A dream about a friend from Seattle. She came to visit with a group of people. She had a lot of tattoos. I wanted to copy the tattoo of Chinese characters on her thumb, but she showed me another tattoo she wanted me to copy. That tattoo was more violent than I expected and I didn’t want to say yes.
Masuk angin is a uniquely Indonesian thing that is hard to explain. Masuk angin literally translates as “wind goes in”, and it is a danger whenever the wind can go into you, like when you don’t wear longsleeves on a motorbike, or in the mountains, or if you are an under-dressed tourist in the street. Masuk angin makes you feel off, sometimes dizzy, sometimes indigestion (gas, bloating, burping), sometimes like a hangover with a headache, sometimes just a bad mood. Masuk angin is an acceptable excuse to escape any social or religious obligation. Every Indonesian understands what masuk angin is and respects the necessity of it.
I myself don’t entirely believe masuk angin is a real thing, however I understand what it means when E has it, and I have used it as an excuse for myself as well. I think of masuk angin more as a useful social convention than as a specific ailment, and in that sense I believe in it and also like it.
There are some interesting remedies for masuk angin, such as rubbing someone’s back with a vintage coin in a branching pattern until red marks form, supposedly releasing the angin/wind. At home we drink warm water to assuage it, or rub the back or other affected area with minyak kayu putih/cajeput oil.
Jepun bali flowers.
…hard to imagine the intensity of their cognitive dissonance, or to say what it’s done to your brother, the experience and trauma of fighting in Ukraine (being there involuntarily? being the aggressor? witnessing atrocities? participating in atrocities? fending for himself without adequate training or support? etc.?), and then almost dying. Hard to imagine somebody you love going through that. Forced to play somebody else’s war game.
It may just solidify your family’s support for Putin’s war. As you say, “he is the hero.” A high price to pay for loyalty to the boss…
It isn’t your fault. None of it is. You’re stuck in the terrible theater of a political regime that is choking its citizens, eliminating trust, breaking families and friendships with no mercy. You have made your own sacrifices, are showing your own strength, your own heroism. Even if your family can’t see or admit this, it’s true.
It is possible to love and support your family from afar at the same time as you oppose Putin’s war. Because your family is not your enemy and you are not theirs. The propaganda is designed to make it feel that way, but it isn’t true. Love is the most important thing, and solidarity between the better parts of ourselves, so that the better parts can survive. Love can find a way.
That’s easy for me to say, I’m not great at listening to that myself…
(From a message to a friend // edited.)
The opposite of bocor (leak) is actually mampet (clog). There’s a mampet in the drain line of our AC unit causing a drippy cascade of water and a large puddle under the bed. Like sleeping in a rainforest cafe. Time to call Blih’s AC guys, who are agents of the absurd, but what are you gonna do.
My interest in (devotion to? ministry of?) sleeping and napping is definitely an overarching theme of my blog. Also one of my more relatable enthusiasms. Maybe I should add a sleep category.
Shiny new toy.
Sing more.
Peaches and sea-green.
One of the few good memories I have of my father is how he would sing me songs at bedtime. Barbara Allen, Poncho and Lefty, Frog went a-courtin. Goodnight My Someone/Seventy-six Trombones from The Music Man snuck up on me the other day with a flood of feelings. Those were the times he let go, the demon inside let him go for a while, singing outloud. Vulnerable moments for him, moments of relief for me.
It’s hard to sit with good memories of someone you’ve let go from your life. (It seemed active but what I actually did was passive. I stopped reaching out, he stopped being there.) As a child it’s impossible to see how fragile your parents are, to understand their separate suffering. To pry open that understanding without their consent, like breaking open an oyster, which is an act of violence. To cleanse yourself of that violence as well as you can, which is never-ending work. To sustain hope that you might never cause somebody else the same pain or sadness. To hold the secret knowledge that you were born under a bad star.
Thinking about the vulnerability of writing, if there is vulnerability in it, what that is.
If you don’t take the nap, you might miss the dream being sent to you.
Odysseus is also an opportunistic napper??
A nap, in the event of a nap, is what I should have been doing anyway.
One symptom of my pms/pmdd (project: find better language for it) is inability to focus. I experienced this a lot and blamed myself for it (laziness, lack of discipline) before noticing that it corresponds to my monthly cycle. I become extra-distractable. I skip between activities on my devices, between reading a book and writing a blog and reading social media and writing a note and doing research and shopping online and writing a thought and looking for a recipe, etc. My attention spins out-of-control, which is frustrating and disorienting and compounds other symptoms like despair and self-loathing. But if I munch on a snack, then I can possibly focus on light reading. I like sweet but not sugary snacks with carbs, like healthfood cookies or fried bananas. Even if the snack doesn’t help me concentrate, it can help me take a nap.
One year anniversary ♥️
I feel very strongly like I sympathize with those Byzantine monks. I feel for the devotion and humility it would take to spend their lives transcribing what, to them, are sacred texts. Copying and copying, writing and writing, I love them for it. It makes me wonder if all those monks are sitting up in a special circle of Paradiso right now, transcribing parchments in perpetuity. I love to think of them like that, all of them at once and forever. Then I’m going down (up?) the rabbit hole of Dante’s Paradiso on a Sunday night when I should be taking melatonin, the structure of it, it’s a whole other kind of planetary science. I could get lost in this stuff, and I do, of course the monks' time wouldn’t be like that 24/7. They could go for walks in a garden, sip green tea, and use k-beauty facemasks, in threesomes or pairs. Sometimes little birds sit on their shoulders and sing sweet melodies in their ears, and their whole life is a singing, I can see them smiling in the sphere of Saturn with other contemplative types.
Hello my name is Elizabeth and I am an etymology addict. Because reply goes back to re + plait, as in, to re-braid. I don’t know if that’s exactly what I want to say, but it’s so romantic, I really want to go with it. It reminds me of braiding my husband’s hair. Folding back and folding back again. To reply.
Grey is the coziest color. Dark grey camisole, dark grey sweatpants, light grey flannel, fuzzy grey ankle socks, my favorite outfit for a rainy afternoon, and when I go outside, grey glitter flip-flops, even a grey hair claw holding back my bangs. Carrying the bones and drinking peppermint tea on a grey day. Green and grey and toasty and warm. Didn’t even have to try, my oh, my oh, my. Oh, that giant mosquitoe biting me through my sweatpants. Oh, Ismail gone kamikaze on my smoothie bowl. Oh, smoothie bowl melting over and I’m a mess. But nothing can break this cozy, Alhamdulillah. Haha, just writing that down is asking to learn a hard lesson. Al-hamdulillah. Oh, I got that mosquito. And I have a peanut butter chocolate ball from Sayuri to eat, those things are the best.
Where girls played in the sand (b&w).
Why can’t one piece of dental floss last forever?
Can somebody ask a LLM and get back to me please?