Meditation on plastic. // Morning sun brightens bare arms, damp grass touches feet, my body aches as I stoop to the ground. No need to move, so much of it is here. I pick it up piece by piece and pin it together between fingers of one hand. I pry fragments of discard from the dirt, from a multifarious mosaic of the formerly-purposed. I find they have become embedded, as finding rest in, as being eaten by organic matter. It breaks into smaller pieces, as by accident, by the pull of my fingers, or the same sacred falling apart as us all. Trying, as nature, to lose itself, disintegrating into soil. The closer one looks, the dirtier one’s fingernails, the more scattered becomes the plastic. One fills bags and it doesn’t disappear. Vegetation grows over it in carpets and thickets. The baby chickens are digging through it, strings of blue grass and black cord, eating it, styrofoam pecked into tiny crumbles like bread, swallowed into newborn bodies. It disappears into living things with unknown effect. The compost feeds the children. The junk food, the barbie dreamhouse food that it wrapped, the beverage it carried, an unending supply of single servings, in reflective colors and flavors of distraction, the defunct dreams play before my inner eye as I untangle it from grass and root, the tarpaulin or the twine that fell apart, the filters on countless cigarettes. This one was held between someone’s lips. It was dropped, tossed, thrown, flung, strung out, put, left, dumped, piled up, ground in, tamped down. Without intention, again and again, as if by second nature, and the being of plastic is to be shaped into anything and never decay, to be infinite and undying, impervious to rot. (I fill a plastic bag with the plastic, and put it in a plastic garbage bin, for going to “the dump”.)
Plastic is hope. Plastic is death. Plastic is certain. I refill my glass at the plastic dispenser. My fingers tap the plastic-coated keys. A piece of plastic releases drugs into my body. I am the destiny of plastic, sorting through its own ephemera. As time slips into plastic time. (As destiny does. Which probably seems like a lot, to you, but) to us, we last less than a day.
Orchid and Traveller //
Lost selves-of-sand resolve as empty time.
As moon that disappeared, or star that failed
to be itself, forging light like iron
chains, and dragging dredged-up planetary
prisoners into debtor’s knowledge. Some
girls worship diamonds, some spilt blood. Of gods,
gravity hallowed flings them, winged, past
the fixed orbit of that rotten town, where
sanctity is suicide, reconceived
as end, turned upside-down. Which ones
are wholesome hunger, scarlet stain, or junk
jetsam, are judged by what rags come undone
in passing. I come close, closer to you.
Here quivers the pink rabbit’s nose, to taste
on solar breezes dying destinies
of sight. Soft lips on eye. And the breathing
body of a ram, inside her, twin horns
repenting tearfully the pious act
of girls, as woman, lost for ‘swords, that shot
their bleak comet close-as-chiasmus to
the split-fruit sundae, cool and creamy core
of chocolate-drizzled, measure-melting Love.
//
(Submitted to September’s IndieWeb Carnival, hosted by Matthew Graybosch a.k.a. Starbreaker. The topic is “Power Underneath Despair”.)
Body/passage earth.
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.
So that peace shall be our constant and only purpose.
artifact //
(this jagged)
wish
(edge of words)
lonely, and a craving for being alone
(came out)
why am I even
(somewhat involuntarily)
finished, here
(during a moment of)
cracking, needs to stop
walls
(up)
walls
broken
Sky from home (8).
Anger, which is of love and loss, is a dragon (dangerous and dialectical) that you tame, and then ride, through cloud tops scattering rainbows in fizzy, kaleidoscopic patterns at your passing. Its yolk is what heats you from the inside, tears melting as rain into rivulets down clefts of leaf-patterned veins toward the womb of the earth, crying (of servant or master, at sound of own voice), in no color but all color, as metal, water, woodwind, swansong of phoenix, cradled in crescent. You rested there, to watch. From a distance, you beheld charcoal and ashes scattering through atmospheres, burnt snow falling, lining the sponge-tunnels of lungs and gills with glass splinters all colors of black, laying it down until pelvic bones overflow as beggars' bowls, abundantly silent, a prelude to epochal winter. Landscapes, exhausted by element, ripple below you as satin sheets of mineral reflection, and smooth, sonic transitions from error into the opposite of whatever it was you believed, rounding into sustainable orbits, or perfect planetary poems. It’s a chorus of angels, just being themselves, being holy. Those who were decent and kind, who believed with their undine hearts that fishwives were wealthy, and who buried in bosom only what or whom all could be borne by the cosmic queen of moderation, with her gardener’s tools and her grey eyes fading, at staggered horizons, to gold.
(// Fire-egg.)
To the alien, from another side. // Earth used to be the most beautiful place.
You could go running, under-leaf, through waist-deep tangled-grass jungle, wondering about snakes but not stopping because you had lost something in there, your heart breaking along fault lines in egg shells of worry and the impossibility of searching this dense pocket of hiding. The sharp limits of eyes. (It could start to rain and the drops, clear pinpoints and gashes on your naked arms, would feel body-temperature, not quite cool.) You would give birth to yourself, clambering out from staggered layers of green into a rice field, shifting pale to yellow, (footsteps uneven in cracking, caked mud, swaying in) needle-soft fibers cascading with grain. A sea of it. (It could start pouring, but the heavy, like wind-whipped-metal, grey holds.) Do you go left, right, forward into the field, or back to the jungle? (Ok, good choice. Turn to page 56.)
Words come from behind you, you don’t understand those, but fearful fluttering heartbeats, you do. From underneath places, trembling invisibles look back, lines of sight never meeting, from too many directions. You never held what happened, there. Life was snuffed out in missed-crossings, disappeared, or worse, waited past the faltering light, as if to be found again, hoping but knowing, skin and memory growing thin and colder, until heart stopped. It gave up, it was over, but then, you were found. A strange struggle, distracting but home again, having made plans that seem irrelevant, at this point. Washed a sink full of dishes. Sat on the floor, scratching stray sentences in dust. It would be dark, but not raining, and anyway, you would be under the solid wood floor of another world, with footsteps relying heavily on the grammar of your (earthy) answer.
Somebody who loved you might bring you food that was soft and crunchy and salty and sweet. And a lit stick of honeyed incense. Parts of you would fall back in right places. You could remove clothes, find yourself misshapen, and step into a hot shower under pitch-navy sky. Becoming twin bodies, ocean and sorrow in a breathy coccoon against deep space. I would work my fingers into your scalp, and medicinal smells of sudsy substances would rinse off in slippery streams to either side of your (kissed) face. Scrub around ears. You could be clean. (And the miracle of that.) You could put on clean clothes. You could slip between clean sheets underneath a comforter blanket that was the perfect thickness for this night’s chill, with just enough weight to let you feel, well, enough. Plus a cat, on your legs. Yes, cats were amazing. You could cover your eyes, and drift off, as a warm hand slipped softly into yours. Everything that was lost, would be home, would be dreamt or forgotten, singing or held, would be tucked under feathers, bed scattered with blossoms, and the waning crescent would disappear into the better side of night.
One felt gratitude, and mistook it for fear. That is how beautiful Earth was. We couldn’t contain the joy it put into us, so we turned it upside-down, into fear.
The cloud is not a cloud. Apple is not an apple. AI is not intelligence. (Examples of using nature to build trust and sell technology.)
Shadow/surface earth.
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.
I love being an animal. // As I sit down to write, in the bedroom, there begins an intensifying chip-chip, bok-bok from outside the front door… getting closer… going past. Oh! I do a little inward cheer.
Our house is partly open to gardens, which surround it on three sides, and these are terraced into different segments, to match the terracing of the farmland. Grace usually begins every morning in the “romance garden”, at one top corner, then works her way down to the lowest level, and increasingly, around to the other side of the house. But to go down, the chicks have to flap down a 1-1.5m drop, and while flapping-falling baby chickens are superheroes, they can’t flap-fall back up again.
So typically, as it gets dark, we catch them and bring them back to the brooding house at night, in the “romance garden”. And although they love their house, (Grace cannonballs into the nest and starts primping in the most self-determined, self-righteous way), the catching process isn’t really enjoyable. It involves E. grabbing Grace first, and as soon as he gets her she screams with the rage of Achilles, and he takes her to the hen house. Then I run everywhere chasing fluffy handfulls of zooming, mind-piercing cheeps, to jumble together in a box, count to make sure there are nine, and carry the box up the walls, grass staining hands and knees, back up to their house, for safety and calm and eventually quiet, which takes me a minute. Okay, so it sounds fun. But they self-express in ways that make it obvious, they hate nothing more than to be separated from each other.
Grace is smart. Mother knows that the humans do not like chickens in the hallway. Chickens in the hallway were a big “no”, in the days of B.H.C.E (before-hatched-chicks era). (Because poop.) But we have perhaps, in an undisclosed manner, changed our minds about this. Speaking seriously, as chicken servants, it’s important to us that they can “put themselves to bed”. And to traverse the human-house hallway is almost the only way for Grace to circumnavigate with her chicks through the gardens and levels, and get them back “home”, on their own. (There is another way, but it is slightly more advanced, somewhat under construction, and not nearly as fun for the chickens, probably, yet. It will “become fun” before there are ten roosters using our main hallway as their favorite place to nongkrong. Believe.)
So again, now. I leap up (!) to watch their transgression from the teras. Grace, who has finally built the courage, leads her chicks through the hallway of the house, past me, “that meddlesome woman”. And mom surely feels like a criminal as she does it, from her extreme expression. No, I will re-interpret. She looks at me like I’m the one getting away with a very embarassing murder. Ok, namaste, Grace.
The final obstacle is a quick leap over the goldfish canal. Bloop, bloop, bloop. And finally, after a grand tour of the premises, the hen and chicks emerge from the hallway out into the “romance garden”, which is their home garden, with the brooding house, where they sleep at night. Safe and sound. It is so familiar to all of them. They burst in nine directions, running and celebrating, peeping about it from all around the little piles of rocks, chukk-chukking with success. It’s a party. Grace is feeling extremely proud right now. I give her a lot of verbal praise and celebration. The first time, going all the way around, to bring yourself and your babies back home. Animals really feel these moments. (And “Alhamdulillah.” I love being an animal.)
Revelation. Every day, she takes them all the way around, shooting for home in the late afternoon. As cool shadow overtakes the green. Grace is following the sun.
(… Salam to all.)
Grace and chicks.
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.
Margaret Spoon //
Peace is everything
(but it makes her laugh), like
rain showers that come and
go, and come again, and
the cozy sweeping shush,
like the hug of your grand-
mother, the sound of sand,
and someone slipping from
who they were into who
they were for you.
Light, whiskers, wood.
E. says I look like a baby dinosaur when I sleep. I don’t know what that means. I used to have recurring nightmares about a t-rex, though.
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.