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Skin soft and worn like igneous sand into
Her open psalm, they one lunation spent
As sounding bodies, soldiering the fast.
Blessed Ramadan to those who observe.🌙
We see now // the tools of tyranny falling happily, giddily into the laps of tyrants. These it turns out were not just our toys, but the dark materials of American fascism.
(Whose?)
Well, I had an accumulation of dark thoughts gathering for a dark moon post, on technology and colonialism and the other usuals around here, but I lost my heart for it. So instead I’ll tell you, my beloved blog, about my guilty pleasure or “secret single behavior” (who remembers this reference?) when my husband is away, which is to watch a certain tv show. I won’t name it but it’s Korean and it involves “singles”.
The “singles” always do this thing where they compare their faces to non-human animals' faces. Saying, like, “you look like a puppy dog” or get specific with breeds like “you look like a maltese” or “you look like a cat” or “like a donkey”. Awkward smile. “Oh, I do?” “Yes. In a good way.” Followed by modest, embarassed laughing. The women cover their mouths with their hands when they smile or laugh. They all have perfect manicures and pedicures. I try to catch looks at the peoples’ faces but I never catch the resemblance to the given animal.
I notice my husband’s face today, when I video call with him and Ibuk, my mother-in-law. I see anew how handsome he is, with chiseled, sad but wonderful features, high cheekbones and kind eyes. He has the most dazzling smile of anybody I’ve ever met. He is part fae. Ibuk smiles when she sees my face in the phone. I wave and smile back, one of those smiles that feels involuntary, with a rush of warmth, maybe gratitude at being recognized. It’s hit-or-miss these days, with Ibuk. I’m happy to see her in a good mood.
E knows I watch this tv show, and now you do too. Why do I watch it? I admit, it’s because I get drawn into the romantic entanglements. The silly hosts crack me up, they also get drawn in. We hope to see clever relationships develop, we fall for every hand-holding moment, (in Korea, I guess, hand-holding is still a big deal), we despair when the perfect couple can’t make it work. Or when someone cheats on us, by holding the wrong person’s hand! Sometimes we cry together (me and the show hosts). So the moral of this dark moon story is, even when it’s garbage tv, I am a fool for
rage, I was thinking, is like-drawing-like. Rage of the inside draws rage of the outside.
Given: a triangle, between external rage, internal rage, and X.
Never ask, who is X?
is who X is.
You were the mother, you programmed the song.
The name you gave it was
(click to subscribe
)…(
is who you are
playing the long game of bow and lyre, aiming for the victory wreath, while (the uncanny child stumbles like a thick and heavy smoke toward the capital)
blind
)
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌑
//
(“Sub-tweeting” Babylon.) //
“There’s no education here. There’s no geometry, no music, no reading or translation of any kind.”
Reminding myself, I was full of outrage for a long time. It will probably be back. It seems to be cyclic, like the moon: a threaded crescent now, disappearing. Eva-nascent.
I believe rage is a deeply revealing human experience of self.
(Does it count as self-study, to use the “search” function on my blog? Incidentally, I love the “search” function on my blog. I use it all the time. It is my favorite special feature. And this is technology that, I just know, certain ancient authors would have been tickled by.)
Of course I do. One of my favorite cosmic-conceptual or noetic perspectives is based on a (dialectically-productive) partnered-duality between Achilles and Odysseus. Each one of whom is a poetic expression (or alchemical transformation) of rage.
Given: a triangle, between Achilles, Odysseus, and the Poet.
It’s like Nimrod has ordered his subjects (including you) to build the tower and you’re optimistic about the embellishments you can make in the brickwork.
I didn’t quite state the obvious, here: the best way to “mind your own business” is to work on (that means, to dedicate active focus to figuring out through embodied and active understanding, or a hypothetical/experimental method) what your business really is.
Coming up on Ramadan and trying to get our thoughts in order. The holy month is always something I know is coming and yet it turns out impossible to prepare for. This will be my sixth one. So far it always hits with the same inexplicable, mind-deafening force.
Maybe fasting brings out my rage. My difficulty fasting isn’t the not-eating. I can go without food. (In some ways, being vegan is a continual fast.) My difficulty in fasting is the starting-to-eat-again. The fast-breaking. It’s the ugliest feeling, like my body gets angry and rebels by not wanting to eat again. Like the body wants to punish me (for fasting, for refusing to serve its appetites) by subsequently refusing food, going numb. It feels like anorexia as revenge. Sometimes it feels like demon possession. This feeling scares me. I can’t tell whether I need to avoid it or approach it.
I never know how these things will affect the blog. Often I keep on writing, and a lot of words, but don’t feel good posting them.
Oh. I realized I forgot to include one of the most obvious idols, maybe in a class of its own, which is “my technology”.
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌒
On conservation as (eva)nascence. // Comment on the first part of the shahada. // Prelude to the incoherence. //
The error of so-called conservatism is that it always comes down to idolatry. Which means, it comes down to nothing at all.
I include among “conservatives” anyone who grieves at the dismantling of present empire. (The time is past for quibbling between Christians and progressives, technologists and institutionalists. Y’all are the same, just drowning in -isms. You are hereby invited to give up your ghosts and make amends.)
As it is idolatry, conservatism is dualism. The idol (whether that’s “the wisdom of forefathers” / “universal human rights” / “liberal democracy” / “all these old books” / “my civilization” / “my job” / “my planet” / “my foreskin” / “my infant child” / or even, for a lucky few, “my esoteric tradition") is worshipped at the expense of the remainder. Well, this is blasphemy against the remainder, and as such, blasphemy against the idol too. Idolatry is an equally absolute error no matter what form it takes. It is immanently forgivable, but absolute.
The era of Tr-mp is obviously (for the privileged) a time of endings. Every news article, here as elsewhere, reflects this and loudly. But the era is one of beginnings too. Beginnings that are well on their way, already visible to themselves. As a seed is visible to itself before human eyes perceive anything green, so truth, as life, has been ignored until now, kept veritably invisible by the dualism of empire’s desperate holding on. Well, we must learn to be blind before we can learn how to see.
The first thing Muslims say in the shahada, or testimony, is La ilaha illallah. There is no god but the god. There is no god but Allah. This is not a statement of faith, as of holding on. The first mistake was to believe that Allah could be held. So the first statement is one of letting go, of letting go of the god. You see, we had been holding them (the god). As if it was by holding them that they (the god) would not be lost to us. We were acting as if they (the god) were the baby, and we were doing the holding. Rather than the other way around.
Letting go (of what I have been holding) opens me for relationship with truth, definition and witness as one. Only the whole is Allah.
The work of being human is to be a part of a living whole. (Here’s a theology of minding one’s own business, broadly conceived.) I myself am only a part. However many flicks of infinite life are reflected through these meager facets, it remains less false to say they are not mine. And I (as human) admit that the only thing worthy of conservation is, whatever the cause, beyond mine to conserve. (In the next breath of the shahada, we are reminded of Allah’s self-conservation.) So we come to submission:
To seek (out of love) from a temporary place (albeit a temple) the ever-ageless in the ever-new.
Alhamdulillahirabbilalamin. 🌒
//
Kendrick Lamar 2026. //
I was busy on the night of, but I’ve since watched Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show more than a few times. It is amazing and very Kendrick. It got me thinking I have to add a “goat” category to my blog. I think he is more accurately the “only one of his time” but ooht is not an animal.
You already know I’m a fan of the epic beef. (And all of that for which it stands.) But don’t let others’ interpretations limit yours. Hip hop is excellent social media but hip hop on the super bowl stage is bigger than fascism. Kendrick works. On that note, he should run for president.
This is not a joke, it is my political opinion. An obvious one, as far as I’m concerned. Kendrick should run for president in 2026. No it’s not a presidential year, it doesn’t matter. He will hate the idea, even though he announced the revolution. Which is why it’s someone’s patriotic duty to make him do it. He needs to start yesterday. With his super bowl performance he basically did.
Part of me weeps, to nominate him for the satyr play, but it is what it is. The miracle we don’t deserve. Kendrick is not just any goat, he already understands himself as a sacrificial goat. And he’s worthy of the title. There is no other serious contender.
Threads woven between pretenses. //
A test I give myself, as I consider interacting with anything at all, but especially on the internet. I ask myself, is this my business? Is it really my business? What really is my business? I originally borrowed the question from Plato’s Republic, where there’s an otw definition (a repeat Socratic suggestion) of justice as “minding one’s own business”. Perhaps better rendered as, to be just is to take care of the matters that are (truly) one’s own.
It’s easy to overlook because it sounds too simple or glib to be the answer to the big question. (“What is justice?” “Mind your own business, knucklehead.") It has a colloquial meaning of not sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong, not interfering with things that don’t involve you, that you don’t or couldn’t understand. And its simplicity is fecund, being the kind of definition that leads to further questions. There is the question most readily implied by its context. What is my role, what part do I play in a “just city”? Who am I as part of a political whole? And then, there are the introspections. What work truly belongs to me? What is my work? Ultimately, who (and/or what) am I?
This all became topical as a friend of ours (we recently learned) might be in a dangerous situation abroad (in a country in the Balkans). He might be, it’s hard to tell. For at least a month, the texts that are supposed to be from him, received by various members of his friend group, are not from him. (He normally would text pithily, in un-g–gle-translatable slang. Whereas his texts have been in too-formal g–gle-translated Indonesian.) The situation could be a dysfunctional relationship playing out over international borders, (i.e., his jealous partner has taken possession of his phone), or something more sinister. Sensitive to these possibilities, we are gathering information to figure out what’s happening (if we can) and what we can do to help (if there’s anything).
So we’ve had the opportunity to ask a few times. Is it my business? Is it our business?
Crucially, there is a lot of work to do, to understand whether it’s our business. (Or whether it’s their own private business, or the business of the embassy, etc.) We work to try to understand what’s going on, as well as we can. At the same time, we realize, there may be no such thing as perfect information. We are worried he might just disappear.
It’s a substantial project, worth undertaking and worth the various risks involved, I think, because this is a longtime friend in a vulnerable situation, the danger is real, and we are in certain ways equipped to help him out. There are things we could do. We are so powerful. And yet, everything still depends on having a clear and trustworthy line of communication. We need to hear him say certain things, for example whether he’s ok. Even then, things might still seem “off”. We will have to judge, on our end, whether he really seems “ok”.
We don’t want to be knuckleheads.
“Mind your own business” is an anti-democratic mantra. Well, it’s an anti-political mantra. The whole premise of politics is that minding one’s own business was insufficient for our pre-political selves. So politics is the business of democracy, after all of the business became everyone’s business. (There’s no politics in autocracy, politics requires embodied plurality.) We all vote on everything, are all responsible for everything. Even the things we have no business being responsible for. Of course, this makes functional organization impossible. No living being could survive in such a way, (with the hand judging the work of the ear, the liver meddling in the work of the pituitary), and neither can a political entity.
The genius of the Republic is (lol to start a setence with those words) that Socrates presents human politics with all of its dubious structural requirements on full display. The “beautiful lie”, the calculated-and-controlled sexuality and reproduction, the removal of infants from their parents' care. How everything relies on the counter-cultural initiation-education (it’s literally psychedelic) of a government of seers (“philosopher kings”). Not least, the inevitable decay into tyranny. These are not idiosyncratic features of Socrates' preferred utopia. (If only they were.) They are fixtures in any political composition, doing its best to imitate and thereby transcend nature. What Socrates' city-in-speech shows is that not even the most beautiful lies, in partnership with the most advanced technology, in the light of Truth Itself, can fix politics.
So it’s a warning for political animals.
“Mind your own business”, in context, was a non sequitur. Some other principle had already been supplied and was primary. This isn’t difficult to see, but it may be difficult to stomach. “Mind your own business, but always in service to the whole.” Always, always, always, in service to the whole. Even the thing that you held precious, your very identity (be it gold, silver, or bronze), was never yours alone. Yours alone is not a thing. It was just a story, (and not even a likely one), used as a tool to keep you in place. Privacy is an illusion, in politics.
Privacy is not (in truth) an illusion. It is something we’ve got and are stuck with. Does this make it a blessing? The most memorable image from the Republic is not the divided line, for me at least, but will always be this one (from Book VI). In the city in disarray, (as are all extant cities, according to Socrates), there is no reason to try to bear witness to justice, as such an effort could only lead to destruction and defeat. So one who loves wisdom acts prudently, as would a human being who has fallen in (oops) with wild beasts. They keep quiet and mind their own business. They take shelter as behind a wall, from the ravages of a storm. They strive to live a life pure of injustice and unholy action. Privacy becomes their saving grace.
Now that is difficult to stomach, coming from the famous meddler of Athens. Who always knew the gossip or was busy becoming the subject of it, concocting alternative political regimes with the young, making aristocrats squirm and getting himself executed on stupid charges. Who also happens to be the only one, if ever there was such a one, worthy of the name philosopher. He didn’t accept his own premise. He insisted on his own day-by-day empirical examination and diagnosis of Athens. “Are you wild beast, or what?” That was his life. His business was neither quiet nor private and it spoke to a different measure than the pure.
Socrates (in this context and elsewhere) considers himself an exception, and often excuses others from following in his footsteps (arguments in the Crito are full of deliberate holes). It was his daimon who made him do it, and his daimon belongs to him alone. Voices in dreams. Idio-socrates. Nonetheless, there is a constant temptation for any reader to consider Socrates as a standalone measure of the human. This is understandable. He gave birth to Western Civilization, and has been executed by it, again and again, ever since. His life story prophesies the whereto and the wherefrom, remaining somehow at the center of it all. At the center of us all. Anyone can more-or-less have a daimon. Well,
Have you been sentenced to death by your city? If not, you’re falling short.
In exasperation, I return to the question of “minding my own business”. Today, I used pointy scissors to dig a hornet’s stinger out of my husband’s big toe. It had gotten lodged in there, underneath a thick callus. Maybe six months ago. And it had been causing increased pain, or at least, increased complaining. In a way, it wasn’t my business, because I’m not a doctor. But it was my husband’s toe. He wouldn’t go to a doctor. It was like he might dig it out himself, but then he couldn’t reach it. I could tell he wanted me to do it. I put alcohol and then a flame on the scissors, not sure they were even made of steel. It felt like a lot of digging for such a tiny thing.
After I finally excised the black chit from his thickened toe, at the brink of where the callus started bleeding, seeming to cause a lot of discomfort (and I apologized a lot, causing pain is hard), apparently the worst of the pain quickly stopped. We were amazed at the relief. It’s wild to think that, again, such a tiny thing could cause such severe long-term reaction. I assumed that the body’s immune system would, you know, clean up a mess like that. I guess there was still some undigested venom, causing irritation.
Now back to hiding behind a wall. When the city seems made up of wild beasts, and you feel like a human, when you estimate yourself to be basically a different species of animal than they are, or if indeed there is unbroachable estrangement between you, this is the condition for privacy as grace. This is the requirement and the active presupposition of taking shelter from politics. They are wild beasts, inhuman. Socrates says it casually and imagines it being concluded, with cheerful optimism.
That’s not a little monstrous. It has been amply demonstrated that to live in such estrangement becomes its own trial. Not everybody is Socrates, that’s for sure. For example, I imagine Achilles withdrawn in his tent. Embracing alienation as he embraces the lyre. This is minding one’s own business as grief. Perpetual grief makes for uneasy grace, and occasionally, murderous fits of rage.
Knowing ourselves not quite as alien, we send exploratory feelers out from the grim sanctuary of our post-political, apo-calyptical selves. We dig out stingers and seek intel from abroad. Minding, making, or discovering our own business as we go. Yearning for reliable facts when we can never quite trust the voices on the other end of the line or the dismantling of a more-or-less abstract empire. Paying our taxes, more-or-less on-time. It helps to understand that it’s been going on since the beginning, this wobbly exercise of unfounded privacy. Protective alienation against a bestial world, savior of impotence, surrender as weapon against empire. But then, feeling along as by touch the limits of this work, which belongs to someone, and where it meets the limits of unreliable information. The limits of what one might (regardless of all that) understand.
(Or care for. Or love.) What really is my proper work?
There are people who consider the whole as their business. Others consider none of it (theirs) at all. The fools, the busybodies, knuckleheads all. Then there are days of being a balloon, floating over illegible landscapes. There are voices of saving and of being saved. There are the trees in the forest, books written about trees, on trees, and there are lumberjacks. The lumberjack’s daughter, up in the branches. The eagle whose nest she stumbled into, as if by accident. There are me and you. We are threads woven between pretenses of praeter-nature and of the praeter-political, as after amateur surgery. Unsteady in grace, as in laws and definitions.
There are some people who judge further questions to be a waste of time; at least we can be certain we’re not one of those.
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌔
//
“Luckily we thlop-thlopped,” // or, And then there was the drive home.
I preface this to say we made it back safely. Also to warn you that this is a long read. Then also to say that history is complicated and sometimes offers no life lessons. Life is not always an Aesop’s fable! (Well, what is it then?) Yesterday, it was an (euphemistically) eventful drive home.
First, I hit a giant pothole and blew out a tire.
//
No wait, let me back up. First, we woke up before dawn (this happens without an alarm here, for me, if not for E) to walk along the beach during and after sunrise.
(What follows is a sneaky-peeky “behind the scenes” of the blog, and I will share things I typically would not make explicit. These are things anbody should be able to gather from following my blog, I guess. Here is a rule I find myself trying to follow, although I’m not sure it makes sense, of not writing things out if they can be easily inferred. Or mis-inferred, in ways that are interesting or useful, to me. From my perspective, this is just good editing. The problem is, it seems a perpetual project every time. My chiselling process somehow follows its own rule. The longer I “sit in front of” a piece of my writing, the more likely it ends up in metered verse. I’m not making that up. I’m in fact resisting it, now.
So forgive me if the following seems pretty obvious. If not now, it will be soon. And I’ll forgive you, as well.)
You see, I have a “beach habit”, I guess you could call it, of taking pictures with the phone. It’s a little obsessive. Every time the light or the clouds or the water or the earth changes, at the beach, I feel quite compelled to take pictures of it. “I feel like Allah is giving these gifts, and I have no choice but to pick them up,” is how I said it to my husband. “Just dropping them down, and what can you do? You have no choice.” (Incidentally, this is the kind of talk that puts him in a husbandly way. That is, speaking in euphemisms. Happy V-day again!) And it feels like meditating, in the sense that, to let myself take those pictures is to let myself be absorbed in this near-“steady state” of constant wonder at the apparent world.
(I assume this is a commonly-experienced thing. On the other hand, that assumption seems somewhat tyrannical of me. Everybody’s different, if not unique. Who I am to say?)
One of my favorite things is to try to catch the shifts and the relationships (of light, I guess, also elements) in (iphone) photos. I’ve tried before to do it with our “real camera”, but these days I can’t bring myself to enjoy that. Something about the limitations of the iphone make it less intimidating, maybe less complicated than the camera. Less pretense at a profession. Anyway, I also enjoy the photo editing process. (I use Lightroom but seek recommendations for open-source or independent apps that would deliver the same kind of thing.) After return, I will be similarly obsessed, or “spend time” concentrating on the relationships between light in its different meanings, in the frame. Figuring out by experiment what I can change, in the editor, in order to bring out the gift of the image. To meet my eyes. I’m still not sure how “seriously” I take it. I consider myself a lover of images, rather than an “artist” (without a “sophistical” camera, lol). Maybe that’s a way to put it.
But then maybe, if it were stripped of the blogger’s ego, that’s what a (written) blog could be too. I’ve mentioned before on here my aspiration for amateur-ism (oxymoron there, oops). Then I might amend it to: I am a lover of images of nature. But what I mean by that would require a very long explanation, including making it clear that I don’t exclude human things from nature, at all. Justice bleeds in, and then everything (through dialectic) becomes inquiries into causes. When the whole point was for a moment not to be Aristotle, but in a way that Aristotle might enjoy. (That would have been his teacher’s task.) So I guess it’s (the photo habit) a small offering out of love for the apparent. Or picking up (as many as I can) these dropped-off gifts of Allah. Other things could also be interpreted in that light, many of them, or possibly everything ever made, by humans, or by anyone else who ever makes.
The point is, I took some more pictures the morning before we left, as one way of saying goodbye. There will be plenty of ocean vibes on the blog over the next however long, weeks or months, as I work through these beach photos. This is how we make time, on the blog, (spending and making time is the blog’s whereto and wherefrom), so yes, Ocean is one of our seasons. (I should make a category and possibly a photo collection for Ocean. It’s not exactly easy to hunt down all these old posted beach pics, from before I had named categories. I guess I should go back in blog-time and bestow upon them their rightful associations. Gather them in harnessable groups. Maybe make a collection for each year? It will take me a minute to figure that out. So many of these normally edited-out inner monologues are strictly bureaucratic. One almost doesn’t have time… except of course, one does. One has all the time.) These photos could last through Cancer, though it’s impossible to be sure. Anyway, Ocean season has returned to the valley below.
//
So we ate our guesthouse breakfast, (veg nasi goreng with plenty of golden-fried tempe, sederhana dan lezat), packed the car, checked out, said our goodbyes and pulled out of the parking lot.
Next, we stopped on the way out of town to get the most amazing tofu bao either of us ever had. These were the kind of dreamy flavor and texture combination that only asian street food can come up with, it reminded me of Singapore. A common response was “Is this dessert or what?” which just means it is irrational and delicious.
(If you are reading this, and ever plan a trip to Bali, no, I won’t name or endorse places on the blog. Bali is dying from tourism, at least, faster than it’s dying from anything else. The last thing this island needs is more advertising hype, in any way, shape, or form. I lay a curse on Instagr-m for this, and all the location-tagging photo-based social media apps. But I would give recommendations by email, so please be in touch. With the caveat that our favorites are the best for us, and not necessarily the best for others.)
Anyway, we picked up some tofu bao for takeaway, along with two chocolate peanut butter banana smoothies, figuring we’d have a nice little meal at a scenic stop along the way.
In any event, we were certain sooner or later to get hungry.
//
Now back to the pothole and me busting the tire.
In my defense. This was bad luck combined with the terrible condition of the two-lane road along the northeast coast. Which is riddled with deep holes, the result of overloaded trucks driving on poorly-laid asphalt, I think? Anyway, in some places it’s like driving on asphalt honeycomb. Usually one can see them in advance and slow to a crawl, so as not to break things. But there I was, passing a local motorbike, at a reasonable speed, in a completely normal maneuver. Being never the fastest, never the slowest, but somewhere in the middle. (It’s not like I was taking an opportune nap. The reins were held not by another’s hands.) And suddenly there was a great gaping hole in the middle of the road. It happened to be right where I was passing. It was disguised by a joint in the asphalt, I think. I was paying more attention to the motorbike on my left and the (distant) oncoming traffic, these other very pressing concerns. I didn’t see the hole in time to avoid. It was ther-KLUNK, and the-whole-car-shakes, sounding like pieces.
And, Oof.
Luckily we thlop-thlopped to a stop right across from a bengkel. We had a spare tire in the trunk and let the mechanic change it for us. (“Contributing to the local economy,” I could call it, whereas E calls it “making friends”.) We “lost” maybe an hour and a half.
I spent a lot of that time watching some chickens in a lovely grove of rambutan trees. Right next to the road, located in the rear of (what seemed like) a large Balinese estate. The tranquility of this place was somewhat surreal. It immediately bestowed calm. The trees were tall, the shade was dense, the ground was covered in brown leaf litter. The sound of chickens scratching, for grubs and bugs, was soft and intermittent in the muffled quiet. Like a cathedral. They seemed happy and peaceful chickens, especially compared to our rowdy bunch. I watched them while drinking my delicious chocolate, banana, peanut butter, coconut cream smoothie. All the ingredients of which were probably grown on this island.
After a while, the car was ready to go. We said our thank yous and our goodbyes, then pulled back onto the road.
//
What happened next was not our fault. At all. I am pinning fault on the app, and okay, perhaps our decision to follow the app. But one really has to side-eye G–gle maps, which fails to differentiate between passable and impassable (by car) roads when it tells you where to go. I’m sure there have been worse examples than ours. It doesn’t really matter what the cause of this kind of error is, in terms of flawed data collection (racist or sexist stereotypes, etc). Trusting this thing will lead you all kinds of un-fortuitous places.
After the blowout, and a break from driving while they switched our tire, I was back behind the wheel. E isn’t enthusiastic about mountain driving, so he navigated. When at some point we made a turn that bore no official signage, we noticed, but we didn’t think to question it. And not for the first time in Bali, but for the first time with me behind the wheel, G–gle directed us onto a “shorter route”. As we would discover, the “shorter route” ended up being an unmaintained treck intended only for motorbikes. We navigated the Dr. Seussian mountain passages with just barely enough room for our tires to squeeze between asphalt edges. The roads were bare pretense fumbling away into nothingness. Thereby I gained plenty of practice, this drive, with “lumayan hardcore” mountain driving. Downshifting into first to manage hairpin turns on hard inclines, wheel placement to avoid the most catastrophic holes, downshifting into first to claw through the unavoidable holes, praying through the sickly whirr of traction-less tires, facing sky or pavement, and squeezing past oncoming drivers, where there is no shoulder. There is only STEEP, blood-curdling DEATH to either side.
Let me tell you, dear blog reader. Our Honda Jazz is no hardtop Jeep. And I am not a Bromo driver. (Those guys are suicidal? And usually drunk? Rumor has it. And now I know why! E says this road was about as difficult as the road we turned back from, when we drove around Tengger. I couldn’t believe that, I was too concentrated on driving to look and be freaked out. Un-filtered side-note, this gives a clue the degree to which my fear of that was a fear of not being in control.)
Music, of course, was not happening. But in process, I talked through it. I reassured my husband and myself at every turn that we were aman. Even when the engine overheating light came on, I kept pretty cool. (E said it’s ok, we’re almost to the top.) Even when I caught a glimpse of the peak that was our destined passage, seeming still so far above our heads. It was some hollowed-out, long-abandoned villa, a roofless, vine-entangled ruins, on a perch that could only have been conceived by an unregulated and out-of-control tourist industry. Insane. Even when I felt the Jazz shuddering with apprehension beneath my feet, I brought the car around the next turn.
(As for going back. The road was too skinny to turn around. And the only thing scarier than going up these ridges was the thought of crumbling back down, in reverse.)
What did I see, oh Muse, and what did I miss? There were cliffside cabbage patches and lush beds of kale terraced into these mountains, geometrically-planted rows of carrots and potatoes blanketing the valleys below. There were misty clouds concealing almost every precipice, and quaint villages nestled into precarious edges of the abyss. The locals stared, but then smiled and waved back, when we smiled and waved, saying, “Sugre!” (We saw a few working farm trucks, which gave some hope that it would be possible to get through on four wheels. Maybe not by me, but at least by local drivers who call these highlands their home.) We saw ancient Hindu temples, looming in the cloud, vibrant with moss over complex Balinese brickwork. Things were set like jewels into improbable places. These visions would have been breathtakingly beautiful, had my breath not been already utterly took by dread and grim necessity. We could not stop, let alone turn around. The only way out would be up, around, over, and through.
We pressed on, driving sky-ward, as having no other choice.
By the time we curlicued our way out of the absolutely beautiful and yet idiotic Googlian shit-cut, of course my entire body was shaking. I felt ready to collapse into a puddle of whimpers. The final reunion with the main road consisted of a dead stop at a steep uphill turn. And, oh! One last face-full of sky. My nerves (plus the Jazz) were at our final raw edge as I plunged us up into first and around onto the blessedly solid, freshly-painted pavement. Ahh, the main road. The hairpin turns would be navigable, and built for two-wheel drive, four-wheeled vehicles, again.
The rest would be easy, or that’s what I anticipated.
And it really was!
//
Save for one last adventure. Which was, by then I really needed to pee.
We were still far from any mini marts, everything was at best a warung (which don’t normally have public toilets, only private homes, and I was in no state to be a houseguest). Also, the local village seemed strangely infested with flies. They were everywhere, buzzing and crawling all over the human buildings. Anyway, I was in no mood for a local toilet, plus I was wearing full-length pants, which invariably get wet in local toilets. Call me high maintenance, but all I wanted was some privacy behind a bush. Away from human habitation, immersed in greenery.
The first place we pulled over, looking for the right spot, I got chased by dogs. They growled and barked at (poor) me, just trying to be alone. Rawr, I almost barked back! But snarling wild dogs are scarier than pissing my pants, so having secured my modesty, I skipped and hopped back into the car.
I drove us around a few more turns, and pulled over at a sharp enough curve that the car itself, and some well-placed grass, hid me from view of the road. Oh blessed curvy road and tall grass, my cozy cave of green. There, squatting in the shelter of the ever-faithful Jazz, with E standing guard, and gazing up at an elevated terrace of trellised grape vines, it really was heaven. I could finally relax. (The Jazz could relax too! And cool off her engine.) If I measured these things, I think I would say without a doubt. It was the best pee I’ve ever had.
As I got behind the wheel again, those angry dogs showed up. They had chased us down the road. This is typical, Bali dogs don’t play. (I guess they don’t like strangers peeing in their territory either, oops.) The dog snapped and howled at my driver’s side window. But I was inside, we were finished.
E hopped back in the car. We shooed away the dogs and drove away.
//
Finally, we felt good and ready for the rest of the drive home. But first!
A reward, for making it through. We pulled over in the next mini mart parking lot. (There were no scenic views left. After all that, our priority had become stable concrete.) Upon noticing that the front of the mini mart was crawling with flies. – (Again, what is this? Is it the fertilizer the local farmers are using? Is it cow shit? We live near cows, and surrounded by farms, but nothing happens like this. Is it a poorly-placed garbage dump? Or something more sinister? I worry about large-scale farming setups that overwhelm the local ecosystem. It’s probably that. But we really don’t know. Strangely, the flies seemed attracted to glass and plexiglass surfaces, like windows. There were no flies at my heavenly grassy bend in the road.) – So at the mini mart, we decided to keep the car doors and windows closed. We were fully furnished (by E, not me. I’m in charge of toiletries, clothes, electronics) with alcohol spray and napkins. And we sat inside the Jazz and ate our tofu bao. They were soft and pillowy on the outside, the insides sweet deep-fried caramel chili perfection, hiding mildly-cheesy tofu, with crisp carrot-daikon pickles, crushed peanuts and coriander leaf, incredibly delicious.
After that, the rest of the way home was blessedly easy. A little rainy, no problem. The roads were clear, with not very much traffic, and the car drove fine. A bonding experience with the little Jazz, who has probably taken over blog vehicular duties from Sweet Orange. (Thanks for the memories, dear, animated Sweet Orange.) We’ll take the little Jazz in for maintenance and get the ripped-up tire replaced. Perhaps we’ll upgrade to tires with more traction. Next time driving that route, we’ll pay less attention to the app and watch for official route signage. I think that’s the best solution? To avoid the remote, unmaintained roads. And stick with the official, unmaintained roads. Lol. I love Indonesia!
//
Wrapping up, I found myself reaching for reflections, and had to slap back my own hand. If there was a lesson here to learn, I do hope we’ve learned it. (F-ck tech it isn’t. The above is such a victory for the Jazz, it may as well be called “the Jazziad”. But please not “the Jazzidy”.) Like picking up these dropped gifts of Allah, because what else can you do? Catching the images, as having no choice. Maybe there’s no learning sometimes, only history and the fact of it having happened. As E pointed out, “you got us home safe. Everything in the end was aman. And what’s most important is love.”
(He also speculated that his wife might get addicted to mountain driving. The possibility cracked us up. It hadn’t occurred to me until he mentioned it, but I won’t say it’s impossible. Who am I to place such limits on myself?) Love is, in no small way, sharing in the creation of euphemisms.
Regardless of all that, the cats were happy to see us. Ismail yelled with anger / whiny relief, Lalah hid / came out / hid / came out again, in histrionic excitement, and Sri Rejeki got super-puffy / nearly catatonic with joy. And Alhamdulillah, we were happy to see the cats too.
The end.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌖
Two year anniversary ♥️
I am the difficult daughter; // I am also a grateful wife.
Not just moving to the other side of the world, (and converting to Islam, from a Presbyterian family), but my mother has to learn a whole other calendar if she wants to wish us a happy anniversary. I explain it again this year. “It’s the first full moon after lunar new year, Mom.” “Okay. So next year it will be on…” She looks up the date. It’s also the last full moon before the holy month of Ramadan. But I don’t tell her that because it wouldn’t be helpful.
If I were a character in a novel, these would be external analogues for internal structures, helpful signs for a reader, to give a good idea. Of all the boundaries I’ve traversed, all the rivers crossed without knowing a way back, (well, literally oceans). Growing always farther away from whatever it was we could never call home.
They are that, for us, but they’re also insistently concrete obstacles. Distances not easily traversed, even by plane. Family with brown skin and kinky hair. (“What do people in Indonesia look like?” my grandmother asked. We both knew what she meant. There was no simple answer to her loaded question.) Laws and customs that repel. (“Muslims are required by their religion to commit acts of terrorist violence,” my father stubbornly held. The immovable rock face of a cliff. In what must have been one of our last conversations.) Altogether different measurements of time.
When I do think about it (I usually don’t), I like to think I’m inviting my mother on an adventure she was never quite daring enough to undertake, by herself (for herself). And all of these things become rites of passage for almost anyone who would ever know or love me. Everyone except for one person. And tonight is our night.
We sit in beach chairs and the frothy tide swirls beneath us, bypassing the sand-inundated sea wall. Then we secure our flip-flops (at some distance) and walk in up to our knees. Sometimes feeling like this rough surf, the bulging swell of a stormy spring tide, pressing always further in than before. (We had submerged ourselves this morning. It had still been pretty rough, we had gone just far enough in for melukat.) Fighting to keep steady. Watching her approach. Wondering when it would be that a person becomes too difficult to go in. Too tumultuous, even for melukat. (What would be the measure?) Wondering if there is such a thing, as “too difficult”.
(We doubt there will be such a thing. Perhaps this doubt is our unshakable faith.)
The waves are taller than we are now, billowing walls of ravenous white under the bright moon. They gobble away the sand. It’s become a steep incline. They come further than you expect, every once in a while making great splashing displays against the sea wall, behind you now. But don’t look away. For they pull back and cling to the earth as they go, drawing everything under and in, sucking at your calves, catching you off-guard. One balances, expands to receive it. A constant calling to be re-absorbed.
The moon has illuminated the sky in dappled ivory edges against misty midnight black. In the pattern of a wild celestial animal. Arcing over us, the body of Nut. Our eyes widen; we are syncretic by nature. We seek the correspondence between Luna and Ocean, learning by as many senses as can be roused. This one here, together with that. This endless appetite, for all the Earth, planets and stars. We stretch out toward the end of a temporal chain. We will be there too; we also correspond.
Alhamdulillahirabbilalamin.
Selamat purnama. 🌕
//
Arrived safely to a moody mother. Well, she’s swallowed most of the beach. No place left for early morning boys. Unusual winds. Churning, charging white water, crashing like thunder against the sea wall. Shimmering, shuddering black under gibbous moon.
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌖
Anticipating ocean. // Speaking of water, we’re off to the seaside today. For the first time the app calculates the northern route will be faster (I guess traffic in Gianyar and Karangasem has gotten that bad). So we drive up through jungly ravines to the Kintamani highlands, clockwise around Batur, then head southeast along the coast. Only a three-hour journey but good to get through the hairpin turns while everything’s still fresh.
And meanwhile, we can’t wait to hear the tide. Then to step in moving water and feel it on our feet. The gritty sand, the drowned seaweed smell, the salt-sticky wind from a steady horizon. How our hair will turn perfectly crunchy as we fall into hypnagogic states of contentment. (E packed the ukulele.) Right before leaving on these trips to the coast, there is a peak of longing, like we can’t carry even one more orphan inhalation. Like we’re running home to mother.
Y’all were louder than the chickens today —
But no hard feelings. Just measured words, and patient
Preening to wax away the feathered nerve.
Soft clucks will mend, with flock tucked-in, the hearts
Of beleaguered and yet good-natured birds.
Half-light sheds taste on full insanity;
Pale lemon slice atop smoked opium tea.
🌓
Early V-day celebration, here. //
Relief and relief and more relief, now ready for rest and (rest-enforcement and) healing. With no artful way to say this, but I feel immensely proud of my husband. Today, I know no other feeling as simple as that.
Spending all day in (traffic or in) hospital waiting rooms. Ahead of time, I envisioned reading and/or writing, while there. Lol. I didn’t realize (or I had forgotten) how absorbing, distracting, draining it is, to witness all these hospital feelings: pain, fear, anxiety, of patients and family members, the humiliation of being treated as an institutionalized body — subject to poking, injecting, cutting, stitching, by no agreed-upon schedule — rather than as a person. And of course, relief.
It was a minor surgery ward, serving routine procedures, so none of the afflictions were life-threatening. The worst was a child who had double infected pilonidal cysts (these are located in the crease between buttocks). It was ultimately not serious but surely uncomfortable, and he was afraid to go in for his procedure. Poor little guy. (If only one could transform into Robin Williams at just the right moment.) The dad kept reassuring him the surgery would make it feel better, (one feels for both child and parent in these situations), and it did. Or at least, the last we saw of him, (post-op), he had stopped crying and was deeply engrossed in his dad’s smartphone. That seems a pretty good use for a smartphone, at least.
E made friends with the dad when he (E) and the child were both still drunk off sedation. (After garbling some words about remembering toothpaste, and how much he loved me, and inviting his surgeon to our place, for coffee, inexplicably in slurred English: “I’m serious, doctor.”) The usual conversation ensued, where are you from, and where are you from, then running through contacts in those places, checking whether any are shared. People always know other people’s people, in Indonesia. Although it’s a more sprawling and diverse country than any other I’ve been to, (over seventeen thousand islands, speaking over seven hundred living languages, spanning China-vast distances), it quickly becomes a very small world.
Then, the zany fun of babysitting him, as he insisted we stop for celebratory dinner on the way home. Apologizing to our server (all the wait staff here know us, except for this new one who took our order tonight. But well, he knows us now) for oddly-mumbled jokes (“do either of you have any allergies?” me: “nope!” him, again in slurred English: “I’m allergic to bad people”… crickets… “aku allergi dengan orang jahat”… crickets… “I wanna lie down”) and too much giggling between us. Explaining, (as if it could be at all reassuring, to this studious newbie), that we had just come from the hospital, and he was still drunk on ketamine. (I don’t know if that’s what it was.) But not to worry, (and I let myself really smile, which felt like the first time in quite a long time), because everything was just fiiiiine.
A couple of middle-aged goofballs acting like (high) teenagers. And what was my excuse? The leftover green tea I gulped down before we went in, in a last-ditch effort not to fall asleep. (I haven’t gone back to coffee, since the flu. I wonder how long that will last.) But really, my excuse was relief. My relief at his relief. My relief at his being ok.
So my eyelids drooped heavily as we neared home, (I’ve become much more comfortable/reckless, with the driving, and I had some more green tea), where we settled in, as if for the rest of our lives. So as not to tempt fate, one fears to say these things out loud. Love is ever a fool’s courage. But how perfect is it, that vasectomy day would end up being more romantic than anything we’ve ever actually planned?
Next week, InsyaAllah, we’re off to the ocean again. Maybe for another footsie photo-op. And our anniversary, which is on the full moon.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌘
Students in submission. //
A difficult conversation, a revelation. So much (of reading this book) depends on acknowledging, wrestling, reconciling, releasing—-the impotence of outward-turning.
Inspired by the treatment of Sufism in KSR’s Red Mars series, (sci-fi and Islam: who knew?) I finally went looking. I found Allah’s servant, Ahmed Hulusi. Alhamdulillah, I believe he is much that I have needed as a guide to the Quran.
Always humbling, in a moment of seeking, to discover just the voice that connects your outer pieces and draws you deeper in.
“It’s a Farsi poem by Jalaluddin Rumi, the master of the whirling dervishes. I never learned the English version very well—
’I died from a mineral and plant became,
Died from the plant, took a sentient frame;
Died from the beast, donned a human dress—
When by my dying did I ever grow less . . .’“Ah, I can’t remember the rest. But some of those Sufis were very good engineers.”
(A Rumi reference, from Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson.)
Of course they are well-prepared for Mars. Mars is ever-singing in the Sufi heart.
After eighteen days on a convalescent diet, I finally got my veggie burger tonight. Beet-lentil burger with purple sauerkraut and charcoal mayo, roasted sweet potato wedges, and a creamy durian smoothie. I am full of flavor-colors.
From a fruitful exchange. I propose “a seed” as a self-incarnating teacher of divine mystery.
(Then to follow the seed back into its sleep, as to dream.)
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu.
Tonight, as begins a new lunar year.
I see there is beauty (also) in your invisibility.
Alhamdulillahirabbilalamin. 🌘🌑🌒
Xenia on the Internet
Another way to think about this is as being a good guest.
For example. I am a stranger and a guest in Indonesia, the country where I live, so I am obliged to respect the boundaries of a guest. It is not (it can’t be) my business to go shouting in streets, making trouble, about Indonesian governance. I’m not a citizen, I cannot (expect the right to) vote. It’s not my work here to castigate people or their customs. (I would be an asshole if I did. And end up in prison.) If I really don’t like it, what I can do is leave.
Consider. The internet would be a much better “place” if everybody treated it as not-their-own-house. If we acted like guests. (Many “here” already sense this, I think, and follow the custom.) The fact of the matter is that nobody knows whose house they are in, in a literal way. The written words you type into your keyboard, in your own house, will appear in unknown countries and unknown houses. Maintaining awareness of that is the basic etiquette of a guest.
However. This is not about “being genteel” or saying “tut-tut”. This is not about avoiding politics. Far from it, this is itself a political stance, and reflects a serious political need. It’s the basis of diplomacy. As a sacred observance, it guarantees sanctuary in a temple or church. To be a good guest is to acknowledge the limits of one’s own knowledge and reputation. It is careful comportment with respect to the unknown. Practically speaking, it’s the basis for traveling and meeting people outside city walls (or national borders). For visiting foreign countries, and hosting foreigners at home. These are the ancient rules of ξενία (xenia), or guest-friendship.
I propose. A hospitable social media platform shouldn’t be governed, in the sense of a neighborhood jurisdiction, as an attempt at community. It should model itself on a guesthouse, at an internet crossroads. Like an inn or a caravanserai. To be sure, the atmosphere can be friendly and welcoming. It will have its longterm or familiar denizens. It may be a convivial place to share news, political views, feelings, artworks, or other ideas, to catch up on gossip, or just to say hi, and yet it remains as a hub of the ungovernable. Not all guests share the same creed or commitments. They may convene in clubs or cliques, or keep to themselves in the shadows. Some things are confined to more “private quarters”, like private notes, emails, or the blog.
Of course, not everything is permitted. When “the law of the land” and the etiquette (or inhibitions) of guests aren’t enough to enable sanctuary, a guesthouse needs to enforce its own rules, in violation of which users may be blocked or kicked out. Even so, unlike those of a political jurisdiction, the rules of a guesthouse are not written to exclude the unknown, the stranger, or the refugee. They cannot demand political allegiance without defeating their purpose. This is so especially in times of civil conflict, when misinformation is rife, and all are on paranoid lookout for mere signs (which are inherently fallible, and not the substance) of enmity.
The purpose of guesthouse rules is to preserve a limited and special kind of peace. Peace maintains the viability of the guesthouse, as a business, the provision of its guests, and the very possibility of (the “open web” as) travel.
Travel is essential to Xenia, who takes on spiritual countenance as host of the politically homeless. She is the honesty of outlaws, the unspoken agreement of (quality) pirates and thieves, and the pious duty of every anarchist. (She also transgresses the limits of deified gender, appearing both as Zeus and Athena.) Then, there is her enemy. The outlawing of travel, in all of its psycheic (intellectual, political, and poetic) senses, (including translation), is the essence of illiberality. It is the attempt to expunge Life. This is fascism, at its very core.
Xenia, therefore, is an organizing element of antifascism. It would be valuable as a principle of the “open web”. It can be a business model, a public good, or a piety, depending on perspective and motivation. No matter the political commitments of its keeper or guests, longterm or transient, the internet guesthouse has a higher duty to guest-friendship. It can host neither fascism, nor the war.
//
Looking around the neighborhood, // as witness to the wreckage. A place where a hurricane has just passed through. The shock of sudden emptiness. The lonely breeze, the shimmering-shift of sun. The broken words, the walking wounded, aimlessness.
The wondering what or who comes next.
That’s what I was thinking, feeling rather sad. Then I realized that what I beheld was the outcome of something epic, and perhaps, essential. It was the making (and the being made) of real decision. It was spirit (as civilization, as culture) in motion. It was human being chewed up in the great grinding maw of dialectic. It passed right over us, the eye of the storm.
We were tested. And we survived.
//
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🕊️
Unsafe Spaces and the Privilege of Peace
//
Bismillahirrahmanirrahim.
I do not know you. Neither do I know myself.
My desire is to be honest, and to welcome you here.
I espouse neither hatred nor violence.
//
I consider my “real life” to be qualitatively different from my writing and reading life. I suspect there is no one best way to express, explain, or “argue for” this, especially in the ingrained contemporary context of social media. But here, following my own experience, I will try to tease apart the difference.
I love having conversations about books and ideas. I have always sought them out, despite being a socially anxious person. Here are a few examples. I founded a “philosophy club”, with friends, when I was in high school; I went to a unique college where classes consisted of nothing other than text-based seminar conversation; I didn’t want it to stop, so I sought out more in graduate school; as a “teacher”, sitting in a circle with my students, I imposed the same (in my opinion) heavenly practice on them; I also founded a women’s book club, and helped keep it active, until I moved away from the United States.
My personal dream of paradise involves so many conversations, with all kinds of people, over books. These take place as in a state of perpetual youth, around an otherwise quiet seminar table. The scent of springtime occasionally drifts in from an open window, or perhaps it’s fall, with the toasted crunch of fallen leaves and a hot cup of tea. (It is not my present, tropical climate.) Yes, my heart flutters up into my throat when there’s an awkward silence. Or when I’ve made a mistake in argument or expression, I think I might vomit. It doesn’t feel good to be misunderstood or ignored. Nobody carries the same baggage, we are all different, and we speak very often at cross-purposes. So it’s messy and confused. Questions are gaping, answers are rare and the whole experience can be quite terrifying.
But it is the most torturous and humbling and wonderful trial. (To write about it makes me tear up with nostalgia.) Every individual is equally anchored to this gorgeous disaster that occasionally converges in a sublime moment of realization. I love it, it has shaped and nourished me more and better than any other form of social interaction. That, and singing in a chorus, (preferably Mozart, but anything really), are my absolute favorite ways to be part of a group of human people.
In contrast, “online conversation” has always repulsed me. I remember to this day the confusion and then sort of visceral discomfort I felt when F-cebook introduced status updates, and a timeline. I could never explain why, but I could find no use for it. It seemed both too public and too mute, too casual and too leaden. There was nothing I could say that I wanted to say. Soon after, I stopped using the platform. After that, I never really participated in “social media”, until I started this blog.
“This” is not “me”. From the outset, I’ve been pretty heavy-handed (look, I wear a mask in my avatar) in expressing myself according to this, my apparently unusual intuition. But I wanted to be clear with you, and honest, and this was the only way it would work.
So I do not claim an “online identity”. It doesn’t feel healthy or right to do so. And from what I have seen, of these online “places”, it’s not healthy for anybody. To identify closely with an “online persona” isn’t conducive to learning about oneself, or the world.
One reason for this might be the multiple alienations involved in the activity of writing and reading online. These are each complicated, but just in brief. First, to express myself in writing is poetic alienation from myself, as I am, in my body and place. Then, to consume “other people” through their writing is to alienate them from their body and place. This is alienation from the (unwritten, unexpressed, personal-historical, perhaps sub- or unconscious) conditions that might help me better understand who they are, as themselves.
Then, to “read people” online is also a kind of alienation from all of the living people who do not write online, or even, write at all. I think about these people often, I am rather haunted by them. These are the people from whom I will never read, the ones I will only ever read about. The poor, the starving, the refugees, the tech-less masses who appear in news articles about natural and geopolitical disasters. But also, this includes a lot of normal, everyday people, from all over the world. There are many who have no desire to appear in such an alienated form, as is required for entry into the world of online writing.
Finally, “reading people” online is alienation from the living people who are present to me daily, in what I call my “real life”.
This present world of living people, my local and embodied community (family, friends, and neighbors), demand negotiation and compromise in a plethora of ways. It isn’t quite a seminar conversation, (and there’s usually no book involved), but it’s not altogether different. For one thing, we can’t really avoid each other. This is sometimes frustrating, disturbing, annoying, even frightening. Sometimes, we need to ask a person’s help, sometimes to help deal with somebody else. We all have our different personal histories and perspectives. Different ones of us call for different expectations, different treatment, and a different response. Sometimes I adjust my expression toward someone deliberately, in order to avoid confrontation. Sometimes I do it habitually, addressing certain people (elders, community leaders, bosses, professors, doctors) with a certain kind of respect. With friends or intimates, I might tread carefully, especially if there’s a difficult subject but I sense the potential for common ground.
As I mentioned, I’m socially anxious. I have some trouble with eye contact, and I often find myself at a loss for words, or staring off into space. But I do my best, basically because I have no other choice. I like people, for the most part. So it’s worth it to me, to put up with discomfort, although I don’t habitually seek it out. Luckily, I live in a place where people like to come over and visit. They are always very insistent that we visit them back.
//
But “real life” isn’t easy. It requires adaptation, compromise, and (I believe, if you do it well), a constant effort toward reconciliation.
Like most people, I hold certain beliefs close to my heart. And I know better than to expect everybody around me to be (my belief, my opinion, or my strongly-held conviction, of what is) right and good. For example, I am a long-time (>15 years) strict vegetarian/vegan.
(Side note. I bring up veganism not to be divisive, but because it’s an obvious and accessible example of being alienated through “real life” customary practice from an ostensible community. My blog, and even this post, is chock-full of other analogous relationships.)
I believe that “to eat meat” is, more-or-less, murder. This means that I live side-by-side with murderers, in community, in many different circumstances. My family are murderers. My neighbors are murderers. Almost all of my friends are murderers. I myself was previously a murderer. It’s quite terrible to live in a world full of murderers. Even members of my supposed political cohort (which, as an academic, was leftist progressive) pretty consistently deride veganism. There is no sympathy offered to vegans, who have chosen their alternate path, and so have taken a burden on themselves. They are often invoked as the definition of “privilege”, used in the pejorative sense. Over the years, I have worked on how to deal with that. Social alienation can be soul-destroying, but ditching my (otherwise relatively easy) practice of compassion seemed far worse.
So one of the important spiritual lessons of being vegan, for me, has been the effort it takes to understand and forgive the non-vegan world (including my pre-vegan self). To live, think, and engage, without being blinded by constant anger. (To be clear. The anger is at the vast and unfathomable harm involved in modern animal agriculture, the relative ease of removing one’s support from that institution, and the flagrant embrace of “my people” of the dietary status quo.) When I first “went vegan”, I implicitly assumed everybody else would too, simply because our (U.S. American) normal eating habits were so obviously unsustainable. Well, I was obviously naive. (What can I say as an excuse, other than, it was 2008.)
To tame one’s own righteous anger is a basic need, I think, for anybody who, in “real life”, observes a minority belief. Especially so when that belief has dawned later in life, so it feels intentional, like a well-earned choice. Another relevant factor is if that belief is related to justice, or the common good. (I think those who are religious will relate to this too.) Rejecting the “real world” is not an option, but neither is grudging silence. The work is not just to compromise, but to overcome the temptation of alienation and hatred. To not, for example, become the next unibomber.
There’s an irony here. Once one takes the first simple but substantial (because active and everyday) step toward non-violence, one is suddenly presented with a heavy lesson in social alienation. One becomes, in a way, the young Mohandas Gandhi, stumbling around London. The accomplishment doesn’t make things easier. The lure of anger and violence does not dimish, but compounds. Dedication to non-violence is called upon to become measurably more deliberate and serious, as a kind of self-calibrating lesson. Not only to “turn the other cheek”, but to love.
Reconciliation, not by reversion to violence but through some hypothesis of love, becomes a perpetually humbling task.
//
Writing, whereby I separate my words from my local and embodied self, sending them off into a realm of unmoored digital flux, is different.
Writing enjoys freedom from the necessities of “real life”, and many of its compromises. I can make my online writing whatever I believe it should be. It is limited only by my ingenuity and imagination. I no longer need even to submit myself to the messy and imperfect vicissitudes of a group seminar. (Not to mention, subjecting it to the demands of mainstream publication.) My writing can, if I am capable of creating it so, become its own perfect world. This is why I love writing, but also how I know to be cautious of it.
Online writing and reading can seem like a dream come true. The inconveniences of “real life” are many, compared to a written fantasy. The incentives to grapple with its necessities, beyond addressing basic needs, are few, other than a desire for social engagement. It seems that “social media” might, by re-introducing social “others” into a written world, alleviate a tendency toward narrowly-built and myopically-occupied psycheic spaces. “Others” are present as apparently spontaneous written words in the feed, and the user receives social “others” through reading words they did not themselves compose.
However, one chief function of social media has been to increase the degree of our self-curation, as readers. Social media users accept textualized (and thereby alienated) others into their field of view, but only as they choose. Others are not there by presence, accident, reason, or necessity. Even those we choose “to follow” (which really means, to summon onto our screens) have no embodied presence. They never actually go anywhere. Astounding dimensions of the other source remain invisible and excluded from the social media feed. The user fills these gaps with their imagination. Sometimes charitably, sometimes less so, but ultimately, it doesn’t really matter.
The result is that social media users surround themselves with figments of their own imagination. To do otherwise might not be impossible, but it requires the superhuman task of “imagining into being” other peoples' substantial otherness. That is, one must do something for which there is vanishingly little incentive. One must will into imaginative existence all the ugly, confusing, and messy realities of an in-person, non-addictive, locally intimate relationship. Rather than letting that otherness slip away into the void, along with the actual work of relationship building. (Let alone, community.) Which is to say, the easiest thing to do is to avoid the ethical and educative challenges of alienation and reconciliation.
It is not work to get along with a curated timeline. Or rather, it is only the work that the user has (with or without consideration) chosen not to ignore.
This almost necessarily lends itself to narcissistic and histrionic comportment toward others. It teaches social behavior through a simulation of social engagement that eliminates the natural obstacles of “real life”. It’s not even that individuals become tyrants (although the bigger and better-platformed “influencers” often do). But that people, identifying closely with their “online personae”, cultivate mutual and exclusive tyrannies with each other. They build these structures with written snippets of easily-affirmed (or excluded) dogma, including codified language that seems invented for this very purpose. They utilize all the reflexive responses available to the social media machine (“likes”, thumbs-up, retweets, etc.) as tools to fortify the borders. To succeed in a social media “world” is nothing other than to indulge and confirm others' and one’s own very worst neuroses.
It is unnervingly easy to sense whether or not one “belongs” in these sealed-off groups, what are often called “communities”. The lines of exclusion are clearly-enforced and absolute. You’re in, or you’re out. As for me, I’ve only ever floated by, as a silent observer, what one might call a lurker, or possibly an “NPC”. There was never any real reason to participate. Challenging perspectives are welcome only in orthodox and accepted modes. Subversion is made impossible, with alternate possibilities of engagement either unacknowledged or disallowed. It is obvious, from the outset, exactly what one is expected to say. Needless to say, I recognize nothing of my heavenly seminar conversation in this mode of social participation. To me, it is literal hell.
Most of us have experienced, recognized, and to some degree rejected this dynamic. It is mainstream social media in a nutshell, regardless of which profiteer owns the platform. And it encourages people, everywhere, (and increasingly, it seems, on purpose), to grow in catastrophic directions.
I don’t wish to cultivate those tendencies, in myself or others. I imagine you don’t either, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading my blog.
//
In distinguishing the modes of “real life” versus writing and reading, I think the distinction between “play” and “serious danger” is both useful and substantial, if not cut-and-dry. Writing and reading are done in play, while seriousness is reserved for what is present, real, and historical.
(A lot of ink has been spilled on this topic in the academic field of hermeneutics, specifically by Hans-Georg Gadamer. But the idea goes all the way back to the poetic subject of my never-ending adoration/translation, Plato’s Phaedrus. Here, I briefly summarize how I experience this distinction, with regard to my habit as a writer and reader of blogs.)
Alienation endows me with this dubious privilege. That my true self is protected from you, by all these layers of separation. Each word is a half-silvered glass. I’m kind of here, but kind of not. Almost like you. I remind us of this, in all of these silly and unsubtle ways. My personal (hi)stories on here are relevant, but only as footsteps that might lead to some other thing. That other thing is not a fact or piece of information. I am not a newspaper journalist. I am a human person, and my blog is where I meet myself, in writing. Here, I engage your immateriality as a way of invoking and experimenting with my own.
In return, I do not “read you” for the purpose of judging you, in any serious way. I gave up on that endeavor (if temporarily) when I stopped “teaching”, when I stopped marching and shouting in the streets for political causes, when I moved away from the United States, when I took a break from talking to my neighbors and intimates, and started reading the internet, instead. This, here, is something other than that. I always enjoy you, and I would never shout at you, or even give you a grade (lol). The worst I would ever do is to leave you, un-read. I think you probably wouldn’t even notice that. You are in no serious danger from me. I’m really here for us to play a kind of game.
Maybe this is unusual, but I desire multitudes in the “people” I read. I have a voracious, almost unhealthy appetite for it. If there is anything that draws me into the way you express an idea, I want to read you. I’ve found this to be so, regardless of whether I agree with you, or not. Often, agreement doesn’t even apply. You can write about almost anything, from the obscure or intellectual, to the lowest-grade gossip, through “over-sharing” and adolescent “cringe”, to theological or political argument. And don’t get me started on “the boring”. The more boring you seem, the more captivated I am by any accidental glimpse of the hidden world that I know (and perhaps this is my unshakable faith?) is concealed therein.
I am a fiend! I will read you until I am exhausted. Or until I feel ill. Or until something in “real life” pulls me away.
You, to me, are the advantage of being alive right now. You are Odysseus’s oceanic world to explore. An entire internet of extant written work is literally at my fingertips, waiting for me to read and puzzle-solve (and weep with joy) and (mis)understand. Sometimes, to out-trick and escape. Always, to make the story my very own. So how could I confine myself to a textual dimension of self-curated agreement? I’m reckless too, like “the man of many turns”. I do not ask my reading to be “safe”, in fact, that would defeat my very purpose, my deepest desire. Which, as Aristotle points out at the beginning of the Metaphysics, is to see and to know, as whole, the whole of whatever there is to know.
(By the way. If you are reading this, there is a pretty good chance that I already read everything that you post on the internet. And I appreciate all of it, so thanks for expressing yourself in writing. When I write, I’m sure it reflects everything that I have read. I have most likely taken you into account. If you doubt that’s the case, and think I may not “read you”, please send a note by email or through Micro.blog. I will happily add your writing to my RSS feed. This wouldn’t be charity, to repeat, this would be you helping me satisfy my voracious appetite.)
Complementary to this, I do not consider my blog a “safe space”. I meet myself here, and as you can tell by now, I am not “safe”. However, my blogging is done in play, and not as war. In writing, I entertain danger for the sake of discovery, and not from a desire or intent to do harm. I do not pose questions from cruelty, and unless it seems very important, I would hate to hurt your feelings. By telling you, for example, that your feelings aren’t real. I do not believe that at all. I believe that your feelings are immanently real. And if anything I write is ever too painful for you, (or makes you feel ill, or heaven forbid, abused), please, look away.
Here are some examples of my repugnant beliefs, just for fun. (This is me, poking out a Cyclops' eye.) I don’t believe in free will. I don’t believe in historical progress. I don’t believe in human rights. (I do not consider myself a humanist.) I don’t believe “science is knowledge”. I don’t believe information is knowledge, either. I don’t believe all men (or all human beings) are created equal. For that matter, I don’t believe Thomas Jefferson was a genius, or particularly smart, or a good person, at all, (not just for being a serial rapist, but also for that). And I dislike the Declaration of Independence. Etc.
I do believe in other things, that are sometimes difficult to express (and less codified or quantified) in modern terms. (I read a lot of very old books, very early in life.) But these things are often intuitive from an unstudied perspective. I do, for example, believe in being kind. I believe in nature. I believe in human needs. While history may be up for grabs, I treat myself as a work in progress. And in case I haven’t yet made myself clear, above all else, I believe in Love.
//
But “real life” is complicated.
“Real life” amounts to navigating situations I didn’t choose, and never would have chosen. Injustice happens, that’s “real life”. Despite a lifelong effort, there remain many things (mostly involving human people) that simply don’t make sense to me. And yet, “real life” always takes precedence over writing and reading. Sometimes it does so by force. At actually dangerous moments in my “real life”, I stay well away from the “publish” button. Complimentary to that, I hope and pray that when you are in serious danger, you have elsewhere to turn, than to read my (or any) blog.
In my “real life”, I have responded in (sometimes regrettably) absolute ways to political difference. I do not like giving my tacit approval to abhorrent political positions. I do not like sitting at the dinner table with that, or praying with that. I have cut family members out of my life, for years at a time, after finding myself unable to sway them from their support for (what I view as) very bad, and possibly evil, political actors. I’ve made my mother cry too many times. I have mixed feelings about it. I’m not sure how much “real life” good any of it has done.
“Real life” also includes decisions about how to obtain and spend money. Like most people, I try to make ethical decisions, and not to support “evil”. (As I said previously, I’m not here to judge you. I’m sure you do your best. I do too.) For me, veganism is obviously part of my attempt, as food takes up a massive portion of my family’s budget. I’m proud of the money we don’t put toward destruction and collapse acceleration. But in certain areas of “real life”, including medical care, I find that these commitments require compromise. And then, when it comes to technology (phones, tablets, computers, various digital “subscriptions” and “services”), which are all ostensibly luxury items, (and yet, somehow, not really?), matters get incredibly complicated. To avoid the stress of calculating the practically incalculable, I try simply to buy (and to pay for) as little “tech” as possible.
(Here, I arrive finally at the thorn in my side, which prompted this entire, novella-length post. It was a deluge of controversy that struck a virtually microscopic online space. This piece of writing became much longer than I expected or wanted it to be, but maybe now it fits the prompt, even better. If you’ve read this far, then surely you deserve to have my opinion on the issue, which is to say, my “real life” rough calculation.)
The amount of money I pay to my host and platform service, Micro.blog, is relatively small ($5/month). But it’s one of these exceedingly complicated “tech” expenditures. For the sake of comparison, I will probably have to buy a new phone this year, as my screen and casing have cracked for the third time, (each time having repaired it at the local shop, here in Indonesia, where authorized Apple is not-a-thing). The display is starting to malfunction in weird ways, preventing me from hanging up at the end of calls. It’s not ideal. A new phone will cost me, at the low end, $700. That’s more than 11 years’ worth of Micro.blog service. I will hand this money over to a corporation whose CEO has just openly gifted a million dollars to the U.S. American president. I don’t like to support that, not at all. But I will, probably, because the alternatives are not really any better.
I have very little idea what goes into the Micro.blog product. (I am not “a computer person”.) Much of it is invisible to me. But cancelling the service, based on a few embarrassing (and at this point, amply-shamed) posts from a contracted employee, seems patently absurd.
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t know these people. I can’t read what’s in their minds, let alone in their hearts. Even or especially when they try to put these things in writing. Like most “tech guys”, they are not the best at expressing their feelings. Nor are they good at resisting the siren song of “shiny new things”. They’re not public relations experts, critical theorists, or acclaimed poets. They are, as many have pointed out, “cis het white men”. Please don’t take this the wrong way, either. But ten years ago, at most fifteen or twenty years ago, I wager you wouldn’t have used those words, or perhaps even known them. With their quick categorization according to hierarchical possibilities of personal well-being, organizing “real life” with deceptive ease, they are pretty clearly born from the hellscape of mainstream “social media”. It’s ok. I promised, I’m not here to judge you.
But dear God. Isn’t it time for a little humility?
I can’t read what’s in your heart. Mine, also, is often a mystery to me. And yet I write this blog, and expose you to my idiosyncratic observations and negations and whatever else flows from these (sometimes, apparently, deranged) fingers. The deeper the question, the weightier the responsibility. I take care to caution you regularly about my writing, because I have (to some degree) been humbled. I am not blind to my limitations, which are personal, to be sure, but also inherent in the very act of writing online. I have no way of knowing who or what is on the other end of this, and how it might influence anybody at all.
I am words in the dark, mixing with other words, in the dark. Nothing here is pure. This risk is incalculable in a whole other way.
However. I do believe that “indie blogging” is peak anti-fascist internet participation, right there alongside other things that get too complicated and dangerous for me (in “real life”) to consider (like hacking, or espionage). So by my rough calculation. Even if I’m paying a few USD a month to a closeted fascist fanboy, and his slow-to-respond, painfully naive boss, who doesn’t give anybody the exact official statement they demand, (Honestly, I don’t believe this is fundamentally who I am dealing with. I think these are just normal, well-intentioned, clumsy communicators. But as I said, there is no real way for me to know), that is still ok with me. Really ok, in “real life” fact. Because my rough calculation still holds.
Fascism, in this exchange, has gotten the raw end of the deal. This right here—me, with my un-timely and meandering response, (and you with yours, which I am pretty sure I have already read, and for which I was grateful)—This right here is the true revolution.
We win.
Speaking of which,
//
From a theoretical or “philosophical” perspective. There remain open questions (OPEN QUESTIONS, I am tempted to shout, but in “real life” I know better) that current U.S. American political discourse has shut down into black-and-white demands for allegiance. “Shutting down open questions” is how many people respond to fear and uncertainty (i.e. danger, real or perceived). That’s understandable, I’ve done that too. Emergencies require reflexive, rather than circumspect, action.
But when the (federated or not) world of online writing is treated as a battlefield, it precludes thoughtful engagement and learning. (It also builds resentment and misunderstanding.) So it precludes U.S. Americans (as their online-written personae) from thoughtfully engaging with each other in open-minded ways. It also precludes thoughtful engagement between U.S. Americans and people from throughout the world, who come from vastly different traditions and cultures. (And subcultures, and marginalized minorities, not to mention individual people who are utterly unique. I want to believe. They do exist.)
A lack of thoughtful dialogue, and the decreased capacity for it, has ripped “the United States of America”, as a “real life” political entity, apart. This has subjected everybody in the world, (in the “real life” world, whether they are recognized by U.S. American discourse as “marginalized”, or not), to exponentially greater danger.
Every living thing, subject to death, becomes “marginalized” by war.
Above all, shutting down open questions precludes inquiry into the truth. (This includes inquiry concerning God, nature, the divine.) Peace, perhaps, is not just a prerequisite for such inquiry, but also its end. Rightly labelled as a “privilege”, and wrongly available to some more than others, peace, (or as it is sometimes misleadingly labeled, “leisure”), is that very thing for which we might courageously endure countless discomforts or dangers. But to shut down inquiry into open questions enacts the opposite transaction. It sacrfices all of this—-truth, God, and the potential for discovering a common cause—-in the name of making war.
War is ignorance in action. Non-violence is the only foundation for understanding. My priority here (on my blog, in my writing) will always be the latter. This isn’t because myself and my loved ones are safe from the imminent and global danger whose toxic vortex looms over the country of my birth. Nobody anywhere is safe. But I believe that the only thing that will redeem any of the “real life” destruction, that is already well underway, is to be found in and through truth and understanding.
Which means, for me and my blog, that we’re staying here. To exercise my capacity, in full view of the problematic and unsafe creature that (in “real life”) I am, to discover, envision, and enact, a life, in writing, of peace.
Thanks for reading, to anyone who got this far.
_ Alhamdulillahirabbilalamin._ 🌒
//
The opposite of repetition. //
Unresolved opposites permit no focus today. These times when it seems impossible to win, (to do even/just one single thing), I forget until I remember to forget. Try letting along instead of hacking against the knotty grain. In the southern land of the last living things, time wasted is but devil-deprived.
So I spent today feeling sorry for Grimes, and sorting messages sent across water.
From the west, a bump on the head, a minor rupture on the surface of deeper, longer-term commitments, tendrils of an echoless dark. Uncomfortable laughter interrupted by untranslatable tears. A familiar face shows no sign of recognition. Anxiety as mercenary, untrusted and useless. While touch, denying separation, begs mercy for mind’s betrayal.
From the east, syncopation of a body’s breath. Mechanical blips, machine eyes seeking nodules of soft tissue, to test and seek again, in oft-repeated cycles. Persistent fever, failing fathers lead mothers to leap out from a fascist frying pan into flames of wind-sheared ice. Blood seeks a new frontier, in northern latitudes, the opposite of repetition. Yet a clumsy gambit for youth.
Parallel lives, viewed as from above. Are they one, or many? When feelings follow fault lines, we take out mortgages on surveillance drones. The old houses are gone, the smells of carpets and moth balls, gone, cat litter and Christmas, that one springtime we planted a cherry tree, or the scent of pine needles, toasting under the North Carolina sun. Anticipation of snow from equatorial afternoon, monsoon against red cardinal’s frosted footprints. Dear unwritten sister,
I’ve forgotten how to share words with you.
Let me hold you in the palm of my hand.
//
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌓