Places
“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!
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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 ♥️
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.
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. 🌘
Temple clearing.
Sky from home (11).
Interiors (4).
Peace, love, and a blessed darkest and lightest to all including the swingier parts of the globe. Our longest day is around 12.5 hours, tempered by clouds, intermittent rain, and a strong breeze, with a high temperature of 28c/82f. The equanimity makes it feel closer to the center of a certain world, but out on the fringes of another one.
(A good reminder to befriend the genius loci.)
Sky from home (10).
Interiors (3) feat. Lalah.
Romantic view (2).
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.
Beautiful flowers // grow out of chicken shit. Sometimes the work is to see chicken shit and imagine flowers, sometimes to see flowers and imagine chicken shit.
Of all known technologies, the best and most reliable way to preserve something is (still) to keep it alive. And, failing that, to make it alive.
An inherent problem of place-based politics is its need for oppression as government. Which can come in the form of punishment, in the form of “education”, or in the form of education.
Politics without place happens through literature and on the internet, by extra-judicial combinations of algorithm, chance, history, and psychic powers (“spirit”, human ambiance, Pan, etc). This is barely politics at all. People become shapeless and unpredictable (wild) without a shared place to anchor them, or if not a shared place, then a strong narrative of that.
Beware the “strong narrative”, which is back in the realm of “education”… often it’s been brought along, unawares.
If you yell at a child, they become an adult who yells, or an adult who is silent.
The work of a writer is, by the written work, to show somebody how to read, not just the work, but the world.
Romantic view.
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..
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.
Full moon, sudah matang, tomato consommé, incandescent orb with eggplant-magenta smudged-charcoal setting, moving through air just chill enough to waken touch, silhouettes of palm trees dark enough to deepen vision, and presence dilates into possibility. Passing fragrance of pandan and frangipani. The best thing about living here is not seeing but feeling the island, how it vibrates as with mimetic electricity, a lucid dream.
On the motorbike, cozy in bright reds, pinks, orange woven scarf, wrapped around face as kerudung, black thumbholes hoodie, black leotard top and flowing layers, sparkling “fancy” flip-flops, holding husband, who’s handsome in black and bronze batik udeng and black bucket hat, and gold-trimmed randai pants, for dancing. We assigned ourselves the task of joy, tonight, and romance, and to get away. It was accordion music, view over ravine, pistachio gelato, single espressos and no distractions. Now, the drive home, through moonlit sawah, is brave, as if night-cleansing, to let busy city streets be forgotten behind backs.
We stop in the street, almost home, to see the moon. Close moment. Then engine off, we glide down the way, tires grinding gravel under sea of cricket-song. Unstrap helmets, put down/take off travel gear, wash hands and check on things to, piece-by-piece, unwind. E. checks the phone for messages of Ibuk. Checks progress on the locking gate, to be installed in front of her home, (the house where she was born), twelve hours' drive away. To keep her safe from wandering feet (and fears and memories and hallucinations). I check cats, asleep, and Grace, who clucks softly from the nest, as tucked-in chicks peek out from mother’s feathers, up past bedtime. We cover brooding house for insulation, shushing chicks, and latch the door. To keep tender bodies safe when the stray cat comes, howling with desire. Jeki will hiss and growl from the screened-in teras. Guardian is her favorite job. But now, aman, and so it’s time for peace and quiet, as goodnight moon, and the subtle art of letting go.
It never seems quite fair, as if, there will always be some tragedy to it. But no less beautiful, for that. The island of gods gives itself to those who give themselves to love.