Hush, children, what's that sound?

Sunrise on Niepi. The jungle nocturne transforms. Many roosters join the orchestra a couple of hours before the light, and now there are hundreds singing together in an endless round. The dogs join in, but there is no human sound. I have yet to hear a motorcycle. Fish’re jumpin’ in the joglo moat… Suddenly an amplified voice, probably a priest or village leader, gives what must be a “start your engines…now shut up!” speech – disturbing but perhaps a necessary reminder at sunrise… One or two farmers work the rice fields: perhaps they are not Hindi? Or perhaps they are hungry. I’ve read a volume of Balinese short stories full of tales of the conflict between tourism and traditional life. Full of stories of rice farmers hanging themselves in their rice fields the night before Niepi after the local governor has requisitioned the family paddies for a tourist development like the resort with infinity pool in which I’ve been swimming. Oh well. So much for the dream of Paradise. Today I watch the flowers grow and insects fly around the garden. Yellows and reds punctuate the green… The butterflies are huge… and the gekkos love them as breakfast. There’s a three-inch long red green and yellow polka-dotted winged being involved in some kind of erotically charged ritual with a long green plant in my open-air bathroom. The bug has black legs that unfold, rotate, and invert like Alien. On a jungle trek a day later I see the same species with different colors –- perhaps they have closets full of interchangeable outfits.