“Luckily we thlop-thlopped,” // or, And then there was the drive home.
I preface this to say we made it back safely. Also to warn you that this is a long read. Then also to say that history is complicated and sometimes offers no life lessons. Life is not always an Aesop’s fable! (Well, what is it then?) Yesterday, it was an (euphemistically) eventful drive home.
First, I hit a giant pothole and blew out a tire.
//
No wait, let me back up. First, we woke up before dawn (this happens without an alarm here, for me, if not for E) to walk along the beach during and after sunrise.
(What follows is a sneaky-peeky “behind the scenes” of the blog, and I will share things I typically would not make explicit. These are things anbody should be able to gather from following my blog, I guess. Here is a rule I find myself trying to follow, although I’m not sure it makes sense, of not writing things out if they can be easily inferred. Or mis-inferred, in ways that are interesting or useful, to me. From my perspective, this is just good editing. The problem is, it seems a perpetual project every time. My chiselling process somehow follows its own rule. The longer I “sit in front of” a piece of my writing, the more likely it ends up in metered verse. I’m not making that up. I’m in fact resisting it, now.
So forgive me if the following seems pretty obvious. If not now, it will be soon. And I’ll forgive you, as well.)
You see, I have a “beach habit”, I guess you could call it, of taking pictures with the phone. It’s a little obsessive. Every time the light or the clouds or the water or the earth changes, at the beach, I feel quite compelled to take pictures of it. “I feel like Allah is giving these gifts, and I have no choice but to pick them up,” is how I said it to my husband. “Just dropping them down, and what can you do? You have no choice.” (Incidentally, this is the kind of talk that puts him in a husbandly way. That is, speaking in euphemisms. Happy V-day again!) And it feels like meditating, in the sense that, to let myself take those pictures is to let myself be absorbed in this near-“steady state” of constant wonder at the apparent world.
(I assume this is a commonly-experienced thing. On the other hand, that assumption seems somewhat tyrannical of me. Everybody’s different, if not unique. Who I am to say?)
One of my favorite things is to try to catch the shifts and the relationships (of light, I guess, also elements) in (iphone) photos. I’ve tried before to do it with our “real camera”, but these days I can’t bring myself to enjoy that. Something about the limitations of the iphone make it less intimidating, maybe less complicated than the camera. Less pretense at a profession. Anyway, I also enjoy the photo editing process. (I use Lightroom but seek recommendations for open-source or independent apps that would deliver the same kind of thing.) After return, I will be similarly obsessed, or “spend time” concentrating on the relationships between light in its different meanings, in the frame. Figuring out by experiment what I can change, in the editor, in order to bring out the gift of the image. To meet my eyes. I’m still not sure how “seriously” I take it. I consider myself a lover of images, rather than an “artist” (without a “sophistical” camera, lol). Maybe that’s a way to put it.
But then maybe, if it were stripped of the blogger’s ego, that’s what a (written) blog could be too. I’ve mentioned before on here my aspiration for amateur-ism (oxymoron there, oops). Then I might amend it to: I am a lover of images of nature. But what I mean by that would require a very long explanation, including making it clear that I don’t exclude human things from nature, at all. Justice bleeds in, and then everything (through dialectic) becomes inquiries into causes. When the whole point was for a moment not to be Aristotle, but in a way that Aristotle might enjoy. (That would have been his teacher’s task.) So I guess it’s (the photo habit) a small offering out of love for the apparent. Or picking up (as many as I can) these dropped-off gifts of Allah. Other things could also be interpreted in that light, many of them, or possibly everything ever made, by humans, or by anyone else who ever makes.
The point is, I took some more pictures the morning before we left, as one way of saying goodbye. There will be plenty of ocean vibes on the blog over the next however long, weeks or months, as I work through these beach photos. This is how we make time, on the blog, (spending and making time is the blog’s whereto and wherefrom), so yes, Ocean is one of our seasons. (I should make a category and possibly a photo collection for Ocean. It’s not exactly easy to hunt down all these old posted beach pics, from before I had named categories. I guess I should go back in blog-time and bestow upon them their rightful associations. Gather them in harnessable groups. Maybe make a collection for each year? It will take me a minute to figure that out. So many of these normally edited-out inner monologues are strictly bureaucratic. One almost doesn’t have time… except of course, one does. One has all the time.) These photos could last through Cancer, though it’s impossible to be sure. Anyway, Ocean season has returned to the valley below.
//
So we ate our guesthouse breakfast, (veg nasi goreng with plenty of golden-fried tempe, sederhana dan lezat), packed the car, checked out, said our goodbyes and pulled out of the parking lot.
Next, we stopped on the way out of town to get the most amazing tofu bao either of us ever had. These were the kind of dreamy flavor and texture combination that only asian street food can come up with, it reminded me of Singapore. A common response was “Is this dessert or what?” which just means it is irrational and delicious.
(If you are reading this, and ever plan a trip to Bali, no, I won’t name or endorse places on the blog. Bali is dying from tourism, at least, faster than it’s dying from anything else. The last thing this island needs is more advertising hype, in any way, shape, or form. I lay a curse on Instagr-m for this, and all the location-tagging photo-based social media apps. But I would give recommendations by email, so please be in touch. With the caveat that our favorites are the best for us, and not necessarily the best for others.)
Anyway, we picked up some tofu bao for takeaway, along with two chocolate peanut butter banana smoothies, figuring we’d have a nice little meal at a scenic stop along the way.
In any event, we were certain sooner or later to get hungry.
//
Now back to the pothole and me busting the tire.
In my defense. This was bad luck combined with the terrible condition of the two-lane road along the northeast coast. Which is riddled with deep holes, the result of overloaded trucks driving on poorly-laid asphalt, I think? Anyway, in some places it’s like driving on asphalt honeycomb. Usually one can see them in advance and slow to a crawl, so as not to break things. But there I was, passing a local motorbike, at a reasonable speed, in a completely normal maneuver. Being never the fastest, never the slowest, but somewhere in the middle. (It’s not like I was taking an opportune nap. The reins were held not by another’s hands.) And suddenly there was a great gaping hole in the middle of the road. It happened to be right where I was passing. It was disguised by a joint in the asphalt, I think. I was paying more attention to the motorbike on my left and the (distant) oncoming traffic, these other very pressing concerns. I didn’t see the hole in time to avoid. It was ther-KLUNK, and the-whole-car-shakes, sounding like pieces.
And, Oof.
Luckily we thlop-thlopped to a stop right across from a bengkel. We had a spare tire in the trunk and let the mechanic change it for us. (“Contributing to the local economy,” I could call it, whereas E calls it “making friends”.) We “lost” maybe an hour and a half.
I spent a lot of that time watching some chickens in a lovely grove of rambutan trees. Right next to the road, located in the rear of (what seemed like) a large Balinese estate. The tranquility of this place was somewhat surreal. It immediately bestowed calm. The trees were tall, the shade was dense, the ground was covered in brown leaf litter. The sound of chickens scratching, for grubs and bugs, was soft and intermittent in the muffled quiet. Like a cathedral. They seemed happy and peaceful chickens, especially compared to our rowdy bunch. I watched them while drinking my delicious chocolate, banana, peanut butter, coconut cream smoothie. All the ingredients of which were probably grown on this island.
After a while, the car was ready to go. We said our thank yous and our goodbyes, then pulled back onto the road.
//
What happened next was not our fault. At all. I am pinning fault on the app, and okay, perhaps our decision to follow the app. But one really has to side-eye G–gle maps, which fails to differentiate between passable and impassable (by car) roads when it tells you where to go. I’m sure there have been worse examples than ours. It doesn’t really matter what the cause of this kind of error is, in terms of flawed data collection (racist or sexist stereotypes, etc). Trusting this thing will lead you all kinds of un-fortuitous places.
After the blowout, and a break from driving while they switched our tire, I was back behind the wheel. E isn’t enthusiastic about mountain driving, so he navigated. When at some point we made a turn that bore no official signage, we noticed, but we didn’t think to question it. And not for the first time in Bali, but for the first time with me behind the wheel, G–gle directed us onto a “shorter route”. As we would discover, the “shorter route” ended up being an unmaintained treck intended only for motorbikes. We navigated the Dr. Seussian mountain passages with just barely enough room for our tires to squeeze between asphalt edges. The roads were bare pretense fumbling away into nothingness. Thereby I gained plenty of practice, this drive, with “lumayan hardcore” mountain driving. Downshifting into first to manage hairpin turns on hard inclines, wheel placement to avoid the most catastrophic holes, downshifting into first to claw through the unavoidable holes, praying through the sickly whirr of traction-less tires, facing sky or pavement, and squeezing past oncoming drivers, where there is no shoulder. There is only STEEP, blood-curdling DEATH to either side.
Let me tell you, dear blog reader. Our Honda Jazz is no hardtop Jeep. And I am not a Bromo driver. (Those guys are suicidal? And usually drunk? Rumor has it. And now I know why! E says this road was about as difficult as the road we turned back from, when we drove around Tengger. I couldn’t believe that, I was too concentrated on driving to look and be freaked out. Un-filtered side-note, this gives a clue the degree to which my fear of that was a fear of not being in control.)
Music, of course, was not happening. But in process, I talked through it. I reassured my husband and myself at every turn that we were aman. Even when the engine overheating light came on, I kept pretty cool. (E said it’s ok, we’re almost to the top.) Even when I caught a glimpse of the peak that was our destined passage, seeming still so far above our heads. It was some hollowed-out, long-abandoned villa, a roofless, vine-entangled ruins, on a perch that could only have been conceived by an unregulated and out-of-control tourist industry. Insane. Even when I felt the Jazz shuddering with apprehension beneath my feet, I brought the car around the next turn.
(As for going back. The road was too skinny to turn around. And the only thing scarier than going up these ridges was the thought of crumbling back down, in reverse.)
What did I see, oh Muse, and what did I miss? There were cliffside cabbage patches and lush beds of kale terraced into these mountains, geometrically-planted rows of carrots and potatoes blanketing the valleys below. There were misty clouds concealing almost every precipice, and quaint villages nestled into precarious edges of the abyss. The locals stared, but then smiled and waved back, when we smiled and waved, saying, “Sugre!” (We saw a few working farm trucks, which gave some hope that it would be possible to get through on four wheels. Maybe not by me, but at least by local drivers who call these highlands their home.) We saw ancient Hindu temples, looming in the cloud, vibrant with moss over complex Balinese brickwork. Things were set like jewels into improbable places. These visions would have been breathtakingly beautiful, had my breath not been already utterly took by dread and grim necessity. We could not stop, let alone turn around. The only way out would be up, around, over, and through.
We pressed on, driving sky-ward, as having no other choice.
By the time we curlicued our way out of the absolutely beautiful and yet idiotic Googlian shit-cut, of course my entire body was shaking. I felt ready to collapse into a puddle of whimpers. The final reunion with the main road consisted of a dead stop at a steep uphill turn. And, oh! One last face-full of sky. My nerves (plus the Jazz) were at our final raw edge as I plunged us up into first and around onto the blessedly solid, freshly-painted pavement. Ahh, the main road. The hairpin turns would be navigable, and built for two-wheel drive, four-wheeled vehicles, again.
The rest would be easy, or that’s what I anticipated.
And it really was!
//
Save for one last adventure. Which was, by then I really needed to pee.
We were still far from any mini marts, everything was at best a warung (which don’t normally have public toilets, only private homes, and I was in no state to be a houseguest). Also, the local village seemed strangely infested with flies. They were everywhere, buzzing and crawling all over the human buildings. Anyway, I was in no mood for a local toilet, plus I was wearing full-length pants, which invariably get wet in local toilets. Call me high maintenance, but all I wanted was some privacy behind a bush. Away from human habitation, immersed in greenery.
The first place we pulled over, looking for the right spot, I got chased by dogs. They growled and barked at (poor) me, just trying to be alone. Rawr, I almost barked back! But snarling wild dogs are scarier than pissing my pants, so having secured my modesty, I skipped and hopped back into the car.
I drove us around a few more turns, and pulled over at a sharp enough curve that the car itself, and some well-placed grass, hid me from view of the road. Oh blessed curvy road and tall grass, my cozy cave of green. There, squatting in the shelter of the ever-faithful Jazz, with E standing guard, and gazing up at an elevated terrace of trellised grape vines, it really was heaven. I could finally relax. (The Jazz could relax too! And cool off her engine.) If I measured these things, I think I would say without a doubt. It was the best pee I’ve ever had.
As I got behind the wheel again, those angry dogs showed up. They had chased us down the road. This is typical, Bali dogs don’t play. (I guess they don’t like strangers peeing in their territory either, oops.) The dog snapped and howled at my driver’s side window. But I was inside, we were finished.
E hopped back in the car. We shooed away the dogs and drove away.
//
Finally, we felt good and ready for the rest of the drive home. But first!
A reward, for making it through. We pulled over in the next mini mart parking lot. (There were no scenic views left. After all that, our priority had become stable concrete.) Upon noticing that the front of the mini mart was crawling with flies. – (Again, what is this? Is it the fertilizer the local farmers are using? Is it cow shit? We live near cows, and surrounded by farms, but nothing happens like this. Is it a poorly-placed garbage dump? Or something more sinister? I worry about large-scale farming setups that overwhelm the local ecosystem. It’s probably that. But we really don’t know. Strangely, the flies seemed attracted to glass and plexiglass surfaces, like windows. There were no flies at my heavenly grassy bend in the road.) – So at the mini mart, we decided to keep the car doors and windows closed. We were fully furnished (by E, not me. I’m in charge of toiletries, clothes, electronics) with alcohol spray and napkins. And we sat inside the Jazz and ate our tofu bao. They were soft and pillowy on the outside, the insides sweet deep-fried caramel chili perfection, hiding mildly-cheesy tofu, with crisp carrot-daikon pickles, crushed peanuts and coriander leaf, incredibly delicious.
After that, the rest of the way home was blessedly easy. A little rainy, no problem. The roads were clear, with not very much traffic, and the car drove fine. A bonding experience with the little Jazz, who has probably taken over blog vehicular duties from Sweet Orange. (Thanks for the memories, dear, animated Sweet Orange.) We’ll take the little Jazz in for maintenance and get the ripped-up tire replaced. Perhaps we’ll upgrade to tires with more traction. Next time driving that route, we’ll pay less attention to the app and watch for official route signage. I think that’s the best solution? To avoid the remote, unmaintained roads. And stick with the official, unmaintained roads. Lol. I love Indonesia!
//
Wrapping up, I found myself reaching for reflections, and had to slap back my own hand. If there was a lesson here to learn, I do hope we’ve learned it. (F-ck tech it isn’t. The above is such a victory for the Jazz, it may as well be called “the Jazziad”. But please not “the Jazzidy”.) Like picking up these dropped gifts of Allah, because what else can you do? Catching the images, as having no choice. Maybe there’s no learning sometimes, only history and the fact of it having happened. As E pointed out, “you got us home safe. Everything in the end was aman. And what’s most important is love.”
(He also speculated that his wife might get addicted to mountain driving. The possibility cracked us up. It hadn’t occurred to me until he mentioned it, but I won’t say it’s impossible. Who am I to place such limits on myself?) Love is, in no small way, sharing in the creation of euphemisms.
Regardless of all that, the cats were happy to see us. Ismail yelled with anger / whiny relief, Lalah hid / came out / hid / came out again, in histrionic excitement, and Sri Rejeki got super-puffy / nearly catatonic with joy. And Alhamdulillah, we were happy to see the cats too.
The end.
//
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌖
Two year anniversary ♥️
I am the difficult daughter; // I am also a grateful wife.
Not just moving to the other side of the world, (and converting to Islam, from a Presbyterian family), but my mother has to learn a whole other calendar if she wants to wish us a happy anniversary. I explain it again this year. “It’s the first full moon after lunar new year, Mom.” “Okay. So next year it will be on…” She looks up the date. It’s also the last full moon before the holy month of Ramadan. But I don’t tell her that because it wouldn’t be helpful.
If I were a character in a novel, these would be external analogues for internal structures, helpful signs for a reader, to give a good idea. Of all the boundaries I’ve traversed, all the rivers crossed without knowing a way back, (well, literally oceans). Growing always farther away from whatever it was we could never call home.
They are that, for us, but they’re also insistently concrete obstacles. Distances not easily traversed, even by plane. Family with brown skin and kinky hair. (“What do people in Indonesia look like?” my grandmother asked. We both knew what she meant. There was no simple answer to her loaded question.) Laws and customs that repel. (“Muslims are required by their religion to commit acts of terrorist violence,” my father stubbornly held. The immovable rock face of a cliff. In what must have been one of our last conversations.) Altogether different measurements of time.
When I do think about it (I usually don’t), I like to think I’m inviting my mother on an adventure she was never quite daring enough to undertake, by herself (for herself). And all of these things become rites of passage for almost anyone who would ever know or love me. Everyone except for one person. And tonight is our night.
We sit in beach chairs and the frothy tide swirls beneath us, bypassing the sand-inundated sea wall. Then we secure our flip-flops (at some distance) and walk in up to our knees. Sometimes feeling like this rough surf, the bulging swell of a stormy spring tide, pressing always further in than before. (We had submerged ourselves this morning. It had still been pretty rough, we had gone just far enough in for melukat.) Fighting to keep steady. Watching her approach. Wondering when it would be that a person becomes too difficult to go in. Too tumultuous, even for melukat. (What would be the measure?) Wondering if there is such a thing, as “too difficult”.
(We doubt there will be such a thing. Perhaps this doubt is our unshakable faith.)
The waves are taller than we are now, billowing walls of ravenous white under the bright moon. They gobble away the sand. It’s become a steep incline. They come further than you expect, every once in a while making great splashing displays against the sea wall, behind you now. But don’t look away. For they pull back and cling to the earth as they go, drawing everything under and in, sucking at your calves, catching you off-guard. One balances, expands to receive it. A constant calling to be re-absorbed.
The moon has illuminated the sky in dappled ivory edges against misty midnight black. In the pattern of a wild celestial animal. Arcing over us, the body of Nut. Our eyes widen; we are syncretic by nature. We seek the correspondence between Luna and Ocean, learning by as many senses as can be roused. This one here, together with that. This endless appetite, for all the Earth, planets and stars. We stretch out toward the end of a temporal chain. We will be there too; we also correspond.
Alhamdulillahirabbilalamin.
Selamat purnama. 🌕
//
Arrived safely to a moody mother. Well, she’s swallowed most of the beach. No place left for early morning boys. Unusual winds. Churning, charging white water, crashing like thunder against the sea wall. Shimmering, shuddering black under gibbous moon.
Assalamu’alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌖
Anticipating ocean. // Speaking of water, we’re off to the seaside today. For the first time the app calculates the northern route will be faster (I guess traffic in Gianyar and Karangasem has gotten that bad). So we drive up through jungly ravines to the Kintamani highlands, clockwise around Batur, then head southeast along the coast. Only a three-hour journey but good to get through the hairpin turns while everything’s still fresh.
And meanwhile, we can’t wait to hear the tide. Then to step in moving water and feel it on our feet. The gritty sand, the drowned seaweed smell, the salt-sticky wind from a steady horizon. How our hair will turn perfectly crunchy as we fall into hypnagogic states of contentment. (E packed the ukulele.) Right before leaving on these trips to the coast, there is a peak of longing, like we can’t carry even one more orphan inhalation. Like we’re running home to mother.
And then we were darkness comprised of crickets,
Resident textures of stars, witness to
Unbound interiors, and delivered by
The same face-dispersing name as ever.
Our watery roots.
Y’all were louder than the chickens today —
But no hard feelings. Just measured words, and patient
Preening to wax away the feathered nerve.
Soft clucks will mend, with flock tucked-in, the hearts
Of beleaguered and yet good-natured birds.
Half-light sheds taste on full insanity;
Pale lemon slice atop smoked opium tea.
🌓
Early V-day celebration, here. //
Relief and relief and more relief, now ready for rest and (rest-enforcement and) healing. With no artful way to say this, but I feel immensely proud of my husband. Today, I know no other feeling as simple as that.
Spending all day in (traffic or in) hospital waiting rooms. Ahead of time, I envisioned reading and/or writing, while there. Lol. I didn’t realize (or I had forgotten) how absorbing, distracting, draining it is, to witness all these hospital feelings: pain, fear, anxiety, of patients and family members, the humiliation of being treated as an institutionalized body — subject to poking, injecting, cutting, stitching, by no agreed-upon schedule — rather than as a person. And of course, relief.
It was a minor surgery ward, serving routine procedures, so none of the afflictions were life-threatening. The worst was a child who had double infected pilonidal cysts (these are located in the crease between buttocks). It was ultimately not serious but surely uncomfortable, and he was afraid to go in for his procedure. Poor little guy. (If only one could transform into Robin Williams at just the right moment.) The dad kept reassuring him the surgery would make it feel better, (one feels for both child and parent in these situations), and it did. Or at least, the last we saw of him, (post-op), he had stopped crying and was deeply engrossed in his dad’s smartphone. That seems a pretty good use for a smartphone, at least.
E made friends with the dad when he (E) and the child were both still drunk off sedation. (After garbling some words about remembering toothpaste, and how much he loved me, and inviting his surgeon to our place, for coffee, inexplicably in slurred English: “I’m serious, doctor.”) The usual conversation ensued, where are you from, and where are you from, then running through contacts in those places, checking whether any are shared. People always know other people’s people, in Indonesia. Although it’s a more sprawling and diverse country than any other I’ve been to, (over seventeen thousand islands, speaking over seven hundred living languages, spanning China-vast distances), it quickly becomes a very small world.
Then, the zany fun of babysitting him, as he insisted we stop for celebratory dinner on the way home. Apologizing to our server (all the wait staff here know us, except for this new one who took our order tonight. But well, he knows us now) for oddly-mumbled jokes (“do either of you have any allergies?” me: “nope!” him, again in slurred English: “I’m allergic to bad people”… crickets… “aku allergi dengan orang jahat”… crickets… “I wanna lie down”) and too much giggling between us. Explaining, (as if it could be at all reassuring, to this studious newbie), that we had just come from the hospital, and he was still drunk on ketamine. (I don’t know if that’s what it was.) But not to worry, (and I let myself really smile, which felt like the first time in quite a long time), because everything was just fiiiiine.
A couple of middle-aged goofballs acting like (high) teenagers. And what was my excuse? The leftover green tea I gulped down before we went in, in a last-ditch effort not to fall asleep. (I haven’t gone back to coffee, since the flu. I wonder how long that will last.) But really, my excuse was relief. My relief at his relief. My relief at his being ok.
So my eyelids drooped heavily as we neared home, (I’ve become much more comfortable/reckless, with the driving, and I had some more green tea), where we settled in, as if for the rest of our lives. So as not to tempt fate, one fears to say these things out loud. Love is ever a fool’s courage. But how perfect is it, that vasectomy day would end up being more romantic than anything we’ve ever actually planned?
Next week, InsyaAllah, we’re off to the ocean again. Maybe for another footsie photo-op. And our anniversary, which is on the full moon.
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🌘
The apps forecasted silence, now tonight
The sky brings thunder. Hurricane or drought,
Sheer element’s beyond us, but not quite:
To make it rain, just leave the laundry out.
These complaints that barely taste displeasure
Are precious and I hope to remember them.
Like 90% of the words I’ve learned in Javanese I’m not allowed to say.
(The solution to the aforementioned was to bring out the ukulele.)
“Why won’t you sing me a song?
I miss your voice.”
(I love your voice.)
“Everyone else’s voice is a cartoon
Compared to yours.”
//
“Why are you always why why why?”
“Because I’m your why why wife.“
//
Temple clearing.
Students in submission. //
A difficult conversation, a revelation. So much (of reading this book) depends on acknowledging, wrestling, reconciling, releasing—-the impotence of outward-turning.
Inspired by the treatment of Sufism in KSR’s Red Mars series, (sci-fi and Islam: who knew?) I finally went looking. I found Allah’s servant, Ahmed Hulusi. Alhamdulillah, I believe he is much that I have needed as a guide to the Quran.
Always humbling, in a moment of seeking, to discover just the voice that connects your outer pieces and draws you deeper in.
“It’s a Farsi poem by Jalaluddin Rumi, the master of the whirling dervishes. I never learned the English version very well—
’I died from a mineral and plant became,
Died from the plant, took a sentient frame;
Died from the beast, donned a human dress—
When by my dying did I ever grow less . . .’“Ah, I can’t remember the rest. But some of those Sufis were very good engineers.”
(A Rumi reference, from Green Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson.)
Of course they are well-prepared for Mars. Mars is ever-singing in the Sufi heart.
After eighteen days on a convalescent diet, I finally got my veggie burger tonight. Beet-lentil burger with purple sauerkraut and charcoal mayo, roasted sweet potato wedges, and a creamy durian smoothie. I am full of flavor-colors.
From a fruitful exchange. I propose “a seed” as a self-incarnating teacher of divine mystery.
(Then to follow the seed back into its sleep, as to dream.)
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu.
Tonight, as begins a new lunar year.
I see there is beauty (also) in your invisibility.
Alhamdulillahirabbilalamin. 🌘🌑🌒
Xenia on the Internet
Another way to think about this is as being a good guest.
For example. I am a stranger and a guest in Indonesia, the country where I live, so I am obliged to respect the boundaries of a guest. It is not (it can’t be) my business to go shouting in streets, making trouble, about Indonesian governance. I’m not a citizen, I cannot (expect the right to) vote. It’s not my work here to castigate people or their customs. (I would be an asshole if I did. And end up in prison.) If I really don’t like it, what I can do is leave.
Consider. The internet would be a much better “place” if everybody treated it as not-their-own-house. If we acted like guests. (Many “here” already sense this, I think, and follow the custom.) The fact of the matter is that nobody knows whose house they are in, in a literal way. The written words you type into your keyboard, in your own house, will appear in unknown countries and unknown houses. Maintaining awareness of that is the basic etiquette of a guest.
However. This is not about “being genteel” or saying “tut-tut”. This is not about avoiding politics. Far from it, this is itself a political stance, and reflects a serious political need. It’s the basis of diplomacy. As a sacred observance, it guarantees sanctuary in a temple or church. To be a good guest is to acknowledge the limits of one’s own knowledge and reputation. It is careful comportment with respect to the unknown. Practically speaking, it’s the basis for traveling and meeting people outside city walls (or national borders). For visiting foreign countries, and hosting foreigners at home. These are the ancient rules of ξενία (xenia), or guest-friendship.
I propose. A hospitable social media platform shouldn’t be governed, in the sense of a neighborhood jurisdiction, as an attempt at community. It should model itself on a guesthouse, at an internet crossroads. Like an inn or a caravanserai. To be sure, the atmosphere can be friendly and welcoming. It will have its longterm or familiar denizens. It may be a convivial place to share news, political views, feelings, artworks, or other ideas, to catch up on gossip, or just to say hi, and yet it remains as a hub of the ungovernable. Not all guests share the same creed or commitments. They may convene in clubs or cliques, or keep to themselves in the shadows. Some things are confined to more “private quarters”, like private notes, emails, or the blog.
Of course, not everything is permitted. When “the law of the land” and the etiquette (or inhibitions) of guests aren’t enough to enable sanctuary, a guesthouse needs to enforce its own rules, in violation of which users may be blocked or kicked out. Even so, unlike those of a political jurisdiction, the rules of a guesthouse are not written to exclude the unknown, the stranger, or the refugee. They cannot demand political allegiance without defeating their purpose. This is so especially in times of civil conflict, when misinformation is rife, and all are on paranoid lookout for mere signs (which are inherently fallible, and not the substance) of enmity.
The purpose of guesthouse rules is to preserve a limited and special kind of peace. Peace maintains the viability of the guesthouse, as a business, the provision of its guests, and the very possibility of (the “open web” as) travel.
Travel is essential to Xenia, who takes on spiritual countenance as host of the politically homeless. She is the honesty of outlaws, the unspoken agreement of (quality) pirates and thieves, and the pious duty of every anarchist. (She also transgresses the limits of deified gender, appearing both as Zeus and Athena.) Then, there is her enemy. The outlawing of travel, in all of its psycheic (intellectual, political, and poetic) senses, (including translation), is the essence of illiberality. It is the attempt to expunge Life. This is fascism, at its very core.
Xenia, therefore, is an organizing element of antifascism. It would be valuable as a principle of the “open web”. It can be a business model, a public good, or a piety, depending on perspective and motivation. No matter the political commitments of its keeper or guests, longterm or transient, the internet guesthouse has a higher duty to guest-friendship. It can host neither fascism, nor the war.
//
Looking around the neighborhood, // as witness to the wreckage. A place where a hurricane has just passed through. The shock of sudden emptiness. The lonely breeze, the shimmering-shift of sun. The broken words, the walking wounded, aimlessness.
The wondering what or who comes next.
That’s what I was thinking, feeling rather sad. Then I realized that what I beheld was the outcome of something epic, and perhaps, essential. It was the making (and the being made) of real decision. It was spirit (as civilization, as culture) in motion. It was human being chewed up in the great grinding maw of dialectic. It passed right over us, the eye of the storm.
We were tested. And we survived.
//
Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu. 🕊️