Happy New Year

Well Happy New Year, folks. I say this and despite being a lifelong New Years Scrooge. But I guess it's the thing to do. 

Despite the official ban on fireworks here in Bali, it is quite clear, at 8:00 p.m., that people intend to disregard this altogether. I have a good mind to call the local police, but I guess that wouldn't be very neighborly 😅 I suppose I should mind my own business (as if peace and quiet is not my business) and just watch something cheerful on TV, necessarily at loud volume. Something like The Walking Dead.

Best wishes for the year to come.

Flesh

What is crystal clear from the outset of David Szalay's novel Flesh is that Mr. Szalay has read a lot of Hemingway. What is equally clear is that he has utterly failed to understand how Hemingway Hemingway-ed. It's not a matter of short sentences. Szalay has that down. It's not a matter of terse dialogue, such as

Do you think so? 

Yeah. 

Really? 

Yeah. 

What? 

Yeah.

Sure.

Okay.

which, although unintentionally hilarious, does nothing to move the story along.

This is all tone and no intention. It is tone for the sake of tone, and it is silly. 

And it don't get much better from there, folks. 

Flesh is the story of an insensitive man of meager means who manages nonetheless to rise in the world by capturing the affection, for some ungiven reason, of a wealthy woman (or rather the wife of a wealthy man), and then fall again by his own clueless devices, whereafter, it is said, he lives alone. 

That's it? 

Yeah. 

Really? 

Sure. 

The most compelling question raised by this novel, in my mind anyway, is why it was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker prize. 

Brilliance on every page, the book cover blurb gushes. 

Well, I stuck with it, friends, to the dreary end. I kept waiting for the brilliance to show up. It never did. The author could have said the whole thing in a short short story and succeeded just as well at saying nothing at all.

Water Sports

Pouring down torrential rain nearly every hour of the day here in South Bali, accompanied of course by streaks of lightning and crashing thunder. I managed to get down to a cafe for coffee this morning, but as soon as I arrived the heavens opened again and the monsoon resumed. I was sitting outside at a table protected beneath the overhang at the roof, but the rain eventually got around that by coming in sideways so that ultimately my right arm and right pant leg were wet, the pages of my book were wet, my cigarettes were wet, and my coffee topped off with rain water. But I am both stubborn and lazy. I did not want to leave my spot and go inside the cafe, so I can't really complain. In any case, my attention was attracted by something else - - two nearly naked tourists, a woman in a bikini and a man in swim trunks, strolling along the sidewalk on the other side of the street, happy as clams. How about that! I guess when the water comes to you, you may as well swim.

Merry Christmas

Well, Merry Christmas everyone. 

As I have mentioned before, there is no Christmas to speak of in Indonesia, and yet I feel Christmas in my heart anyway. Although to be honest, I woke this morning in a bit of a Scroogy mood. Everyday now, for longer than I can remember, I awake with a numb left hand, and despite the numbness, the hand is also painful. I don't feel ready to get out of bed, and yet I can't go back to sleep with this dead hand at my side. So I spend a lot of time twisting myself in various positions in an attempt to return feeling to the hand, in which I am generally, eventually successful. By that time, however, I am fully awake and find no reason to remain in bed. My back as a whole is painful anyway, as is my neck, and so I drag myself out from under the covers and begin my day. 

A glass of water and medicine first, and then I open the door for the dogs, two of whom are usually waiting impatiently on the doorstep. Sometimes three. 

I turn on the TV, I prepare my instant oatmeal, and the dogs now impatiently wait for their milk. 

My plan for this Christmas Day is to go down to the mall later, which is fully open and offering various Christmas events such as carols and a chance to meet Santa Claus. Obviously, the mall caters to tourists in the sense, although of course Indonesians always enjoy a festive atmosphere, even if they don't know what they are being festive about. 

I will have my coffee and my pastry and finish my yearly reading of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Then I plan to wander about being festive like everyone else, being always mindful, as was Tiny Tim, of he "who made the lame beggars walk, and blind men see."

A Wonderful Life

Coming out of the Grand Lucky grocery store this morning, I was greeted by a violent downpour of rain, and so of course rather than swim over to my motorbike, I joined a line of smokers sheltering under the storefront roof. I found myself standing beside the same very tall man I had been standing behind in the grocery line. He was tall as well sitting down. 

"Would you like my seat?, he asked, starting to get up. 

" No, no, I'm fine."

(Gosh, how embarrassing it is to be so obviously old that a younger man offers his seat. But hey, I have my pride).

So I struck up a conversation. 

"What are you, about 6'5"?"

"6-6," he said. 

"Wow, that's tall."

"Yeah, especially here in Indonesia."

"Ha ha. Indeed." 

We exchanged a few common details after that. Where are you from? How long have you been here? And so on. As it turned out, the young man, maybe late twenties I figure, was from Syria.

"Well then you must be quite tall back home as well," I noted. 

"No,' he said. "I'm always the shortest one in any room." 

Holy cow! It's a nation of giants. Perhaps The offspring of the nephilim, who knows? 

Anyway, we continued our conversation about this and that, and it continued to rain, and eventually the conversation settled on how so many foreigners spend their time here complaining about everything. They complain about the traffic, they complain about the drivers, they complain about the culture and all of the ceremonies, they complain about the service, they complain that things are not the same as they are in their own countries. 

"They ought to be learning about the people, appreciating a different culture, respecting the traditions, opening themselves to other ways, he said. "Instead they complain."

Too true. I've seen this many times in my years here, even among foreign residents. Everything is better back home. Why then are they here? It's a puzzle. There are, as I told the young man, many foreigners here who just hang out in their own national groups, the French with the French, the Australians with the Australians, and so on. They don't learn the language, they don't join in the lifestyle. Their constant sport is simply complaining.

Well we moved on to how I had come to be here and to the various countries we had visited, including Japan, and also China, where he had studied language. He teaches language back in Syria. 

"How did you like Hong Kong?, he asked. "Did you get to see much of it while you were there." 

"I'm sure I did," I answered, "although it's not like I can remember much. I remember enjoying myself. But my girlfriend planned the whole thing, so we were back and forth and up and down and who knows where." 

"Your girlfriend from here?"

"Yes. Java."

At this he smiled approvingly. 

"You have a great life, Sir." 

The rain had now ceased, and the giant man offered his giant hand for me to shake. 

Folks, we are all the same. Most of us are just the same, wanting to connect, seeing one another as fellow human beings. The haters would like us to see things differently. They would like to pit us against one another with lies and fables and accusations, relying on a lack of actual knowledge and experience. But don't let the haters win. That's my Christmas message. We have so much more in common than they would like us to think. 

It is indeed a wonderful life.

Stormy Weather

We've had a week of stormy weather here in South Bali. Really fantastically stormy weather. I'm talking like end of days type storms, blinding lightning and deafening thunder, driving winds and slashing rains. Pretty exciting stuff, except for the dogs. The dogs do not find this exciting. They find it terrifying. And so, terrified, they showed up at my house - - shivering and shaking, wild-eyed, teeth chattering. Lol. They congregated in my house, finding individually a corner to hide in - - Otis at the back of the house between the wall and the bed, Jagger in his usual place beneath the drapes by the rear window, Loki in the bathroom. Even Puyuh showed up, which is unusual, because she is not generally in the habit of coming here, nor is she even very friendly with me. But this storm called for desperate measures, and Puyuh, a big yellow-furred, usually fearless female, rushed into the house just as wild-eyed and panicked as the others, and decided that her place was by the arm of my sofa, where my own arm was readily available for comforting her. I never much liked Puyuh beforehand, and she never much liked me, but I guess a good storm has a way of bringing folks together. 

A Final Word

All colors and blends of Americans have somewhat the same tendencies. It's a breed -- selected out by accident. And so we're overbrave and overfearful - - we are kind and cruel as children. We're overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We're oversentimental and realistic. We are mundane and materialistic -- and do you know of any other nation that acts for ideals? We eat too much. We have no taste, no sense of proportion. We throw our energy about like waste. In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture. 

--East of Eden, John Steinbeck 

It has been written that John Steinbeck considered East of Eden his crowning achievement, and in my mind he was quite right in thinking so, and I am so glad to have finally, after 71, nearly 72 years, to have gotten around reading it through.ll Then again, maybe I was not remiss or lazy in the past. Maybe this has been the proper time to read the book, because you have to be patient, you have to be focused, and you have to have, perhaps, some of the experience of life under your belt to fully digest and appreciate what is being said. 

Of course, it is hard to compare vastly dissimilar efforts in literature. East of Eden is one thing - - very long, sprawling, complex--while titles such as Cannery Row, Sweet Thursday, Of Mice and Men are as sharp and focused as one of Muhammad Ali's left jabs. I loved those brilliant short novels as well. But pressed to choose, I do conclude that East of Eden is Steinbeck's masterpiece.