Last night, beneath a sky full of stars. Crickets and tongaret and frogs of a hundred voices, night bird from the jungle with a wistful lilt. Full chorus. From within, Pacitan and Glagahdowo chat tentatively as they wire a fixture, poke fun at R., the youngest, for an accident with the motorbike. (He’s ok.) How did so much time pass without seeing stars? (One of rainy season’s more subtle effects, no stars for months.) The sound and the visible meet in expansive absorption. One doesn’t want to leave the moment for anything.
(One must, and so, one does.)
This morning. Wake in the different, the old, the becoming emptier place, where our presence thins. Wijaya kusuma, orchids, instruments, gone. Cats observant, unsure of change. To abandon all of these heavy, unfixable things.
But our footsteps are lightness. We orchestrate movement, flowing now as if downhill. We tell Blih that he absolutely must come visit (arguing against his inner voices). And we prepare, part by part, to disappear.
(To the place where one listens to stars.)