NO NYEPI BRAIN

 "Hush" - Mixed media collage

Elsha Bohnert (2011)

Today is Nyepi, Balinese New Year, celebrated by 24 hours of silence and darkness.  No fires, no lights, no cooking, no TV and radio, no airplanes, no driving or walking out on the street.  Everybody stays inside, including the tourists, to take a break from the outer world's distractions.  Except for babies and animals who don't know about rules, the otherwise bustling island settles into an eerie and blessed quiet. 

As I'm writing this, my downstairs neighbor suddenly starts up his vacuum, another neighbor clangs her pans, a helicopter roars overhead, the ice cream vendor jingles on the scene, someone splash-bombs into the pool, and someone else explosively starts up his car.  All of it simultaneously in rapid succession!  This concatenation of noise is highly unusual.  We live in the quiet end of Waikiki and our place is all snuggled up to a dense and lovely grove of palm trees. Birds and the wind through the trees are usually all I hear.  But now it is as if just writing about a whole day of quiet calls forth all the demons of noise.  Funny how that goes.

 

"No Nyepi Brain" - Ink on scrap paper

Elsha Bohnert (2011)

It's quiet again.  Outside, that is.  Inside my head not so.  No Nyepi in my brain. But that's okay.
Nyepi or no Nyepi.  It's all good.  Now hush, no more talking today.