My hair looks really fantastic today. Sometimes in sunlight it appears almost pink. Cornhusk and rose, golden waves, softly shining. Unwashed and undone, perfection!
Therefore, the weight of Ish on my legs. (Still full belly from the night before?) The gentle snore of somebody I love. The chatter of Blih, passing by, on his phone. The coffee, that made it down, bitter savior of morning. The what-to-do, ten thousand tasks on a throwaway list, bricks out of which a day might be built. That structures over unmarked graves still provide shelter from rain. To wait (for the moon) out the stages of grief. Soft, you. Sometimes, all that’s visible are the ironclad logics behind our great diversity of angers.
Awake before wanting to be awake, noticing the untenable. Eyes dry, in the dark, fingers sore from a bite. Blankets and sheets that don’t fit, at all. Chill in the bones, heat at skin surface. The groan of vehicles, unceasing respiration of machines, and somewhere, the unaddressable discomfort of a womb. Everything dragging a heavy weight. (Growing deficit of fuel.) History, its epicycles, (each one a genocide), and words, from which I ask too much. Even body cannot do that, says Luna, inverting. Shifting between, the falling apart, the holding together, or the manic inference that there ever could have been a beginning. One would first have to have died, says the cock, crowing. (Or at the very least, fallen asleep.)
Parable of the Cage // G. brought a songbird over from Java, (a murai batu/white-rumped shama), named Nobita, to keep at the house. Nobita is at our guesthouse today, just temporarily, hung under the awning outside the door. His cage is covered completely by a yellow, zipped-shut fabric. (The cats are mystified.)
All during my practice, Nobita was singing and whistling sweet trills and dynamic little melodies. Happy sing-songy sounds. It had me thinking. After practice, I said, Oh, sweet little bird. (I am Snow White.) Maybe you would like to peek out from under your cover. Have a nice view of the garden. Get fresh air and sunlight. So, I unzipped one of the zippers, just a little. As soon as he saw me, Nobita started squawking and scolding. He said, “no! No! what are you doing! What are you doing!” Not in words, but in angry little squawks and tch tch sounds. I felt so bad, I quickly apologized and zipped it back up.
There are no computers in Sweet Orange, G.’s truck, I noticed as I climbed in today. It could be 1975 in here. This will be useful in case of “AI apocalypse”, or whatever it’s called when our tools stop working because they’ve all become subscription-based.
Sweet Orange is a Mitsubishi L300 pickup truck, custom painted in mint bluish-green, with bright orange and yellow accents. A photo of Sweet Orange might break the blog. Prayers, slogans and mottos, in Indonesian, Javanese, English, and Japanese, in different sizes and street-art fonts, (with letters whose edges appear lightning-blazed or ripped into metal), are airbrushed or stuck on with decals. The most prominent is “berkah 77”, a prayer of dedication to G.’s mother, born in 1977. (A reminder that in Indonesia, E. and I are grandparent-aged.) There are two anime ladies’ faces on one side, and a third on the other. A decal on the driver’s-side window warns, “18+”. Sweet Orange is tricked out with an array of string lights that ripple across her dashboard in rainbow colors, at night, for safety, or on command, for fun. It is mesmerizing. She is part of a truck driver community. Her decorations and adornments are a language she shares with other trucks (of a similar orientation).
(All of this is G.’s world, of course. He gets shy if we ask too much, but it’s pretty obvious he loves his truck.)
She’s called Sweet Orange because (announcing her purpose) she mainly transports oranges across Java and Bali. That is, when she’s not transporting us. I get a lot of weird looks, a princess-looking bule riding around in such a vehicular statement, but this kind of attention, somehow, I don’t mind. It sets a good example, there’s nothing wrong with a working-class truck, and of course, we’re proud of Sweet Orange too.
Clouds from home (1).
Sun falling, light lengthens, sounds of tongaret (cicada) sawing away in hedgerows. The big sky in painterly patterns of grey and peach and pale, on blue, swallows crossing. Sighting of layang-layang (kites) confirms a hint of dry season, despite big rain last night. All of this feels like change.
…this, to the extent that when colonizers came to the island and saw someone speaking with a mountain, they called it animism. By which they meant, since you don’t pray to Mickey Mouse, you must believe that the mountain is beefcake grandpa. A mountain person told me how offensive and idiotic this was, (they brought it up, told me their side of the story), I said you only know the half of it, and told them the meaning of anima. (Soul, air, breath.) The mountain person said, “I guess we do kind of believe in that,” and I said, “They don’t know the meaning of their own words.” The mountain person said, “Our god cannot be described in words.” (Anthropologists call it, “primitive.") (To speak with a mouse, or to disbelieve in a cartoon?) In retrospect it’s no surprise, colonizers go around with so little understanding of where they themselves come from, that even the mountain person, after uncounted crimes that are (then and now) being committed, against the mountain people and the mountain, had to laugh and feel sorry for them, to be turned so upside-down…
…many I’ve spoken with over the years (students, family, colleagues, friends) have this very cartoony notion of god. Either god is this magical fellow making decisions in the sky, or “He doesn’t exist.” Sometimes I wonder if Michelangelo is to blame, (my little mind, always wanting somebody to blame. How about,) the beefcake grandpa on the ceiling, with voluminous silver hair and clingy pink peejays, (nipples erect, yes and, godly buttocks), pointing theatrically at the things he creates. (Zoom! Bada-boom!, is what I hear.) It’s more than a little… over the top. (Stop looking up Glaucon, you’ll pull a muscle.) Doesn’t leave much to the imagination? (Let alone ta meta ta physica.) (Italian Renaissance is the Las Vegas of European cultural history?) (Pretty crazy what passes for monotheism, then and now.) So that when Mickey Mouse came along I think it confused people, they were like, wait a minute, this is really compelling…
I was floating in emptiness, no light, only the sound of heavy rain. Body weightless, cocooned. It all almost fit inside itself. Then, the thought that I should remember the moment. Record it to retrieve at a later time. It was already sealing itself off again, the interior reflection, and I lost myself back to sleep.
Related, from what I can observe, pesantren provide really good husband training. There’s a folk song about a boy who pretends to be a santri, (a student in pesantren), to get a girl to be interested in him. The song is funny and cute and I totally get it.
Oh, there was a little anger left. I had a chat with A., who is one of my oldest friends, through no achievement of my own. I’ve been a jerk sometimes and/or bad at keeping in touch. We have mysteriously parallel life patterns that we react to in symmetrically opposite ways, we are non-Euclidean soul sisters. She’s a prolific playwright and painter, her plays are clever and touching. We’re like sisters, (except that) it feels very easy to talk.
I also talked to E. about the pesantren community, which is close to his heart, where abuse scandals come out every so often. The dangers inherent in providing a good education, which relies on trust in a trustworthy institution, the imperative for the institution and community to protect their students. How complicated it is to watch them change, whether they can maintain trust. E. told me how one time his kyai made him walk all the way back to Glagahdowo, from Ngawi, which took several days. (He ate and slept in mosques on the road. This is why my husband never complains about anything.)
Woke up to terrible news about someone from my past. A trusted person was not to be trusted. (According to longstanding rumor, brought to harsh light of day.) Questions now. Was I ever in danger? (Yes.) Should I have known? (I did have a feeling. A weird feeling of discomfort.) Should I have done something? (I did do something: I distanced myself. I put up a wall. I had no account of anything happening. I blamed my uneasy feeling on myself. Felt guilty for listening to it.) There were many vague rumors. (Neither can you trust rumors… I didn’t want to spread gossip.) I feel deceived. (He deceived all of us? Except for the victims, I guess. I’ve not yet heard their accounts.) I hope the victims are healing, can heal. (A decades-long violation of trust.)
Memories, polished smooth over time, must be dug up, re-shaped. That will be a process.
Also: A shitstorm happening on (that niche of) social media, I guess. (A. wrote, “you are smart not to be on f-cebook.”) (This, here, is my “public statement”?) I was tempted for a minute, but, gross. I’ve had enough. No anger left. (Only sadness.) It all hurts too badly. And an institution that I almost admired (Am I still so naive?) is utterly besmirched.
A few days ago I lit an incense stick in the bathroom and as I shook out the flame a mosquito was drawn right into it, I think that’s what happened, it went so fast, it was puzzling, one minute I witnessed the collision of featherweight body with fire, the next minute there were ashes floating in the air. I blinked. Illusions hovered, visual errors, spots in my eyes, barely enough substance to focus on. Oh, I realized. I’m sorry.
Today in the pre-dawn I am awake, with thoughts like that, airborne ashes from a quiet but catastrophic combustion. Did a volcano erupt in my dream? I wonder, before I remember the mosquito that burned. A person I once knew with a career in pop music, social media plastered with lifestyle decisions, each phase earnestly renouncing the last, fast self-fashion. Hungry eyes, a curling thread of ash. The conventions of academic departments, offices stuffed with reading copies and slippery stacks of papers, white bundles bound by black metal clips, always slumping off to one side. Leaves, orange and brown and yellow, crackling under feet, woolen sweater, a chill in the air. School days. Time to light the first fire in the stove, curl up with a book.
Autumn. Or just, shifting. Sometimes you can catch the scent of seasons here, I mean the temperate ones, on a breeze blowing in, a tendril of air from a forgotten place. The monsoon is waning. Dry days ahead, clear nights, bright stars. Sharp horizon. Mountains without thunder.
When I write “you”, I almost always mean myself, from 2 days ago. (Or 2 weeks ago. Or 2 years ago, or 2 thousand years ago.) (Or myself in a mirror.) (Sometimes a strange mirror.)
Mentioned I wanted some roses for the “Moms’ garden” and E. comes back with twenty-three rose bushes. All different kinds, colors, patterns of rose.
Walking Through Walls (3/3) // Phaedrus 227α-β
Poros (and Poiesis) and Socrates (and Student)
Socrates is famous (then and now) for being without, (or against?), these two “things".
Socrates is (was) (generally agreed to be) a-poetic. That is, he doesn’t (didn’t) write.
Also, a-poretic (to be a-poros, to have no way out or through, at an impasse). He never leaves Athens. (Whadabout when he fought the war for Athens, Alcibiades slurs, symposium-crashing.) (And Meno claimed, that everybody agreed, that) Socrates inflicts a-poria on others. Anti-poros, as a weapon. They feel angry, embarassed, humiliated by him, so they put him on trial (and, by jury, convicted). Socrates sits (like Buddha) in a cell. Declines all plans, (from students et al.), to help him escape. Builds extra arguments to wall himself in. Invokes the law. (To be only himself, within only those walls.) (Admitted no poros. Other than,) he dies (died) in that cell.
(Deep in the city, a dead body where her heart should have been.) (Aporia Herself.) (Is it tragedy?) (Almost like that,)
wrote the student. (Never as herself, always of the other.) And she left the city. (Oh, she was angry? She didn’t like hemlock?) (She was sick of assholes with speeches?) (Some gross politicians?) (Her “pussy hat”?) (Well, things got weird.) (She abandoned her teacher. Her friends, her school, her family, civic responsibilities.) (She seduced a king? She was sold as a slave?) (She was run off and/or exiled by tyrants.) (Gave birth to a monster. A creature of gossip.) (Well, where was her heart?) Subjunctive, contrary to fact: Without her getting out, and writing a lot, (of SEO content), the words would have passed, with the man.
(The poros at the dark heart of Aporia. Is… what leads beyond city walls.)
Each soul is an argument. Across from, opposed to, in need of, the other, a romantic entanglement, a war between worlds, (the after, the before). Their interplanetary logics of love and their lawless reunion by meta/physical coup. (In a Platonic jungle. As dark hearts go, it’s lovely, and well lit.) (By following the law, he broke the law. Like, it’s broken now, like a chipped tooth on a fractured jaw. And they can’t fix it. So.) The lover lays a trap, (for the soul of the youth), while the poet lays a trap, (for whom?), (are they dead?), (are they mortal?), (do they even know Greek?), set ‘twixt crossed stars, in time out of hand. Spanning written word, and word, alive. Each being nothing if not caught in the snare of the other. (Marriage, divorce, remarriage, and?) And Phaedrus in the middle.
//
I like Enya.
To understand the meaning of rain here, it’s useful to know that we live half outside. This is typical in Balinese villages. When it rains, that means staying dry in the bedroom or going outside to living areas and getting a little wet. The kitchen and bale (our little “living room”) are covered, but walkways get slippery, stray drops are always blowing in, the more wind and rain, the less dry, the less safe for cats and electronic devices. Huddling in from the edges. It can be… inconvenient, but I mostly like living close to the weather. And the garden, and the bugs, snails, bats, frogs, geckos and tokays, occasional birds, snakes, monitor lizards, stranger cats, etc., that visit.
That little bale is also the place where we socialize at home, and it’s visited daily by members of our Balinese family. Writing and my yoga practice demand a sustained level of privacy that’s not typical of family life here. (And not good at all for social anxiety.) I’d always heard that “Asian culture” was “more family-centered, less individualistic” than Western, but I never understood it until I lived (sort of) immersed in it. (I say sort of, because we don’t live at the main family compound, but at a nearby offshoot. Even so,) it seems to me like a drastically different lifestyle that has profound effects on mental, emotional, social, psycho-spiritual development. Not least because families take care of their elderly. I think treatment of elders sets a strong foundation for how people think and feel about death and dying, what comes to be and passes away, and what, if anything, is deathless.
These dark, rainy mornings encourage prolonged sleep, retreating back to bed, the world outside loud water, the cloud, a weighted comfortor. Coffee (the weapon) is (hot, black,) powerful, bitter, earthy clarity that breaks through the muffling sky and fire peeks through, evaporation, drops shrink on banana leaves, steam rises from roofs. Power tools start at the forever construction site next door, it makes me anxious, that sound. No problem, I tell myself, there’s plenty of time. And a text exchange with my mom about sunscreen, bras, preferences and recommendations. Mine (as expected) somewhat different from hers.