Lizards

 The story is the same, over and over, but I watch it again and again. The same story, different faces. CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC. Abcdefg. Twenty-one killed, 19 children. 

Children. 

A lizard emerges from behind the TV screen. A cicak. From above, behind the clock, another lizard emerges. They approach each other cautiously yet deliberately and stop only when they are nose to nose. 

What is happening, I wonder. 

Somehow an hour passed while a growing mob of heavily armed officers and agents outside the school did nothing. The children died. The children screamed, the children bled, the children died. 

One of the lizards, the one that had come from behind the clock, positions itself parallel to the other, then places its body on top of the other's, its sticky little paws pinning the neck, its tail snaking around the lower portion. The two bodies are motionless for some moments and then the lizard on top begins to twitch from head to tail as if electrocuted. Something is happening here. Something ... I don't know ... reptilian. 

One cannot help but watch.

What Can You Be Thinking

 It seems that in my old age a general detachment overtakes me. I move about in the midst of humanity as if encapsulated, walled off, able to see and hear and speak and navigate (after a fashion), yet unable to respond articulately, appropriately, promptly to the most basic of stimuli. 

I am in the cafe, reading, all things as they should be--coffee and banana bread on the table before me, ashtray to the left, a lit cigarette, cellphone to the right. This is my entire field of vision. This and the open book in my hands. Little by little, something intrudes. I am completely unaware of it at first, and then it begins to vaguely stir the air between my thoughts, or rather between the thoughts of Murakami or Hawthorne or whomever happens to be thinking that day, and very slowly, very slowly my eyes wander upward, as slow as sunrise, to find a man standing above me with what started as an expectant smile in the process of fading from his lips.

"Sorry?" I say rather too intensely, as one suddenly jolted from sleep. 

"I wonder," he answers apologetically, "if I might get a light." 

"Oh, yes!" I say, again too quickly, too loudly (having just awakened). I hand him my lighter. 

Where was I? What happened? Where am I in this world? Just a moment ago I was with Murakami's enigmatic driver, just a moment ago I was on the platform of public shame with Hester Prynne, and then what is real alters the world: a man who wants a light. 

Wedged uncomfortably between two worlds, I wander back to my coffee, and I wonder what my girlfriend can possibly be thinking. And why she would think it. I think about kissing her and about how it does not feel right, the way a kiss is supposed to feel. Something is off. I put my palm to her cheek, smooth back her hair, trace the line from her neck to her shoulder, so thin, so slight. I have never known a woman like this. I do not know a woman like this. I kiss her breast (whose breast?). She makes a sound. I can feel her breath. I try to remember the way things are to be done, the way they were once done. What can she be thinking? I have nothing to offer, not even a future. 

"I love you," she whispers.

And I know those words. I do know them, somewhere. They are right on the tip of my tongue. 

Idul Fitri

 This last week was Idul Fitri in Indonesia, which is the end of Ramadan, when everyone gets to start eating normally again (Ramadan being the fasting month) and either travels to their kampung (home town) or goes on vacation (which pretty much means they go to Bali). Bali was, therefore, incredibly crowded for the whole of the last week, resulting in massive traffic jams (there is, after all, only one road which goes through Sanur) and inapproachable beaches. 

But it's Sunday now and the tide has receded. Thankfully. 

Toward the end of last week, my bank here in Indonesia suddenly shot itself in the head, which is to say that the system went down completely. I could not get money from the ATM, could not use my card at a store or restaurant, and in fact could not even log in to my account. It just so happens, naturally, that this happened in coincidence with my having run out of cash on hand. This was on Thursday. I had 110.000 Rupiah in my wallet. On Friday morning, I bought two packs of cigarettes, a coffee, and a cookie for a total of 100.000. What now?  Saturday came around and the bank was still dead. What am I gonna eat till ... whenever? Taking a survey of the kitchen, I found eggs, oatmeal, and one square of a dark chocolate bar. 

Ah well, happily they revived the bank at some point on Saturday and I was back in business. The business of eating, that is. 

Other than that, my two remaining teeth (which were not teeth anyway but rebuilt sorts of things) had to be pulled this last week, so now I am altogether done with teeth. Yay. I will need to send my upper dentures away to the lab on Monday so will be gumming food for the next four or five days. Soup, yoghurt, mashed potatoes--stuff like that. Endless fun here in paradise. 

Faithfulness

 I've been feeling a bit guilty lately about so seldom writing an entry here that I determined this morning that I would forthwith take up my laptop and dutifully head out to the Renon Starbucks, home of so many past entries, and by God make an entry. 

As I headed down to Sanur instead, without my laptop, I ruminated a bit over the term "forthwith". The word actually means instantly, without delay. So clearly I had used the wrong word for what I was doing, which was heading down to Sanur with no laptop instead of to Renon with one. 

Forthwith, as it turns out, is not really what I meant. Eventually is more like what I meant. 

And so eventually, just as promised in amendment, I packed up my laptop this evening and headed out to Renon, determined to be more faithful henceforth.

Just one little problem. I forgot to bring the power cord to the laptop. The laptop is dead without this electrical life support system. And my plan to be more faithful died along with it this evening. Or until just now anyway. 

So here I am at home, laptop powered up, hardwired in, all at ready at last, and I wonder ... 

What the hell was I going to say to begin with?!

Singing

 Early in the morning, around about 7:30, the sound of children singing rises above the sound of the traffic on Jalan Hangtuah. Their sweet voices, so clear, and somehow so unanimously on key, easily overpower the tuneless clamor of the traffic. The children are gathered in the courtyard of some nearby school and singing is part of their morning ritual before classes begin. I just sit at the outdoor table and listen, sipping from a hot cup of tea, smoking a cigarette. The street outside my gate is yet quiet and unoccupied. The workers next door have not yet begun their pounding and drilling and sawing and grinding. The dogs have already arrived at the house for their morning nap and are lying here and there about the floor like so many throw rugs. The children sing, the dogs sleep, a light breeze dances through the Bogainvillea flowers, and I think of how very blessed I am. 

The Dogs Again, Oh Dear

 The neighborhood dog hater war has reignited over the past couple days, the main issue being, once again, poop. These troubles had seemed resolved after the last flareup with an agreement being negotiated to the effect that every neighborhood resident would be responsible for the area in front of his or her own house. Additionally, all of the dogs were at that time vaccinated and neutered, at significant expense to the dog lovers of the neighborhood. 

However, complaints have arisen once again, and one dog hater, a woman named Komang, was caught on CCTV actually carrying poop to our end of the street (that is, the dog lover's end) and dumping it in the middle of the road.

The claim was then made that one of the dogs (unnamed) had bitten the driver of a motorbike and torn his or her pant leg. I consider this very unlikely, as none of the dogs has been known in the past to bite, except in play. They bark a lot, yes, but they do not bite. Unless maybe someone on a motorbike is trying to kick them? 

Barking, by the way, has also been added to the list of complaints against the unfortunate mutts.

Yes, they bark during the night, but I have always considered that a free neighborhood watch service. We have never had a single criminal incident on our street (other than pooping), and that is not surprising, because these dogs do set off a godawful fuss if a stranger dares enter the street at night. 

So I don't know what the end of this trouble will be this time around. There seems nothing additional that the dog lovers can do. The demand appears to be that the dogs either be kept inside a house or adopted out and expelled from the neighborhood altogether. 

I cannot imagine keeping any of these dogs locked up in a house at this point in time. They have run free since birth. It would seem cruel and unusual punishment. And splitting them up also seems heartbreaking to me, because they are always together, always have been. It's their family. 

I reckon a better solution would be for these complainers to get a damn life. Live and let live. 

I Hate Rats

 The dreaded rats are back! 

For a long time, I had had no trouble with rats in the house. Yes, I had seen them occasionally, running along the gutter at the street side or creeping inside my gate now and then, but none had the temerity to actually enter my house--until a few weeks ago, that is, when the maid reported that one of the critters had been inside the cupboard under the sink, busy at shredding plastic garbage bags. She did not actually see the rat, but advised me to place a sticky trap in the area and buy new garbage bags.

Well, that sticky trap went untread upon for the weeks to come, such that I began to wonder whether some other culprit might have been behind the garbage shredding incident. Or perhaps the maid herself had shredded the bags for some inscrutable reason. 

Nonetheless, with no rats caught nor seen nor heard, I pretty much forgot the incident. 

Until yesterday. 

It was morning time still, and I was just finishing my breakfast and having a cup of tea when there arose a sudden clatter from somewhere in the area of the kitchen. At first I thought it was something outside, given that men are working every day on building the house next door and do very often cause various clatters to arise. 

Peering out the doorway, however, I discerned that in fact the noise was coming from the inside, and directly, on keener inspection, from beneath the sink. 

Rat! 

Yes, there he was, a big one too, snaking around on the surface of the superglue with which the trap is coated. The more they move, the more stuck they get. In their struggle, of course they eventually fall down, never again to arise. It remains only to shut the lid of the trap and thus smother the poor critter. This has actually always seemed a more cruel method than the old style metal bar traps that break the rat's neck, but oh well--they don't sell those here, and basically the only good rat is a dead rat anyway. 

Closer investigation of this area reveals that the rat must have come up through a pipe beneath the sink that leads to the drainage area beneath the street. This must be fixed. Especially considering that the construction next door is driving a lot of various creatures out into the open and in search of new dwellings. I'm determined that my house not become one of these, because, to put it very succinctly, I Hate Rats.