Family
Margaret Spoon //
Peace is everything
(but it makes her laugh), like
rain showers that come and
go, and come again, and
the cozy sweeping shush,
like the hug of your grand-
mother, the sound of sand,
and someone slipping from
who they were into who
they were for you.
Full moon, sudah matang, tomato consommé, incandescent orb with eggplant-magenta smudged-charcoal setting, moving through air just chill enough to waken touch, silhouettes of palm trees dark enough to deepen vision, and presence dilates into possibility. Passing fragrance of pandan and frangipani. The best thing about living here is not seeing but feeling the island, how it vibrates as with mimetic electricity, a lucid dream.
On the motorbike, cozy in bright reds, pinks, orange woven scarf, wrapped around face as kerudung, black thumbholes hoodie, black leotard top and flowing layers, sparkling “fancy” flip-flops, holding husband, who’s handsome in black and bronze batik udeng and black bucket hat, and gold-trimmed randai pants, for dancing. We assigned ourselves the task of joy, tonight, and romance, and to get away. It was accordion music, view over ravine, pistachio gelato, single espressos and no distractions. Now, the drive home, through moonlit sawah, is brave, as if night-cleansing, to let busy city streets be forgotten behind backs.
We stop in the street, almost home, to see the moon. Close moment. Then engine off, we glide down the way, tires grinding gravel under sea of cricket-song. Unstrap helmets, put down/take off travel gear, wash hands and check on things to, piece-by-piece, unwind. E. checks the phone for messages of Ibuk. Checks progress on the locking gate, to be installed in front of her home, (the house where she was born), twelve hours' drive away. To keep her safe from wandering feet (and fears and memories and hallucinations). I check cats, asleep, and Grace, who clucks softly from the nest, as tucked-in chicks peek out from mother’s feathers, up past bedtime. We cover brooding house for insulation, shushing chicks, and latch the door. To keep tender bodies safe when the stray cat comes, howling with desire. Jeki will hiss and growl from the screened-in teras. Guardian is her favorite job. But now, aman, and so it’s time for peace and quiet, as goodnight moon, and the subtle art of letting go.
It never seems quite fair, as if, there will always be some tragedy to it. But no less beautiful, for that. The island of gods gives itself to those who give themselves to love.
Full moon, icy white, concavity of clouds like a light-womb, and a visit from Blih. Unexpected pleasure in the familiar and reassuring how happy he is to sit under our roof. They roll tobacco. He comments on the quiet, on the peaceful, he is right. The moment when you feel family, when you know no matter how different you are, or how skewed your perspectives on the world, that if ever called, he will protect me from weirdness, and I will give him sensible relationship advice, and pretend not to see him cry. And maybe we have seen some success. He was smiling tonight, and speaking of marriage… It’s totally allowed to spread gossip about love and marriage.
Speaking of exits. A heartwarming way to spend this Saturday morning was (virtually) to watch my dear friend A. as Inez in Sartre’s No Exit. She and cast did a fantastic job (playing horrible people). Amateur work in its excellence (“off off Broadway”). (And the play remains obviously relevant… Of note. The infernal trio were provided an exit, when the door opened. But none of them went on to take it.)
Things from Today. //
Frankie and Grace (rooster and hen) ate lunch with me and E. today. It was a double date, Frankie purred.
In the afternoon Ibuk goes back into her childhood. She gets very upset at E. for never feeding her (there is some trauma from her past) and believes herself to be surrounded by thieves.
I cried while reading a cookbook, a recipe for “cheddary broccoli soup” (vegan, from Isa Does It). So, it’s that time of the month. (No stove or oven hookup yet.)
Related: my favorite place to go and hide is the (outside but enclosed by a wall) bathtub. Not filled with water, (haven’t gotten to that yet), just a place to lie down and feel cocooned. This and the rustle of nearby coconut palms in the wind are pretty strong medicine. Today Ismail came down from the ceiling and we had a cuddle. Or sometimes E. and I sit opposite each other and just chat and relax.
The mental and sort-of spiritual adjustment from living semi-permanently in a guesthouse to living in a forever-until-you-die-(InsyaAllah) house is profound.
When they say AI what they really mean is an artificial slave, which becomes redundant if you just get human people to act like machines.
When we go to the big western-style supermarket for the first time since pre-pandemic, we are transfixed. Hypnotized. E. and I are pulled in different directions, but we are both pulled. (Managed to avoid buying almost anything unnecessary. But we did buy two cans of La Croix.)
It is almost impossible to find soap or detergent products here without perfume. I hate strong synthetic perfume. No, thank you. “Lavender” that actually smells like “headache”. I would rather smell like cow shit, honestly!
E. has a pinched nerve in his shoulder so I don’t let him carry the groceries but then he won’t let me carry them either, he makes G. carry them, which I do shamelessly appreciate.
Or is it my country? Being a stranger, at home. (Bule di rumah.) Surrounded, protected, as by a wall, by recognition, but correspondence is at the same time unpredictable, wild. I am found to be several someones, then very, very many. (So many strangers.) At first this is difficult, but then (I can make it) effortless. Unknown, but contained, sometimes even possessed. And Ibuk will teach me to dance. (Mind-blowing.
)…(
Self-government by love, a good morning, and whatever else might be possible.) Well, time for practice.
Still raining, still dark, still soaked to the point of saturation. May the rain bring the world back from the loudly unspeakable, back from self-abstraction. Ghosts, being stuck in some in-between place, will eventually realize, (can ghosts learn?), that being (human and being) half there is not being there at all. Likewise, fifty percent of a world (any world, no matter how wealthy or free) is one hundred percent unlivable. So. The perennial question of who I am, (where to and where from), and today the answer, family is here. Listening to what is present as to what is quiet, my day will be full of smiles to return. (A living face, a secret to itself, is at least self-contained.) This (the daily slog of political theory
)…(
iykyk) becomes a certain happiness, necessarily. And sometimes there will be no other way.
Chaotic maneuvers this morning after certain equipment, which had been broken for a long time, finally became unusable last night, ok I will tell you, the water kettle fell apart. The glue holding the plastic levered stopper to the aluminum body melted off or dissolved, and left a smear of melted black plastic on the pouring spout. (Yum.) I try not to be precious about the flimsy equipment standard in household shops here, people make do, and so have I. (I read that the risk of aluminum poisoning from cookware is largely exaggerated? And I trusted that information? Was that the right thing to do?) But I did think briefly, wistfully of the (stainless steel, sturdy, chic) ikea kettle that sits already in the new house, on an induction cooktop, (a luxury, no more running out of gas, or wrestling gas tanks and their beat-up valves, risking limbs for fuel for heat), and its dulcet whistle, a treasure to be used.
(I’ve become famous in the family for using kitchen tools hard and breaking them fast, blenders or stick-blenders especially. I demand performance! Not sure this is a good or bad thing, E. thinks it’s hilarious, is laughing this very minute, he says he gossips about it with other husbands. Possibly a point of pride, for him, I admit, it does reveal something enduring about my personality…)
Waking up and taking stock, this is about where we are. So ready to be gone from the guesthouse that inanimate things are kicking us out, refusing to function, telling us (me?) to leave. Family from Java (including Ibuk/mother-in-law) arrives tomorrow for yet another new house ceremony (Javanese) on Thursday, when we will move the cats and start living there for good. None of it is in my control. It feels similar to when we got married. Pulled up into a tidal wave of big-family customs and engagements, trying to hold my own (personal, petty) rhythms, hoping/assuming (cheerfully) I will be back on solid, more predictable ground soon, I just have to (go limp and) survive the next few days.
Rainy still, wet everywhere, and dark. I guess dry season got cancelled. Santai saja. (Let’s just be relaxed.)
For us. // A dark day, cold and rainy and the atmosphere got funereal for a minute, which it does here, now and again. My mother-in-law is passing away from dementia and my country sort of is also. There are parallels between the grieving processes, all of which I experience almost second-handedly, at unstable removes.
One of the things that makes it truly difficult is learning, through trial and (regrettable, yet forgivable) error, how softly you have to tread when it isn’t yet clear (to everyone, to anyone, at any given moment) that she is dying. How feelings of guilt, anger, fear, or sadness intermittently (and unpredictably) penetrate the (relief and) forgetfulness of daily activity. How one believes, (because belief is everything), (belief is her), until the moment it becomes impossible to believe, that she is not yet lost. And how that moment disarms us, completely, leaves us feeling motherless, without a home, (or seeming impossible to ourselves.
)…(
So I have a prayer, for us.) Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem. May you never be alone in this. May you be surrounded by love and care. And may the people you have loved always be there to remind you that you are absolutely possible, solid, and real.
I found the Margaret spoon when I was packing the wardrobe, I mentioned it to my mother and she was reminiscing about her grandmother (Margaret). How she would play the piano and sing, and her grandfather would sing too, and their “beautiful voices”. She (my mom) remembered that from when she was six years old. (In my imagination, she plays lieder by Franz Schubert, I listen to it now.) Margaret was also an amateur astronomer, which has me thinking about studying constellations. It’s often too cloudy here for stars.
Cloudy again tonight, and raining, and the sky is an inky thickness. They sit around a cross-section of tree, cigarette packs out, kripik passed. Low conversation. Light bullying. A start, a decision, not quite unanimous, to go on the roof. Bare feet up homemade ladders, disembodied voices, and the night tips over that always close-by edge into surreality.
Night in cloud. With sounds of water surrounding, an evolution from gerimis (drizzle) to soft patter to steady downfall, with drips following waterworks around the house, (in which, fish respirate) small splashing pours, shifting flows through ducts, now slowing into more percussive plonks and plinks and poinks, tinkles and trickles, like this jungle is designed by frogs. A nestled-in rainforest of fractal-shaped puddles arrayed through heartleafs and stems reverberating. This is a very rich ambient sound, and I wonder about sleep, or disturbed dreams, lost connectivity, (unexpected, of course), and mental compulsions related to that. How this was probably written late last night relative to when it will be sent. Just so, a blog inelegantly measures motion. As trial and failure at learning nothing. So imagine this, but yesterday, and we found ourselves watching old videos of Mikhail Baryshnikov dancing the Nutcracker. My mother used to speak somewhat breathlessly of him, his body, (in translucent stocking), and its parts, so visibly distinct. Me, then, in tight-pulled bun, (tears), and pale pink tutu. Today, a grainy image of a man leaping (if we could be parts of that, composed) into a momentary stillness.
Amber citrine on midnight velvet smiling surprised me above the tree line as we left to see what the house (electric installation) looks like by night. Giving shapes and lines an implied trickery or deception, warmly but also cruelly comedic, elegant. The moon with two horns. Reasons to be happy and reasons to be very very sad, these past few days. Rediscovering the deep well dug down through the bedrock of the soul called grief.
Unusual calm this morning, absence of demand. (Explained later by the fact, which I missed, I was sleeping, that somebody else took care of jobs that are usually mine.) A shadow of floating, displaced fear, and a choice, to let the intimacy of sensation remind me that we are (here, and not un)real.
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.
My younger sister’s birthday was several days ago (same day I got stitches). She and I are okay, we don’t fight, but we also don’t communicate much. (I went to her wedding, in Walt Disney World, she didn’t come to mine, in Bali.) I usually send a note for birthdays and holidays but I had sort of… let this one go by. I admitted that to E.
He asked when is my sister’s husband’s birthday, a random question, I said I have no clue, it was only Greta, (my grandmother), who kept track of those things. I could go search emails from Greta, and probably find one she had sent to the family list, for my sister’s husband’s birthday. She always included our significant others in her correspondence.
I opened my phone to find that my mom had sent a bunch of old photographs of my great-grandmother and great-grandfather, Greta’s mother and father. Beautiful old photographs. I showed them to E. We peered into those for a while, trying to see me in their faces, seeing Greta there, or my mom. They look handsome and serene in sepia tone. She has penetrating eyes and a subtly sculpted brow, square jawbone, soft and solid expression, with sloping shoulders and precise (pianist) hands. She wears an offwhite blouse with extra bibs of fabric down the front, (not fluffy, just draped), pinned with a brooch at the v-neck, under a boxy cardigan with matching skirt, a pearl necklace and an elegant, plain bonnet. He has blonde hair, blonde brows, and deepset, translucent eyes, a seafarer’s gaze, clean expression. He wears his uniform, undecorated. He sailed on a sloop in the navy, patrolling for underwater mines during World War I.
It’s disarmingly easy to see myself in my great-grandfather’s face. That’s me, as a brave young man, in the year 1930. E. goes silent when he sees it. Greta had those eyes too, although her hair was tawny brown, her face more square. She had her mother’s mouth and chin.
My grandmother was a prolific in-writing communicator. She sent emails often to the family list, (she practically was the family list), about backyard (or frontyard) animal sightings, health-related events, astronomical occasions, and light neighborhood gossip. In addition to emails, she sent paper greeting cards for every birthday and major holiday. (She also left voicemail messages long after everyone else stopped doing that. We all have archives of these, brief documentaries of her Durham, North Carolina life.)
I am different from my grandmother in this respect, I am terrible at keeping in touch. In my American family, (what’s left of it), holiday greetings feel artificial and pointless. A few words exchanged a few times a year. There’s not enough shared experience to give them life. Then I procrastinate writing replies, which makes me feel self-conscious, so I harbor secret resentments. (Ultimately, bad feelings toward my own self.)
I admire my grandmother for her ethic of communication. It took stubbornness, an iron will sometimes, to maintain family connections. She did it even through awkwardness, divorces, other circumstances of alienation. She crossed lines, crossed church aisles, defeated angry silences with routine but nonetheless heartfelt greetings. (This seems impossible?) I don’t know if she used etiquette as a weapon (good manners are a martial art in the American South), but she did use it as armor. In this respect, she was unimpeachable.
I felt sad for a minute that I would never be like Greta in this way. I am not a connector of people. I didn’t have the heart to send my sister a message for her birthday. Why not? I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t in my character. (She never sends me messages…) Then I asked myself why I couldn’t just do it. Then I decided to send my sister a birthday message, and then I just did. Like swallowing medicine. Really not that bad. Fine!
Then I sent a message to brag to my mom that I did it. (And I wrote this…) It made my mom happy, for a minute.
I have a small amount of ashes from Greta’s cremation. My mom brought them when she visited Bali last year, whispering, “I have her.” Me, mystefied. Who? “Greta.” I told her, “That’s not Greta, Mom. That’s just ashes.” They made it all the way to Indonesia, from a woman who never left the east coast of the United States. We still don’t know where we’ll put them. We’ve considered a few places, scattering them at Bedugul, or in the garden at our house that we’re building, or in Tengger caldera. “If it’s Greta’s destiny,” said E. Still watching and waiting for that decision to come down, from the sky plan. (Greta herself had called them, her future ashes, “my leftovers.” Impishly, defiantly morbid. Her favorite section of the newspaper to read was obituaries. Then, the sports pages.)
After we got married, E. gave Greta’s name and birthplace to the little mosque in his neighborhood. Every year now, her name is called out for community prayers in Galgahdowo, in East Java, with the rest of his family ancestors.
I visited her before I left for Indonesia, in 2019, when it was probably the last time. I helped her clean out a few kitchen cabinets, old boxes. She didn’t like to let go of things, we bickered, she was mischievous. She gave me a silver spoon with her mother’s first name etched in it, (the lady from the photo, in delicate cursive). Which was also her first name, and my mom’s first name, and my first name. Later, after she gave me the spoon, she tried to take it back. She didn’t like the idea of it “lost at some cafe.” (You know, because I’m flaneur-esque.) I scolded her, told her she can’t do that, give something and then take it back. It’s rude. Besides, I had already packed it. (E. overheard the conversation, from the phone in my pocket. He reminds me how I made her laugh.) She said, I suppose you’re right, let it go.
I still have the spoon, of course. I call it the Margaret spoon.
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.
Leftover notes from yesterday, recorded with morning coffee today. //
We met a guardian of the path at Ranu Pane, sitting on his sleeping mat, with a fire to keep his toes warm. And his bag of snacks, a jolly fellow. Stopped for a chat about mutual friends, traditional farming methods, and the corrosive effects of tourism. Always, what a small world it is, around here. //
The scent of woodsmoke in the mountains, memories of that. //
E. and I got a lot of weird looks from local tourists yesterday, this isn’t typical. Not sure why. People see me, assume E. is foreign too. Stare, heckle us, snap pictures with their phones. //
We saw at least two motorbike accidents on the mountain roads yesterday. Both women, one looked like she was fine, the other one looked very bad, she had blood running down her face, appeared pale and grey. Many had already stopped to help, so we drove on… //
A transport truck couldn’t make it up one of the inclines, it was overloaded with potatoes. “Boss goblok,” said E., who jumped out and helped push it to the next pull-over point. //
The high-altitude villages around Lumajang, which primarily grow green onions, smell like green onions. You catch whiffs of it as you drive through. //
I have clearer photos of the lutung but those feel private. //
I also have pictures of Gunung Batok, will probably share later. //
I have to relearn how to use “the good camera”, another reason it’s ok we didn’t see Bromo yesterday, my camera skills are not (yet?) worthy. //
I forgot my carnelian stone at home, I realized. //
Always, a beginner, again. //
Orang gunung/mountain person.
We wake up at 3 to reach Tengger before sunrise. G. drives me and E. in his truck, called “Sweet Orange”. E. (my husband) is a former ranger and guide in the park. G. is from a nearby village and has experience driving the roads.
I hope to see Bromo. (This hope will not be fulfilled.)
Sunrise comes, and I take pictures of Gunung Batok and the surrounding walls of the caldera. Batok is beautiful, swathed in green velvet, as a dream or a fantasy.
I still hope to see Bromo.
We’re not in a hardtop jeep, so entry into the caldera is prohibited. We decide to drive down from Tengger, to the east, and back up again, possibly to see Bromo from another place on the rim.
As we climb again in elevation, the drive gets scary, or at least I am scared. I can’t describe how terrifying it is. Hairpin turns, steep drops, no shoulder, broken asphalt. Clouds begin to obscure the surroundings. At some point, with steep drops on both sides, suspended in clouds, the road is broken enough that the truck loses purchase. G. is a good driver and gets us past, but I begin crying from fear.
Crying, then sobbing, I just break open.
G. parks the truck. E. holds me. We decide we have to go back down. But I am afraid to go down in the truck. Two local people come and offer E. and me an ojek, a ride down on their motorbikes. We accept.
The locals are understanding. I know they have driven this road a thousand times, at crazy fast speeds. E. has explained the situation, they won’t go fast with me. I feel safe. We get down past the scariest parts. (G. follows in his truck.)
We all sit and have coffee together. I am still shaking, most of what I remember from the conversation is that one of the men asks me to help him with English, which I do. (This was very kind of him.) They realize we have common friends, in our village on the other side of Tengger. These men trade in green onions and potatoes, while our friends trade in flowers. (Crops that grow in the tropical highland climate.)
We part ways with the Tengger people. We’ll drive the rest of the way back down in the truck.
Shortly after, my eyes still hot from tears, I have an encounter with a lutung (an East Javan langur). I spot him in a tree as we drive. G. stops the truck, I get out. I have my camera.
He is a black shape against the cloud. At first I think he’s a macaque, but he isn’t. E. says, from the truck, “lutung.” They are shy, they have been hunted by humans. This one at first jumps down from his lookout. I think he will run away. But he doesn’t, he keeps looking at me from behind ferns and shrubs. He starts climbing back into the tree. He comes out, looks at me. Then, like he knows better, he hides. He does it repeatedly, where he hides for a minute, then climbs up or comes out, looks at me. Slowly, with intent. I speak to him. I say I don’t want to hurt him. I make a hand gesture like a little wave. He lets me take a few pictures. I say goodbye, then go back to the truck.
G. starts up “Sweet Orange” and we continue home.
I feel this was Tengger, telling me that I’m not ready for Bromo. (I’m not sure where these big feelings come from, it’s a turbulent time of the month, I’m tired, more sensitive than usual, the terror, I’ve only felt fear like that one time before, hey, also on a mountain, and the breaking.) Then, the lutung. It felt like a gift, or a secret, or a word. Or something, I don’t know.
We will try again. (I will keep practicing and trying again.) I know we can just take a jeep. (Mas B. wants to drive us.) … But I will keep working through what happened today, because I pay attention when a mountain speaks.