Back on the Clock

(First published in Bali Advertiser, April 25, 2007)

“Hello, I must be going,
I cannot stay, I came to say, I must be going.
I’m glad I came, but just the same, I must be going.”
-- Groucho Marx as Captain Spaulding in the 1930 movie, Animal Crackers

This is good-bye. Two years I have been writing this column. Five years I have been staring at the rice fields contemplating life. Now it is time to punch in again. I’ve taken a job, you see. It is back to morning alarms, noon whistles and five o’clock bells.

Thank you to the readers that have let me know they enjoyed the writing. Thank you, too, to the people that have disagreed with me and took the time to tell me so. To the less appreciative and more abusive, well, you won’t have Lee Roy LeRoi to kick around anymore.

Five years ago I would have said I would never return to the regimented world. Dealing with it (badly) had just about done me in spiritually and physically. My soul had shrunk to pea-size. It knocked around in a husk hollowed by smoke, drink and corporate panic. A good portion of the cure was rest, diet and moderation. Bali had little to do with it. It could have been Oklahoma cow pastures or Rocky Mountain skylines that fed inspiration and smoothed wrinkled brows.

Weep not for me. There is nothing inherently harmful in returning to gainful employment. Its reputation as destroyer is exaggerated, and I want the steady money. The world is regimented, after all, even if only by the rise and set of the sun or the rhythm of the seasons. People naturally try to bring order to chaos, too. It is the way our minds work, the way we are made, the way the world is made, with planets, stars and men cycling through appointed paths. That is not an endorsement of astrology or predestination. The world moves; we must move in sync with it.

There is no other secret, no magic mantra that once grasped makes everything clear. Life is mostly washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, paying attention to social calendars, business agendas and travel itineraries. Life, not the devil, is in the details. Even those with an artistic temperament must pay their bills. They must pay attention to technique, timing, tastes and markets. And if they can’t govern their lives and their art, then they are probably just interesting people to talk to in a pub -- as they wait for someone else to buy the next round.

We may all be clowns, buffoons and baboons. That is no reason simply to drink and make merry and stick our heads in the urinals.

We have friends and families. We have each other. We have suicide bombers, presidents, painters, bluegrass musicians, composers, TV blondes, news anchors, preachers, missionaries and imams. There are rich folk, white folk, black folk, poor folk, brown and yellow folk. We hate each other, love each other, and are indifferent. We have each other, and nothing else, just we, the blind, leading the blind down the dale and over the cliff. We are all in this together, even if we aren’t all together. Even when we hate each other it is nice to have company.

Life is a lightning bolt in a twirling cosmos; it is infinity in the twinkle of a gnat’s eye. It is humongous and tiny, swift and slow. Blink and it is gone. Stare at it a lifetime, it does not move. It is impossible to reduce it from the unimaginably massive, or raise it from the incomprehensibly infinitesimal, to a human scale. Life overpowers, overwhelms and awes. Never trust anyone who wants to hand it to you in a convenient formulaic package. They are charlatans or fools. The universe is the single largest fact that we know, and must be accepted in its entirety. We creep along our little surface of it as an ant creeps along our own earth ball. On this kind of a scale, even our giants are only one baby step ahead of the rest of us, and less than a meter is sufficient to represent the progress we have made since stepping down from the trees.

So, weep not for me. I have gone back to work only. It does not matter a hill of mole beans, and it pays better than freelance.

My almost constant companion, the semi-adventurous Tropical Tramp, who writes Border Run, also wishes to convey his farewell and thanks to readers and to Bali Advertiser. TT says he has enjoyed it immensely and hopes he never gave anyone a bum steer. Past columns of Bali Skeptic and Border Run will be archived at baliskeptic.com. E-mail is leeroyleroi@yahoo.com.

Copyright © 2007 Lee Roy LeRoi