The opening passage about sunrise on Mercury is very good: “The spill to left and right keeps spreading, farther than seems possible, until it is very obvious one stands on a pebble next to a star… The sight of it can strike thought clean out of your head.” (Reading 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.)
We’re losing Ibuk (my mother-in-law) to Alzheimer’s disease. Sometimes she whispers to me in basa Jawa and I just can’t understand. Sometimes the memories come skipping, tripping, flooding out of her, and my husband translates. Sometimes she wants to cry and be held, so I hold her, which doesn’t require words.
I feel very smug sitting in Mak Sun’s kitchen, eating krawu and trancam and mendol and tempe goreng, knowing that the best vegan food in Indonesia is to be found in kampung kitchens, cooked by mothers and grandmothers and offered freely to family. (Not in the trendy restos of Bali.)
Investing in artificial intelligence without believing in natural intelligence is modernity in a nutshell.
Writing (is) for strangers.
Java makes me feel foreign again, cozy and completely uncatered to.
Sounds of Java: growling engines, whining brakes; azan from the speakers of every masjid; dangdut on blast from a roadside warung; sawing and chirping of insects in the brush.
Never let anybody tell you where your breath should go. It doesn’t matter what famous gurus say. Yoga yamas, niyamas, asana are preparation for the revolutionary lesson of pranayama. There is no outside authority for the breath.
Wijaya kusuma, midnight diva.
One problem with re-interpreting traditional Sumba death rituals through digital multi-media is that the sacred beings involved might not like digital multi-media.
When an ant colony produces a flying swarm in your bedroom, (because they live in your cheap bamboo furniture), a good solution is to turn off all the indoor lights and turn on a bright outdoor light.
Then you sit in the dark and wait for them to leave.
Leonard Cohen’s middle to late catalogue continues to provide excellent commentary and companionship in these times.
Deep sleep last night with all that electricity in the sky. Thinking this morning about Shane MacGowan, some angel, as mosquitoes bite my hands, Jeki huddles in my lap, Lalah cries at snails. Nostalgia is a strange pleasure here, uneasy to hold, where even the seasons speak a different language.
Banana leaf after rain.
Must be a snake nest in the garden because the cats have caught three babies so far. Small, brown, narrow heads, E says not dangerous but how they rear their heads and face you off… Then I had a dream some deity, reflected shimmering gold and black, commanded I build it a temple. It was terrifying.
When it seems like a luxury but also like you need it, or you want it in a truly special way, then you make a religion out of it? A fabulous alibi for making beautiful things or a ruinous excuse or petty vanity. Or discovery of the sacred, or what is the difference between these things?
Yoga days 5 and 6 completed, I wanted to let you know, although family demands have temporarily disenabled writing. I was thinking how writing is a luxury, you can only do it if you have extra time. What that means is a mystery though. Extra means more than enough. Who has more than enough time?
Black ants on lemon leaves.
Was gently reminded by yoga day 4 that progress sometimes feels like confusion. Then Ish caught a baby monitor lizard right before headstand. Dangerous if they bite, I (sweaty) gingerly separated cats from lizard, wrangled lizard (alive) into a towel and deposited in the ravine. Savasana deserved.
A spell of rain before sunrise, just enough for the orchids. Last quiet day before E returns with Ibuk. Happy to see them but I savor today’s solitude, the no need to speak, how the words that come out are just for me. Or the cats. Or the fish in the pond, or Blih or Father, or Mbok A., or etc.