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A metaphor for the parts and a different metaphor for the whole, is a human being. // That old triple goddess, the zoon logon echon.
Or like Prometheus holding desperately onto his chains, while his insides are being picked at, so he doesn’t fall into a void. (Permitting a small symbolic alteration..)
I sometimes think about the central mediations of the major Abrahamic religions (as far as I understand them) and how those must be key to the logic of their respective theologies. For Judaism, the covenant. For Christianity, a mother and a father becoming pregnant and giving birth to a child, and/or the passion. For Islam, the messenger.
It gives me some confidence that, even though it seems like a geographical accident, I (we) found my way to the messenger, (the messenger found a way to me?), when a messenger has already accomplished the most important mediations in my life, over and over again, clothed in different bodies and texts and appearances. My life’s passion and work has been the search for and interpretation of messages. Now, I am offered a message of Islam, which is a message of Peace (as-Salam, as in, assalamualaikum). As a world composed of messages, the messaging world has been very kind, to me. It has cradled me, (I always think of Thich Nhat Han, counseling me to cradle my anger), to make the anger inside of me feel loved and cared for, that has been the love and care of the messenger, patiently sending messages. Waiting for me to find them, and listen to them, and discover their sense, and follow them. Until, at last, a message of peace.
A messenger is very close to the Logos. A messenger is an apt prophet for writers and above all translators. A messenger is a teacher who doesn’t teach, a (musical) counterpoint to learning, especially from afar. A messenger carries a message and it’s not, strictly speaking, her own. A messenger might bring the news, or she might bring a message of peace.
The “seeming” shifts. It stops seeming like a geographical accident, and begins to seem like (reveal itself as) destiny. As it does, other things fall into places, that were already falling, as a planetary whole. Like a webbing of streams and rivers flowing into lakes and then oceans.
(I have a tradition.)
A message can come (and go) in many forms. Its essence is in its (departure and) arrival (and in the differences between these things). A message is manifold and fitting.
What I feel, when I feel my feelings, is resonance, and then humility, and then gratitude. (Resonance is with study, which is measured, but all three are somewhat infinite feelings.) That a message might reach me from across the entire world, in a way that feels “right on time”, (a message delivered is always on time), and these are the messages that have.
(I am a jihadi.)
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu.
I’m wearing a ruched tie-dye tube top, I’m self-actualizing✨
(There were certain things that you kept from me.) //
Rainy days lately, and buggy, with small flying termites swarming frosted lightbulbs, at nights, and particulate rivers of ants spanning surfaces in exploratory veins, locating and removing insect bodies, leaving translucent brown confetti, so many spent wings, scattered across the floor.
A breath, and they disperse.
A moth alit on the soap dispenser, a velvety shield of black and cream stripes against a liquid surface of stainless steel reflection.
A tiny, brightly-humming wasp building mud cradle-tubes on the bedroom door. To be woken in the morning by its sunny song.
Homestyle curry cooked on a rainy afternoon. Onion, garlic, ginger, turmeric, chilis. Potatoes, carrots, broccoli, tofu. Remembering how to improvise. It always tastes better on the second day.
A few of the baby roosters peck food from our hands now. The same few linger nearby and make eye contact, inquisitive, observant. One already has a little cockscomb, although it’s still black. (Frankie’s is a blazing red, like the chilis, with a full scarlet mask and cheek lobes.) Another has pinkish-red patches showing around his face and neck, and stunning glimpses of iridescent copper and blue, green, and purple nestled in his otherwise black feathers. One is a little smaller, with black and white marks like a tuxedo. Each child rooster looks a little different. We won’t know their “final forms” until they go through a full adult molt. That’s several months away, at least.
Frankie arrived here as a plain-looking juvenile, but then he had a dramatic transformation. Now, he is deep coppers and rich burnt caramel creams, chocolate browns blended with black, a frothy cappuccino ruff, teal patches on his sides, a forest green fountaining cascade of tail feathers, and the aforementioned bright red mask and comb. In my opinion, he is a rooster of flamboyant elegance and circumspect stature, a proudly beautiful bird, tempestuous and refined. Almost always with a faint goofy undertone.
I want to take a picture of him, but he is paradoxically hard to get a good picture of. He doesn’t appreciate having a camera (phone) put in his face.
(Some things I don’t need to know. But some things, I can’t help it, I just wish I did, about you.)
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu.🌑
Fruits, flowers, and one active choice. //
I watched my husband turn the spray-bottle (for “cat discipline”) on Frankie, which was utterly ineffective, mildly confusing for Frankie, and funny for us. (Chickens have no problem with water.) It’s not very effective on Ismail, either. We might have to add vinegar, then Ish will hate it, in his casual way.
He and I are capable of self-discipline. But when it comes to others, we are terrible disciplinarians. It brings us joy to see (and let) others break rules. A luxury of being child-free, I guess, or a vice that we “permit ourselves”.
Frankie and Grace have a collaborative romance. Frankie builds nests for her and catches bugs and grubs and gives them to Grace. Grace did the same for their children, until she emancipated them. They share their peanuts. They sleep together, Grace and Frankie perched on top of the coop with the children safe (if not silent, sometimes a little rowdy) inside. The chickens have a family.
The sufficiency of apricot-scented roses. Trigger warning: America.
What is called politics (or democracy) in U.S. America is a highly-formalized, performative/participatory ritual of nostalgia for the sacrificed/human act of choice. Not unlike Attic tragedy.
Imagine attending (or abstaining from) that yearly Dionysian hoedown.
…and recognizing it as your (now) destiny.
There must eventually be a satyr play. Traditionally, after three of these. Don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing, it just seems, rhythmically, a necessary thing. Which might be the lure of the uglier alternative. The aestheticization of politics is (Walter Benjamin’s term for what I describe as) enthusiasm without education.
(Was subsequently referred, through a rabbit hole, to this talk given by Robert Frost, where he compares an education by poetry to “enthusiasm tamed by metaphor”. … While, and this seems important, he also emphasizes poetry as that from which we learn the limits of metaphor.)
“The election” in 2016 seems like U.S. America lost a kind of virginity. Thinking about the myth of virginity, and its loss, as a suffered trauma that cannot be repeated because it substantially changes things, who you are, your character, what can be said or is true about you. Through one Passion, or act of suffering, the landscape of possibilities changes, completely. (The protagonist doesn’t have to be “the anti-christ”, or an actual rapist, but calling him that makes it feel more real.)
Not pathei mathos (learning by suffering), pace Aeschylus, but pathei genesis (by suffering, being born).
Watching someone fall prey to their own mythologized monsters, using predation as an excuse for predation. This is also (sadly) a “feminist take”.
By no coherent logic do one-hundred and sixty-million individual choices add up to one active choice. Allah is ever, over all things, an Accountant (al-Haseeb, Qur’an 4:86).
Lemon is one of my favorite fruits, flowers, and flora. Also, vanilla (which, if you didn’t know, is an orchid). Imagine growing both in the same garden. Pollinators would love it and so would we.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu.
This may be obvious, // but as everybody knows, obviousness is relative.
When the thing that would make you happy has been planned out of your civilization, this can mean something different for everybody.
For no reader do I recommend fascism or joining cults or eating an animal.
(Some things can be written in stone. Others should be written only in wax, or on the wind, etc.)
Ten roosters crowing is not just a metaphor, it is also real. Hence, the “news” category. There will be ten roosters crowing, at my house.
(We will have to name them, I guess. The nine juveniles. The dad is already named Frankie. Grace is the Hen. “Fun fact”, Grace and Frankie is a tv show starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. Frankie is the name of Lily Tomlin’s character.)
When I don’t use an emoji, the mood that I am communicating is, “I am not in the mood to express myself with a cartoon right now.”
(I added that to my emoji dictionary.) (For a minute, I got confused between roosters and emojis. There are a lot of both!)
To communicate in writing requires synthesis between writing as yourself and writing for “the reader”.
“The reader” is only ever inside your head. It is almost absolutely plural. Hmm.
(Inside your head, “the reader” can feel nearly synonymous with “the writer”… also, in a blogging neighborhood.)
To every one of you, I have something different to say.
To every one of you, thank you🙏🏻 for showing me ways to break out of my civilization.
(That’s what I look for, in blogs.)
…“almost absolutely plural”…
Salam to all🌓
Three yolks, two pulsas, no home. // Last night we ran out of two kinds of pulsa at once, it was just bad luck, but our reward was to spend a night without internet or cellular. That is still an odd kind of quiet, unsettling to notice how compulsively I check internet things. I surrendered to connectionless-ness by (of all things) reading a book.
I feel cleansed now; saintly.
Infrastructure concerns. My mother who went through a hurricane two weeks ago is (fine, but) still experiencing power outages and spotty internet service (from the storm). I don’t know where I would move anymore. Maybe the last safe place in Florida will be the last safe place… and the multitude of homeowners who are desperation-betting on that same thing. No time like the present… to liquidate assets. Dollar-face emoji, tsunami emoji, filed under “texts not to send”.
Stories about Mars are stories.
Stories about the Moon are stories.
Stories about Earth are stories.
(Staunching an open wound with stories.)
What is placeless has no home.
The vibe around here shifted because Grace decided it was time to ditch being a mom and take a lover again. (The lover is Frankie.) So while the juveniles have become a roving band of nine goofy pre-teens, Grace is an expressive queen, squawking to the heavens before each egg laid. Hen labor is painful and intense. Grace is also a demanding queen, so they copulate with abandon, and Frankie is her designated guardian. I carry a broom, in case Frankie decides I’m a credible threat. (He is bred for fighting and I am “a chicken”.) Grace leaves eggs tucked all over the place, I never realized egg hunting was a real-life thing, until now. (Practical chicken birth control.) Looking for them makes me feel like a child on Easter morning. Each one found is perfectly rounded and smooth, in clouded ivory, texture of water-shaped stone, the inside heavy with liquid potential. The shell feels thinner than it should be, protecting infinitude. I cradle it in my thieving hands, gaze at it with my thieving eyes.
I love questions.
I am questions, too, excavated insides of who-knows-what. Being the question, opening up, the beggar’s bowl of ecstatic reunion. Even (especially) a crone conceals an egg-shaped interior, triple of yolk, with strange constellations unfolding across their inky, jelly-fat surfaces. The placeless-ness inside.
I am a thief. Of infinite potential!
(Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. All eggs are offered to al-Haqq, the True.)
Salam to all🌔
“Guide of the perplexed sea witch”. //
Certain ancestors were about to be angry if she didn’t make that joke.
Circe polypharmakos at home on her island. Making her magic. Laughing at images she conjures of herself.
The herbs will not teach, but they carry a message.
We run an orchid roadside rescue service. If you know of an orchid in need of rescue, please contact us at the email in the footer.
Howard Ashman was the shape of my 8yo heart, what about yours? (A youtube link. Please listen to the end.)
The connectivity of interior structures and sensations, made possible by breath. Stretching my right psoas and unwringing the “deep front line”, I can feel the pull and release through different channels in my neck. That is not surprising. But sometimes, I feel it pulling back from my inner ear. That is surprising. Or pulling at the back of my tongue. At the same time, I can feel a deep release under the arch of my right foot. Like serpents inside, listening, dancing, trying to speak.
Given, that we can never be friends. Let us be alien-dream twin sisters.
We shall meet here at midnight. Under the stars. Attended by tame animals we have made out of men who knew only violence. Don’t worry, they all presently agree that things are much better this way.
Who, out of all of them, gets the prize for having told the most beautiful lie?
This body is full of secret sounds. Waiting in here to be found. Aeaea!
Even less could the sparkling sapphire of Truth be removed from Her setting.
She was the gender of fire.
She was the gender of water.
She was as you like it.
Salam to all.
Something about orchids. //
A mistake on a small road is easier to fix than a mistake on a big road.
If I only knew how and could do absolutely everything in the world, then I wouldn’t need anybody else, at all, ever. The fantasy of anti-politics. (A grouchy thought I had that made even me laugh.)
I guess this post on loudness is in a way a follow-up to this one, which is on, ok, I forgot what it was on. Something political that I don’t want to re-read.
The entirety of my political views can adequately be summed up as: education is the sine qua non of politics.
Woke up from a dream about the blog, where I looked at the photos and the last five or six photos were all of cloudy grey skies, and they started blurring into each other and expanding. It’s a vibe I like but try to avoid on the blog.
I remember knowing only grocery store orchids. You know what those are. Or any orchid that you buy from a shelf, in a pot or mounted in media, that you take home and put in your house, or your garden. These are lovely, predictable, clean and tame things. But then I came here, and began to meet wild orchids. Orchids that live in the trees, in the jungle, on the mountain or in the ravine. There’s something about an orchid, how it sits in its place, how it inhabits, infuses itself into and out of the surrounding life, clinging to tree branches, nestled in deep sponges of green and brownish-black, respirating and perspirating the bodies of mist that roll in at night. Leaves being sniffed and scampered across by a passing reptile or rodent, the ants and tiny wasps that visit for nectar or moths that flutter past the floral apparition. The grizzled reaches of its roots, aerial and earthen, as the spirit taps into and from everything. Some of the most enchanting orchids I’ve seen are the tiny ones, with delicate foliar structures and thread-thin blooms, indescrible furry textures, feeling everything out, and it’s their thorough presence. They radiate with the truth of this, that
You can’t take an orchid out of the jungle. It doesn’t remain the same thing, when you do that. A person would have to live in the jungle, to know the orchid. This person wouldn’t remain the same thing, either.
An orchid isn’t the fantasy of anti-politics, but the religion of a cosmic polity. An orchid is the true revolution.
“Fire blue as glass” is Dylan Thomas' “Fern Hill” but sung from a mermaid perspective.
(The “mer-spective”.)
Salam to all🌖
View from the caldera. // So we’ve returned, after a trip that was at the last minute extended, twice, and an exhausting drive back, that included stopping for car trouble, which isn’t worth mentioning but I got dehydrated and it is taking me a few days to work off the headache and refill energy stores. Sometimes it’s like this, when you disappear into Java for a while.
I used one of these “nitter” instances to access information about the major hurricane headed straight for my mother over the last few days of the trip. (So many peoples' helpful contributions are still stuck inside of that “hell on earth”.) (Now thinking about the meaning of hell and the meaning of earth, not wholly comfortable with that expression, there. To be clear, the hellish is only so by its alienation from earth, and its attempt as-such to dominate earth. Hell is alienation. Earth is almost the opposite of that.) (And then, you have to let the words slip through their evolutions, like picking a lock, listening for things to fall into the grooves.) Even with the limitations of browsing through a choppy third party, it remains massively evident, one of the main patterns that makes social media exponentially harmful in a democracy: it is full of stupid things that are very popular.
Social media teaches people to be loud and to love the loud. When what you really need is to teach people to be quiet, and to teach people to hear the vanishingly quiet. In order to do that, people need to stop. What you really need most of all is for people to stop.
People will never stop if they live in a world about being loud, where they are taught to listen to the loud, taught to be loud, taught that loudness is good. This runs parallel to Monhandas Gandhi’s insight that Ahimsa is prerequisite for understanding. Loving the loud while understanding the True is possible, but requires the accumulated insight of interbeing. Interbeing is more like gateways into Samadhi, which will be the culmination of a study that began with Ahimsa. You can only come back to “loving the loud” from the other end of a cycle, over which you have stopped seeking it and stopped trying to be it, a cycle through which you have in fact become a measure of the quiet.
This is also teaching by doing, in the sense of Arjuna fighting his family, as is his dharma, in the war. It means to stop talking and start doing, to make a message of your life, to purify your actions of self-servitude, in the sense of purifying your actions of service to the finite, in the ways that are possible for you, who are presumably, partially, human. The only true teaching is to teach how to learn. To teach how to learn, you must show how to learn, which means, to show how to listen to the very quiet. Which means, showing how to become oneself quiet. It means
showing
being
quiet.
Writing is a dance of symbols around the truth of things. It can absolutely be beautiful but will never be satyagraha. Poetry is a polytropic pedagogy of silence, another word for this could be psychopompy, which is also a seduction into that thing: the quiet. If you do not know how to love the quiet, you do not know how to love. Desire is inflamed and transformed by the watery veils that have fallen before it. All of this is a path in the service of destiny, the final destiny being servitude as self-understanding. This is your deepest desire, fulfilled.
Tears were overflowing down my cheeks as I sat on the squared-off wood bench, on the opposite side of the room from my mother-in-law, Ibuk, who day-by-day and year-by-year has lost connectivity with herself and her others. She is falling back into pieces, and she looked at me completely lost, for some moments, which just made my tears come at higher volumes, fat streams of salt down This Elizabeth’s face. Until she reached her hand for me to go to her, which I did, and then she put her arm around my shoulder. This is something I’ve done for her, when she is crying, many times now, sometimes with “success”. Like that, in reverse, me feeling lost and helpless, her in a gesture of undeniable form but clouded content, we sat together and watched my husband, who was her son, his left eye smudged purple, (It wasn’t my violence. But was it my violence?), performing salah, (down and up and down again), in the next room. Which was her bedroom, with her mattress against the naked wall, a polyester fleece strewn across it, twisting faded colors in plastic fluff, from an irrelevant cartoon, as if the very blanket from my childhood in 1980’s America. The miracle of (plastic) being there.
Three a.m., the morning after the wedding, the baby came. Mother and child are healthy and fine, Alhamdulillah. The hurricane went right over my mother. On my advice to “make it cozy,” she had furnished their “safe room” with reclining chairs from the lanai, bottled water, and an axe. She was text messaging me from inside the eye, she didn’t lose power until the opposite side of the eyewall, about which she said, and I quote, “Back side is ummm. Different,” before losing contact for the entire journey from Probolinggo to the ferry in Banyuwangi. (The winning truck logo of the day was Banyuwangi Sexy.) Which I drove, beginning in Basuki, and now I’m an official cross-country driver, yee-haw, in this life, where at any moment all of it flashes before you like the matrix of lights on the front of an overnight bus, in its fitful passing, plowing into a head-on collision, with you, and all you have is the possibility of a shoulder to pump the brakes and pull over onto, the gravel always too bumpy, and the sudden hope-adjacent afterthought that thank goodness you weren’t on a bridge over a ravine. But my mother was fine, Alhamdulillah, not in a storm surge zone or a flood-prone area, (unlike many others, for whom I offer prayers and condolences), just underneath your average eye of a category 3 ‘cane. With windows and doors rated to 150mph winds. Not sure she’ll stay for the next one, though. Alhamdulillah.
Java has always been the “endgame”. (For us, for me, for different reasons that curve around into the same.) The place of furthest extent, into I’m not sure what, which is sometimes the point. As El-n has Mars, maybe, I have Tengger, and I do also conceive of this as my response to an existential risk. I contemplate whether this is an influence that he personally has had on my life, that his hubristic insanity has made it not only possible but perhaps it is now everybody’s responsibility, to go hubristically crazy ourselves. He’s at least made the argument more persuasive, if not more loud. So that an xennial white lady like this, (who is not the Karen Elizabeth, Karen is the first name of Other Elizabeth, suspected spy), could actually take lessons from the seditious Gujarati who, (while he failed to prevent it’s partition), still fasted his way to Indian nationalist liberation. (The medicines have been strong.) (Not that it matters, to a volcano.) One can feel the things turning, keys slipping into place. Ibuk’s hand on my shoulder, her hand in my hand. The earth is getting eaten by fire and water and air, elements churned into a rage by the stupidity of popular things, and the momentum of the human as it ploughs into the outerspace depths of its innerspace desires, knowing so much but least of all how to stop. So the silent call, for everybody with ears to learn to be quiet, to show being quiet. To hear being quiet, to learn how to stop. Just to stop. After which, will be time for invisibility. At least this was my view from the caldera, now we’re back to the valley below..
The air is heavy with rain that didn’t come. //
Galungan today. Canang on the bedside table, one also on the floor. A brown egg, small scoops of rice, sprinkled coconut, a few cakes and crispy sweets. Pisang susu, a mango, shredded pandan and frangipani. Scented like the sweetest dream. Lit incense stick and holy water. Cleansing the atmosphere of bad spirits so ancestors can come. (The veil is thin for the next ten days.)
One week til travel, soon enough to feel too soon. Sluggish thoughts on what to wear to a wedding. No traditional kebaya and sarung, but covered up. Mentally locating long sleeves and pants to go under other things. The priority is respect.
(Then again, a reminder to self. Let go of getting it right. Be yourself even if it means making mistakes.)
Argument advances. Poetry waits, and/or is carried.
Thinking about walls. Walls around the property (gateways with extra offerings, today), walls of houses, walls and doorways of rooms, and the need for them. Natural or artificial obstacles between self and world or self and God. Clothes to be seen, and to hide behind. Expressed appearance as a veil behind which one might… just be. The quietude of invisibility. Poetry as protection.
On the other hand, as prayer. Or the instability of opening channels without the (what?) to close them back up again. When and how to draw a portal closed and not lose yourself in it. Grounding.
One chick wanders away from others. He’s independent and interested in his own things. Sometimes he gets left behind. He’s fine, just a little different from the rest.
Sun is falling. Animals of day have gone inside. Insects' shimmering drone in dense humidity, gripping hands of mind are melting, letting go of time.
and then I knew. All of creation is
so many veils and such suffering as
would spell defeat for all but purest Love.
Salam to all.
(omg what did you just read?) //
or,
(omg what did you just write?)
Every blog is a re-invention of blogging, or at least it could be.
If one had to choose, one should rather be “jester” to the nerds than “queen” of them.
I don’t blog about snack foods lightly but here in Indo we have these keripik tempeh, like tempeh chips, that are so good and also complete protein…?
Bi-/multilateral causality, equiprimordiality, mimesis. Organism, energeia, wholeness. Natural analogues for artificial system, or whether there’s a real dividing line between those.
One could choose worse audiences (or readers) than (e.g. Milton’s) Satan. But the hardest ones to reach are often the “useful idiots” of God.
(File that one under “Vladimir Putin would smirk.")
Gus Dur, former president and Islamic leader in Indonesia, had a remarkable sense of theological humor. He was also disabled, and a fascinating proponent of religious pluralism.
I don’t consider myself a very religious person but I love to write about God.
(Sometimes I capitalize and sometimes not, depending on context and mood, and sometimes it’s not God but Allah. In addition, Allah has at least ninety-nine names. That complicates or simplifies things, depending on perspective.)
You have to deal with your anger because it’s God’s anger. You have to deal with your fear because it’s God’s fear.
Plastic was an important working component of the overall machine, which was fueled by fear. The machine was incredibly terrifying, which is how they had discovered perpetual motion.
Grace and the chicks demand peanuts every evening, earlier each day. It’s hard to say no because they get really loud. With that, and their hallway parades, we could film a Hitchcock spoof.
Sitting (lying) down to read Rumi and feeling like the sand as it slips through the funnel of the hourglass, and the glass bulb on the other end is Rumi.
Wishing the whole world a restful night of sleep.
Salam to all🙏🏻
Earthquakes, atonalities, and rice porridge. // We (here) had a pretty big earthquake just now, the ceiling and frame of the house rattled and shook. The sound, like something big grabbing and shaking, from the roof. (Later, to add: the place where the concrete wall of the bathroom meets the wood construction, is where all the noise is. Gempa bumi reported as magnitude 4.8, which is not too high, but less than 10 km away, which is close.) I grabbed Sri Rejeki (she had been sitting on my lap, as she does when it rains) and ran out the door. Everything shook for a while. During that time, I remember the vague sense of surprise, that it was happening, that it wasn’t over yet, and then, that Jeki hadn’t clawed away. Looked for that pain. Soon after that, I started shaking, as one shakes after a car accident. When the noise stopped, I put Jeki back inside, went back inside myself and found Ismail and Lalah, safe, looking up at the ceiling. As though there was a serious ghost or a monster, up there. Still waiting to reach E., who hasn’t answered his phone. I’m sure he’s ok, they were driving in Sweet Orange, the truck. Is it possible they didn’t feel it?
The other measurement is that it was 36 km deep, so the total distance from here, of the source of motion, (what exactly does that mean?), was around 37 km. From me, the earth moved. At least, that is much further away than my husband is.
Something odd is hearing them before feeling them. The rattling of joints in the house, divisions between separate parts of a whole, in conflict. Sound is such an earthy sensation. Light is fiery, touch is watery, smell is airy, not sure to what extent I’m making these up. Also: making up a list of seeds to buy, chamomile, okra, interesting greens, like tatsoi.
Husband was fine, he felt it, he just forgot his phone at home. As happens. I’d rather he forget it, than spend too much time on it. As I probably do with mine.
(Always looking for the moment of proportion between two extremes, moderation, balance, but when certain things swing too far, maybe it’s hard or impossible to find a note of ease. Atonality isn’t an abstract thing, but earthy, embodied, off-balance, bad music. Trying to find good music inside of bad music, to hear past the bad music, to listen for atonality’s resolution, to shape one’s ear in that way, as analogies for being a person on their way through these various worlds.
How far can you stretch, to make it whole?)
Turning around, realized I’ve been in a dark place these past few days. Reading got tangled up in a Catherine Wheel (don’t look it up). Writing got tangled up in time, a bad rhythm, “off”. Days are hot when they’re not dark. Assuming this is hormonal, waiting for it to pass. Playing Enya’s Shepherd Moons, and then, Dark Sky Island. It’s the bubur sayur (rice porridge, with vegetables and peanuts) of music.
Saw the moon two nights ago, the thinest scythe of light against violet-pink satin, when Bu and Pak S. brought our offerings for Kajeng Kliwon. Bu S., (wearing pink marimekko flowers), gave me a jepun flower to put in my hair. I said “suksma Bu”, and she smiled and called me “pinter”, and I smiled and said “sedikit saja Bu”. I put two small offerings in the bedroom, with dupa/incense. Then I followed Bu S. as she prayed over the offering in the kitchen, one in the driveway, two on either side of the exterior of the gate, and one large offering in a basket on the ground in the middle of the gate, at the house’s entry. She poured wine in a circle around the final offering, then she prayed, and then it was finished. (She hugged me and patted my butt, which could be part of the ceremony, too.)
Salam to all.
Verses of chickens, cats, crones. // We get her to the vet’s clinic and I swear Lalah jumps out of the carrier, nose glowing pink, and exclaims, “All better!” Maybe it has something to do with the trauma of the drive here, as she carries on like she’s suffering endless sorrows in the style of Italian opera. Or the memory of having to stay overnight, a few weeks ago, due to ear infection, when she learned about how cats live, “in the Real World”. On the drive back home, she is the sweetest, slow-blinking angel.
“Do you know Enya?” (A better test for whether a tribe is uncontacted by “civilization”.)
In the Indonesian language, “un-contacted” (tidak terkontak) is said differently than “not-yet-contacted” (belum terkontak). I find this characteristic of the language already influences the way I think about the world, getting into the habit of considering temporality with every negation. (Even when writing/thinking in English. Do I mean “not”, simply? Or rather, “not yet”?)
Future (“InsyaAllah”) is (just) another kind of presence.
Prayer is a practice of humbleness, humility. Then also, any practice of humility, including serving, giving, offering, supplication, cooking or baking for someone, taking care of someone, including yourself, in body and/or soul, translating, loving, you could say these all fit together under the broad (outward-leafing) umbrella of “prayer”.
Every new/different person that you meet is an opportunity to express yourself in a new and possibly beautiful way. To become a new verse/version of yourself. But what this means is, it’s a new opportunity to learn from someone else, which requires a certain flexible but deep listening. Re-sponding, re-plying, re-versing. Well, that isn’t trivial. (And “self”-ish is the opposite of “selfish”?) We “keep” Grace and Frankie because we are interested in learning something from them, about their selves, about ourselves. And we “keep” them, and take care of them, as guests. We follow, if we can, certain rules regarding guests, and strangers, or anyone we don’t know who “shows up”, ancient rules of hospitality, that you could really, in “the old stories”, be punished for violating. We don’t know who that is, the homeless beggar that shows up at our door. But we treat them as an honored guest.
(I also am a guest. And in many circumstances, I also find myself “speechless”.)
As an aside, in a present and experiential way, it does seem to me like, if I eat other animals, it becomes hard (even just for my body) to hold onto the idea, that I can learn from other animals, too. The scales-falling-from-my-eyes moment, which I felt first in 2008, (when I stopped eating animals and “animal products”), was very moving. One of the most deeply-felt moments of my educational life. I will always be (humbly) grateful for it, and toward everyone involved.
(There are so many ways to say this same thing, and every time I say it, I feel the need to choose words anew. But/and again, “Alhamdulillah.")
Looking up the etymology of “version” (through French version for “a translation”, from Medieval Latin versio, “a turning, a translation”, from Latin vertere, “to turn, turn back, be turned; convert, transform, translate; be changed”), which led me to another really wonderful Proto-Indo-European root, wer- (2), meaning “to turn, bend”. Odds are, if you are reading this… Well, I was going to write, “if you are reading this, you probably use many words that are descended from wer-.” But I stopped, because it blows my mind into diagonals-of-squares to contemplate readership, whatsoever. Any readership, between zero and one hundred (percent, of what?), and further, who can say what and how (your, my, their, our, the) logos will evolve? Or numbers, for that matter, or time itself? Some people believe that t=0 is a constant, or the speed of light. But stability remains mere hypothesis, without which certain favored things (people, worlds, blogs) fall apart. Life requires shelter, not the direct blast of a sun. I know not even a fraction of what a shelter could look like, (for example, of an “uncontacted tribe”), but I know that I can’t survive without it.
And yet, she considers herself a translator. So she rests in the shape of wer-.
(“Are you there Heraclitus? It’s me, Elizabeth.”)
The beggar could be Odysseus, interminable, come home like a wanderer, red with the blood of innocents slaughtered in Ilium. Or it could be Pallas Athene, eyes grey with motherless calculation. Nice to have some non-human kinfolk around, whose opinion you can trust, chickens, etc. Or the crone, the devoted, elderly woman, who remembers the baby who suckled from her breast, however many years have passed. So, she knows the master of the house before almost anyone else. She too rests in the shape of wer-.
(Wer- is also, excellently, the source of weird.)
By the way, the first thing Grace did, when I let her out this morning, was to circumnavigate her entire territory, with chicks, including through the hallway. My husband woke to the riotous sounds of their passage. Which is just the weirdness of a bule di rumah.
Peace on earth and salam to all.
Reversal spells, mulberry stains, and mixed substance. //
Trying to understand everything as (part of) a “natural cycle”.
I send a text to my mother and then read it back over, (why do I do that?), decide I sounded high, think of the times when she has sounded similar, and I always assume it’s a “senior moment”. Time for another coffee.
It’s a “no hope for laundry” day. Sri Rejeki is glued to my lap, she knows what it feels like to be alone in the rain and she doesn’t like it. Not looking forward to chasing chickens in this. Wait, let me re-interpret myself, and speak it outloud. “I am looking forward to chasing chickens in the rain.”
(Doing a reversal spell on my PMDD, which stands for “Predisposition, Monthly, to Demons and Despair”.)
Thinking about traffic in Ubud, wondering what the future of that infrastructure situation is, and then remembering, I don’t have to wonder, because there’s an already apparent progression, from there, to Canggu, through to Kuta. Kuta is the future of us all. (There is no future for Kuta. Kuta is an eternity of unironic tackiness stuffed into hollowed-out cultural ruins, I guess, I haven’t been there for years.) The other relevant question is, where will be the “next” Ubud?
(What is history, if Kuta is where it all ends?)
Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. “Dear Barong, and whatever divine beings may be present in this place. May Kuta (the one that is inside of us all) bloom again with wildlife.”
Nobita (G.’s murai batu, songbird) sings with campur sari-ngdut, not consistently but often enough making harmony that it’s unsettling. Also, Mas K., from the workshop, is singing along with such a charming falsetto, as he (rhythmically) cuts wood with circular saw, that I can’t stop laughing and I might be confused. Wait, I think they’re both whistling… Mas K. is actually weaving his performance back and forth between whistling (with the bird) and singing (with the voice). This is almost virtuosic. And then, a woman neighbor stops by and has a conversation with him from her motorbike, and it sounds exactly like a spoken-word part in the music. And then I realize, I am in the campur sari.
(And this is the mixed substance!)
Rain lets up for a minute, with a hint of brightness, and roosters across the sawah are touching base, communicating, crowing as for their lives.
We go out on the motorbike at night to buy gorengan (fried tempe, stuffed tofu, weci, banana, sweet mung bean, tape). The kid selling gorengan asks me if I like “arang”/charcoal, making a joke about the color of my husband’s skin. I smile blankly. I massage E.’s shoulders a little on the way home.
He did harvest mulberries today, so his feet and hands are stained inky black. (The blacker the berry… semakin pedas the wife.)
When one makes an analogy, one calls attention to a similarity. One should also pay attention to the differences. In this way, one pays attention to everything.
Big rain again. Salam to all.
Witch’s mane and chaos truffles. //
I don’t look at the sky today. It’s too bright.
A discussion about zucchini, which isn’t commonly grown or eaten here, whether, where, and how we can grow it, in the wilder garden, outside the wall. Easy to grow, but the danger of curcubits is that the plants are favorite hiding places for pit vipers (the small green ones) and cobras (the “kings”). One also avoids walking in jungle areas, or anywhere really, without a wide-brimmed hat. Snakes will attack your head and face, from above, which, if you’re very lucky, doesn’t kill you.
Discovering periods of my life I seem to have stashed into dark, cobwebbed corners, so they’ve been barely, rarely remembered. Now, when I think of them, they strike me as odd, alienating, inappropriate. What to do with these memories?
Related: some things you can’t learn until you separate yourself. Dysfunctional situations prevent growth. Situations, institutions, environments, are not surface problems, but deep.
We stop at a small bridge, over a ravine, to collect aren palm fibers, (duk), from a fallen tree. It looks like a witch’s black hair, (it’s used as this, in ceremonial representation, also as mane of Barong), a matted tangle that we tug apart. Afterwards my skin is dry and tight, and sinuses are on edge from the dust.
Fragments of conversation with school children, walking by, two boys and a girl, puzzled to see us. Until we explain, “ini untuk tempat tidur ayam”. They smile, hands on hips, like adults. O iya, of course, it’s for chickens.
Back home. Grace leads chicks to the lowest garden, jumping down a one-meter (or so) drop. They need “assistance” getting back to the chicken house, so E grabs Grace and I grab the cilik-cilik, but it turns complicated as they scatter into a chaotic (cuteness) matrix. Soon I’m Lucille Balling again, chocolate chicks like quick-moving truffles, stuffing in bra, like an expert.
Separating oneself is like separating duk, tangled and tough. It decides whether and where it comes apart, and what comes with it, that you didn’t expect.
Now time for practice. Salam to all.
More chicken news. //
Grace got up to stretch her legs, today, and I counted nine eggs.
I bring Frankie fresh water. He drinks it. I talk to him. He makes soft noises at me. I think we’re becoming friends.
Maybe. Older siblings are like the first trees, they grow tall and big, and younger siblings are like the next trees, they have to spread out, twist around, or find other ways to get light. It’s hard to be either one of these things.
Noticing the swastikas on neighbors' front gates. Here, it’s a symbol of balance. In the West, (its reverse is) a symbol of evil. Again here, a symbol of the instability of symbol.
(Evil remains evil, and, context is everything.)
Moments around which everything changes, or breaks, and I carried her with me, after that. (Writing about Bocara, the pony.)
Admire the optimism here.
I feel changes in my toes, (big toes mostly), the soles of my feet, my knees (twisty jelly), my shoulderblades, my triceps and elbows (little pops), my wrists, the pinky mound of my palms (crampy), my neck (cracking up and down spine), and even in my jaw (unpleasant tension). As the psoas (un)twist, the entire body follows. A crazy tour of the deep front line (myofascial meridian).
Cozy outfit: Soft grey sweater dress over brown-grey tank top, white pajama shorts, light grey ankle socks, charcoal grey buff worn like a beanie, old blue-grey tie-died shawl. Orange chocolate sachertorte and oat milk. Love fake winter.
Salam and goodnight to all.
We found your footprints in the snow.
We brushed them all away. //
Chilly night here, the forecast says low of 63f/17c. My fingers and nose definitely forgot what cold feels like. So I have on socks. Trying to figure out what I think about claims of blood descent from a prophet, or mid-20th century Indonesian politics, shivering. Realizing it’s not important and I was just confused. I try to be better at being confused, or the feeling when you suddenly stop being confused, and realize how confused you’ve been, fingers fumbling with keys, perhaps for a long time, even in a sort of rhythmic way. Cozy pajamas help. The moon was an icy white chunk in a starry black sky but I can’t see it now because it’s too cold to get out of bed. I’m under the covers writing this with a flashlight, and I’m about to put on “50 Words for Snow”, (by Kate Bush), which is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard. Probably the warmest thing ever written about the cold. This album will take care of you in a dark moment. It’s such a midwinter meditation.
Salam and a peaceful night to all.
Living light captures, listening to “Soldier of Love” (by Sade), sight. From the corner of my eye, a flame, on wood panel near bed. Scent of Taiyo Byakudan, dreamy sandalwood, lofty amber, honeyed clean. Not flame, but the sun setting, hot and steeply-sliced through northern window, shimmers by wind-rustling coconut palm, presently as perpetual motion. Shifting moods of ever-late afternoon, captured there, sinks heavenly warmth toward evening, fades to cool, and fevered comfort wraps thoughts in blankets, whether to let go or pull it closer. Either way waits dewfall so it’s time to bring the laundry in.
Little earthquakes can be reassuring. If it doesn’t little-earthquake for a while, there’s a chance the next earthquake will be really big.
(If you haven’t recently, ask a loved one whether they’ve experienced any little earthquakes, lately. This really works!) (And of course, the album too❤️)
Unexpected summons to a banjar celebration (part of Odalan) this morning, brief if frantic search through storage boxes for the traditional regalia, batik sarungs and embroidered lace kebaya, shades of purple, lavender, olive, background of antique cream, accents of black and gold and possibly pink. (Pak S., mischievous, likes to catch us off-guard?) Making time to make-up the face, the layered steps of that in-between sips of accidentally too-strong coffee. Jitters on an empty stomach, ignore it, will be supplied jaje at the banjar. Preparing outward-self for salims, looks of studious listening, dutiful nods, and prayerful hands, accompanied by my few but respectful (as I can manage) words, having more sweets and coffee pressed upon me than I can possibly eat, and broadcasting gratitude fused with admiration by sunny (as possible, though muscles in the face grow tired, and questions sometimes peek through) smiles. And oh, there will be all our farmer friends playing gamelan, always a wonderful treat to see and hear.
Om Swastiastu🙏🏻