We wake up at 3 to reach Tengger before sunrise. G. drives me and E. in his truck, called “Sweet Orange”. E. (my husband) is a former ranger and guide in the park. G. is from a nearby village and has experience driving the roads.
I hope to see Bromo. (This hope will not be fulfilled.)
Sunrise comes, and I take pictures of Gunung Batok and the surrounding walls of the caldera. Batok is beautiful, swathed in green velvet, as a dream or a fantasy.
I still hope to see Bromo.
We’re not in a hardtop jeep, so entry into the caldera is prohibited. We decide to drive down from Tengger, to the east, and back up again, possibly to see Bromo from another place on the rim.
As we climb again in elevation, the drive gets scary, or at least I am scared. I can’t describe how terrifying it is. Hairpin turns, steep drops, no shoulder, broken asphalt. Clouds begin to obscure the surroundings. At some point, with steep drops on both sides, suspended in clouds, the road is broken enough that the truck loses purchase. G. is a good driver and gets us past, but I begin crying from fear.
Crying, then sobbing, I just break open.
G. parks the truck. E. holds me. We decide we have to go back down. But I am afraid to go down in the truck. Two local people come and offer E. and me an ojek, a ride down on their motorbikes. We accept.
The locals are understanding. I know they have driven this road a thousand times, at crazy fast speeds. E. has explained the situation, they won’t go fast with me. I feel safe. We get down past the scariest parts. (G. follows in his truck.)
We all sit and have coffee together. I am still shaking, most of what I remember from the conversation is that one of the men asks me to help him with English, which I do. (This was very kind of him.) They realize we have common friends, in our village on the other side of Tengger. These men trade in green onions and potatoes, while our friends trade in flowers. (Crops that grow in the tropical highland climate.)
We part ways with the Tengger people. We’ll drive the rest of the way back down in the truck.
Shortly after, my eyes still hot from tears, I have an encounter with a lutung (an East Javan langur). I spot him in a tree as we drive. G. stops the truck, I get out. I have my camera.
He is a black shape against the cloud. At first I think he’s a macaque, but he isn’t. E. says, from the truck, “lutung.” They are shy, they have been hunted by humans. This one at first jumps down from his lookout. I think he will run away. But he doesn’t, he keeps looking at me from behind ferns and shrubs. He starts climbing back into the tree. He comes out, looks at me. Then, like he knows better, he hides. He does it repeatedly, where he hides for a minute, then climbs up or comes out, looks at me. Slowly, with intent. I speak to him. I say I don’t want to hurt him. I make a hand gesture like a little wave. He lets me take a few pictures. I say goodbye, then go back to the truck.
G. starts up “Sweet Orange” and we continue home.
I feel this was Tengger, telling me that I’m not ready for Bromo. (I’m not sure where these big feelings come from, it’s a turbulent time of the month, I’m tired, more sensitive than usual, the terror, I’ve only felt fear like that one time before, hey, also on a mountain, and the breaking.) Then, the lutung. It felt like a gift, or a secret, or a word. Or something, I don’t know.
We will try again. (I will keep practicing and trying again.) I know we can just take a jeep. (Mas B. wants to drive us.) … But I will keep working through what happened today, because I pay attention when a mountain speaks.
Es teler durian. (ice)
Birds singing in the garden to the sounds of Zuhr, the mid-day prayer, being sung from the mosque.
Birthday plans.
(Head spinning), after dark. Warm welcome, quiet children, fragrant oolong tea. This desire to collapse on the soft bed with the clean sheets in the room that isn’t moving. Steady the mind, organize needs: eat, drink, bathe, sleep. Close the door and trust that unconsciousness will fix everything.
Mid-morning, over water. Parked behind two coconut trucks. We get out and seek a shady spot. School girls in white jilbab, green skirts, cushy foam sandals crowd the deck, eat pop mie and laugh together. The strait is calm, glinting turquoise blue, a few rolling swells. (Water does weird things when switching seas.) The tip of Ijen shows through its topping of whipped cream, in front of us, with Baluran a hulking silhouette to the north. Our way lies between them.
Arrival at the pier in Ketupang. Men and boys swim at the waterline and heckle us for cash, slipping between boat and bumpers as we maneuver into place. School girls toss them crumpled bills, everyone is laughing. Lines secured and everything is a rush. Pick through the crowds, squeeze past the trucks, climb into the car. Azan sounds as we drive off the ramp (rumble and clank of steel joints) and onto the island of Java.
Travel day. Cotton candy sunrise. The whole back seat of the car to myself, that’s nice. Out the window, seen between jumbled warungs, a beach, west coast of Bali, beige-black pebbled sand, pale surf. Hazy. Rumbling, growling, belching of trucks. Bob Dylan//Desire on car speakers, not even my choice, good music for moving. E. plays air violin in the front seat, chats with G., who drives. Sun climbs, blue deepens, shadows turn solid. We make progress toward the ferry at Gilimanuk.
Jeki mood 2.
Delayed departures and I notice Bali before leaving, or rather Balis, there being so many. The cocks crow from before sunrise and a pack of dogs barks at a passing presence, feral guardians of night. The scent of cooking rice mixed with floral incense smoke, women’s work, through sunrise. Mourning doves and frogs and tiny finches chirp their ambient language. Traffic heaves a periodic sigh, as on every workday, hordes of red-burnt tourists, the punctuated exchange of horns, brakes squealing, and fragments of conversation picked up from hidden alleyways. Giggling, crying. Colors run more saturated under heavy skies, overwhelming sight, and people walk uncovered, as if open to the sun. Plastics mixed with faded floral offerings crowd the gutters below their feet.
So open you might be fooled into believing she’s honest, a reputation ardently if sloppily maintained. Her government is tangled and obscure, embroidered with extra-judicial bureaucracies, her pathways impossible to navigate by compass, unmapped, and obstacles send you looping back in wild directions. You are the ant and someone toys with you. The more you try to cross, the farther from the source you go. So cloven is the island into slivers and pieces by rivers, ravines, and lava flows.
A silent goodbye to something here, pale jepun blossoms wreathed in green, or barren branches in their ever-staggered cycles, and black grass-roofed temples that house Barong. An extra moment granted to a stranger, the balance of the otherwise unknown.
The camera and the scarf are talismans, same as the polished carnelian I carry in my bag, the one that helped bring Jeki home. Talisman, from Greek telesma “completion”, from telein “perform (religious rites), pay (tax), fulfill,” from telos “end, purpose, completion”.
The scarf is for resourcefulness and protection on the road. The camera is for clear sight and perspective. The carnelian is for listening to my heart. Expressions and reminders of deepest purpose, things that help me get there.
Early morning boys (3/3). (transcendence)
There’s something wonderful even about terrible art projects!
Waking up to a day of preparation, packing, for a week of unpredictable travel and socializing… opportunities, obligations, the whole spectrum between those. Travel through Java is a constant cultural puzzle that hits all my anxiety pressure points. I will always stand out, the tall foreign woman with blazing blonde hair. What to wear, how much skin to cover, when to make eye contact, whether it’s ok to smile. If I look weird. (I always look weird!) Words that abandon me as soon as I need them.
Language is a survival skill. I rely on my words, more even than I know. Words are my resource and letting go of language is a profound surrender. Being in the woods at night, how your ears pick up every sound, my ears pick out words from the Java language. A complex language with multiple levels of formality, even simple things have multiple words, are socially complex. I piece together situations, relationships, themes. I test out learned words on closest family. Where failure results only in minor embarassment! They are affectionate, they cheer me on. Ah, I am a babe again.
There is something challenging and healthy about all this, I firmly believe, it’s also enjoyable. I just have to awaken my appetite for adventure. A new trick this trip, we have gotten out “the good camera”. Getting behind a lens is like the first dip into a cold pool, but once in, it can be a very nice place. The world as image, not as constant, living demand. The camera speaks and says, I am not here for words. (To be determined, how successful this is here, where social demand is forceful, loud, strong. Doesn’t always take “no” for an answer.)
It also helps to wear a scarf. I discovered this last trip. Not as hijab, (at least not in the usual sense), and usually not covering my hair, but as a protective presence. Something that can be adjusted to fit different situations. Again, like a babe, with a blanket. But a blanket can be very good armor! Portable psychic cozy.
Flaneur-esque. (Ubud, 2019)
How I keep dipping my feet into rivers when I should be focusing on the name of Zeus.
I have never been a flaneur but a peripatetic, yes.
Reading, and remembering the claustrophobia I would feel reading, Benjamin, under the eyes of professional readers of Benjamin. I guess it’s the Marxism, more specifically, the strict adherence to history, (or to what they call history, history always being what somebody calls history), which imposes an ontological opacity, a dull thud in my intellectual imagination, the thinking-sensation of too many walls.
(Never a problem with Baudelaire, though I fought many battles with him too. <3)
A trauma response to World War 2, maybe. And then the fetish they made out of 19th and 20th century Europe. An arbitrary designation of “our historical situatedness” that, once viewed from outside academic halls, appears naive, classist, colonialist, absurd, the humorless inability to see one’s own irony. Snapshots of the arcades are exhausted, a nostalgia that’s barely worth the effort anymore, the amour-propre of an empire on the brink of fully embracing its decline. (Instagram.)
Or maybe it’s just me who escaped. Is obsolete now, unseen, uninterpreted, having gathered enough manufactured scraps to contentedly erase myself from history. (Cheers.) Or maybe I am the revolution Benjamin was waiting for, (is a self-deprecating joke), who knows. …I am hardly alone.
You can be a ragpicker, but I think you can’t see the city from inside the walls. There needs to be some glimpse of sky mixed in. Or ocean, or fire, or (in Baudelaire’s terms), fils sacré du Soleil.
So back to you, Héraclite.
Small.
A long day. Supporting E. through pukesmas visit (a minor but unexpectedly painful procedure) and then a grueling day 2 of yoga, like there were weights on my hands and feet, my pain tolerance was low, my nerves already exhausted. The upside of a stiff day (like day 2) is that muscles are harder to injure. I pretended to be a boulder and rolled… through it. (The hot shower after, some comfort.)
There is a constant conversation between us about going to the doctor. I get scared thinking, about growing old here, in a rural area, the healthcare that will or won’t be available. I remind myself, it’s ok to be afraid. (But you don’t make life decisions based on fear.)
So, always looking for home remedies that work, rudimentary first aid, more advanced first aid, or herblore, also for witchcraft, which is good backup, and sometimes the only thing that works. Believe it or not, one of my most valuable (to my community) skills is that I can find ok health information on the internet. Enough to double-check doctors in most situations, to help people understand why they’ve been given different drugs, or help them figure out what they can or should eat. I’m the daughter of a nurse, I also communicate advice from my mom. (Nothing is, or ever feels like, enough.)
Here is reality, we have these chocolate waffles with extra “raw-tella” for dessert, so in the day’s economy of pain, we can possibly come out even. (If there is such a thing as an economy of pain.)
A trip to the local pukesmas (health center) reminds me what a privilege it is to have access e.g. to anaesthetic when somebody is cutting into you.
Cozy cactus.