Alien

Things have gone from bad to worse. It used to rain whenever I went to Sanur. Now it rains no matter where I go. Hell, if even rains if I don't go anywhere at all. My effect on the weather has gone from coincidental to universal, and I don't know how to stop it! 

Seriously, though, I don't like to be in the house when the maid is in the house. I feel like I'm in the way, and apparently I am. It seems like she wants to clean wherever I happen to be standing. Kind of the same dynamic as with the rain. Wherever I go, she cleans. 

So I pulled on my long rain smock, buttoned up the neck and sleeves, fired up the scooter, stared at the rain for a while, causing the same, it seems, to pour down even harder, fastened my helmet, set my teeth, and set off on the seven minute drive to Starbucks at Plaza Renon. It was to be the wettest seven minutes of my life (if you don't count swimming).

Ah well. I 've got my hot coffee now, and a dry table, and I shall camp out here until the rain stops, or until they eject me--whichever comes first. 

I've been thinking lately about being sort of an accidental stranger in a strange land, an alien in a country that has nothing to do with me. The original reason for my being here, my original connection with the place, has run off with another man, and the son whom I raised has long since returned to America, and yet here I am, without apparent reason, like a piece of luggage that didn't make the connecting flight to wherever it was supposed to go. 

Why am I here, without anchor or sail or compass or crew?

And yet it occurred to me this morning that this sense of alienation is not so much a new experience as it is an old acquaintance, for even at home, I have often felt not at home. I have often felt like an alien among my own people and in my own country--what did they, or it, have to do with me? I felt like I was on the outside of the world, trying to find a way in, a place where I would fit. For periods of time things would seem to coalesce, but then would just as suddenly evaporate, as if they had been nothing more than compelling shapes in a fog to begin with, and I would find myself unmoored again. 

I have, however, found one familiar thing in Indonesia, something to ground and reassure me. I have found, here, America. Not the America of the present day, which must seem alien to most folks my age, but the America of my youth, a place of simpler forms and friendlier manners, a society of interconnectedness and a mutuality of common sense.  

I have been watching, lately, old episodes of the Andy Griffith Show. Y'all remember Sheriff Taylor and Deputy Fife, Gomer and Goober Pyle and Howard Sprague, and Otis and Floyd and Opie and Aunt Bee, right? Well, the thing that strikes me in watching these episodes of American life in the 50's and early 60's is that while they are as quaint and antiquated as can be in regards to America, they pretty well describe life as it is in Indonesia. Everything moves at a slower pace. Social conventions trump strict business at every turn. You don't just stop in at the local store for a carton of milk--you stop in for a carton of milk and a conversation. If your motorbike has a flat tire, someone stops to help you. If you're taking a walk and you meet someone on the way, they don't look away or walk faster. No, they stop to chat and maybe walk with you for a ways. Everyone watches out for his neighbor, and God help the thief who gets caught red-handed. 

How ironic it is that I should find home in this sense in a country on the other side of the world and among a people who speak a different language. How strange to find so much of the familiar in such a foreign place.