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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Cuckoo Indeed

 It was interesting to reread Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest after all these years. Yes, it's a bit dated, with its emphasis on "the establishment" and other popular buzzwords / ideas of the time, but it is still an entertaining and an essential read, an examination of individuality and conformity, of how people are supposed to be, according to the authorities anyway, and how people really are. And I was surprised to realize that McMurphy is actually a Christ figure, which is something I missed when I first read the book many years ago, because I was quite young then and I was not aware of how great writers fold these themes into their narratives. The translation from English to Indonesian was also very well done and provided footnotes for matters or expressions that might be completely foreign to Asiatic readers. I'm going to share this novel around my Indonesian friends. I think they will find it quite enjoyable.

Faceplant

 I've mentioned here before that I have a problem with the right side of my body. A neurologic problem combined with spinal disc problems which has caused muscle atrophy in my arm and leg so that the right side is significantly thinner and weaker than the left. This causes problems with gait of course, which is exacerbated by balance problems arising  from MS in general. My right foot tends to drag while my right calf freezes up. This combination of difficulties sometimes results in a fall. 

Which is what happened today. 

I had stopped by the cookie store on Jalan Danau Tamblingan, dismounted from my bike and was stepping up the curbing when my right foot failed to raise itself sufficiently high. The forefoot caught on the curbing and I pitched forward into a fall. A full body fall, you know? A total faceplant. 

Now the interesting thing I want to mention here is not the fall itself but the reaction of the people nearby. The bules, i.e. the white people, the tourists passing by deftly stepped around me, such that they wouldn't step on me, and went on their way, while the nearby Indonesians exclaimed "Oh no!" and rushed over to where I lay. Two motorbikes stopped by the curbing. "Kamu ga apa-apa Pak? (are you okay, sir?).

I experience a combination of embarrassment and amazement--amazed still, even after 15 years here, that people care. Some people care. Certain people care. 

And it strikes me that this is in large part what we have lost in the West--a common sort of civility, a shared concern, a sense of community. They move aside, they turn their eyes away, they don't want to be involved. He shouldn't be so clumsy. Maybe he's drunk. In any case, it's his problem, not ours.

Of course I'm okay. I cut my forearm and a couple of fingers, and it looked worse than it really was, given that the blood thinner I have to take makes me bleed very easily and rather excessively.

Injured, embarrassed, but thankful, and newly appreciative of where I am.