Large thud from outside. Voices of men yelling from corners of village. I run outside. A tree fell from all that wind and rain. Next to our place, on a building being renovated by foreign money… nobody was there. Still jittery. Next time, listen to locals when they tell you to trim the branches.
Big rain doesn’t stop the gamelan in the pura across the street, it summons the people, makes space for the god. There will be dark moon ceremony tonight. Snails are quick now, slimy and free, a bullfrog swims in the pond, stops. Regards me. No, I will not eat you. I just want to look at your bumps.
Well-being in concrete and rain.
Made an about page for Phaedrus replies. No wonder I was tired.
I’ve been informed I have to add diarrhea, muscle aches, and excess sweating to the list of possible symptoms of masuk angin. Upon reflection I think it’s impossible to write a comprehensive description without reducing it unforgivably. Which E and Blih both agree is very Indonesia, (Indonesia as an adjective), how we escape definition.
Got dragged by the undertow to a watery blue deep, surfaced after sundown but incomplete, sinking weight to movement and sluggish sensemaking because I am a being on loan from unconsciousness. Where do I belong. The cats are crying and other questions to answer. Ok let’s be temporary for a while.
Up again at 3am for sahur, only two more days before Eid and I am so tired my eyes seem permanently puffy, but being surrounded by those who are fasting really shuts up most of my complaining, in that way fasting has a very good effect on me hahaa slightly chilly with thunder in the distance.
Jangan masuk angin. Gunung Semeru, Jan. 2020. (windy)
Editing this photo of Semeru, I think of Angelina, by Bob Dylan, which I hear as a love song, an expression of vulnerability, bewilderment, exhaustion. From his Christian period, in tumultuous relationship with a difficult savior, broken but speaking. Certain mountains make me feel just like that.
The dialectic of posting a photo to the blog. // You can’t just post a photo to the blog. (Of course not.) Look at the image and be with it for a while. What do you like about it, what do you find beautiful? What, through the visible, catches your heart? An emotion or mood, mysterious or graceful or kind, daring or bright or sublime, ecstatic or elemental or raw, it does not need words. Adjust the image to make it more clear, the beautiful thing. Enjoy it. Then press “Post”. Ha! Enjoy it again. Understand your responsibility for it. The image is out there because you saw it in there before it was visible. It was born from your eyes. It is a reflection of you. Feel humble. Then let it go, but keep something of it. Let yourself be like the beautiful thing, that you made and let go, because that is a beautiful thing to do and to be. Go back sometimes to look at it again and remember, what you saw, what you did, what you are. Fin.
I didn’t include in this post another autobiographical note, that my whole life used to be all about books, and then all of my books burned in a housefire. That was fifteen years ago, a long time now. After that, I didn’t have the heart to replace them. Anyway, I guess they were never really mine, was my basic conclusion.
But I wouldn’t be who I am without them.
Also wouldn’t be who I am without that fire.
Serene Spathiphyllum.
Nothing is more satisfying than when pieces start fitting together. (This may not be true but it feels true in the moment!) That little rush of wonder and understanding.
On minimalism and a paradox of technology
Five years ago, I left America. Now I live far away from universities and libraries and mega bookstores, outside the cheap shipping zones of online behemoths, in a climate unfriendly to the longterm preservation of organic material, including paper goods. My house is modest, my storage space is minimal, and there’s an active volcano right next door. I have neither the wish nor the practical ability nor the extra coin to get or have or keep more stuff. I guess I’ve learned this lesson in my life, that books burn, and houses burn, and cities burn. The whole world is a burning thing.
To be alive is to travel and it’s best to travel light. So I use cloud storage, digital photos, ebooks, online libraries, which are all lighter and cheaper than books and notebooks and pencils and pens. And I was wondering, is this the best use of technology, I mean for human beings in general, to help us travel light? Always to be ready to leave. Or does technology only give the illusion of lightness, not the reality of it? It has its own kind of weight, if it postpones an inevitable question. If it is a habit-forming postponement of the most important questions. No matter how light, it will still be gone when the network burns.
Good advice for living near a volcano: cultivate clear sight and the readiness to leave. (What have you done lately to get ready?)
Is it foliage?
One really cool thing about an ashtanga vinyasa practice is that you can experience dynamic tipping points in your own body.
Sometimes I feel like I know how the earth’s climate feels, as it’s being changed, because of the changes I put my body through. But my changes are toward balance, and Earth’s changes are away from balance. I try to understand the karmic accounting of that, how it could possibly be allowed, how it makes sense. This has been a big part of my yoga practice the past five years. Persuading my body that it’s ok for it to get better, in the cosmic scheme of things, it’s ok to be healthy. I can be an expression of strength and joy in a disintegrating landscape. It’s allowed. It might even be my final orders, so to speak.
Started reading Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson 📚, my new favorite poet of the extra-terrestrial.
Up early for sahur. Fasting is a trial and a demonstration, and if Muslims don’t write very much about it, that might be because it’s such a consuming practice. Focus is required to stay yourself and writing, which is an othering of the self, becomes impossible, irrelevant. I do not fast but I do wake up early to help, and to witness. And I do enjoy the morning.
My favorite time of day is the early hours, the stillness of the dark and the freshness of dawn light, the quiet that slowly awakens. This morning the sunrise brings with it a thunderstorm, pale light and rain coming at once, like a heavy sigh of release. Jeki huddles in my lap and glares at the inundated morning.
But the pale glow begins to turn golden. Soon sunbeams will pierce the grey clouds, and day will chase away the dawn, with its brightness and noise and heat. Birdsong will fade behind the growl of traffic, clarity will give way to obviousness, and inward potential will be burned off by the relentless activity of coming and going, until all words are spent and externality is complete.
Card of destiny.
Finished Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree 📚 According to my mom, this one “is not as delightful as the last one.” I agree. And there was some word usage that a better editor would have fixed. And it was low on surprises. But it was fine and I cried at the end, however I am also an easy crier.