the valley below

On the road, memories of Java. Baluran a looming shadow on the left, Ijen somewhere to the right, cloaked in a grey day that fades to black, as grimy trucks metamorphose to arrays of rippling lights, inscrutable expressions ever gnawing at the pass.

And Ibuk, the eroding centerpiece of every Java trip. No longer as individuals but as genres of people, we enter her life. E. as son, husband, father. I as myself or Other Elizabeth, both of whom Ibuk trusts and likes, to whom she whispers untranslated secrets. An intimate unknown. Until she loses the thread. Then she trusts nobody, wants nothing but to grab a nearby bag (of what?) and flee on foot. She fights to do it, tooth and nail and shouts and cries. The family contains her as best they can. I try to comfort my husband. Alzheimer’s may be the cruelest disease.

(Other Elizabeth is, in a twist of circumstance strange even for here, an American woman who came to the village some twenty-five years before me, also blonde, rumor suggests an intelligence agent? She married a local artist and studied dance and voice with Ibuk. Then left Indonesia, taking with her a large collection of E.’s fathers masks. Present status unknown.)

My feelings for Java remain so ambivalent, it demands so much, of both of us. Nothing here is convenient or comfortable or predictable. I can’t say if I could ever live here. After Ibuk passes, I’m not sure how alive that question will be anymore.

The possibility of our entry depends on a community coherence that remains presently intact, but seems unsustainable. How the younger generation is being sucked into the same smartphone world as everywhere else. They abandon village life in pursuit of urban status, commodfied glamour, the parasitic myth. They will go back to the village someday, look for it again, find it has disappeared. The same story, so many times over. At what point does one give up the ghost?

Presently, in Bali. Jeki on my lap, sulit girl, karmic helper, I am home. Angry-happy to see us, now cuddly and precocious, soon she will be off again. I must reweave loose threads so things don’t fall apart. Memories of last night (this morning) are a dark dream.

Over water, from the ferry. The waves were too big and E. was afraid. (I was afraid to squeeze between trucks. We contain complimentary visions of annihilation.) We went to the upper deck, at the muster point, near the lifeboats, and distracted ourselves deciphering deployment instructions. Heaving swells of black ocean tossed us and all that heavy machinery, sometimes in circles, it seemed. The force of water crashing against steel, the thunk- and vibration of the rudder, resisting, the engine pushing to maintain a direction. (Water does weird things as it switches between seas.)

I had two photos ready for “community”. One, of a tiny mosque we passed the other day, it’s carved decorations painted turquoise blue, golden ochre, like icing on a sweet dessert, neat little gate, (doors closed), blue sky with white clouds, a happy, trim little image. The laws, rituals, and words that bind people together, a place with a pretty shape, clearly defined.

The other, of a graveyard we visited before leaving. The quiet of their interwoven voices, the sound of ghosts in ancient communion. Holding back judgment, as a drawn breath in unison, noticing my presence. Countless gravestones in an old jepun forest.

They keep jepun (frangipani) in the graveyards, in Java. I think I understand why, (a little), the trees leafing out, flowering, or bare, in their staggered cycles. Always saying everything at once, these trees. And in silence. Just like the dead. The image was wild, gnarled, messy edges, poorly captured. Hard to tell what it was, if it was anything, an undergrowth concealing the broken stone markers, grass untended. Disorderly. I waited for fear, but instead it felt calm, soothing. Everyone here has seen too much. They don’t shout. They are not afraid.

I felt expected there, to be honest. It was some kind of welcome. Difficult to admit, but I am difficult to admit. A slow, almost flat exhalation. Without pain. Savasana.

It was on the ferry, waves heaving underneath us, (another graveyard below, don’t forget the ferry that was sucked down, in this very crossing, just a few years past), that I, fingers stumbling to touch the right buttons, posted that photo. Unsure of everything, in that moment. The meaning, the memory, what it would be. Probably we would be fine, I said to E., and we were. Someone threw up their dinner over the side, was all that was lost. Everything else, aman.

Now, Jeki stretches out on my lap. Special when she shows this much affection, comfort, trust, her paws and whiskers twitch, she is in her own dream. I think about why it is, that I love best the most difficult things, and I get back to life here, in Bali. Where I sweep my own floors, we brew our own coffee, and make the day as familiar as the medium allows.