Sad Coffee

 You notice it because of the bright yellow paint on the wall at one side of the doorway. SAD Coffee, a small hole-in-the-wall cafe tucked shoulder-to-shoulder alongside a steamy motorbike rental joint just before the intersection of Jalan Tamblingan and the highway. It is a spot people pass through quickly on their way to somewhere else. That's the first sad thing about SAD coffee that is sad. It is a wallflower. The second thing is the name itself, although I personally find it intriguing somehow. It brings to mind Hemingway's A Clean Well-Lighted Place. The little cafe, the lone man, the shadows of the leaves on the deserted sidewalk. Some sort of quiet pathos. But that's just me. 

It's dark inside, a single shaded light on the ceiling, and the walls are covered with thin strips of rusted metal, giving it a tin shack sort of appearance, which was either an artful choice on the part of the proprietor or the very cheapest possible option. Offsetting the rusticity, and yet somehow complimenting it, are two round tables of rich brown wood as well as a burgundy two-person sofa behind a long glass-topped table. One wall, also of brown wood, displays framed photos and paintings. 

The place serves only Vietnamese coffee. And of course fried rice. 

 I order a coffee and I ask the waitress why the coffee is sad. She does not answer. The place is new and she is new and seems a bit flustered. Or perhaps she is confused by my American accent that seems to muddle even the simplest of words.

I sit at one of the little tables. The seat of the chair is leather, which feels nice. I scroll through my phone briefly, but then as there is no one else here, I decide to move to the sofa against the wall at the back of the small room. How cozy this would be were there other people here. Or merely crowded? I guess it would depend on the quality of the people. To tell the truth, I'm generally happiest on my own.

"Boleh merokok, nggak?" I ask the waitress. Can I smoke? She says that I can. My goodness, a clean, not-so-well-lighted-place where one can smoke inside. I'm liking it more all the time. 

The waitress brings out my Vietnamese coffee, sort of a little tower, glass globe topped with the little metal cup from which the coffee drains onto the condensed milk below. The tower totters as she lowers it toward the table and finally crashes altogether to the glass tabletop. 

"That is sad," I say. "I guess that's why they call it sad coffee." 

This remark was meant to humor, but she answers nothing, rushing away to the kitchen for a towel.  

I sip the second effort casually, taking my time, enjoying the plush cushion of the sofa, which is infinitely more comfortable than the sofa I have at home. I am in no hurry, after all; and in this case, unlike that in the Hemingway story, there is no waiter impatient for me to go home. I have all the time in the world. At this moment, anyway, all the time in the world. 

Just As We Are

 I've been out of touch lately. Silent. A bit stunned. Lost for words. Discouraged and depressed. Disillusioned. 

But you know, I spent the last week with my stepson who is here from the US, and what I have taken away from our discussions in general, the political ones, I mean, is that people of his generation feel that once they have voted, they have done what they could do. It is their only power, and after it has been expended, there is nothing left. And so they kind of just roll with things. They are living busy lives, working careers, trying to build a tolerable situation for themselves, hanging out with their friends, dating. Life goes on. Much of their private lives is spent online in  venues and entertainments and pursuits that I can barely begin to understand.

And so what? It seems that there is even less that I can do over here on the other side of the world. I am affected, to be sure, especially where social security is concerned. And so I hope and pray for a democratic overturn of Congress in 2026. And that's about it. What else is there? I can write, here in the blog for example, but who cares? 

We did not dwell, therefore, on politics. Instead we laughed and shared stories and talked about our aspirations. Especially his. What aspirations after all does a 71-year-old man have? The aspiration to somehow avoid feeling like he has been run over by a truck when he wakes up in the morning? 

We talked about what we love. We talked about friends and also enemies. We talked about girlfriends and ex-girlfriends. We talked about the things for which he is striving and we talked about the things in life that are important, and the things that are not so important. 

We philosophized. We talked about culture, American culture and Indonesian culture. 

We are friends, I and my stepson. We agree, we disagree, but we do both without losing our grip on our mutual affection. He is himself, and I am me, and that is all okay and as it should be.

"Don't die before I come back next year," he texted before he got on his plane. "I still have lots of stories I want to tell you."

God Knows

 For those trumpers who are gleefully claiming that God saved Trump from an assassin's bullet by directing it into an innocent, decent family man sitting behind Trump -- Think it through. Such a God could have and would have saved everyone from injury, given that this same God is said to love all equally. So stop the bullshit, folks. No one is buying it, least of all God.

Explain This to Me

 Let me get this straight ... Trump wants to deport brown illegal immigrants who have committed violent crimes, and yet he has pardoned nearly all of the white American citizens who committed violent crimes at the capital on January 6th? 

And speaking of crimes, isn't Trump himself a convicted felon? And wasn't he found liable for sexual assault by a jury of his peers?

Almost Malaysia

 So my girlfriend and I were about to head for a 6 day vacation together in Malaysia. We arrived at the airport, went through baggage check, and then queued up to go through the check-in for the flight. She scanned her passport and headed through the automatic doors. I scanned mine and was taken to the immigration office. As it turned out, I had neglected to extend my exit permit. I had no idea I was supposed to do this. When I purchased the 5-year foreign residency here, I had no intention of ever leaving the country, and so I paid no attention to the rules for a possible exit at that time. As far as I knew, the 5-year foreign residency permit included a permit to leave and come back anytime I wanted. But no, it appears that I have both to pay to stay here and to pay to leave here. Lol. And so I am very depressed this evening, as my girlfriend continued on to Malaysia, as she should have done, and I returned ignominiously to my house in Sanur. I don't get to see my girlfriend often, as she lives in Central Java and can only visit me once every two to three months, and so this is especially painful to have ruined the opportunity to spend a week with her. But this is just one in a series of catastrophic brain failures for me. It seems that my cognitive abilities are swiftly deteriorating. I pay for things that I am not supposed to pay for, and I forget to pay for things that I should have paid for. I often have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing without seeking help, as if I were a child again. The only consolation is in the thought that she will probably have a better time without me in Malaysia, as I would always just slow her down and require assistance. I feel sad and angry and imbecilic and  and hollow. When immigration got done with me at the airport, an officer came to me and said "You must leave the airport immediately." As if I am some kind of criminal. And maybe I am. Criminally stupid, anyway.

The Sympathizer

I am reminded in reading the block-like, densely packed pages of Viet Thanh Nguyen's novel, The Sympathizer, of Conrad or Melville, not only for the complexity and precision of the prose but for the monster and the enigma lurking between and beneath the lines, the heart of darkness, the white whale: the Vietnam War, the meaning of which is forever both brutally present and bitterly elusive. 

The novel concerns the testimony/confession of a communist sympathizer, long embedded in the staff of a South Vietnamese general; half white, half asian; half Eastern, half Western, a living dichotomy of cultures, ideologies, sensitivities and, yes, sympathies.

Here I present a rather long segment of the narrative as an example of the sheer deliciousness of Nguyen's voice, for this is a novel chock full of such shimmering passages and well deserving of the literary acclaim it has received.

 Bang bang was the sound of memory's pistol firing into our heads, for we could not forget love, we could not forget war, we could not forget lovers, we could not forget enemies, we could not forget home, and we could not forget Saigon. We could not forget the caramel flavor of iced coffee with coarse sugar; the bowls of noodle soup eaten while squatting on the sidewalk; the strumming of a friend's guitar while we swayed on hammocks under coconut trees; the football matches played barefoot and shirtless in alleys, squares, parks, and meadows; the pearl chokers of morning mist draped around the mountains; the labial moistness of oysters shucked on a gritty beach; the whisper of a dewey lover saying the most seductive words in our language, anh oi; the rattle of rice being threshed; the working men who slept in their cyclos on the streets, kept warm only by the memories of their families; the refugees who slept on every sidewalk of every city; the slow burning of patient mosquito coils; the sweetness and firmness of a mango plucked fresh from its tree; the girls who refused to talk to us and who we only pined for more; the men who had died or disappeared; the streets and homes blown away by bombshells; the streams where we swam naked and laughing; the secret grove where we spied on the nymphs who bathed and splashed with the innocence of the birds; the shadows cast by candlelight on walls of wattled huts; the atonal tinkle of cowbells on mud roads and country paths; the barking of a hungry dog in an abandoned village; the appetizing reek of the fresh durian one wept to eat; the sight and sound of orphans howling by the dead bodies of their mothers and fathers; the stickiness of one's shirt by afternoon, the stickiness of one's lover by the end of love making, the stickiness of our situations; the frantic squealing of pigs running for their lives as villagers gave chase; the hills afire with sunset; the crowned head of dawn rising from the sheets of the sea; the hot grasp of our mother's hands; and while the list could go on and on and on, the point was simply this: the most important thing we could never forget was that we could never forget.

Christmas Eve

And so this is Christmas 

For weak and for strong 

For rich and the poor ones 

The world is so wrong

So sang John Lennon in his beloved Christmas song, heard continuously throughout every Christmas season since. 

The world is so wrong indeed. More wrong now than when Lennon penned the lyrics? Or just the same wrong? I don't know. Different wrongs for different times. But always wrong. Forever wrong. 

And so many of us are having a hard time feeling very merry this Christmas, as we find ourselves in the dark shadow of a government peopled by criminals, frauds, scammers, billionaires, perverts, rapists, racists, fascists. A hard time indeed are we having, and feeling the words of poor Mrs. Cratchit when asked to bless old Ebenezer Scrooge. 

"The founder of the feast indeed (said she). I wish I had him here! I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it."

But our curses, and our heartache fall impotent on December's empty air. We do not have Mr Trump before us any more than Mrs. Cratchit had Scrooge.

Christ himself came in a dark time, for the times of this world have always been dark. He came to right the wrong, and himself was wronged by the world that was wrong. And yet, as it is written, on the cross he overcame the world, and in his death and resurrection dispelled the darkness. This we believe, and must continue to believe. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail.

I recently heard a sermon by one James Talarico. I had never heard of the man before. He just popped up on my YouTube feed. But things like that happen, don't they? 

He was talking about the virgin birth and how such virgin births were a thing in the ancient world, not totally peculiar to the gospel record. Such a birth happened not only in the manger. Such births are happening all the time. Spiritual births. Something new is born, not of man but of miracle, Christ of Mary, and yet also Christ in us. We are made new creatures, free from the bonds of the world. Let the weak, therefore, say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich. And let us have hope, not in the world, for the world will disappoint, but in what is good, in what is noble, in what is kind and compassionate and generous and patient and fair and honorable. And joyous. 

In Christmas.

So this is Christmas 

And what have you done 

Another year over 

And a new one just begun ...

Where shall we start? Surely not in despair.