Day 32: ARMA

We toured Ubud's fine art museum, the Agung Rai Museum of Art (ARMA), largely compiled from Mr. Rai's private collection of Balinese and international artists. There were more pieces like those seen in Museum Puri Lukisan visited earlier in the week, but the difference in presentation seems to be emphasis-works of heritage vs. works of art. Since the museum is also a cultural venue and it was a Sunday, we got to watch dance class, traditional Balinese styles of dance, for groups of children on one of the pavilions. Here again is our benevolent Barong.
Balinese courtyards are real treasures and this was another fine example of harmonized media and composition.
The galleries got me thinking about synthesis. If I were to sum up my travel experience? I think when visiting places very different from your home culture, you'd better dust off your gratitude, for the things western culture has gotten right, and for the things your host country offers and does better. I miss my instantaneous access on the Internet but I like the pizza I've had abroad better than American 'za. I love the artificially hygienic, boiled dead, disinfected standards of my culture but I like the unsolicited soothing state I move into at the end of the day when hearing the call to prayer. I love my snake-free bathroom in Boston but I wish my junior high had looked like this instead of a turquoise-paneled 60s architectural sin.My what-free bathroom? Yeah, so I'll be ready for a brief visit in sterile Singapore. J and I have handled the gecko poop bombs falling from the thatch, birds giving up the ghost on the porch, the two bee hives in the roof line (those are just the ones I've counted), wasp nests in the stairwell, downpours in the bathroom, and ants joining us for breakfast every morning with some grace. But I was starting to think I better make some offerings of my own to the bungalow shrine when we woke up to the molted snake skin in the shower. Having lived with a pet snake long ago, I can report that I heard a kill thwack the evening before, with the unmistakable squeal of some quickly silenced bird or mouse.

Time to bid our fair terrarium farewell.