Places
Sometimes, to get back on the right path, you have to circumnavigate the globe.
Notes at the limit of politics.
Winning is never the most important thing. In a political context, the most important thing is justice. Justice is the only source of political legitimacy.
There is nothing inherently just about democracy. A democracy is only as just as the demos. (A demos is a group of people, “a people”, understood as a political body. Democracy is the self-governing of a demos.) Therefore, if one wishes to use democracy as an approximation of justice, or as a political hypothesis on the way to justice, (which remains, despite everything, a very good idea), one must first of all consider education.
Education (on justice), as the “sine qua non”, is therefore the first responsibility of democratic governance. Education (on justice) would be the heart and the soul of a legitimate democracy. What this looks like (education) is an open question. But it must look like something. There must be some idea (even hypothetical) of justice, cultivated through education, (obviously, public), in order to preserve (even the hypothesis of) the legitimacy of democratic governance.
(What is justice? The government would not have to know, or even claim to know, but it would have to ask. Without justice, it is nothing. So the demos might pose hypotheses, and learn or decide ways to judge between them. If the demos discovers a good hypothesis of justice, then this, and the practice of keeping it alive—which is what political education is—would be a foundation for the stability, function, and health of the demos, and therefore of the democracy. This, and nothing else, is what would make possible a healthy and legitimate democracy.)
But without education, there is neither justice, nor a people. If a government claims to be a democracy, and it does not hold sacred the work of education, then it will function only so long as the demos preserves a rigid and un-adaptable idea of itself. (A conservative political identity falls back on arbitrary characteristics, racial genetics, cultural superiority, personal wealth, or other dysfunctional place-holders for justice.) But moreover, if a government claims to be a democracy, and it does not hold sacred the work of education, then it surrenders (even the hypothesis of) its legitimacy.
To repeat. Without education, (One would do a lot of work at this point, for the sake of responsibility, to complete the demonstration, which is something of an argument-by-adventure. But few have the training or stamina, these days. And we are all very tired. Maybe this is a lapse.
)…(
Study, e.g., the entire Platonic “corpus”, but especially the Republic, from which all of this, although the author artfully renounces authority. An orphan argument, but nonetheless), democracy surrenders its legitimacy.
As a “democracy” (lacking education) fails, (which it does from its inception, because it is nothing), the fragmentation of the demos becomes more apparent. (And feels awful.) Lacking a relevant or coherent education, individuals respond in different (haphazard) ways to the dawning recognition that they are participants in an ongoing (historical, natural, perhaps cosmic) in-justice. (Against themselves as against outsiders, through imbalance external and internal, with rapid exacerbation of symptoms. The problem appears to be everywhere.) Without a demos, individuals need, seek, and find their own private (idios) educations. Many gather shouting under the ugly banners of partial ideas. It is complicated and contentious. But recognizing the basic problem, diagnosis is trivial. That is not a democracy. That is an illegitimate regime, a people without a soul, at a loss (aporia) to heal (the hearts, minds, bodies of) its broken (political) self.
That is not self-government, but a multitude of tyrannies. And a multitude of tyrannies inevitably approaches war.
Winning is still not the most important thing. (Winning is never the most important thing. Not even in war.) (Consider Achilles, or Odysseus in his next life.) But it may be that losing—beautifully—becomes the new (oldest) measure. Which, like a divine gift, opens up whole other worlds of action.
Tropical winter. Reluctant to leave the insulation of blankets, but I go out. I place my feet in a shape of warmth as the rising sun enters, by elongated geometry, from the east. And here, the polyphony of the farm. Roosters with their long-distance proclamations, the consolation of doves, smaller birds organizing casually in trees. Morning greetings and sleepy conversation that gives way to the thumping or sweeping noises of human people at work. A door closes. The hollow jumble of bamboo chimes, and coconut palms shuffle like cards in the breeze. Someplace far away, a two-toned repetition, as something swings on a rusty hinge.
There are things that nobody wants to say outloud. That nobody enjoys. Sometimes you keep those things to yourself, but sometimes the truth starts flying around and then up your throat, like flies that are buzzing inside your mouth and you try to keep your lips shut but the interior sensation gets very intense, then they burst out in a curdled black vomit. Uncontained. Truth sometimes is the wrong thing at the wrong time. Ugly, ashamed, unwanted.
I think of how remarkable it was, the celebration of tragedy. To gather around the stage, as at a communal flame, together in the perfected ugliness of truth. To honor with a feast the maker-revealer of the most exquisitely necessary (you/me/us) problem. (I imagine tragedians as necessarily insufferable, though that could be wrong.) To revere the Muse. As protectors of the city, as if poetry itself could be the shield to defend against everything it artfully spits out. That would be the craft, if one could discern. What power you need from her, what power she has, and the light of day between those two things.
Dogs bark at a passing stranger, out by the main road. Some distance from here, but the sound travels easily over ricefields on a chilly night, socks and stocking-cap weather, and clouds of mist pass quickly across the fat quarter moon. It’s scary when street dogs go after you like that. They really don’t play.
Our village (banjar) is hard to find. If you search for it by name, it doesn’t appear on G–gle maps. There’s another village in Bali with the same name, that one does appear in the search. It has nothing to do with us. (It’s a decoy.) Also, our street doesn’t have a name. It’s not empty, there are at least four other families (Balinese) who live on our street. It’s just hard to find, if somebody doesn’t show you where it is.
Last night in Penestanan. // Gamelan
strikes bronze and sounds of competition,
jumping (on) and fending (off) the night
time, momentum tops the kendang and
recedes, then tries again (again). Elaboration
of champaca smoke on taught skin.
Low beats call up shining
density from darkness (Bima’s
laughing) and his pupils
follow moths, at
lantern light,
frenzy
dancing.
Chaotic maneuvers this morning after certain equipment, which had been broken for a long time, finally became unusable last night, ok I will tell you, the water kettle fell apart. The glue holding the plastic levered stopper to the aluminum body melted off or dissolved, and left a smear of melted black plastic on the pouring spout. (Yum.) I try not to be precious about the flimsy equipment standard in household shops here, people make do, and so have I. (I read that the risk of aluminum poisoning from cookware is largely exaggerated? And I trusted that information? Was that the right thing to do?) But I did think briefly, wistfully of the (stainless steel, sturdy, chic) ikea kettle that sits already in the new house, on an induction cooktop, (a luxury, no more running out of gas, or wrestling gas tanks and their beat-up valves, risking limbs for fuel for heat), and its dulcet whistle, a treasure to be used.
(I’ve become famous in the family for using kitchen tools hard and breaking them fast, blenders or stick-blenders especially. I demand performance! Not sure this is a good or bad thing, E. thinks it’s hilarious, is laughing this very minute, he says he gossips about it with other husbands. Possibly a point of pride, for him, I admit, it does reveal something enduring about my personality…)
Waking up and taking stock, this is about where we are. So ready to be gone from the guesthouse that inanimate things are kicking us out, refusing to function, telling us (me?) to leave. Family from Java (including Ibuk/mother-in-law) arrives tomorrow for yet another new house ceremony (Javanese) on Thursday, when we will move the cats and start living there for good. None of it is in my control. It feels similar to when we got married. Pulled up into a tidal wave of big-family customs and engagements, trying to hold my own (personal, petty) rhythms, hoping/assuming (cheerfully) I will be back on solid, more predictable ground soon, I just have to (go limp and) survive the next few days.
Rainy still, wet everywhere, and dark. I guess dry season got cancelled. Santai saja. (Let’s just be relaxed.)
For us. // A dark day, cold and rainy and the atmosphere got funereal for a minute, which it does here, now and again. My mother-in-law is passing away from dementia and my country sort of is also. There are parallels between the grieving processes, all of which I experience almost second-handedly, at unstable removes.
One of the things that makes it truly difficult is learning, through trial and (regrettable, yet forgivable) error, how softly you have to tread when it isn’t yet clear (to everyone, to anyone, at any given moment) that she is dying. How feelings of guilt, anger, fear, or sadness intermittently (and unpredictably) penetrate the (relief and) forgetfulness of daily activity. How one believes, (because belief is everything), (belief is her), until the moment it becomes impossible to believe, that she is not yet lost. And how that moment disarms us, completely, leaves us feeling motherless, without a home, (or seeming impossible to ourselves.
)…(
So I have a prayer, for us.) Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem. May you never be alone in this. May you be surrounded by love and care. And may the people you have loved always be there to remind you that you are absolutely possible, solid, and real.
Beat on the kul-kul summons people to the pura this morning and gamelan starts for the ceremony. Incense smoking, offerings aloft, village is alert, decisive. Brass shivers and syncopated heartbeat and (bodies marching and) the bell of the Mangku, high and bright. All attention put on the spirit. Barong moves through the streets today, transportation by music, in full regalia. (The battle for balance. Stops traffic, stops everything. Alhamdulillah. And what are you being called to do?)
I found the Margaret spoon when I was packing the wardrobe, I mentioned it to my mother and she was reminiscing about her grandmother (Margaret). How she would play the piano and sing, and her grandfather would sing too, and their “beautiful voices”. She (my mom) remembered that from when she was six years old. (In my imagination, she plays lieder by Franz Schubert, I listen to it now.) Margaret was also an amateur astronomer, which has me thinking about studying constellations. It’s often too cloudy here for stars.
Cloudy again tonight, and raining, and the sky is an inky thickness. They sit around a cross-section of tree, cigarette packs out, kripik passed. Low conversation. Light bullying. A start, a decision, not quite unanimous, to go on the roof. Bare feet up homemade ladders, disembodied voices, and the night tips over that always close-by edge into surreality.
Emptying the wardrobe. // (Finally.) Piece by piece sorting clothes (and other things) into (commandeered from cats) cardboard boxes. Items that disappeared, (underclothes, mostly), constantly needed and vaguely missed, one by one reappear, having been crumpled into rear corners, crevices, hiding between darker and heavier things. One could have sworn one had checked there, again and again. Some coated in dusty grey mold, some apparently eaten by it, elastics and polyester blends stiffened or dissolved or having become oddly, unpleasantly sticky in the dank incubator, black box, organizer’s nemesis, which has in certain ways ruled over us these past years, determining what we were allowed to have, and what not. You see, the tropical climate is unsuited to long-term storage (or possession) of anything at all (subject to disintegration).
(Avoiding questions, whether we could have been happier here, if we had done this all a little bit differently.) (We came to the guesthouse in February 2020. Having no idea what was about to happen, of course we stayed much longer than planned.)
The satisfaction of shining light on the interior of a more-or-less orthogonal container. Hollow. An empty possibility, belonging soon to somebody else. Sketching boundaries between ourselves and whatever will become of that.
Moving house starts today, according to the island gods. Ceremony this morning, awake before dawn to comb through the details, mentally then materially preparing everything. Not least, (my body), sarung, kebaya, symbolic trimmings. Painted on face, twisted up hair. Becoming a symbol, in person and gesture. Ceding control to complex performances, letting it be whatever it is. Stretching outward the various senses, as one does when (humbly, although today, quite publicly) summoning cosmic significance.
Thoughts fallen into all the wrong places, as if settled into gutters, now stuck there glaring back with soapy sachets of synthetic perfume, no solutions, and a lot of bitter complaints. Taking shelter in small wrongs, lost perspective, petty despair. Needing reasons to laugh, get turned on one’s head, reset. (Monkeys? Maybe. And just literally standing on my head. Being literally upside-down is being upside-down!)
Indeterminate clear, nice day for a Saturday morning, a modest tower, safe, from which to see. Last night. A past-hyped art piece (ha) that turned familiar in disturbing ways. That a certain world, once inhabited without question, was already perverse, designed by greased-up power-clowns, and world-historical problems, if not made clear, at least had some ugly guts spilled out, glorious tacky, and evil, almost innocent with shamelessness. A devil’s garden (Manhattan, Berlin, Jerusalem?). What things were born that still bear fruit, etc.
Weekend questions, am I fruit? As I breakfast (fried plantains with drizzle of palm sugar) leisurely on the bale with Glagahdowo and Pacitan (husband and G. and A.). Nongkrong. Temperature the same as skin. Sweetness on teeth, obscure (to me) vernaculars bouncing out time, bitter coffee biting down. The joy of being included, with eye-contact, in laughter, at a harmless joke, (about the pisang goreng, and who accidentally picked the over-burned piece). How I covet such rudimentary signs of trust. (Re-making a life on their foundation.) While contemplating a different city, and whether it could ever be, that certain things that happened, never happened.
Last night, beneath a sky full of stars. Crickets and tongaret and frogs of a hundred voices, night bird from the jungle with a wistful lilt. Full chorus. From within, Pacitan and Glagahdowo chat tentatively as they wire a fixture, poke fun at R., the youngest, for an accident with the motorbike. (He’s ok.) How did so much time pass without seeing stars? (One of rainy season’s more subtle effects, no stars for months.) The sound and the visible meet in expansive absorption. One doesn’t want to leave the moment for anything.
(One must, and so, one does.)
This morning. Wake in the different, the old, the becoming emptier place, where our presence thins. Wijaya kusuma, orchids, instruments, gone. Cats observant, unsure of change. To abandon all of these heavy, unfixable things.
But our footsteps are lightness. We orchestrate movement, flowing now as if downhill. We tell Blih that he absolutely must come visit (arguing against his inner voices). And we prepare, part by part, to disappear.
(To the place where one listens to stars.)
It started with the ants. The ants are being pesky today, (small beady black ones), doing this thing they sometimes do when it rains: they come out of the ground, running in circles with nowhere to go, so they find (my) food more quickly than usual. Then a pink and purple salad with inky black elements (no, not the ants!) next to pumpkin electrifies the day. Something I love is the always-everywhere freshness of vegetables, here. Still full of midnight air. Strings of raw, grated cabbage and beet are juicy and sweet-bitter, like the best Saturday ever, (or, as Sappho says, like love). I immediately want to share, with E., who is in Java today. So I add it to a list of things that need sharing. The list will solve problems of place, and time. Whereas love solves the problem of
A day spent adjusting between conflicted places and moods. Driving through Denpasar in Sweet Orange, windows down, concrete heat. Hair stuck to my cheeks, impossible to clear. Music from a younger country, (pie), dobro and whiskey, as the sun goes down and the city takes shape, interiors lit, full of smartphone advertisements, food stalls, diesel fumes, cartoon boba shops. A moment of lightness (under bright lights) in a foreign space. Dealing out as needed, the inside occupied by questions of boundaries and the effort it takes to let something go. Nothing quite settles until we get home, (it’s not home yet), wash feet, splash face, new toothpaste the scent of orange and cloves. Head on pillow. Ish, asleep. Lalah, playing, on top of the armoire. Waiting for E., and the closeness of warm skin, and for all of these things to slow to a stop.
Leftover notes from yesterday, recorded with morning coffee today. //
We met a guardian of the path at Ranu Pane, sitting on his sleeping mat, with a fire to keep his toes warm. And his bag of snacks, a jolly fellow. Stopped for a chat about mutual friends, traditional farming methods, and the corrosive effects of tourism. Always, what a small world it is, around here. //
The scent of woodsmoke in the mountains, memories of that. //
E. and I got a lot of weird looks from local tourists yesterday, this isn’t typical. Not sure why. People see me, assume E. is foreign too. Stare, heckle us, snap pictures with their phones. //
We saw at least two motorbike accidents on the mountain roads yesterday. Both women, one looked like she was fine, the other one looked very bad, she had blood running down her face, appeared pale and grey. Many had already stopped to help, so we drove on… //
A transport truck couldn’t make it up one of the inclines, it was overloaded with potatoes. “Boss goblok,” said E., who jumped out and helped push it to the next pull-over point. //
The high-altitude villages around Lumajang, which primarily grow green onions, smell like green onions. You catch whiffs of it as you drive through. //
I have clearer photos of the lutung but those feel private. //
I also have pictures of Gunung Batok, will probably share later. //
I have to relearn how to use “the good camera”, another reason it’s ok we didn’t see Bromo yesterday, my camera skills are not (yet?) worthy. //
I forgot my carnelian stone at home, I realized. //
Always, a beginner, again. //
Orang gunung/mountain person.
We wake up at 3 to reach Tengger before sunrise. G. drives me and E. in his truck, called “Sweet Orange”. E. (my husband) is a former ranger and guide in the park. G. is from a nearby village and has experience driving the roads.
I hope to see Bromo. (This hope will not be fulfilled.)
Sunrise comes, and I take pictures of Gunung Batok and the surrounding walls of the caldera. Batok is beautiful, swathed in green velvet, as a dream or a fantasy.
I still hope to see Bromo.
We’re not in a hardtop jeep, so entry into the caldera is prohibited. We decide to drive down from Tengger, to the east, and back up again, possibly to see Bromo from another place on the rim.
As we climb again in elevation, the drive gets scary, or at least I am scared. I can’t describe how terrifying it is. Hairpin turns, steep drops, no shoulder, broken asphalt. Clouds begin to obscure the surroundings. At some point, with steep drops on both sides, suspended in clouds, the road is broken enough that the truck loses purchase. G. is a good driver and gets us past, but I begin crying from fear.
Crying, then sobbing, I just break open.
G. parks the truck. E. holds me. We decide we have to go back down. But I am afraid to go down in the truck. Two local people come and offer E. and me an ojek, a ride down on their motorbikes. We accept.
The locals are understanding. I know they have driven this road a thousand times, at crazy fast speeds. E. has explained the situation, they won’t go fast with me. I feel safe. We get down past the scariest parts. (G. follows in his truck.)
We all sit and have coffee together. I am still shaking, most of what I remember from the conversation is that one of the men asks me to help him with English, which I do. (This was very kind of him.) They realize we have common friends, in our village on the other side of Tengger. These men trade in green onions and potatoes, while our friends trade in flowers. (Crops that grow in the tropical highland climate.)
We part ways with the Tengger people. We’ll drive the rest of the way back down in the truck.
Shortly after, my eyes still hot from tears, I have an encounter with a lutung (an East Javan langur). I spot him in a tree as we drive. G. stops the truck, I get out. I have my camera.
He is a black shape against the cloud. At first I think he’s a macaque, but he isn’t. E. says, from the truck, “lutung.” They are shy, they have been hunted by humans. This one at first jumps down from his lookout. I think he will run away. But he doesn’t, he keeps looking at me from behind ferns and shrubs. He starts climbing back into the tree. He comes out, looks at me. Then, like he knows better, he hides. He does it repeatedly, where he hides for a minute, then climbs up or comes out, looks at me. Slowly, with intent. I speak to him. I say I don’t want to hurt him. I make a hand gesture like a little wave. He lets me take a few pictures. I say goodbye, then go back to the truck.
G. starts up “Sweet Orange” and we continue home.
I feel this was Tengger, telling me that I’m not ready for Bromo. (I’m not sure where these big feelings come from, it’s a turbulent time of the month, I’m tired, more sensitive than usual, the terror, I’ve only felt fear like that one time before, hey, also on a mountain, and the breaking.) Then, the lutung. It felt like a gift, or a secret, or a word. Or something, I don’t know.
We will try again. (I will keep practicing and trying again.) I know we can just take a jeep. (Mas B. wants to drive us.) … But I will keep working through what happened today, because I pay attention when a mountain speaks.
Delayed departures and I notice Bali before leaving, or rather Balis, there being so many. The cocks crow from before sunrise and a pack of dogs barks at a passing presence, feral guardians of night. The scent of cooking rice mixed with floral incense smoke, women’s work, through sunrise. Mourning doves and frogs and tiny finches chirp their ambient language. Traffic heaves a periodic sigh, as on every workday, hordes of red-burnt tourists, the punctuated exchange of horns, brakes squealing, and fragments of conversation picked up from hidden alleyways. Giggling, crying. Colors run more saturated under heavy skies, overwhelming sight, and people walk uncovered, as if open to the sun. Plastics mixed with faded floral offerings crowd the gutters below their feet.
So open you might be fooled into believing she’s honest, a reputation ardently if sloppily maintained. Her government is tangled and obscure, embroidered with extra-judicial bureaucracies, her pathways impossible to navigate by compass, unmapped, and obstacles send you looping back in wild directions. You are the ant and someone toys with you. The more you try to cross, the farther from the source you go. So cloven is the island into slivers and pieces by rivers, ravines, and lava flows.
A silent goodbye to something here, pale jepun blossoms wreathed in green, or barren branches in their ever-staggered cycles, and black grass-roofed temples that house Barong. An extra moment granted to a stranger, the balance of the otherwise unknown.