Thesis

Wow, yesterday was just about like working again! Déjà vu. Spent about two hours at Starbucks correcting Dharma’s thesis, then went home for four hours more. A significantly messed up writing effort, even inscrutable in parts. Not that I don’t know how this feels—as my own writing in Indonesian may be occasionally inscrutable as well. To express one’s thoughts in writing may be the most difficult of tasks in a second language. When speaking, much may be filled in or supposed by the listener, according to facial expression and according to a sharing of the subject at hand. With writing, you’re on your own. One has no other clue to depend upon other than what you have written. Dharma tells me that he has already received a B+ on this paper and that his professors have merely asked for revision and polishing. Hmmm. I think I may go back to university here and seek a doctorate! Lol. 

Oh well … when I think back to my own college days there is much that now seems cringe-worthy. I remember doing a term paper, for instance, and asking a professor to excuse me for passing over Moby Dick in my analyses of the term reading because I just could not hope to do justice to its complexity! Talk about weak! Could it be that I just felt lazy, or had a date that night?

Dharma is just 21—a young man with a lot of conflicting interests and energies—just now facing the beginning of a life in the adult world, where he will need to find a niche, a defined direction. He’s a delightful young man, with a deep affection for his family and friends, a polite reverence for his elders (which is common in Balinese society), a lover of laughter and of like-aged girls. Were I to live so long, I can imagine meeting him again years down the road and finding a man of maturity and integrity, yet with a well preserved glimmer of youth and humor in his eyes.

Hopefully, he will put on some weight, too—for the boy is now so thin that I fear he may fly away with the next serious gust of wind!