Cats
A funny thing is when a meow turns into a yawn.
A day spent adjusting between conflicted places and moods. Driving through Denpasar in Sweet Orange, windows down, concrete heat. Hair stuck to my cheeks, impossible to clear. Music from a younger country, (pie), dobro and whiskey, as the sun goes down and the city takes shape, interiors lit, full of smartphone advertisements, food stalls, diesel fumes, cartoon boba shops. A moment of lightness (under bright lights) in a foreign space. Dealing out as needed, the inside occupied by questions of boundaries and the effort it takes to let something go. Nothing quite settles until we get home, (it’s not home yet), wash feet, splash face, new toothpaste the scent of orange and cloves. Head on pillow. Ish, asleep. Lalah, playing, on top of the armoire. Waiting for E., and the closeness of warm skin, and for all of these things to slow to a stop.
To understand the meaning of rain here, it’s useful to know that we live half outside. This is typical in Balinese villages. When it rains, that means staying dry in the bedroom or going outside to living areas and getting a little wet. The kitchen and bale (our little “living room”) are covered, but walkways get slippery, stray drops are always blowing in, the more wind and rain, the less dry, the less safe for cats and electronic devices. Huddling in from the edges. It can be… inconvenient, but I mostly like living close to the weather. And the garden, and the bugs, snails, bats, frogs, geckos and tokays, occasional birds, snakes, monitor lizards, stranger cats, etc., that visit.
That little bale is also the place where we socialize at home, and it’s visited daily by members of our Balinese family. Writing and my yoga practice demand a sustained level of privacy that’s not typical of family life here. (And not good at all for social anxiety.) I’d always heard that “Asian culture” was “more family-centered, less individualistic” than Western, but I never understood it until I lived (sort of) immersed in it. (I say sort of, because we don’t live at the main family compound, but at a nearby offshoot. Even so,) it seems to me like a drastically different lifestyle that has profound effects on mental, emotional, social, psycho-spiritual development. Not least because families take care of their elderly. I think treatment of elders sets a strong foundation for how people think and feel about death and dying, what comes to be and passes away, and what, if anything, is deathless.
On the road, memories of Java. Baluran a looming shadow on the left, Ijen somewhere to the right, cloaked in a grey day that fades to black, as grimy trucks metamorphose to arrays of rippling lights, inscrutable expressions ever gnawing at the pass.
And Ibuk, the eroding centerpiece of every Java trip. No longer as individuals but as genres of people, we enter her life. E. as son, husband, father. I as myself or Other Elizabeth, both of whom Ibuk trusts and likes, to whom she whispers untranslated secrets. An intimate unknown. Until she loses the thread. Then she trusts nobody, wants nothing but to grab a nearby bag (of what?) and flee on foot. She fights to do it, tooth and nail and shouts and cries. The family contains her as best they can. I try to comfort my husband. Alzheimer’s may be the cruelest disease.
(Other Elizabeth is, in a twist of circumstance strange even for here, an American woman who came to the village some twenty-five years before me, also blonde, rumor suggests an intelligence agent? She married a local artist and studied dance and voice with Ibuk. Then left Indonesia, taking with her a large collection of E.’s fathers masks. Present status unknown.)
My feelings for Java remain so ambivalent, it demands so much, of both of us. Nothing here is convenient or comfortable or predictable. I can’t say if I could ever live here. After Ibuk passes, I’m not sure how alive that question will be anymore.
The possibility of our entry depends on a community coherence that remains presently intact, but seems unsustainable. How the younger generation is being sucked into the same smartphone world as everywhere else. They abandon village life in pursuit of urban status, commodfied glamour, the parasitic myth. They will go back to the village someday, look for it again, find it has disappeared. The same story, so many times over. At what point does one give up the ghost?
Presently, in Bali. Jeki on my lap, sulit girl, karmic helper, I am home. Angry-happy to see us, now cuddly and precocious, soon she will be off again. I must reweave loose threads so things don’t fall apart. Memories of last night (this morning) are a dark dream.
Over water, from the ferry. The waves were too big and E. was afraid. (I was afraid to squeeze between trucks. We contain complimentary visions of annihilation.) We went to the upper deck, at the muster point, near the lifeboats, and distracted ourselves deciphering deployment instructions. Heaving swells of black ocean tossed us and all that heavy machinery, sometimes in circles, it seemed. The force of water crashing against steel, the thunk- and vibration of the rudder, resisting, the engine pushing to maintain a direction. (Water does weird things as it switches between seas.)
I had two photos ready for “community”. One, of a tiny mosque we passed the other day, it’s carved decorations painted turquoise blue, golden ochre, like icing on a sweet dessert, neat little gate, (doors closed), blue sky with white clouds, a happy, trim little image. The laws, rituals, and words that bind people together, a place with a pretty shape, clearly defined.
The other, of a graveyard we visited before leaving. The quiet of their interwoven voices, the sound of ghosts in ancient communion. Holding back judgment, as a drawn breath in unison, noticing my presence. Countless gravestones in an old jepun forest.
They keep jepun (frangipani) in the graveyards, in Java. I think I understand why, (a little), the trees leafing out, flowering, or bare, in their staggered cycles. Always saying everything at once, these trees. And in silence. Just like the dead. The image was wild, gnarled, messy edges, poorly captured. Hard to tell what it was, if it was anything, an undergrowth concealing the broken stone markers, grass untended. Disorderly. I waited for fear, but instead it felt calm, soothing. Everyone here has seen too much. They don’t shout. They are not afraid.
I felt expected there, to be honest. It was some kind of welcome. Difficult to admit, but I am difficult to admit. A slow, almost flat exhalation. Without pain. Savasana.
It was on the ferry, waves heaving underneath us, (another graveyard below, don’t forget the ferry that was sucked down, in this very crossing, just a few years past), that I, fingers stumbling to touch the right buttons, posted that photo. Unsure of everything, in that moment. The meaning, the memory, what it would be. Probably we would be fine, I said to E., and we were. Someone threw up their dinner over the side, was all that was lost. Everything else, aman.
Now, Jeki stretches out on my lap. Special when she shows this much affection, comfort, trust, her paws and whiskers twitch, she is in her own dream. I think about why it is, that I love best the most difficult things, and I get back to life here, in Bali. Where I sweep my own floors, we brew our own coffee, and make the day as familiar as the medium allows.
How Not to Break
Σωκράτης: καλῶς γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, λέγει.
Socrates: Beautifully said, fellow.
//
People forget the absolute confusion it would throw us into. Our poor hearts. To be flirted with by Socrates!
Everyone reacted in his own way. There were puppies, pitbulls and poodles among us, Siamese cats, golden retrievers, kosher beef hotdogs, poisonous spiders and slithering snakes, all electrified, burning cheeks, clammy hands, contemptuous coughs, eyes rolling exaggeratedly behind backs, tea-drinking, name-calling, note-taking, knowing looks, mistaken engagements, pregnant pauses, drunken outbursts, drunken confessions, drunken makeouts, sneaking sweets into pursed lips, so many petty jealousies you wouldn’t believe.
Backstabbing, frontstabbing, it got ugly, abusive. Nobody wanted to see himself like that. Some went abstract, algebraic, symbolic, tried to ignore it, tied their hands as they slept. It exhausted us all. Some dismissed her for it, pretended cute compliments were sarcastic slights, secret glances a lie, the multi-entendres a meaningless flourish, intellectual metaphor, performative bullshit, while sneaking behind bushes. Some named it irony, her beloveds and her beautifully saids, a great number of grown men turned theatrically, cartoonishly evil, sending pornography to professional inboxes, these are historical facts, they just broke.
From her simple, sweet flirtation: they broke.
The question was always, how not to break.
(Hold it together?) What does he want. (Does he want it from me?) What do I want. (Why do I want it?) Do I want to give. (Do I have what he wants?) Do I believe him. (Is it about sex?) The stimulation of bodies to pleasure, more pleasure, until lost in the pleasure. (Reforged in pleasure?) Is it empty or is it full. (It or me?) Am I safe or am I in danger. (Which is the one that holds me together?)
The heart becomes a gaping question.
After all, this is a rite of passage. Few of us pass. (Pass into what?) The beautiful is what we call it when someone just does.
//
A spell of rain before sunrise, just enough for the orchids. Last quiet day before E returns with Ibuk. Happy to see them but I savor today’s solitude, the no need to speak, how the words that come out are just for me. Or the cats. Or the fish in the pond, or Blih or Father, or Mbok A., or etc.