Everything we eat from bule restos here in Bali we put sriracha on, we have to or it doesn’t taste good. I didn’t used to need hot sauce on everything but all the foreigner-geared food tastes bland to me, I’m not sure if I changed or if the food changed, I think maybe I changed, or it could be both.
Lowest tide.
Started reading Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree. 📚 Looking for some literary xanax as E visits Java this week. Home alone with cats and a cup of peppermint tea during rainy season reading. Enjoyed the first book, so far this one (weird word usage?) has inner critic tweaking, hope it settles.
Ahh I spent years thinking the Indonesian word for “leak” is spelled “pojor” and today I learned it’s actually “bocor” and now I know that I know nothing.
Related: I (over-)use the words bocor (leak) and macet (traffic) to describe figuratively a broad range of situations (cf. poros and aporia).
Finished reading 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.📚 Expansive and thoughtful portrait of a post-Earth, post-capitalist artist. The evolution of art, history, psyche as ecosystems, animal/human bodies become products of human making. Replete with planetary science + extra-terran topographical poetry.
Blue sunset chill.
Pale sunrise.
How Not to Break
Σωκράτης: καλῶς γάρ, ὦ ἑταῖρε, λέγει.
Socrates: Beautifully said, fellow.
//
People forget the absolute confusion it would throw us into. Our poor hearts. To be flirted with by Socrates!
Everyone reacted in his own way. There were puppies, pitbulls and poodles among us, Siamese cats, golden retrievers, kosher beef hotdogs, poisonous spiders and slithering snakes, all electrified, burning cheeks, clammy hands, contemptuous coughs, eyes rolling exaggeratedly behind backs, tea-drinking, name-calling, note-taking, knowing looks, mistaken engagements, pregnant pauses, drunken outbursts, drunken confessions, drunken makeouts, sneaking sweets into pursed lips, so many petty jealousies you wouldn’t believe.
Backstabbing, frontstabbing, it got ugly, abusive. Nobody wanted to see himself like that. Some went abstract, algebraic, symbolic, tried to ignore it, tied their hands as they slept. It exhausted us all. Some dismissed her for it, pretended cute compliments were sarcastic slights, secret glances a lie, the multi-entendres a meaningless flourish, intellectual metaphor, performative bullshit, while sneaking behind bushes. Some named it irony, her beloveds and her beautifully saids, a great number of grown men turned theatrically, cartoonishly evil, sending pornography to professional inboxes, these are historical facts, they just broke.
From her simple, sweet flirtation: they broke.
The question was always, how not to break.
(Hold it together?) What does he want. (Does he want it from me?) What do I want. (Why do I want it?) Do I want to give. (Do I have what he wants?) Do I believe him. (Is it about sex?) The stimulation of bodies to pleasure, more pleasure, until lost in the pleasure. (Reforged in pleasure?) Is it empty or is it full. (It or me?) Am I safe or am I in danger. (Which is the one that holds me together?)
The heart becomes a gaping question.
After all, this is a rite of passage. Few of us pass. (Pass into what?) The beautiful is what we call it when someone just does.
//
Dreams.
Moonchild, mother of cats // “about”
Moonchild, mother of cats, mask-maker’s wife, call me Elizabeth, artist and poet and maker of things out of words, ashtanga yogini and translator of Plato’s Phaedrus, American woman living in Bali, Indonesia, with Javanese husband, E, my pronouns are as you/like it, I renounce my credentials, our religion is Islam, Eat, Pray, Love but in Ancient Greek, have I answered the question?, trying not or not trying or trying to be not clever, in person I come across as quiet, normal, a little weird/scary/oops?, but I believe in nature, and the Muse, and Durga, and Ganesha, and Barong, I am here for the god, and I play with ghosts, preferring the past because there is mystery in it, if you’ve seen the future the last thing you want is to talk about it, the sibyl knows, that’s why the drug, the rage, the singing, mermaid, unicorn, crone, weaving, unweaving, listening, practical stuff like gardening, herbs and vegetables and flowers and bugs, while there still are bugs, understanding this body, touching this earth, forgiving, grieving, loving, remembering, pictures, of cats
Bright hot.
After ogoh-ogoh, tomorrow will be Nyepi, Bali’s silent day. No electricity, no internet, no data, no leaving the house, no talking, enforced by pecalang (village police). A reminder to all on the island that no matter your business, it’s not as important as the silence. Selamat hari raya Nyepi✨
Giving birth to something evil. Ogoh-ogoh, Penestanan Kaja, girls’ team (3/3).
Ogoh-ogoh, Penestanan Kelod, boys’ team (2/3).
The monsters ran wild in Bali tonight. Ogoh-ogoh, Penestanan Kelod, girls’ team (1/3).
Mid-morning thunder.
The perpetual war between art and cats.
Where girls played in the sand.
Too many spider webs? Time for “spider liberation day”. Take a large coconut frond (or other stick with branches/leaves), gently sweep around the spider web corners. Hurry or they will drop threads and get on you! Take spider stick outside, leave in garden. Repeat as necessary, doesn’t kill spiders.
Burnt sunrise.