost souls gather to build a Neverland on top of thousands of years of local heritage. And the cycle of cutting ties to who we are and where we come from, history thousands of years old, continues.
The thing that keeps me here is the presence of the dark side. Not as an opportunity to make money or frolic in pleasure, but as an awareness that I must find places for the darkness inside me, the root of my own suffering, or be forced to by some tragedy. Underneath the fantasy of paradise is a real opportunity for reflection, and for gift to help metabolize what gets stuck in seeming self evidence at home in America. A connection to the world, for each other, and ourselves. In full awareness of innocence being lost around you now, and inside you, in your personal history and heritage. And here, at the end of the realized American dream, my free heart is longing to belong, somewhere, with my people.