Cats
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.
Grey is the coziest color. Dark grey camisole, dark grey sweatpants, light grey flannel, fuzzy grey ankle socks, my favorite outfit for a rainy afternoon, and when I go outside, grey glitter flip-flops, even a grey hair claw holding back my bangs. Carrying the bones and drinking peppermint tea on a grey day. Green and grey and toasty and warm. Didn’t even have to try, my oh, my oh, my. Oh, that giant mosquitoe biting me through my sweatpants. Oh, Ismail gone kamikaze on my smoothie bowl. Oh, smoothie bowl melting over and I’m a mess. But nothing can break this cozy, Alhamdulillah. Haha, just writing that down is asking to learn a hard lesson. Al-hamdulillah. Oh, I got that mosquito. And I have a peanut butter chocolate ball from Sayuri to eat, those things are the best.
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.
//
Deep sleep last night with all that electricity in the sky. Thinking this morning about Shane MacGowan, some angel, as mosquitoes bite my hands, Jeki huddles in my lap, Lalah cries at snails. Nostalgia is a strange pleasure here, uneasy to hold, where even the seasons speak a different language.
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.