Volume One: Paradise...!

In my work I intricately weave into a literary stream of consciousness frame my strong likes and interests, especially in the Arts: Music, Theater, Film, Travel, Languages and Current Affairs. My narrative non-fiction is obviously in the English language. However, several other languages do also play an important supportive role in my literary work of cultural crossovers, a logical result of my colorful background.

With my two volumes I very much also intend to call attention to the looming plight of the mainly unsuspecting Balinese. In seven short years I have disturbingly witnessed with alarm a decline in the unique culture of Bali, my host island. Especially in the overflowing tourist centers in the South of this island there is a strong influx of migrants from the many other islands in this archipelago. I am truly apprehensive, that way, way before the end of the current century there will not be a Hindu Bali, at least not like DEAR WORLD knows it now. Having just recently reread again one of my favorite works in World Literature, the 1935 Vicki Baum German novel LIEBE UND TOD AUF BALI (literal translation LOVE AND DEATH ON BALI; the official English title is, however, the far less romantic A TALE OF BALI), I continue to be quite shocked at the big differences. Progress is, of course, good, but not when it has a detrimental effect.

My first seventeen years on "DEAR WORLD' (quote from my work) I spent mainly in the Dutch East Indies (Nederlandsch Oost-Indie)/ Indonesia, growing up in the city chronologically called Batavia/Djakarta/Jakarta. Upon completion of the rigid set of final exams at the end of my high school education in the Netherlands, I joined my family in the United States of America. After my totally self-financed intense universities' studies and professional careers in the Boston, MA area -first in education, then in the travel industry- I opted to return to part of my roots. "Ageism," my increasing abhorrence of the often brutal winters in New-England, and also what was sadly happening to "the Good U.S. of A" since the turn of the century, definitely helped me with the decision to settle on "the Beautiful, Mystical and Spiritual Island of Bali" (quote from my work).