YANGED IN YINDONESIA
A scuba diving screenwriter (me) recounts an intense mission working on a documentary about creating a UNESCO marine preserve in a remote area of Irian Jaya Indonesia. Where headhunting still exists.
It was 2003, the new millennium imploding and exploding with no exit unless to the most remote, primitive outpost possible. I’d always wanted to write an extreme exotic adventure story yet never knew quite how to make it real. Research? The dull dialectic opposite of what Graham Greene did out in the field and then back again to his imaginative typewriter. Perhaps a fantasy adventure from my own occasionally rich imagination. A thriller set in…somewhere? Irian Jaya was the place that chose me. Many plane rides later I was there, somewhere in the uncharted middle of nowhere.
And now it’s 2021. I live my life hard and fast but it had screeched to a halt for Covid; isolated at home I could only re-write movie scripts to pay the bills. I’d work on those in the morning and had begun pivoting to fiction and essays in the afternoon. Hemingway said “don’t write until you’re 35 and have something to write”. I was way beyond that start date yet it was no longer 1950. I’d never had the interest nor confidence to write novels or short stories; let my heroes Updike, D.F Wallace, Carver, Hemingway, Proulx, Oates etc. do that heavy lifting for my reading pleasure. And then I recalled; the most fantastic, intense adventure I’d ever had, eighteen years earlier in Indonesia: it was a writing job of accompanying filmmakers on a quest into uncharted areas near the equator where the greatest marine bio-diversity on the planet—- fish & coral—- had been discovered and certified by a team at Stanford. It was suddenly 2003 again, pardon the shift. I was enlisted to write a documentary script of the narrative as it unfolded, for the widest audience possible; a film to be used at UNESCO events and for fundraising.
Memories of all that purged onto the page; memories drift and change—it’s best to write them down before your brain cells take hold and reshuffle. It all became real again as I started typing it (this) all out as it happened and forgot about that other typist guy who’d done same on an amazing boat twenty years ago. I dug up the documentary script and its fragmented notes. The best stories occur in the remote regions of our planet or in the remote regions of our mind. Whether that makes any sense at all, it made sense to me 312 words ago... you just type and see what comes up from the deep Indonesian water. In this case 100 feet down. I was then a scuba diving screenwriter, age forty, hired to write a documentary about the creation of a UNESCO marine bio-diversity preserve. Herein I revisit and recapture.
Back then my diving experience, though PADA certified capable, was far less than anyone else’s aboard. They included six of the top underwater cinematographers in the world and their diving friends and partners; my scuba-diving producer and his scuba diving wife; four professional scuba guides who’d outfitted us with the boat and crew; a terrific crew of ten. Just fyi, SCUBA is an acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus...I just now looked that up. We wre fifteen terrific people and a terrific Captain and boat crew of ten. A perfect fit from day one. Twenty-four xclnt people + one typist, to accomplish our mission, have fun, meet a head hunter tribe in Irian Jaya and nearly die in a plane crash after typist nearly dies from nitrous oxide on a solo ascent from 100 feet of water dive “buddy” abandonment. All in the most remote, certified greatest scuba paradise on the planet. Yet there were also far-reaching times of truth and beauty in this 40,000 year old still primitive part of the world where naked with the penis-gourd remains male high fashion (Western couture is way behind, yet recently catching up).
The last chart had been done by the Dutch in 1924. We were heading off that chart. I was game…not for the headhunters, I mean…er…please read on.
I accepted the job then did more research. It all seemed excitingly safe, with one exception: a year earlier, one local tribe had burned down a scuba outpost in the middle of the night with torches and machetes; the paid-up scuba adventurers had been spared, yet stranded on a beach for a week eating crackers before their rescue. The remote site was owned & run by a Seventh Day Adventist scuba geek who employed local tribal workers he’d converted to Christianity. Upon the incendiary invasion he raced off in his slick boat promising to return and rescue his customers. On the 8th day after his disappearance he kept his word and did. What I began referring to as a Yangdonesian Advent.
After accepting I did further research. Corrupt military generals in gunboats fish-bombed and strip-logged in the area. They generally left scuba dive boats alone; per their indirect yet legal protection paycheck from scuba tourism, under Indonesian law.. The 7th day Adventist seemed the worst of it; and I wasn’t out to convert any of the natives to screenwriting. I ordered a nautical chart of the area and charted our locations, mostly uncharted— the last time had been by the Dutch in1922.
.
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Two months later, I boarded an Air China plane. The first stop was Hong Kong airport where some of us enjoyed a first-time meeting before the connecting flight to Bali. The rest of us from other parts of the world all met in Denpasur, Bali where the death-prone scooter and taxi drivers race past neighborhood cock-fighting. Death is the same as life here in Yindonesia. There’s possibly a beauty to that; giving up your worldly materialism, your life but not your soul. In the quiet safety of our simple but fabulous Denpasar compound; a pool surrounded by thatched-roof cabana-rooms replete with fancy German bathroom fixtures everyone was finally convened.
Our crew included my producer Flynn, an old friend; his wife Lydia; the five top underwater cinematographers on the planet and their partners; and a cheerful Indonesian crew. I suddenly felt beyond safe and that this was going to be beyond fun. A welcome dinner party ensued prepared by our remarkable galley chef Beni. Who would also be galley chef aboard our scuba ship the SEA SAFARI III.
The Kararu Dive outfitters commanding this mission were based in a damp office in Bali entered through corroding sliding glass doors. As most offices in Bali are. Here, the following day, I met Tony, our brilliant focused head guide and divemaster; an open-souled 32 year old, zero% fat and tan British gent from Egypt by way of a failed Bristol childhood. He’d clearly found his niche and I liked him immediately. At a Denpasar dept. store I bought a red-top Ovation knock-off for $5O. . . a perfect imitation of the real thing, besides the pearl inlay on the headstock which, instead of ‘Ovation’ was: ‘Welldone’ . After another perfect breakfast from Beni we left for the airport—in rented SUV’s, not suicidal taxis. Then a 1200 mile puddle jump to the remote Irian Jaya port where, the Sea Kararu III awaited. At our first puddle hop airport to the island of Abon we were advised to remain on the plane; a very recent Muslim v. Christian riot had occurred, with machetes slaughtering fifty people near the airport. Some of us deboarded anyway, including beautiful, petite Laura. Local women laughed bewilderedly at the rare sighting of this small white woman walking past with her rugged white husband. The airport was clearly just a site of entertainment for the locals; and relief from the machetes. They all seemed simply happy as we trudged past bearing our heavy scuba and camera gear. Yet the violence was recent so we were scurried forward by our dive-guides, leaving our half-finished Bintangs on the worn plastic tables before boarding again.
We remained on the plane for our final landing, and six hrs later boarded the big beautiful 155’ Sea Safari III converted into an Xtreme dive ship w/ video editing bays. The last provisions were being loaded, including 90 cases of Bintang beer. She even had water-skis aboard. What wasn’t to like?. A pair of wealthy Brits also aboard were financing beyond the UNESCO commission; they owned a resort somewhere nearby; a delightfully energetic married couple in their happy early 60’s, slightly reserved of course. They loosened up later on into the party animals they’d once been in Essex. Throughout the job I restrained from pitching them my other movie projects, focusing on my job on hand. And not to my regret; they’ve since invested in two and always offer me their beach villa on Maui to come and stay, even if they’re not there (one of their many houses).
As a sailor I was wowed by the ship’s perfection. The boat was amazing— a restored 1960’s four masted schooner all teak with luxury everywhere; throughout the galley and crew’s quarters all the way up to the fourth top deck (where there was a bar, of course). The crew would regularly re-caulk the teak deck every four days after divers’ feet and any other weather wearied their old joints. We were underway, it was all now very real...if not surreal
Diving deep can induce a certain ecstasy in such a place of brilliant live color. We were diving 60-100’ in a scuba team with cameras and underwater lights. The coral is alive as are every manner of colorful fish. From 30 ft wingspan mantas to a school of 1” neon fish who have been there for eight hundred million years. It was all a brilliant movie five times per day.
When repetitively diving, as a rule you must replenish your body for 1 hr after each dive before diving again. I’d dived the world’s best sites from Cozumel to the Great Barrier Reef but this was a colorful nirvana epiphany on acid of how this seaworld might appear another two hundred or a thousand more feet down. I would’ve gone deeper and never returned but couldn’t: the Irian Jaya sea floor is 60-100 feet deep throughout the archepelago. Unique diving bliss with 200’ visability, the sun illuminating through the clear warm water.
And then, after three days of six dives a day I felt a desperate need to be alone on land. The intense togetherness of our dive ship in the middle of a beautiful, enchanted nowhere inspired a sort of loneliness which made me want to swim away. Even with the most amazing new friends I’d ever so quickly met. Some of us would regularly dive off the first deck, at first light of day, a 25’ splash into the water, and swim around the massive hull to the lurching steel launch deck; grab it and and hoist ourselves up. It’s like that college dorm moment when you glimpse who you finally are—- alone in the universe; and so this was redux for me. I asked for a dive skiff to drop me off on one of the remote volcano islands, then pick me up at sunset. A few rolled their eyes at the writer.
Our young, cheery boat guide Abdul dropped me off on a strip of sand. I said he could play my guitar while I was gone and could keep it if I never came back; I’d been giving him basic guitar lessons between dives. I explored the 30 feet of sand back into the shady cool rock formations, shocked to discover an old campsite with a pair of desicated sandals. Who’d been here and when and why? Why was I here? It suddenly seemed like such a bad idea. I sat on the sand staring out across an expanse of identical volcanic black plugs of various sizes stretching out for miles. I’d brought neither mask nor snorkel yet plunged in and swam, my intent was to swim its quarter mile circumference. I’m a good swimmer and it felt fine as I expected there would be a few beaches I could swim to, come up for air and gaze into the existential abyss for awhile then swim on. These islands are like round black volcanic plugs shooting out of the warm dark violet water. I swam the circumference; no beaches. During the last 200 yards I suddenly feared I was lost or worse would be munched by a manta or crocodile. I reached the beach then waited as fear abated then crept in gain. Was I stranded? Would the dive boat retrieve me? Why did I do this? What a fucking idiot I was!! As Freud so rightly postulated in Civilization & Its Discontents, the Western Male—- me—- is a dysfunctional failure. And then, just as my brain spun fully out of control here was the boat, reliably returning. Of course; they needed writer to write the show.
Back on the ship, however, my Yinned feeling intensified that we were still in an unpredictable, extremely remote planetary place in the universe. The sense of that dissolved to Yang, surrounded by all these wonderful people I’d recently met who could save each other from whatever peril. “You look a bit bewildered from your island meditation” Geoffrey grinned, “Have another Bintang...there’s Peyote in it” He slapped my back with a chortle and I took the beer as I should’ve, hoping he was kidding. He was. Somehow he knew what I’d just been through.
Regarding those 90 cases of Bintang beer... It’s always well-advised never to drink at all the night before diving, much less prior to 6 dives the following day. However, on this mission that instructional command was ignored. Our divemasters explained the instruction away. When hungover, each dive to depths of 60 - 100 feet (2-3 ATMS), for an hour, pressurizes and speeds metabolization of every toxin in your system. And so it was, though most of us drank no more than 2 or 3 Bintangs the night before. If even the slightest hangover occurred, you felt totally refreshed after your second dive. We dove 6 dives per day, many divers with full camera gear; with the required hour or so aboard ship in between. Scuba is purification of body mind and soul; whence we came: the ocean. I’d dived in Hawaii (to 110 ft thru volcanic-formed cones), Cozumel, Australia, Catalina; a meager 23 total dives in my divebook. This was like nothing else I’d ever seen; islands like massive dark rock plugs with craggy tropical trees and greenery drooping vegitation then the vibrant color thriving beneath them when you dived.
But it all went to terror on another dive a few days later; my previously reliable Kararu certified divemaster “buddy” Ken abandoned me at 60 feet deep. In landlocked terms that’s like speeding in a car falling asleep at the wheel with your friend in the passenger seat. Or running from a burning building away from your friend still trapped inside. And sure enough I had a problem; I was rising upward despite yanking the cord to purge my PFD. Air expands as your rise and floats you up faster and faster. It’s hard to see others in a mask, turning your head with its water-tight tube in your mouth, keeping track of your group. It’s why divers always dive in a pre-assigned pair, you’re each other’s survival partner, your dive-buddy. But Ken was gone with the others and I couldn’t see the group, no doubt drift-diving just around the curve of the island plug with its dazzling coral wall. I was alone 80’ underwater in a dangerzone, in the middle of nowhere 500 miles from the nearest decompression chamber with no airstrip let alone seaplane. I was ascending as my PFD inflated further as air expanded expanded, racing upward—- WTF!! Just when you think you’re Yinning you get Yanged in Yindonesia! I flipped and kicked back down, swimming as hard as I could straight back down; monitoring my control wristwatch for depth...45’... stop for 1 minute kick kick kick! But I was still buoyancy increasing as air in my PFD expanded during my swimming battle to contract it as I rose to higher ATM’s toward the surface, yanking the rear PFD purge knobs to no avail. Within 90 more seconds I lost the battle and surfaced, certain I was about to be gripped with paralyzing bends or worse. I gazed about; no dive boat anywhere, I was all alone. Braced for a narcosis seizure I floated on my back and relaxed. After many long minutes of fear, heads popped up out of the water, including Ken’s, and the diveboat appeared motoring towards us. No seizure occurred as I climbed back on board.
Later that night, over dinner and Bintangs, I confronted Ken, who was being paid to look after all of us underwater, on land, and aboard, as well as our provided equipment. He admitted he’d abandoned me and further apologized after examining my assigned PFD and finding two small leaks in the purge seals. The buddy system was loosey-goosey out here, i.e. yin-yang. I abandoned Ken with no rancor and requested another buddy, no less than my producer Flynn volunteered; I was glad for the acknowledgement that my words weren’t more worthless than me.
Onboard, between dives there were stories told, as there always are with crew, of adventures and misadventures past. It’s how you get close to one another on an extreme adventure like this. You listen and nod, then summon your own when all eyes point to you. I had nothing comparable, just a calamitous routine sailing misadventure fifteen miles off California’s coast in my 30’ sailboat. I’d saved my dog but not the boat Unimpressive in this forum; scant applause responded with some laughs and aawws. I passed the floor of teak to someone else.
The closer we sailed to the equator the more ominous became my sense of being part of something brilliant beyond anything I’d ever experienced: floating on the outward bulge of our planet. Everyone encouraged my freshman excitement; they’d all been equatorial all over the globe many times before, enjoying the fattest section of Earth spinning at the Sun and its cosmic pleasure. To them this was just a job; February in Indonesia during its warm summer. When the moment of crossing came, around 11PM, I was excitedly aside capable Captain Yan at the helm who smiled as I took a video of the equatorial GPS instrument winding down to 00:00:00 then up again 00:00:01 00:00:02. In the nightime in the middle of nowhere, he nodded and smiled; he’d been in this scene many times before with white divers from the West. I sheepishly thanked him and retreated to my cabin, Yan sailed his big boat all night long, dodging islands.
I refocused on the diving and the writing and soon found the balance Yin to my Yang: rehearsing guitar duet covers with Jack also on vocals, and also playing backgammon between dives with our Egyptian head divemaster Tony. He unfolded his beautiful board one late afternoon and when I asked where he’d gotten it he said it was the wedding gift from his lucky wife, with a twinkle in his eye. I’d learned backgammon at my father’s knee as a 6 year old, thence shrewdly played it with the doubling die against innocent victims. I was ready for the challenge. Which continued throughout the 3 week voyage. No money was exchanged The prize was the coin THE COIN! (French pronunciation) we’d shout as it passed back and forth between us with every match. It was a copper trophy coin of Tony’s with queen Victoria whose fallen empire had once ruled these seas. We would exclaim after a victory and several Bintangs The CWAH !! It went back & forth like this; a battle of the board onboard the boat.
The magic continued, both inward and outward as I focused on the purposeful objective writing I was being paid to do. Good luck with that, I wanted to write the magic. And so I finally am (in the end my script with Voice Overs was pretty good, performing the way it should and not upstaging the spectacular cinematography— my title was UNESCO: UNCHARTED SEA EXPLORATIONS; meant for fundraising events). Heading towards each next waypoint scheduled anchorage and dives, the production’s location schedule, the boat would speed forth all night at 15 kts under power, listing port to starboard all the way with its cargo of scuba humans slumbering as if all back in the womb. When we awoke at dawn, rebirthed, we’d be anchored beside yet another beautiful volcanic island itself birthed from the ocean floor a billion years ago. The subtext of our pre-dive glances and breakfast chatter was the profoundly shared unity with Earth’s truth and beauty. Diving around the equator in uncharted Indonesia is among the most rare terrestrial connections one can experience; along with floating on a tether in space, and climbing Everest. We could’ve been in any ocean but this one felt profound; perception, of course, is all in one’s head. CS Lewis wrote… ‘Joy was not a deception. Its visitations were the moments of clearest consciousness we had’. I was profoundly joyful. But why, and why not the reverse? After another dive day I collapsed in my cabin reading the novel I’d brought along (Robert Stone’s Outerbridge Reach) a sailing catastrophe story and metaphor for the American Dream adrift) within which my existence seemed disturbingly relevant. I put the book down as thoughts shot into my brain of my life left behind: had my home been invaded by squatters? Was my life of any inner or outer value, or just bleak and terminal? Had I forgotten to pay my mortgage? I snapped my brain right back.
When I travel I always return to the essence of my sense of myself, with odd clarity. This was an extreme return, any self was absent; what Buddhism calls selfless. It’s a sublime place to be. My life in LA felt like a distant planet, a happy planet, with a beach and the Pacific Ocean connecting us through 10,000 miles of the saltwater whence we’d evolved. Yet the equator is simply mercator math so man can inhabit Earth under some measure of his specious control. If you’re vaguely enlightened, these are things you think about when diving in uncharted Indonesia at the equator. Pinch your nose, lean backwards over the dive boat and plunge in, purge your mask. And then you’re in that magical world that existed long before your forebears crawled out of its sludge. Five dives and hours later I sat at the top deck bar facing my formidable backgammon opponent Tony once again. The sun was setting over an island’s peak, Bintang flowed. It remains one of my life’s perfect moment memories: high up on a majestic teak boat in the middle of nowhere with beautiful strangers becoming best friends both above and beneath a warm ocean. Many better describable characters and scenes and moments could fill a novel; here I try and cram them into this short memoir. What was next? I wasn’t here to write a novel just a one hour documentary script, my only purpose in life here…besides joyfully surviving.
One morning as we were all preparing to dive, a gunboat appeared loaded with six tattooed white men and women all in their muscular twenties. Two of them, wielding M-15s, boarded and commanded us to lie down on deck. We complied to their Aussie accented order. They were from a nearby pearl farm; one of their divers had been shot and killed in an attempted theft a week earlier. They were still looking for the culprits. With his face planted into the warm teak,Tony calmly talked them down with assurances that it wasn’t us and we were harboring no one. We were allowed to get up; the M-16 is a scary looking weapon, I’d never seen one up close, not to mention two being wielded. The tense exchange was further dispelled with a reassuring case of Bintang and it was now all smiles. they left with an invitation to tour their facility… yeah, right, we’ll come right over. The next day we did. It resembled a winery yet oyster pearl bins instead of vineyards submerged in the water. That same night we hosted a dinner party aboard for them, they brought guns back aboard and as if like shoulder packs slung them over their chairs. Later I later asked Tony if we had any protective firearms on board ourselves; he gave me an affirmative discrete nod like it was none of my business.
The wonders never ceased now with daily adventures onshore. Our guides knew the area and had grown to know us and trust that we wouldn’t act out when we encountered the indigenous communities which had been there for 40,000 years; we were their guests. On one island a short Mayor-commander marched w/ a vintage machete down the sandy street of his Raja Empat beach village, his presence keeping order. I wondered where his Napoleonic comportment had come from or whether that was primal among small men with big machetes. His citizenry numbered about 3000; happy brown Indonesians living purposeful lives in this beauty. The village kids had seen video cameras before but apparently never themselves on the viewfinder screen as scuba-cinematographer Jenny twisted hers towards them to a burst of frightened laughter. And then gleeful screams as they recognized their own faces. Their only other mirror has been the lapping calm water at the shoreline but now they knew exactly what they looked like. It was a wonderful innocence to behold. My sense of it was shattered as what next transpired was the annual head hunting ritual engaging these same 12 year old boys heading out excitedly, armed with knives and hatchets. It’s an annual violence between neighboring tribes to reassert geographical boundaries. Simple as that: kill two birds with one stone; cut some heads off and matriculate youngsters into manhood. Their fathers and ancients ancestors had done the same for millennia. The next day in the village meeting space where this manhood ritual is completed they sat with their freshly severed trophy heads in their laps before the village elders and Mayor. We didn’t witness this, only the traces of dried blood all over the dirt floor when we later walked by it.
I was relieved to return to our mother ship. But we’d been invited to return for a feast that night. Back aboard the Sea Safari III sanctuary I wondered what sort of feast might that be? The sun was setting over our vista of these amazing islands…what could be more beautiful. The answer came as Just then the sun set as a flock of bioluminescent birds of paradise that fly off the islands in a flurry of light each day flew off. There were hundreds of them lighting up the sky like stars, flying off for who knows where in a fifteen minute show. And as dusk turned to gloaming, we mustered for our return to the feast. Tony assured us it was a regular stop on the Kararu scuba-cruise and we’d return with our heads intact.
We were welcomed by the Mayor sans machete and were led along the shore, past tin-roofed huts with gas generators occasionally disrupting the quiet. People peered out, and I peered in. In one hut I glimpsed an 18th century Dutch Master religious painting hung on a wall... an absurd reliquary of the Dutch’s Christian colonization of the South Pacific. I glimpsed another in another; Masters and Minors. Ten million dollar paintings a million miles from Christie’s. In a beach clearing where many feasts had occurred and ours was about to, we were greeted by a prehistoric-esque Casuarian 5’ tall bird strutting back and forth like a giant colorful turkey. A smiling old man with lame twisted legs sat on his beach clapping for us.
The breeze was warm, the sky cobalt with cloud whisps, matching the shoreline seawater with its froth. It was the most beautiful place I’d ever been to. Other people emerged, including a five piece band; the music took off. The feast proceeded—likely the best dinner party I’ll ever attend. When the band struck up again I sat in on bass—- a beautifully crafted acoustic stand-up instrument resembling what a jungle bass may always have been for 40,000 years: a hollowed out gourd with the neck of carved bone. When you get it right, as Stradivarius felt about his violins, why change? Glimpses of people’s lives so extreme and apposite to mine and they were happy cause they knew what was always going on at its core. Wake up, Thrive in Natural Beauty, Wake up again. These folk never think about Woke.
The quiet beauty of being underwater with only the sound of your breathing in warm water 60-100 ft deep must be akin to being in the womb. That’s where I was the following day. Six dives per day including a night dive had been a slightly intense routine for two weeks, yet it wasn’t a scuba vacation party. Reminding myself of myself and my purpose here was a necessary daily reminder. I had to write clearly; an objective/subjective admixture for UNESCO’s audiences around the world, not like a philosophical fool. Yet my keyboard preferred the latter. I would retreat to my cabin download my notes and brain on what had happened that day into two categories: The Subjective Journal and The Documentary Script; the former you’re now reading
After the Mayor’s banquet, we sailed to another gorgeous inlet cove with surprisingly mountainous greenery, unlike the sparsely vegetated black volcanic exteriors of all these thousands of islands. Bert, one of our cameramen knew of a hike; he’d been there before…and so we hiked…in search of some elusive tropical bird Bert also knew about which perched in the trees of this region. This all sounds absurd like a Disney movie but it’s true. It was a tough hike led by Bert slashing foliage aside with his dive knife.. And after a seemingly futile frustrating steep hike up and down we found ourselves in a clearing were Bert shushed everyone…and there the bird was. Unfortunately unremarkable; after the difficult hour long climb I’d have preferred the Disney animated version. But the view of the isolated cove and Sea Safari III way below in all her perfect scuba-home-at-sea majesty made the hike worth it. Back onboard we enjoyed a fresh caught excellent seafood dinner with mint crepes, washed down with Bintang.
On deck at sunbreak, prepping our gear for more hard labor underwater, the 7th Day Adventist w/ bible in hand motored toward us in his fancy speedyacht. Here in the flesh was the person I’d read about whose minimalist scuba “resort” had been burnt to the ground a year earlier. He’d relocated to a new site and hired new tribe-members to build lean-to’s on the beach, with the lumber corrupt Indonesian Generals were blasting into the waters. He blessed us and sped away. It was time to go home. On our last afternoon, after 3 dives, I picked up my guitar with its flawed flatted 13th fret and headed to the middle aft deck; our party central. Bobby soon joined me and we went through our playlist, people gathering around for the fantastic view ot so much the live music. Several Bintangs later, Tony’s backgammon board came out and we played a final few matches for the “coin”… I won it in the end, The CWAH! Remains displayed in my office as a cherished memorabilia token of every possible great adventure always available.
Yet the end was not quite yet to be; we had a harsh civilization re-entry on our flights back to Bali. The last thing I recall as the Sea Safari III unloaded us in Sanur was Jack gifting his expensive guitar to Abdul. I kept my cheap Welldone which may have cursed me with some yang but it was too cool not to take with; my American sensibility about clinging to material items intruded-- I should’ve left it on the boat but. We boarded the 40 seater plane, slumped exhausted in our cramped seats along with thirteen other robed or business suited passengers used to smelly, rich Western scuba adventurers. Some deboarded two hrs later as we touched down on Ambon, completing the first of our two “puddle jumps” en route back to Bali, a few more came aboard. The next stop was the small island of Trawarangan, which was fogged in.... Anyone who’s flown enough has likely been on a flight where the landing descent takes the passenger through opaque grey clouds seen outside the windows and then you see whatever cityscape high vista and the airport and then the plane lands. This landing began just like that then quickly turned to disaster, as disasters often do. The plane rounded the dinky one runway airport at a dangerous 300 hundred feet above, through the opaque grey. The international FAA rules are: 1) If ground-to-cloud cover visibility is 400 feet or less, only 3 landing attempts may be made. 2) If 3rd attempt fails, plane must land at another airport or return to original airport (per regulations, a plane always carries enough fuel to return to airport of origin). As we dropped from the clouds at 200 MPH on the first attempt, we were over rocky shoreline, the airport visible a quarter mile out the left side windows. The plane swung up, speeding back into the grey. And then it was another long 10 minutes of grey as the plane circled around for another attempt. During this time people got nervous. Descending for the second attempt was calming—- until we broke out of the clouds at two hundred mph heading straight into a mountain—- now screams broke out as we sped up vertically, dodging explosive death, back into the now-sinister grey. For another ten minutes of torture. On the third attempt all three stewardesses were crying; the co-pilot appeared and addressed the 50 seat plane in Indonesian, then in English: “Everyone must now pray”. This time as we fell from the clouds, the runway was closer but landing again aborted. I leaned my head into Flynn’s, our arms properly outstretched pressed into the facing seatback in crash preparation, and we spoke very softly as, I discovered, one does when you’re about to die in a plane crash. Up in the grey made sense after the transcendent three weeks we’d just shared. It was okay to die; we just hoped it would be instant and wouldn’t hurt. Flynn’s wife was weeping with fright; he took her arms from the seatback and into his and they embraced.
The Fourth Attempt: Of course, as the saying goes, third time pays for all. Enough payment already! But now there was about to be a fourth attempt, defying FAA law. Philip marched from his seat into the cockpit to challenge the crazy pilot...minutes later walking back to his seat shaking his head, “he’s a good pilot, but the ground control is telling him to land cause there are 4 paid passengers to board so all our lives are now worth 240 bucks. Strapping himself back in, arms forward. Through the portals, the whisking grey, at this point seemed somehow beautiful, transitional; seeing the other side through a portal strapped into a comfortable chair. There were much worse ways to go. I scribbled a note to my girlfriend and one to my mother: “I’ve lived two lives already, I was happy to go and will always...” and couldn’t finish; what was I doing? Giving in? “Fuck you...” I muttered. Flynn shot me an angry glance—- “No, I mean fuck this, not fuck you...everything was great Flynn”, I blurted.... “Except for this shit.”, he spoke softly, and then he grinned, and then the three of us were laughing. I hoisted a phantom bottle: “Bintang” , we toasted with empty fists.
And then we again came out of the clouds and there was sun and it was windy and the plane blew about but touched down on the actual runway. Nobody applauded as usually occurs after a difficult flight, just froze then released their seatbelts. Exhausted, we sat in the small shabby airport (drinking...Bintang, the ubiquitous yin-yang beverage). Phillip had grilled the ground tower controller and learned a plane had crashed a month earlier in the ocean and all the stewardesses had died. I looked at my boarding ticket, Merpati airlines with its figurative-esque “Fly The Friendly Skies” inscription: ‘Merpati: Get The Feeling’. An hour later, we all had to reboard the same plane and get the feeling again, with our four new oblivious $240 co-passengers, for the final hop back to Bali. Everyone survived and we all kissed the Bali tarmac.
Safely back in our same Denpasur villa, Jack & I jammed, vocal-harmonizing with my solo guitar all the songs from our Sea Safari III playlist.
He and I headed out into the night determined to share our musical chops to a receptive uncritically drunk club audience. We found it in an Australian Sports bar with an Indonesian rock cover band onstage who welcomed us to sit it, even knowing a few songs on our playlist. Jack sang solo, prancing like Jagger as I played a Fender Strat and we briefly became Bali rockstars-- in our own minds, before maybe forty people-- yet with our capable back-up band the set was a certifiable hit. As affirmation, the house paid our Bintang tab. And now it was truly time to go, I’d survived by the skin of my teeth and a leaky scuba suit, fallen in love with a new group of far-flung friends I’d likely never see again yet stay connected to on social media.
Back in Hong Kong the remaining few of us reconvened in the bar at the Peninsula Hotel; platinum hospitality at its highest with the green Rolls Royces parked in the circular drive, the cello quartet at tea-time on the mezzanine. The bar wasn’t crowded yet fell on my ears as a cacophony of noise chatter as if my eardrums were fully exposed. It was all too loud. After the calm warm desolation of the Indonesian sea and our gently swaying mother boat we were back in the normal human life of expensive shoes planted firmly on expensive floors. We all struggled for conversation then silently looked at each other sharing the same thought; I hugged everyone goodbye and left. We were all as alive as possible for those three weeks, though I don’t recommended it for everybody. What we’d shared was being Yanged in Yindonesia, or Yinned in Yangdonesia. There were no near-deaths, just laughter about the ones that might have occurred.
I made it safely back home to my desk-- a life anchor. As I downloaded all my notes I typed this one first: ‘You must always balance more Yin with your Yang, as if that’s even possible. It’s possible on the written page: skewed-balance lives can seem on a perfect course in fiction, if you can write a good sentence. Or, in this case, reliving life in non-fiction because like being 60’ down in the middle of nowhere no one else is there but you...trying to control your own mind.’
I have no idea what I meant by that, still wondering.