Jowls

I looked in the mirror last night--always inadvisable--and noticed that I am developing jowls. Some men develop their biceps, some their thigh muscles or calves. Some even develop their minds. I develop jowls. And apparently I didn't even have to try. Or at least I'm not aware of having done so.

I have also developed a complete row of bottom teeth. Ah, but I brag. I cannot take credit for these teeth. They were in fact fashioned by a dental lab, after several weeks of sitting in the dentist chair for a series of gooey molds. And (again, looking in the mirror), it strikes me that the jowls, however regrettably so, look more natural on a man my age than the row of straight, white, gleaming teeth.

But of course the purpose of these things is to chew, which I hope they will do at least after a moderately useful fashion once my gums adapt to the hard lower edges of the appliance.

 

This, That, and the Other Thing

Having a lot of trouble with my shoulder and back for the last week. It's a recurring problem. I just don't know why it suddenly gets worse than usual. I did some stretching exercises, but that seems to have made it worse yet. The only other intervention that I know of is methylprednisolone, which I try to take only very sparingly, as it exacerbates the problem with my stomach and could, if used too often, do a real number on the stomach.

The traffic in Bali is rather heavy today, which we have not seen in quite some time, due to voluntary lockdown. There are still very few businesses open, so I don't know where everyone is going. Heading for the hills? Or maybe they're just trying to get out of the house for a change. But the beaches are still closed, so they're certainly not going there. The grocery stores are open of course, and some eating warungs are open (for the brave).

You know, the people in the complex where I live are quite careful about wearing a mask, some seeming to wear it all the time, and not going out very much, and yet they all order warung food to be delivered by Gojek. Seems a bit counterintuitive to me.

In the meantime, my new kost (apartment) is very nearly finished. AC installed today. Hot water already in. Kitchen nearly done (they still need to move the sink to an accessible spot on the counter). Electric all hooked up. Sometime later (after I actually move in), Louis will arrange the landscaping in the front and the dry garden in the back.

So I have told the owners here that I will definitely be gone by June. It has been a long (longer than expected) process, which was originally to have been finished by early March. I don't relish the idea of actually moving (packing, carrying, rearranging, etc.), but there seem to be sufficient helpers lined up, we have plenty of time to get ready, and I am certainly hoping that it will all proceed more smoothly than the disaster of last year's move). As it is, I can't lift anything anyway, so I will certainly need the help.

Critter

Yesterday evening I was having a cup of tea and a smoke out on the porch when my peace was suddenly interrupted by the flying entry of an enormous bug which made a couple of wobbly circles of the immediate area, crashed into a wall, and landed on its back on my tea table. I took this at first to be a cockroach, for, as people familiar with cockroaches will know, the things often end up on their backs, unable to turn themselves over again. It was, however, the most enormous cockroach I had ever seen. Note: I am both fascinated and terrified by giant bugs. So I took a photo of the critter and posted in on Facebook, where one reader commented that this was not a bug at all but a small mouse. A flying mouse? No, I don't think so. As it happens, a friend here had also just recently posted regarding an infestation of a certain flying beetle in Bali and included a photo in his post. Ah ha, that was it! This was not a cockroach at all, but a beetle. Not as bad as a cockroach, but still not someone I enjoy having tea with. In any case, when I went into my room to post my own photo, the critter somehow regained its feet and was gone by the time I returned to the porch.

 

Jesika

I don't like videocalls. They make me feel nervous and uncomfortable. Conversations feel stilted, interrupted by the video itself. I dunno, maybe it's just my age. It's funny, when we were young (or rather when I was young), the idea of a videocall was alluring science fiction. It did not necessarily seem that it would actually be a real thing. It was for secret agents and spacemen. Now that it is here, many of us avoid it. I avoid videocalls. At the very suggestion, I change the subject.

For young people, it is the norm. Of course we're doing a videocall. What other kind is there?

Texting. In fact, I prefer texting.

Nonetheless, a certain young woman in Sumatera, Jesika by name, from the city of Riau, requested a videocall so persistently that finally I ran out of excuses and relented.

She wants to practice at speaking English conversationally, in real time, you see? And I must admit, she has a point. Texting allows too much time to think, to edit what you're saying, to consult a translator app. On the videocall, you must communicate on the instant. For me, that's just another nerve wracking element of the whole deal. For her it is an exciting opportunity to employ a foreign language. And let's face it, in real world interactions, you don't have time to stand around texting your part of the conversation.

Yes, the little whippersnapper has a point.

Anyway, we did the call and I found it surprisingly pleasant. She's a delightful girl, almost 22, of a serious bent of mind, cute little face, big black glasses. For the most part, she spoke English and I spoke Indonesian, which was useful and educational for both of us at the same time. In addition, I got to meet her big brother, her little brother, her cousin, her mother and her uncle. They all gather, she told me, at the uncle's house on Wednesdays to hold school for the children (given that Indonesian schools are cancelled for at least the next three months due to coronavirus).

What stuck me most about this young woman was how childlike she is in comparison to a 22 year old American woman, which indeed is further accentuated by her small village upbringing (a kampung girl, as they say here). Friendly, direct, open, unsophisticated. She is Christian as well, as is her large family, and this is unusual especially on the island of Sumatera. In fact, one will often hear of church closings, lockdowns, and building permit denials in Sumatera. I mentioned this, but she seemed unbothered. We just have church in our houses, she said.

Well amen, sister. Church is not a building, it is a gathering of believers, ecclesia, the called out. Close as many churches as you want to, forbid the stones and the steeples, but the spirit is like the wind. It blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born in the spirit (John 3:8).

Summer

A fitful wind is sweeping through Sanur this evening, scouring out the humid days of spring, ushering in the cooler months of summer. High clouds come along on its courses, higher than the dangling near full moon, twirling gently at the treetops like a silver lure. The earth leaps, gulps air, fills its lungs. There is no plague here, there is no illness, the earth has never felt so well. Enchantment lives. Even the ghosts of the land cease their moaning and come out to surf for a moment like kites. And forget.  

Perspective

By way of comparison, the death toll in the great London plague of 1665, according to the record of the time (The Bills of Mortality) was 68,596. This number, according to the investigations of later historians, is about half the actual number of deaths from the plague that occurred in the summer and fall of that year. And, again, this was in London alone.

All this happened within the centuries long second pandemic, a period of intermittent bubonic plague epidemics which originated from Central Asia in 1331, which was the first year of what was originally called the Black Death. The bubonic plague killed in all about 25 million people in Europe, almost a third of the continent's population.

On the other hand, the current forecast is that perhaps 70,000 will die from the coronavirus in the entirety of the United States.

Perspective is always edifying.

It was known in 1665, just as it is now, how disease is transmitted from person to person, household to household, and the main remedy was what we now call 'social distancing'. The streets were deserted, businesses closed, fortunes ruined as people hunkered down in their own homes.

For those homes wherein a member of the household was afflicted with the plague, watchmen were set, one at day, one at night, to enforce isolation of the entire household. No one went in, no one came out. Or that was the rule, anyway. There were, however, many cases wherein people managed somehow to slip away unseen or indeed issued forth violently, overpowering the watchman. They did not like being constrained, told what to do, having their personal freedoms compromised.

Sound familiar?

Well, there is much that sounds familiar in reading Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year. We've been here before, folks, only more so.
 

My Three Sons

Watching the old TV series, My Three Sons (things to do during the shutdown). This series ran from 1960 to 1972 amazingly enough--amazing because it's not a very interesting show, comparatively speaking.

This is straight formula situation comedy centered on a single (widowed) father with three raucous sons who are, curiously enough, fairly perfectly anonymous. There is nothing really to set them apart from any other boys, such as was the case with the Beaver and Wally (and Eddy) in Leave it to Beaver, or with Ricky and Dave in Ossie and Harriet.

I remember very little about the show now, probably because it was not much watched in my house. Perhaps it was in the same time slot with something more engaging, I don't know. I certainly did not have a particular fondness for the show as a child. I only remember thinking that Bob, or Bub, or whatever they called him--the live-in grandfather played by William Frawley--struck me as a bit creepy.

As with all of these old, old shows, the best thing about it is the foggy window it provides into those black-and-white times, the strange disconnect one feels now with a world that once seemed perfectly ordinary but which now is extraordinary indeed.

The one unusual thing the show does do, in the episodes I've watched thus far anyway, is to end each episode with a sense of non-resolution, not a pat 'everything-all-wrapped-up-when-the-theme-plays' conclusion, but with a hint of the perpetual irresolution of normal family life.