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Take Me to Paradise | |||
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Review by Chisato Hara: Finding One's Paradise Within Australian writer finds her creative renaissance in Bali |
An Expanded Synopsis Marilyn wakes up one morning and instead of catching the bus to work, catches the ‘I don’t like Mondays’ flight to Bali. But is she too late to indulge her paradise dream? Has post-bomb, post-Schapelle, Bali, become a cliché just like Marilyn? How many western women have arrived before her and fallen headlong, for the lush green island, its exotic culture and their attractive driver? So begins Jan Cornall’s new novel Take Me To Paradise. Set in the artisan hill town of Ubud, between bomb one and bomb two, Jan Cornall’s witty and insightful performance prose novel explores notions of paradise and a modern woman’s quest for meaning and passion in a post 9/11 world. Travelling the tourist sites with her driver Bagus, Marilyn has time to reflect - on her marriage break up, post divorce life as a single independent woman and the work/life treadmill she has just escaped from. But as her spirit wakes up to the rich sensual atmosphere all around her, Marilyn becomes aware of her longing for something more… perhaps creative and spiritual fulfilment… perhaps a Balinese man? But what about his wife? How can Marilyn even consider entering the same triangle dynamic that ended her marriage? And yet how else can she express the deep feelings of mind, body, and soul arousal that she is experiencing? “…Maybe it’s not just Bagus, I think. Maybe the whole island has been working its magic on me from the minute I walked through the airport doors into its warm scented air. As if from that second, every cell and pore of my body woke up from a long sleep, as my senses were overloaded with observations, experiences, sensations that in the end all add up to one overriding impression - sensuality! " Like I have arrived in a sensual heaven, a pure land where everyone is a god making offerings to other gods; of colour, scent, form, sound, taste, touch, and I want to ask Bagus, how can you live in this, just day to day? Is it sensual for you too or is it just ordinary and mundane and boring because it’s what you know? How do you live with beauty all around you, everywhere you look, not only the physical beauty of almost every Balinese man, woman and child, but in everything you do: your art, your religion, the way you dress, smile, walk and talk, how you carry and care for your children, your physical ease with one another, men sitting with arms around each other, young girls holding hands, women carrying offerings to the temple with straight backs and slim figures, their smooth honey skin, flowers in their hair… Writer Jan Cornall leaves it up to the reader to decide whether Marilyn does, or Marilyn doesn’t, and then hits us with the clever denouement - Bagus’s wife, Putu was one step ahead all the way! But this isn’t the end of the story. The Jimbaran Bay bombers, busy in their cell, have a far more sobering surprise ending in store. Jan Cornall’s thoughtful novel shows us how different the paradise dream can be - for a western woman, for a Balinese man, for a Balinese wife, for a young terrorist, for a jaded expat. She reminds us, just as the Balinese do, that while the huge painful events of our lives; death, divorce and major life change, leave their mark; if we are to go on living, we have no choice but to let them go. “ I gaze out at the coloured flags flapping in the rice paddies wondering if they are to keep birds away or if they have another purpose. They look like Tibetan prayer flags, whose mantras drift into the wind and are carried away on the air. I have no desire to tell Bagus the blow by blow details of my marriage break up. Once I would have had to tell the whole story, but finally, thank goodness, it has lost its grip. It doesn’t matter, the flags seem to be saying. All our hard won battles and losses, all the huffing and puffing of our life and death dramas, will one day simply fade into the soft movement of air; in, out, out in, around, up, down, all around, and vanish on a gentle breeze. “
Take Me to Paradise by Jan Cornall, design and publishing by Saritaksu Editions 2006, ISBN: 9791173-00-1, Soft cover with flaps, 116 pages, 290 mm x 145 mm. About the Author
Jan Coranll Singing Srengenge, Written by Sitok Srengenge |
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©saritaksudesigncommunication bali | |
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